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New Orleans Notes March 2025 30 Mar 3:21 PM (6 months ago)

We recently took a trip to New Orleans, here’s a quick list of where we went. Mostly a lot of food, walking and music– very fun spot to visit. Here’s a list of some of the places we went by category.

Brunch

All really good! Alma probably our favorite, Elysian bar really nice vibe, Bearcat had great biscuit+egg sandwiches.

Beignets

They get their own category- all very good. Hard to pick a favorite. Also had to pick up a “Beignet done that” t-shirt.

Music

Our favorite was Pat O’Brien’s.

Lunch

Not really a fan of Turkey and the Wolf, got too much hype. Willie Mae’s seems to have multiple locations.

Dinners

Saba was our favorite here, the pita + dips were great.

Museums

I really learned a lot at the Katrina exhibit, and it was easy to understand. The WW2 musuem was impressive, but also overwhelming.

Walked Around

We really liked walking around the French Quarter and did that for a while. Explored a number of galleries and a few antique shops. The Garden District was a nice place to explore

Other Unique Spots

We found this spot online and this was actually very cool to see how they make the floats.

Mardi Gras World
Cafe Du Monde
Loretta’s
Pat O’Brien’s

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What is Ethereum? 25 Dec 2024 6:32 AM (9 months ago)

I recently wrote up a long explainer on Bitcoin. Now I’ll try and add a bit more about the #2 cryptocurrency, Ethereum. As of this writing bitcoin is at $98k and $1.9 trillion market cap, and ethereum is at $3500 and a $421 billion market cap.

Bitcoin was the first real internet money. Ethereum is the first real programmable internet money.

Technically bitcoin is programmable with Bitcoin Script, but it is much simpler and not as powerful. Ethereum has a Turing-complete programming language which means you can program any type of computation that can be solved. In practice, this means you see Bitcoin and Ethereum being used for very different things.

Here’s a few differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Creation

Bitcoin was created by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, and Ethereum was created in 2013 launched by Vitalik Buterin and other developers.

Token

With the Bitcoin network, bitcoin (BTC) is the native token (same name) and there is a cap of 21 million coins. With the Ethereum network, ether (ETH) is the native token, and there is no set cap. But colloquially, I hear ether and ethereum used interchangeably a lot and people might talk about the price of ethereum when technical ether is the network token. I say ethereum, and if you do that people still know what you mean.

How they create new transactions

Each blockchain network has a consensus mechanism, or process for creating new transactions and saving and propagating them. In Bitcoin, the mechanism is bitcoin mining done through proof of work, with tons of computers, data centers, and energy spent to solve a computationally difficult problem to secure the network. With Ethereum, it started as proof of work and transitioned to proof of stake. Proof of stake is where a smaller group of “validators” are chosen to create new blocks based on how much of ether they “stake” or lock up and put at risk. They earn rewards for securing the network honestly, and bad behavior can lead to validators losing their staked assets. Proof of stake is a lot less energy intensive.

Ethereum is programmable

The really important difference with Ethereum is that it is programmable. Ethereum can almost be thought of as a global computer. You can write programs that run on the ethereum network in a language like Solidity or Vyper. These programs are called smart contracts. A smart contract is a self-executing program on a public blockchain instead of on some private application. This enables the creation of distributed applications (dApps), and other new types of applications like decentralized finance (DeFi). The distributed or decentralized aspect here is that instead of running on the server of one person or one company, the program executes and is available on the public ethereum blockchain network, which anyone can participate in, making it more transparent. These run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), and importantly there are many other blockchains that make use of the EVM.

New assets and fungible tokens on Ethereum

Lots of people in crypto or Bitcoin are “Bitcoin Maxis” meaning they only see bitcoin as having value and think many of the other cryptocurrencies, including ethereum, are scams. I think this misses a lot of the point of crypto and a lot of the new value that can be created here.

One amazing value point of Ethereum is that on the Ethereum blockchain you can create other tokens representing other assets (digital or other real assets). One common standard for creating tokens is the ERC-20 standard, which is for the creation of fungible tokens on ethereum. Since anyone can make a token, there are probably over a million tokens, but as of this blog maybe around 1200 valued over $1 million USD. But there are 300 over $100 million USD and currently 75 over $1 billion USD.

