Nilrun-Mardux interview of tondes-sitrym (expatting, trans humanism, network states, urbit development, cyber future)

10:19PM Jul 12, 2022

Speakers:

Philip Galebach

tondes-sitrym

Keywords:

mexico city

new york

crypto

bitcoin

urban

pretty

el salvador

mexico

month

nice

talking

feel

city

people

lightning

good

energy

guess

great

friends

All right cool we should be live now got Jake here. What's your Pap T? Again? It's like Tongass What's the last time? Okay, yeah, I feel like you're like one of the more active people on urbit That's like least well known for actual activity ratio like has the best retention rate whatever you're like up anyone. Everyone's like, Oh, Jake. Yeah. And that bike, but in terms of, I guess your presence on urban is just more like physical relative to most people. Like definitely less.

I'm more of an in person. Like socializer than a chat. socializer very much unlike when I was a kid, like when I was in middle school, my entire social life was on internet forums. And like, now I've kind of reversed but like, you know, I know a lot of people would communicate through our bit just like but I mostly work in public groups. I'm trying to be better about that. But you know,

yeah, even you were posting more to like the collapse and digital America and stuff. Yeah, like longtime Lurker but I mean, you're one of the most active people in terms of like physical or that

yeah, like two years now.

Yeah, so like, let me see. I know a little bit of that story, but like Okay, so you had kind of like an interesting route to crypto to begin with, right? Because you were like bartending in New York. And then you did a coding bootcamp, and then switched into crypto after did you do you did a little bit of like, traditional coding, right? Just like web two. Yeah.

So like, I was on track for grad school and philosophy, and then did like a online postgraduate course on Bitcoin and philosophy with Midland and realized like, I mean, I knew about Bitcoin previously, it kind of like ideologically thought it was cool had used it to you know, buy illicit substances probably spent 10s of millions of dollars in present value

on that like, Okay, that was your that was your route. Yeah,

yeah. But I didn't really understand like, you know, anything about the technology or about like, its real promise until that class and then I realized like, holy shit, like, this is an epoch making, you know, development.

What when was that? To 2015 Okay, so quite early like predates like the big wave of adoption of like a 2017 cycle.

Yeah, so I just like, up and decided like, Fuck academia, you know, I want to do philosophy in the real world, which means being a crypto engineer. So I moved up to New York to go to Code bootcamp, and like bar time to kind of pay my way. Did some web dev for a while eventually joined a token startup.

What was your first token startup?

Oh, let's see. So COVID was spring of 2020. So this would have been beginning of 2019. Yeah, so

yes. Because that was kind of like, yeah, obviously sort of a winter time. I was actually working on a crypto startup from basically end of 2017 through like, mid 2019. So it was like sort of a winter period. I think eath went all the way down to like $100. Yeah, which doesn't seem when like

100 200 range until basically until like, defi got started. Like, the big like TEDx pump, like from, you know, $200 to like 2000 Something was like end of 2019 Maybe something like that.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you were, so by 2019 You already doing like DGN projects, is that all for D org?

No, so the so the first thing like the token startup was not very Dejan. It was like, fan reward token kind of like, relatively forward thinking when two people trying to get into web three. It's actually something that's like it's much more happening right now than it was then. And then they, you know, the crash in 2020 paid to them. And that was when they initially like They laid me off. Right as COVID was starting and that's when I started working in New York, as like a proper Aetherium Dev.

It was that Darpan or are there connections? Because you're

Yeah. Serban worked on New York projects first. I don't really remember like, I mean, we both met them through like New York crypto meetups, like people who are associated with New York. And I don't know there's just like an endless train of projects and Dows and things going through those meetups. So it's like hard to recall exactly.

That was already hanging out in New York back in those days, like the head of Sega was already hanging out in New York. Those days. He came

through a couple of times, like he didn't live there. He's been nomadic longer than basically anybody I know. I think he hasn't lived in the same place for more than a month or two in like, four years at this point, I think.

