It seems I can't get a dinner anymore without overhearing talk about blockchain. One point I keep hearing that irks me though is that government wouldn't restrict the crypto industry because of how much money they could make by letting it flourish.  That is just wrong on so many levels.  Whether a law exists or not has nothing to do with making money.  It doesn't matter if everyone got paid or the government gets a cut.  Otherwise by that logic, you might as well say the government should let illegal drug trade and black markets flourish because of "how much money they could make."  It's like if a cop let someone go for stealing because the cop got a share.  As long as everyone gets a piece, what's the harm? Unfortunately this kind of thinking seems to be the norm in crypto and really just finance in general, where right or wrong is decided solely by whether money is made.

Marble Machine by Wintergatan (@wintergatan)

If a few hours on a larger planet with higher gravity can be years on Earth, then any advanced alien life is most likely from a smaller planet with much lower gravity than us, where each year for us can be millions for them. #interstellar

Sound is just a concept, a label to a group of molecules moving together in tandem.  There is no "thing" called sound that actually travels.  It's just a domino effect.

After splitting my time evenly between New York, San Francisco, and LA for about three years, a semi-humorous comparison of the three cities.

NYC	SF	LA
Money.	Make the world a “better” place.	I just want to be “happy.”
Honor.	Righteousness.	Entitlement.
Luxury.	Gadgetry.	Comfort.
Live to work.	Work is play.	Work to live.
Materialism and consumerism.	Tech and health.	Feelings and feel good.
Hardened.	Pampered.	Doesn’t want to move.
Does it make money?	How's it improve society?	What's it got to do with my life?
Sell and finance things.	Create things.	Stylize things.
Mechanical Turk.	Machine automation.	No automation.
Tech = Man on foot w/ a phone.	Tech = Same thing done differently.	Tech = laundry machine w/o coins.
Backup servers in the same building.	Backup servers across the globe.	Still moving past CDs and VHS tapes.
GPS doesn’t work.	Can’t drive w/o GPS.	Can’t drive with a GPS.
Drives competently without tech.	Tries to follow GPS into a river.	Drives past you 4 times at full speed.
Four seasons.	Fog.	Smog.
City never sleeps.	Even the mall closes by 8pm.	Regular hours.
Can get 3 things done a day.	Can get 10 things done a day.	Takes all day just to get somewhere.
Subway goes everywhere.	Subway literally on one street only.	No subway except to downtown.
$1M for an apartment.	$1M for a closet.	$1M for a house.
Old but quality buildings.	Tries to look like an old warehouse.	Actually is an old warehouse.
Having elevator operators is normal.	Sewage smell every block is normal.	Paper-thin walls & roof leaks normal.
People everywhere.	Siren noises everywhere.	Motorcycle noises everywhere.
Homeless give speeches.	Homeless scream all day and night.	Homeless rant about politics.
Rats on the subway tracks.	Needles and human feces on ground.	Garbage on every sidewalk.
Musicians jamming on street corner.	Homeless peeing on street corner.	Get shot on street corner.
Celebrate with outdoor festivals.	Celebrate by burning down own city.	Celebrate by being stuck in traffic.
Orderliness in desperate times.	Violence in the name of justice.	Punch whoever’s in closest proximity.
Broadway.	N/A.	Hollywood.
Silicon Alley (Midtown).	Silicon Valley (Entire Bay).	Silicon Beach (Santa Monica).
Wall Street.	Embarcadero / SOMA.	N/A.
Brooklyn.	Oakland.	Los Angeles.
Jazz bars.	Gay bars.	Just ordinary drinking bars.
Pride in job and work.	Half asleep and mentally absent.	Zombified and flopping around.
Service oriented no matter what it is.	Doors open wrong way (fire hazard).	15 minutes just to get the menu.
Decent food at all prices.	Expensive food or crap food.	Expensive crap food.
Ginger beer has corn syrup.	Soda has corn syrup.	Bottled water has corn syrup.
High cultured.	Mono cultured.	Blurgh-whatever cultured.
Well-rounded.	Indoors.	Outdoors.
Punctual.	10 minutes late.	Hours to days late.
To the point.	Half-formulated sentences.	Grunts and murmurs.
Deep but circular.	Meaningful but shallow.	Entertaining but meaningless.
Offended by bad manners.	Offended by differing opinions.	Offended by your success.
Think of how others remember you.	Think of your impact on the world.	What’s it matter if you die anyway?
B+ on everything.	Always either A+ or F.	A for effort.
Everything works at least half decent.	Half new, half assed.	At least there's the beach.

Another story I watched play out like a movie in my dream - ironically this one about a character dreaming...

A man lives his life through many lucid dreams.  In them, he is aware he is dreaming and can pick the setting or story he wants to live in.  One thing he can't control though is that the dreams seem to randomly end and reset.  While he keeps his memories from past dreams, no one else in the dream seems to remember.  Over time, he starts noticing a person who is always in the dream.  It starts off with them just passing each other by, walking in the same direction, or other small coincidences, but eventually they end up in the same scenes or situations as well.  She ends up being the only constant between each dream, and they share many adventures together.  However, whenever he tries to talk directly with her and figure out who she is, the dream cuts off.  It doesn't help that she also always forgets everything as well, so every...[More]

Watched Alex Garland's "Annihilation" and enjoyed seeing similar ideas as my Immortality essay about death as a programmed flaw in cells.
https://www.pftq.com/blabberbox/?page=Steps_to_Biological_Immortality

Seems all inspiring directors actually know many subjects well, as opposed to being specialized like schools keep pushing.  Just have to go down the list and look up the bios on Garland, Christopher Nolan, Hideaki Anno, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and others to find out all of them are extremely multidisciplinary.

Also interesting in the below article that his shooting of "Ex-Machina" cost only $10M.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jan/11/alex-garland-ex-machina-interview-the-beach-28-days-later

Puts some perspective on how ludicrous a lot of the crypto/VC projects are for costing hundreds of millions, sometimes billions, with nothing to show for except for the PhDs and branding.

-----
#Annihilation @annihilation_x @ExMachinaMovie

Had #FLStudio freeze suddenly - I think while auto-saving. Almost lost my work but opened task manager, expanded FL, and killed just ibridge.exe, which disabled all sound but unfroze FL and allowed me to save + restart. In case this helps anyone, although it's probably case-specific.

Recently came across Nietzsche, and his Übermensch vs Last Man come closest to what I write about.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ubermensch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man

Below, my Three Tiers:
https://www.pftq.com/blabberbox/?page=Three_Tiers_of_Mind

And here, discussions of Nietzche mirror similar points:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-simple-explanation-of-Nietzsches-ideas-and-philosophy