Ok- pause and think about what this means. The ethereum network, because of its programmability, has allowed the creation of many massive digital assets and tokens that live on that network. A few large examples are USDT and USDC which are stablecoins, meant to be tokens that hold the value of $1 USD but now available for transacting on ethereum.

Non fungible tokens on Ethereum (NFTs)

Another novel application from ethereum is non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or ERC-721 tokens. These tokens represent digital items that are unique and not interchangeable. They could represent things like digital art, collectibles, or game items. A good way to think about them is like a digital baseball card or a digital ticket. Getting a limited edition baseball card of your favorite player is not the same as any other baseball card — even if they are both baseball cards.

The global NFT market cap today is $8b, and almost all of the large collections are on Ethereum (75% of the top 100 on ethereum, a handful on Solana and Bitcoin). Some of the current most valuable NFTs are CryptoPunks, Bored Apes, and Pudgy Penguins. There are many popular NFT exchanges like OpenSea, Blur, and MagicEden.

Lots more applications on ethereum

Ethereum has lots of applications on it, which is a major difference from Bitcoin. For example there is a domain name system (Ethereum Name Service, or ENS). There are onchain decentralized exchanges like Uniswap. There are onchain lending applications like Aave. There are many, many more.

Easier to use and more powerful

I’ve found ethereum and EVM-based chains to be easier to use. It’s easier to use the block explorers like etherscan to see the blockchain, see your wallet. The wallets are better and more robust, and even easier for mobile. The transactions are faster. The apps can do more, since they aren’t just limited to sending and receiving like bitcoin. (Again there are technically other things you can do on bitcoin, but practically this is extremely, extremely limited).

How to get started

There are a few ways to get started and that you can buy and interact with ethereum. You could buy ethereum on an exchange like Coinbase. You could send it to your own wallet to test out blockchain applications. You could start by testing wallets like Metamask, TrustWallet, Coinbase Wallet, Zerion and Rainbow Wallet. You could try and exchange a token on Uniswap, you could try to buy an NFT on OpenSea.

I think in the future as cryptocurrencies and digital assets expand there is room for more than just bitcoin, as there are already many thriving cryptocurrencies. First try to understand bitcoin, then try to understand ethereum.

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What is Bitcoin? 1 Dec 2024 7:06 PM (10 months ago)

Lots of digital ink has been spilled explaining the question “what is Bitcoin?”

As the price of bitcoin nears $100k, it’s a good time to explain it again. I find myself explaining it to a lot of people still, and find many people are still confused. It can be confusing!

I wrote about bitcoin it in my book, and part of the intro was this question:

What if the internet had money built in, that was distributed, and that nobody owned but anyone could use?

I have also been blogging about bitcoin and crypto since 2014 (post here on buying dogecoin, crypto/blockchain as one of my top 5-10 year trends from 2017, getting started resources, and more).

So what is it?

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency secured by a network of computers that can only ever have up to 21 million coins.

Bitcoin doesn’t really fit a lot of existing mental models so it’s helpful to think of it in other ways. Here are a few different ways to think about bitcoin.

Internet money

First, bitcoin is internet money. Any cryptocurrency can really be internet money, but bitcoin was the first and is currently the largest cryptocurrency. Web pages don’t have the concept of a native payment system, but bitcoin is an open money system that anyone can use.

Digital gold

Bitcoin can be looked at as digital gold. Much like physical gold represents a store of value of a scarce and desirable resource that is hard to reproduce or forge, bitcoin has many of those properties. Some interesting properties of bitcoin is that it is:

The St. Louis fed lists some properties that important for money: “The characteristics of money are durability, portability, divisibility, uniformity, limited supply, and acceptability.” Bitcoin has many of these.

Image from Bitcoin properties of money blog.

Bitcoin is still hard to get and hard to use day to day, and there are a few other properties to consider.

Store of value: Bitcoin has held and significantly increased its value so can be considered a store of value. However, it has a much shorter lifetime than gold or US dollars so has not been proven.

Medium of exchange: It could be used in this way, and possibly is for larger transactions but isn’t as common yet.

Unit of account: Bitcoin is very volatile in price and not currently in use in this way.

Blockchain
Bitcoin is a blockchain – a distributed immutable ledger. The way transactions work is that anyone can send out a transaction, and then they are grouped together in blocks. Each block is then added, or chained on to the prior one, and together these create a blockchain. Each additional block secures the network further and makes it increasingly infeasible and expensive to go back and change the history. These transactions are finalized by bitcoin miners, effectively large groups of computers running expensive math problems to add the new set of transactions to the ledger.