Yeah. I mean, there was I mean, that's sort of a sort of a little bit of a tangent, but there's like this whole there wasn't a lot to do as a nomad. You know, like if I look back at like the old like original nomads who like sometimes call themselves expats, sometimes expats depending on the click. I mean, I think a lot of it honestly was sort of sex padding, or like the people just found the dating and sex life better abroad, back in the sort of, like, early 2000s. And so that class of people who like I've sort of met through my brother and some of his friends they kind of like expat for entirely different reasons. And their lifestyle seemed like very different from sort of modern day what we've been doing since since COVID, mostly

very divided into right like there's the group you're talking about, which are like the early nomads who had money or some money, and then there were like, you know, the early nomads who didn't have money and weren't like you like Ori, you're the kind of guy who goes to northern Pakistan, to like, check out the communes there and climb the mountains or whatever, which is like at that time, that's like a very niche lifestyle. I mean, like traveling alone and in places like that. for extended periods. It's sort of like

a backpacker type mentality versus the sort of like, I don't know, the sex part was more like somewhat stationary in places like Thailand, that had what they were looking for in basically Colombia and Thailand. So there was yeah, it was pretty, very, actually extremely different people doing that and I feel like if you go back and like, no, even today, a lot of this blogs are like still written by this sort of backpacker clique. And I find them like kind of quite disappointing and they sort of led me to Tbilisi, which was a bleak couple of days. So I've become very skeptical.

You're good for what they're good for, you know, like, they're good for recommending places that you wouldn't hear about otherwise, or like little details about a country, things like that, but like, you know, the lifestyle that they're formatting all of that into, doesn't bear much relation to what we're doing now.

Yeah, and it kind of gets I don't know for me it like somewhat inspires me if I see like a blog about Bali. I'm like, gosh, check out Bali. Although frankly, I don't know if you've reached this point, but I've sort of reached the point with nomadic where it's like, I don't really want to just like go to a random place anymore. I kind of want like new people. In the spot. And I'm kind of like, just way pickier than I was two years ago, nomadic whereas like, Oh, this is, I don't know, like I just wouldn't do a lot of the trips that I like, used to do even pretty recently. Just because of like, I don't know, I think for me, it's like the difference in the experience of like, if I know people I don't hang out with people I like versus if I have to, like re create like friendships.

Yeah, I mean, it makes an enormous difference to travel with, you know, two or three people and to know that there are other groups of you know, two or three people are gonna be passing through the same place. I mean, that's the whole basis of the lifestyle really, for me. Yeah, not atomized.

Yeah. So let's see. So you got so you of course you came to crypto and then how did you get into herb it and then we can kind of dig into some of the frontier X Patrick

urbit did a call with D Ord. Like I think Brother Cloncurry. Must know it was Plon because Ted was in the call.

And I didn't attend was the initial embassy to D org.

Yeah, I don't think it was the only one on the call. But yeah, he was in this call between Taiwan and New York. And then he ended up like him. Sarvam hit it off. And he ended up coming and staying at Starbucks in my apartment in Chinatown in New York. Yeah, and so that was I got my plan at that weekend. Got a little bit of a crash course on him.

Yeah, he's like, tents just like kind of this crazy ambassador for urban. We've got him over with the Ukrainians. I introduced him to Vitaly, the guy we had the drinks with and Keith.

Yeah, now he's in Central American our worse yet.

He's in Portugal. Yeah, he's in Portugal. And Vitaly drove up to see him in Porto just I guess, five hours. So it's kind of surprising. But Vitaly is very interested in urbit Of course, stars. In Vitaly was pinging me about he wanted to get his devs coding for urbit. So I was like, oh, you should meet up with Ted. He's gonna be there. And then Vitaly drove TED to Lisbon, and then showed him all the Ukrainians so So, yeah, just you can kind of throw into a social group pretty easily. They just kind of like swims at it and it's fine. Yeah. Social. Okay, so Ted kind of evangelized urban. I didn't realize that was how serpent also got involved. I mean, serpents like number one. Urban evangelizer that I had.

He definitely has the most just like raw passion.

Yeah, it's like it's crazy. It's great. It's like, yeah, it's really awesome. Here's the

host scaring like urban evangelist energy, like it is high level.

Yeah, he. Yeah. Okay, so you guys got that was like 2020 When you guys get Herbet pilled. Yeah,

everything happened really fast. Like Ted came and stayed with us in it was actually December 2019. And then we saw him again, him and Matilda and wraps off. A couple of other people at eath Denver the following February. So just a couple of months later, and that COVID had two weeks after that, and we fled New York, and then you're lost my job started working full time at New York as an eighth.

Just like COVID Yeah. COVID riseley just a massive accelerate on Sufix just like poured accelerate all over some trends like remote working massively accelerated urban. I think a lot of dude just started like hanging out online. And then you got Where do you fled to you did what North Carolina then Hawaii. Was that right? Well, yeah. So

first it was Northern California. Like OG weed growing country, middle of nowhere with Louis and Anders, and then that kind of fell apart, you know, forced intimacy, confinement, etc. And there it was York for a while, and then but the following winter, like you're not New York, sorry, North Carolina. And it was like, you know, winter in North Carolina and we were like, pretty financially well established from like, defi summer, you know, do your stuff at that point. I think that was like kind of it was a very critical moment. Because it was just like suddenly realized, like this brainwave, right like why are we here? Right like we can work from anywhere like we're financially stable. We have like a support local support network and each other a global support network in terms like and be able to find work like through the Dow and like, know people in places that we're going through. So like, live somewhere you want to live like get up go.

