Bitcoin has been a very interesting development in both the liberty movement as well as the monetary world. You might think of it as the economic version of libertarianism in that it is very much fighting the status quo and presents a radically different way of thinking about things.
One of the "marketing problems" the freedom movement has pretty much always had is the inability to speak the language of those who are believers in 'government as a good thing'. When we speak of compassion for the poor, they hear it as us wanting to throw poor people out in the streets. When we talk to them about improving education, they take it as us not wanting any education at all. Clearly there is some underlying difference in thinking that keeps us from effectively communicating. I think I have one piece of the puzzle, or at least a good clue.
I'm a member of an interesting group of wildly diverse futuristic thinkers that are discussing what to do about potential existential threats to humanity. You can describe it as a think tank for ensuring our survival as a species. As you can imagine, much of the talk is either about protecting the planet from things like huge asteroid strikes or how to get enough people living off the planet that its destruction wouldn't cause our extinction.
When the occupy movement was still just starting, some New Hampshire residents formed their own occupy group. A handful of libertarians and/or Free Staters (myself included) joined up, with several being founders of the group. This was an interesting and potentially significant opportunity to effect change.
Ever since I read Ayn Rand's novella Anthem, I have been thinking about the house that Prometheus finds. From my memory, it had been abandoned for a few hundred years yet it was still fully functional.
When turning on this computer and logging in, I have to take some steps that just seem insane in this day and age. Since this computer isn't going to be mine for much longer I do need to document these issues.
My laptop is a piece of junk. The hard drive has crashed dozens of times in the last year, the power connector is hanging loose, the battery is essentially dead, and the trackpad buttons don't work. And all that was before the hinge got broken. Thankfully I was able to use someone else's hard drive, complete with an already installed operating system (although it is Windows).
I've become reasonably dependent on Drush, the Drupal Shell, so when it starts acting badly it can really throw me off. I can certainly do everything I need to without it, but it is so handy I'd rather not.
Back when I had a lot of cash I started turning into a sort of coffee snob. I had a nice coffee maker with a built in water source as well as a good burr grinder. I tried different grind settings and many different roasts and blends, over time finding my personal preferences. But eventually the good times went away, and for years now I've had to settle for what I can afford.
But a free promotion from Bitcoin Coffee gave me a chance to try something new, and so I jumped on the opportunity. They were just starting out and were looking for new customers, and were giving away small samples. I got mine in the mail not long after asking. Unfortunately I've been out of the bean grinding routine for so long that I hadn't even considered that they might send unground beans, and I'd long ago gotten rid of my grinder. So the beans have been sitting there for around a month, unopened, in their plastic bag.