So this ledger is open–this means anyone can inspect it. For example here is a BTC explorer and here is a sample block.

Open source software

Bitcoin is also open source software. You can download the software, edit it, fork it (create your own version), run your own copy, run your own node, or just explore the code. Here’s the code https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin. Lots of new cryptocurrencies are actually just forks of bitcoin — someone made a copy and changed some variables and gave it a new name.

A New Macro Asset with a Set Monetary Policy

Bitcoin could be considered a new macro asset with a set monetary policy. Following the digital gold analogy, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies can be seen as a new asset class. Investors might invest in stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, private equity, but cryptocurrency is slowly being added to that list (it is listed on the Wikipedia page for asset classes). Investors might look for non-correlated assets to diversify a portfolio. In addition, it might be seen as an inflation hedge. US inflation has been around 3% per year over the past 10 years, and 8% in 2022. A dollar from 1950 is worth $13.10 today.

Also, relative to many other countries, US has more manageable inflation. There have been many countries in the past with hyperinflation. There are many countries with inflation in 2024 over 20%. Anyone in these countries is rapidly losing purchasing power and could benefit a lot from storing value in bitcoin or cryptocurrencies.

The monetary policies of different countries can be highly variable, and countries can print lots of money and cause inflation. Bitcoin has a set monetary policy, the rate at which new bitcoins are minted is known, and the limit of the total supply of bitcoins is known. We don’t know yet how the monetary policy will stand over time, but it is more set than many countries.

Digital savings account

Bitcoin can be thought of as a digital savings account. Given some of the earlier properties, you could choose to save money in cash, or maybe stocks or a stock index, or property like a house. However, to keep up with inflation you have to own assets. This may allow for a new type of digital savings where people prefer to store some money in bitcoin rather than just in cash, which can lose value to inflation.

A Potential Reserve Currency or Treasury Asset

Bitcoin is gaining legitimacy in several new ways. There are now many ETFs that have over $100B in bitcoin.

https://treasuries.bitbo.io/us-etf-aum/

There are many companies starting to hold bitcoin as a treasury asset, most notably Microstrategy.

https://treasuries.bitbo.io/#public

Countries are holding $50B of bitcoin, some of them more intentionally like El Salvador or Bhutan. The US has talks of a “strategic reserve of bitcoin”–and while far off– the fact it is being discussed is very interesting.

What’s interesting here is that the game theory of it might suggest that as more countries get bitcoin, it becomes more validated, and it may lead to other countries trying to get bitcoin, and continue to make it more desirable and valuable.

Memecoin

Bitcoin is a memecoin. There are now thousands (or more?) memecoins, which have no value or purpose, but just are internet digital tokens. Bitcoin is a memecoin. It just is the strongest meme coin. It has a community, lots of companies, exchanges, tools, and software around it. We don’t know how many users but maybe there are 100 million holders, or rather hodlers. Bitcoin now has a market cap of $1.9 trillion. So there are a lot of people invested in the meme.

Philosophy of money – Bitcoin has value if people want it

Part of learning about bitcoin is learning about the philosophy of money, what is it and why does it have value? What is the history of money? One reason that is simple but also true is that something has value if people want it. People across the world want to hold US dollars because they believe they hold and will hold value. This is another valid reason to hold bitcoin. People believe bitcoin has and will continue to hold value. Why bitcoin and not any other coin then? This is a great question. It could be any other coin. But as more people buy into bitcoin, it may increase its perception of legitimacy.

But what if it all crashes to zero? (and other objections)

I guess it all could. That could happen to a lot of things, and it’s certainly still considered risky. But I think all of the reasons above are reasons it may not crash. “Where is the cash flow?” See reasons above why it may be valuable despite not looking like a normal company with profits.

What about the other cryptocurrencies?

There are thousands (or maybe millions, depending on how you count them?) of cryptocurrencies. What about all of the others? Many are random tokens that no one uses or cares about. But lots have apps, and users and ecosystems. Ethereum and Solana are several of the very popular large coins. These are arguably even a bit more programmable than bitcoin. So we don’t know which ones will win. Bitcoin for now is the largest and the OG, but anything could happen.

I guess we should check back in 10 more years!