And what like, do you remember what the exact impetus was like a conversation that was just like, oh shit, what are we doing here? Like we go go anywhere

because I think for me, for me, no matter who was kind of like, I had spent the beginning of COVID at my ex wife's when she was still my wife, like empty lake house in New Hampshire. Just so you know, like, I don't know Boston sockets. I had minor concerns about COVID Initially, although frankly, like the Italian data got me feeling pretty good that Tim like, was sharing with me. But I was still like, Alright, whatever. No one's hanging out. Anyway, so I'll just hang out in like this lake house with like my sister, Lon, ex wife. And it was like pretty fine. And at certain point, I was just like, oh, people in Boston still aren't hanging out and he was getting into like, post summer when Boston gets like very dead. In the lake gets cold. So I was like, I don't really want to do another isolated period. So at that point, I was like, Oh, let me go. Like go to Mexico. And so I ended up going like October late October to Mexico City by myself, actually. And then, for me, it was just like so much nicer Mexico city than Boston, that it was just like, kind of a no brainer. I was just like, What the fuck am I doing in Boston? Yeah, yeah.

That was I don't remember like the exact conversation like part of the impetus was that Louis ha Hydrex says on her blog something is his pappy here and Christians friend Josh came in moved to Durham workers from I already work. And you know, like the city was mostly shut down. It was winter. I think we all just like sort of simultaneously realized that it like we were all like interested in moving somewhere like Hawaii somewhere warm and beautiful. Like, it was just it was harder to contemplate doing that, like two at a time. You know, because it's just like, in the same way that it's hardest to contemplate doing it by yourself. Right? But when we had four people who were thinking that way, it just suddenly was like, yeah, there's like a preference cascade. And we just broke through.

Yeah, especially because you were already like, bouncing around the US, like you would already practice bouncing around. So it wasn't like the craziest thing to go like just to a new state, basically. Anyway, it's it's still the same laws.

Yeah, it's definitely it's been a thing in phases. Yeah. Because I had been in New York for five years, like, but when COVID hit, yeah. And so like that kind of move to bouncing around the US and to thinking like, you know, like the political policies and so on is like now an active problem for me and I have to pick on that basis. And then that Craig I created the conditions to realize like, oh, I actually have agency I can live wherever I want. And then you know, moving through those first of all, it was still in the US it was Hawaii, but then we came to see you guys in Mexico City and like

Yeah, is that is that like serpent talking to Tim luck? How did that okay?

Yeah, cuz they were just started working on stuff on DGM and stuff together.

Okay, yeah. Yeah, that's what I met you. You live Brexit, obviously sarpa and although lib Brexit was like super brief, that was like, that was like an evening tonight. Right? Yeah, it was there for the night coming back from from the coast of of Mexico. Yeah, then you guys were there for a while because I think we must have met like, middle of March, roughly. And then I was there until the end of April. So I was hanging out for I feel like we were there. Maybe we overlapped for like four weeks or something. And then you guys you guys hung out in Mexico City after I left to go back to the US to sell my other house.

Yeah, until Bitcoin Miami.

Yeah, okay. Because yeah. Then we met up with Ted and he already knew you guys that was the first time I met Ted in person was Bitcoin Miami the first night at that restaurant, okay. So yeah, so what was a like, walk me through like kind of like alright, so you're bouncing around us? How was it different going to Hawaii and then abroad versus like just bouncing around, you know, as a nomad in the US. Well,

so like North Carolina is where I'm originally from. And so like, Durham is like, that's a familiar city to me. I went to school there. And so that was not like a big departure that was more like just get out of like the coast, the northeast and California and kind of context with regard to COVID. And it was just easy From a logistical perspective to go somewhere that I knew well. So the point it was like, the feel the vibe was very, like refugee ish. Kind of like, you know, you'd like you resettle in the place that feels safest. Like you're on the run from COVID policies, like at the time.

Yeah, I forgot about this. They were important back then. That was a huge deal with COVID. Yeah, it was a huge deal. Like where you can even go? Yeah, that's why I chose Mexico.

leaving the country would have been quite difficult for most of 2020 Right.