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The self-driving cars are coming 27 Oct 2024 11:30 AM (11 months ago)

I’ve been on a few trips to SF in the last few years where I got to take a Waymo. I’ve currently taken 11 Waymos. They are crazy! So futuristic. And yet, now they are doing over 100,000 paid rides per week.

In May 2024, they were doing 50,000 rides per week. In late 2023 it was 10,000 rides per week. So that is 10x in 1 year. They are already here. They are public in major cities like SF, LA, and Austin, and yet they are still a secret. They have felt like technology that was “a few years away” for the last 10 years but they are actually just here.

I have been interested in self-driving cars for a while, and just found a blog post I wrote speculating when they would come to LA back in 2015. Well, it was this year, 2024 – that they started offering rides in LA

https://waymo.com/blog/2024/03/scaling-waymo-one-safely-across-four-cities-this-year/

Day 4 // 4/9/2015 // Los Angeles

You get into the car, it starts talking to you. But the thing that is most noticeable is it just feels like a safer driver. I am a regular user of Uber and Lyft, in particular when I’m traveling and very regularly I get Uber drivers that are just unsafe. They are swerving, they are driving aggressively, they are speeding, and I really do not want that. The human drivers are already unsafe as is.

The first couple rides seem weird but after that it seems normal. I don’t live in SF enough to use more often, but if they were in Chicago I would take them over a Lyft or Uber. Then you can sit on the back, use your phone and get to your destination. It just feels calmer. Also helps that they have the futuristic music playing.

The thing I’ve noticed in the last few times that I’ve been to SF is the number of Waymos just seems to be increasing. It was relatively common on my last trip to see several Waymos in a row. Before it was a rare sight to see even one self driving car.

Prediction market on # of Waymo rides in 2025 and 2026. 2025 estimates currently at 400k-800k rides per week, and 2026 estimates at 1-2 milion rides per week.

https://manifold.markets/JoshYou/how-many-paid-driverless-waymo-ride?play=true

Not sure if Waymo (Google) or Tesla will be the major self driving player but exciting that the technology for both has developed so much.

A few clips below.


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So many things to charge 27 Oct 2024 10:53 AM (11 months ago)

Now that everything is digital, there are so many things to charge.

Seems like it used to be that you just needed to charge your phone. But the more smart or tech items you use, the more you can end up charging.

Now that I’m using so many of the Apple products you have to charge all of those.

Charge:

We went to a smart doorbell, but now we need to charge that.

If you get an electric car, then you’d need to charge that.

Just seems like everything always needs to be charging. On long trips when traveling and the GPS seems to kill the phone battery, then sometimes I’ll use a backup battery. But that needs to be charged too.

Sometimes I’ll be reading on a kindle, so need to charge that too.

So then we are charging:

Lots of cool tech, but so many things to charge.

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Notes from my first self-driving car experience 27 Dec 2023 4:47 PM (last year)

I’ve been interested and tracking self-driving cars for a long time now, and finally a few months ago I was able to take my first ride in a self-driving car.

My initial reaction from it was really that it was just a crazy cool experience, and I think this will become a lot more common, and I can’t see how this doesn’t become commonplace in the future. Now the real question is how long will that be– a year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, or longer? I hope it’s not 10 years or longer and it seems so much of the technology was there.

Here was the full experience:

I called a ride on my phone, kind of like you call an Uber. I was in San Francisco and took a ride back to my hotel.

The car arrived to pick me up. It seems it had a designated pick up spot a few minutes from where I was so it didn’t come exactly to me. I walked over to it, clicked the button on the app to unlock it.

It started talking out loud, and then just started driving.

It was about a 20 minute ride. It felt like it was going super slow, but I think that’s because it was going the speed limit and most drivers aren’t going the speed limit.

There is no one in the front drivers seat, but you still see the wheel, and see it turning when it is making a turn. I think initially I felt a little nervous because there really is no driver, but after a bit it seems like it is just driving like normal. It comes to a complete stop at a stop sign, which also seems a bit different since I don’t think most human drivers will stop all the way to 0.

Near the end it pulled over and dropped me off. It had a designated drop off spot which was about a few blocks away from my hotel and at the bottom of a hill, which was a bit inconvenient. I’m not sure why it picked this spot, but I’m guessing it had designated some safe drop off and pick up spots.

Maybe a week or so later San Francisco stopped Cruise from operating in San Francisco, which I think is a real shame. It seems in the accident that precipitated it, the initial fault was from a human driver. The real problem for the self-driving cars… is all the other human drivers.

I haven’t taken a Waymo yet but hope to do that soon. From Waymo’s blog, “This year alone, Waymo has served over 700,000 ride-hailing trips with public riders and no human driver.”

Later in the blog they write:

When considering all locations together, compared to the human benchmarks, the Waymo Driver demonstrated:

This means that over the 7.1 million miles Waymo drove, there were an estimated 17 fewer injuries and 20 fewer police-reported crashes compared to if human drivers with the benchmark crash rate would have driven the same distance in the areas we operate.

I think there is a lot of fear surrounding self-driving cars because they are new, which seems reasonable. But if you look at the Waymo data, it seems that self-driving is just far, far safer than human drivers. The obvious problem here, from a public messaging standpoint is that people are comparing the cars to being perfect instead of comparing them to a human driver as a baseline.

Human drivers are obviously terrible! They aren’t paying attention, or are drunk, or sleep-deprived, or or on their phone, or distracted by something else, or driving angrily or aggressively, or speeding or any number of other things. Even with the baseline today self-driving cars seem better than human driven cars. There still seems to be a long ways to go before they are way more widespread.

The real challenge is getting more people on board which is why the roll out is the real challenge. I think the best strategy is a roll out that continues to expose people to self-driving cars in very safe ways so that more people can get comfortable with them. I think driving at low speeds is just better while they are still new because even if there is an accident, if someone is driving 10-20 miles per hour it’s probably much more likely to be ok than an issue at 50+ miles per hour.

My prediction would be that it would be a lot more common place in 5 years (2028). And for Waymo I would guess 1.7m rides in 2024, and 3.5m rides in 2025. I would hope it could continue exponentially if they continue to see success.

Here’s a 3 minute video of part of the ride:

16 minute ride video

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Setting up a computer, Macbook Air M2, 2022 5 Nov 2022 1:58 PM (2 years ago)

I created a new blog category and now have a series of at least 6 blog posts on computer setup over at least 8 years.

Here are the other posts: https://thekeesh.com/category/computer-setup/

Here was my set up and notes for setting up a new computer. This was a Macbook Air (M2, 2022), 24GB ram.

For me at least, you have your existing computer configured so much you forgot what settings you changed and it’s interesting to see what things become most apparent when setting up a new computer.

Here were the steps:

Log in with Apple ID for setup

Download Chrome. Still not a Safari person.

What seems off so far: The scroll direction! I changed the scroll direction to the other way since I am so used to that.

I wanted to create this blog post, but didn’t have my passwords migrated, or my notes migrated, so started writing in the default Mac Notes app.

Then I downloaded Simplenote from the Mac App Store.

What seems off so far: Don’t have my keyboard shortcuts for resizing windows, will need to set that up.

Adjust my bottom bar apps, remove apple native apps from the dock. Add Chrome and Simplenote to the dock.

Set up Dropbox. There were a lot of issues with the installer. It didn’t open 3 times. Took me to a support doc for this version of MacOS – seems it hasn’t fully caught up. Went through the Dropbox installer and configuration. It looks like Dropbox has a lot of good new features. They promoted Dropbox Capture – which looks like a Loom/Skitch combo, so downloaded, set that up and tested it out.

Turn on dock app hiding

Download and set up 1password native app and in the browser

Download zoom. First the default is the wrong type for an intel mac. Then find the installer for the Apple silicon. Not super clear.

Computer feels really snappy, way less RAM than the prior computer. Maybe I was very late to the Apple silicon upgrade.

Set up Slack.

Download Notion. Seems the Intel processor/Apple silicon download options for native apps is still pretty clunky, wonder if more sites are able to see which version you are on instead?

Download Evernote from the Mac app store.

Set up divvy window manager, download from app store. Reconfigure a few shortcuts.

Download Loom.

Download Adobe Creative Suite.

Seems pretty set up at a basic level. Will still need to set up the codebase.

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Some notes from our trip to Italy 7 Aug 2022 6:44 PM (3 years ago)

Julie and I took a great trip to Italy recently. We visited Rome, Florence and Sorrento. Here are a few notes from our trip and itinerary.

Here was our general itinerary.