Yeah, Mexico was one of the first open they opened in July but they they honestly closed down like right at Christmas. 2020. So I just left my first time in Mexico City. I've done three now. And they shut down again. It was pretty bad. So it's, it was definitely risky. You kinda have to Yolo a little. But yeah, it was extremely limited in terms of places that were available to go even in 2021 Especially as sort of a non vaccine male. Well, I guess human. I don't think the Europeans exactly targeted men for vaccination. But yeah. And so you show you went to Mexico, so how was like Mexico commander? Why?

Um, I mean, why is crazy fucking expensive? It's beautiful, but there's nothing to do for the most part. Yeah. I mean, it was good. You know, like, there were there were a fair number of crypto people there. So like, there were some really valuable, like connections. But, you know, I know that I was working on that were made there. And, you know, and it was fine. But like, it's like, the weird thing about it, like in this context was that it's very like borderline like, in some ways, it feels like a foreign country just like environmentally, just in terms of like you. I mean, I had clients in Israel. And so I had like your 12 hour time lag. Yeah, because the middle of the Pacific and so on. So it's like on the board, but it's also the same time totally American and I before Where's Mexico city like, infinite things to do? Cheap and not at all American, especially at that time, there were not many, you know, internationals there compared to how it is now. Work

seems like it really shifted between 2021 and 2022. Like I just like night and day got a lot more expensive. It's still cheap. Relative to the US I think yeah.

Yeah, like food prices like commodity prices have not shifted that much but Airbnb is doubled. Yes, like price. Yeah,

yeah, we had. Yeah, it was really rough with like, I was used to the first two trips have a great Airbnb prices. And the third time I was like, oh, fuck, I've gotta like, negotiate directly with the host like not pay the Airbnb fees, the taxes because I don't want to spend like 2500 a month on this place.

Yeah, yeah, we're about to be paying like 1000 A month 1000 Something for for us but you know, yeah. It's a big difference from one Christian and I had that nice place for 40 bucks a

night. And that was 40 a night for that place.

Yeah, that place was fucking $40 tonight

yeah place is gorgeous. It was like great spot to Yeah, we had I think we'll I think fab nev and I when I lived with him in that same that same period of 2021 spring. We spent I think it was like 2k It might have been 1500 for three bedroom in the best area like next to like in Condesa. Like similar your area. That was I think 1500 a month. It was like insanely cheap. It was like actually new and yeah, so it's

still great though. I mean, even with like, you know, more internationals and like higher Airbnb prices like coming back here just like remembering like all over again. Like I love the city. This might be my favorite city in the world, which is tough to say this like a New Yorker, but like it is yeah,

maybe I had the same experience. I like kind of forget how much I love that city. And then I went back there after our Costa Rica trip. So after two weeks in Costa Rica, I got back and I was just like, Man, this feels like home, like Mexico City. feels like home to me. Yeah,

I found myself thinking I can't remember what exactly the sentence or thought was. But thought of like Mexico City is like us, as opposed to like them. You just had this like intuitive like this is actually home moment, which is kind of cool.

Yeah, there's something about it's just beauty. It's a beautiful city. It's beautiful at night. The weather's great. Although I don't know what's the rainy season. How's that in Mexico City? I've never been there.

It's like every I would say like, kind of alternates like relatively cloudy and relatively sunny days. It rains most evenings but not all like, also the worst thing of other rainy seasons so far is like there's more mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes. Dude, I yeah, not to dig on El Salvador but the coast of El Salvador Itami especially, it's like a lot of mosquitoes. I think tumko would have been better. Mosquito was people were like commenting on my legs. Like where, you know, everyone's like, what the hell happened to your legs? It's like, well, I had like a couple 100 mosquito bites on them. I don't really notice but yeah, it looks like shit. Yeah, I mean, well, since some people might not have been to El Salvador. I'll just plug like the city doesn't really have bad mosquitoes. There are definitely beach areas that don't have bad mosquitoes. Itami is just a place. It's like nice and a lot of ways but I'm like skeptical of going back to Itami. Yeah.

I want to see like what it's like in a year or two because it really I mean, it feels like a place under development. Not like where people mostly actually live. There's just like, there's so much construction going on and everything that like, you know two years it'll be it'll be quite different. So it'll be interesting to see what that's like.

Yeah, and I guess like I mean, you'd like to Asante a lot I like I don't know how but I ended up not going there. I think it's my phone died on a second to last day and it was like a complete shit show tried to like, you know, I was gonna have to travel to multiple cities without like a working phone so I just had to focus on that.