Day 1
Fly Chicago to Rome overnight

Day 2
Arrive to Roma Termini station, then hotel
Walk to Trevi Fountain
Lunch at Vos
Go to pantheon
Gelato
Pasta e Vino Osteria – Trastevere
Walk around Trastevere.
Live music
Walk around Tiber river street fair
Limoncoco stand

Day 3
Breakfast of maritozzo
Walk to Spanish steps, via de corso and Piazza de Poppolo
Da Vinci museum
Scooter
Pizza
Coliseum tour
Roman forum. Palatine hill
Go to Parione neighborhood
Dinner at Ponte and Parione
Fridigidarium for gelato

Day 4
Visit Vatican museum and Sistine chapel
Pizza
Train to Florence
Walk around Florence. Duomo. Ponte vecchio at Sunset
Dinner at Acqua Al 2

Day 5
La Menagerie for breakfast
Uffitzi museum
All’Antico Vinaio sandwich
Gelateria dei Neri
Visit Boboli gardens
Sunset at Piazzale Michelangelo
Dinner at Trattoria 13 Gobbi

Day 6
Pasta making class at Pasta Experience
Antico Noe panini lunch
Wine tour and Olive oil tasting at Tenuta Torciano and one more in chianti area
Walked around Santa croce neighborhood
Tiramisu at Cafe Gilli

Day 7
Accademia gallery to see the David
Walk around Florence leather stores
Lunch at little stops in central market
Train to Sorrento
Walked around town
Lemon ice overlooking water
Dinner at Inn Bufalito

Day 8
Visit local markets
Walk to Marina Grande
Pizza at Frankie’s pizza bar
Gargiulo olive oil factory tour and tasting
Dinner at Fuoro

Day 9
Amalfi coast boat tour day
Stop at Amalfi
Stop at Positano

Day 10
Relaxing at hotel
Walk to town for lunch at Garden de Gennaro
Walk to dinner at Tavern Allegra

Day 11
Train from Sorrento to Rome
Walked around hours of Rome
Dinner at Tonarello (https://g.page/tonnarelloroma?share)

Day 12
Flight back to Chicago

Our Favorites

Best Pasta: Cacio e Pepe at Pasta e Vino Osteria or Tonarello in Trastevere, Rome
Best Pizza: Frankie’s pizza bar in Sorrento
Best Neighborhood: Trastevere, Rome
Best Tourist Site: Coliseum
Best Gelato: Frigidarium in Rome in the Parione neighborhood
Best Sunsets: Florence, Ponte Vecchio and Piazzale Michelangelo
Best Dessert: Nutella Bombolone at Florence Central Market
Runner Up Desserts: Gelato, Chocolate Salami (which is chocolate, not salami)

Transportation notes

We got around Italy mostly by train, which works well. The trains were running very regularly and for a number of the cities it is pretty easy to get to.

When we landed in the Rome airport Fiumicino we took a train to Roma Termini station which was right near our hotel and pretty easy to do.

From Rome to Florence we took a train and that was also pretty easy. We took a train from Rome to Sorrento, but to do that, we did Rome to Naples, which was on one of the fast trains. Then we took a local train (Circumvesuviana) to Sorrento, and that was very delayed, packed, and hot. On the way back we were looking for something a little easier and there was the Campania Express train which was supposed to be faster and have air conditioning. That train was also equally or more delayed, even though it was supposed to be the tourist train with fewer stops, and we missed our connecting train.

We booked through the Omio app for trains, which was pretty helpful. However, sometimes we booked in advance, which with all of the delays was mixed. It seems it would be better to book almost on the spot, or anticipate delays on a number of the trains and especially any local trains.

For getting around Rome, we mostly walked, but Rome was still a lot bigger and some times we took taxis. In some places we were able to more easily get a taxi, or from the hotel. But at the more packed areas, including near the Coliseum, it was very hard to get a taxi. There was also the FreeNow app, which was an Uber-like app but that worked directly to taxis. In some of the general areas it was fine, but in the tourist areas, we had a lot of trouble getting a taxi.

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The Mass Shooting in the Town Next Door 4 Jul 2022 8:01 PM (3 years ago)

There was a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois today on the Fourth of July, the town next door to where I grew up. An absolute tragedy.

Guns are a sickness in this country.

The median country has 6 guns per 100 people.

The US has 120 guns per 100 people.

This is 20 times the number of guns as the median country. This means a normal country has 95% fewer guns than the US.

The US is the only country in the world where there are more guns than people.

Many people in the US are confused on what constitutes a normal or moderate view on guns versus an extreme view. Many in the US think that supporting guns and gun rights is a moderate view; looked at globally it is an extreme view. In most countries it’s extremely rare to have a gun. Also the idea of being anti-gun or wanting to significantly reduce guns in the US is viewed as an extreme view; globally it is a moderate view.

Guns are now the leading cause of death for kids in the US. Read that again.

We have a population and leaders that won’t do anything meaningful on gun violence. We’ve looked at shootings in elementary schools and said, yes, we’re going to have more of this because we care more about our gun rights than anything else.

Guns are a sickness in this country.

42% of households have a gun. 30% of people in the US own a gun. Until these numbers go down, it will just be more of the same. The most common reason gun owners give for owning a gun is protection. In reality, guns just make bad situations more dangerous and deadly. These “responsible” gun owners believe a lie: “In virtually every way that can be measured, owning a firearm makes the owner, the owner’s family, and the people around them less safe.”

Over 300 mass shootings halfway through the year, 11 per week. In 2021 there were 692 mass shootings. Sickening.

The US is truly not a civilized society any more. It’s a society with a lot of guns, and that prioritizes absurd gun rights over the safety of every day people. And a significant percentage of people want this.

On this fourth of July I can’t say I’m proud to be an American. I’m saddened that this is the state of the country.

I’d pick 6 guns per 100 people in the US and I would be ok with that. That’s what a normal country would do.

I think gun owners who own a gun for self defense fashion themselves as some movie superheroes. The reality of what happens is much more tragic. Read this excerpt from the Atlantic:

The record shows case after case of guns escalating ordinary disputes into homicides or attempted homicides. In March 2020, a man was fatally shot in the head after an altercation over a parking space at an Atlanta shopping mall. In August 2020, a 75-year-old Nashville homeowner reportedly shot and wounded a landscaper for not properly hauling brush from his property. In November 2020, a gun owner shot and killed a teenager for playing music too loudly in the parking lot of the motel they were both staying at, police said. (source)

It seems to me the US is not unique in its ordinary disputes. It’s unique in that that the presence of guns turn these disputes into tragedies.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country

https://www.axios.com/2022/05/26/gun-deaths-children-america

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/09/13/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/15/1099008586/mass-shootings-us-2022-tally-number

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/10/responsible-gun-ownership-is-a-lie/619811/

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How to Mint a Karel NFT (short version) 30 Dec 2021 1:51 PM (3 years ago)

Here I’m going to assume you know a few of the basic cryptocurrency terms and have a metamask wallet, and polygon on the polygon network. You can see how to set up metamask here. You can view the more detailed post here.

We have created 10,000 randomly generated Karel NFTs on the polygon blockchain. If you want to mint your own Karel NFT, read below! If you need more background read some of the earlier posts above. Here are a few sample Karel NFTs:

Mint your own Karel NFT

Ok- now for the fun part. Also the good thing about the setup is once you have metamask and polygon set up, you only need to do that once. The reason I’m using polygon here instead of ethereum is because transaction fees on polygon are less than a cent, and on ethereum it can be $50-$100 or more. Karel NFTs right now mint for 1 MATIC which is about $2. Minting a NFT means you are creating a new transaction on the blockchain and creating a new unique token.

Visit karelnft.com.

Then click Connect.

Then select the number you want to buy. I will mint 1 for 1 MATIC.

Then you will receive a pop up you want to approve.

This costs 1.00855 MATIC, 1 MATIC to mint and 0.00855 in transaction fees.

Then I click the Mint box, and then View on block explorer. That takes me to see my transaction on polygonscan.com.

You can see here I minted karel #159.

https://polygonscan.com/tx/0x867ad4006e2933cc7b1b3d92148ff74a5a3be92b7560694b6e404b91440fca4a

View your NFT on OpenSea

Now you want to view your NFT. Go to OpenSea.io. Click the Profile icon in the top left, then connect your account with Metamask.

After a couple of minutes your karel will show up on your profile.

Now you can click in to your NFT to see the main page for it.

So there you go! Now you can view your NFT. Here is the link for mine: https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0x9f0105fa457279db93545ebfd7a190659a2fd97c/159

You can also see the properties here if you scroll down:

So that is it! It is a bit complicated to get started right now but that is a way to get started minting your own NFT.

We have 10,000 generated Karel NFTs. If you mint one, let me know! Also if you are a student on CodeHS who does this definitely let me know! I’m sure some students are already crypto wizards.

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