Yeah, fuck that. No, yeah. Trouble. Yeah,

so I didn't end up seeing Asante Okay, so yeah, Mexico City really solid. And then you also I mean, I know these but actually, I don't know all of where you went. So you went to Ukraine for a fair amount of 2021. Once 1010. I had gotten there by July. And then you got to Ukraine. What like September, or like, early August. Okay. Pretty soon after. Yeah.

Something like that. Let's see. So I was in Ukraine for a month. And then where did I go first? After that. I went to Greece to visit my family in Athens. And then like went around the Greek islands. Some then went to Spain for the D org retreat. Where treat me like the boys go to Barcelona. Which was so much fun. And then we there's a bunch of Spaniards in New York. So they we went with them to Madrid. After that.

You also have the Venezuelans of New York, I guess. Like maybe since we've been talking about New York, maybe just like give us like a elevator pitch of New York. So the first Dallas that actually works.

It's a Dow that is a co op for engineers design para para engineers, like designers and PMS, who work on crypto stuff. And so like the organization sources, contracts with different people who want to build crypto applications and defy protocols and things like that. And then we assemble like teams inside of Dior. And then you get like voting power in the Dow on a one to one basis with how much you get paid out by clients. So like for every dollar I earn working on your project, I get one rep which is like you know, one vote.

I actually really like that. I mean, have you might have had, do you notice any issues with that model? Did it work? Um,

I think so at the time, so because like I haven't done it's been about a year since I've done a lot like work directly through New York. Because like, you know, I was at mando for nine months, and that was a separate project and so on. At the time, you know, the biggest issue is just like coordination logistics, like, you know, we've got spreadsheets on one platform and schedules on another and then like you're doing you know, like your payouts on an actual like blockchain platform. And we built the voting model it's like, you know, in order for the payment of somebody to be approved people with rap have to, you know, upvote the payments to find like I didn't there was no like, political issues with that the way to I was like sushi paying and status for example. But just meant that you know, like Ori had to go and round up people to go and vote on the proposal to like pay someone what everyone knew they were out because we have like it was well kept track of, you know, like, what the payouts were the hours and things like that.

So could have been made like administratively smoother with like, maybe better tack?

Yeah, there's been improvements since then. One is that like, so instead of like all proposals being organization wide now there are no safes for each team. And so like block grants of money like payments goes into those nurses safes and then they like abortion money separately, and so you don't have to like deal with the whole organization like basically like the people on the team can deal with their own payouts. Still in like a blockchain mediated way, and that's like that's a more efficient process. I think what's still missing that, you know, hopefully, urban new car can provide is that whole issue of like, you have your spreadsheets in one place and you do your meetings in another place, and like how your chat and displacement vote in that other place and so on, if you integrated tooling where you could have a group that you ever had the functionality to deal with payouts and could do things like scheduling and calls and stuff like that would be

it'd be awesome. I think it'd be awesome for like, groups in general. I mean, I like what holy M is done there. Like their demo. I think you saw it, actually. No, did you see their demo?

Yeah, I saw Trent show me the demo. Okay, cool. It looks really good.

Yeah, yeah, I was pretty wowed. It was bitmap insisted upon showing it late at night, just like I've seen it off after like a minute and credits like no, there's more. I was like, Yes, I know. There's more of a like a lot better than what I should have to deal with on urban now. So yeah, pretty excited that I've told a lot of people to not, like go too far into urban like that. Don't even try or bid if you're not like a dev right now. Just like wait until Holyoke launches with like the partnership with third Earth because then you've got your like, just think about the their onboarding experience is like so much better. That it's like a sell. You can, you know, get it hosted, do a free month and then have like a really sick clean onboarding experience. In addition to the self into the hosting

groups too. I've also just started fading. I got into like plugins groups, too. And like similarly, you know, come assembly. There's going to be so much better UX options.

Oh, yeah. So groups here is pretty awesome. Yeah, groups too. Looks good. Can I get out on that beta should message Tatar Leo? Yeah, Mrs. Chatterley? Yeah, yeah, I'll try to it's just fun to play with the new tools. I mean, like I don't I don't develop on top of it. And I don't think you have yet although, of course, you were looking into the lightning.

I haven't happened now. I've been it's like a weird like, you know, Qabalistic CCR, you can Maitreya app, but like it works. I'm very pleased by that. So lightning is what's next up.

Oh, yeah. Can you talk to the foundation? So is that

I'm still waiting for an email back from somebody who's not good about replying to his emails, but we won't go into that.

Oh, need to name names, but I had unfortunately I've heard that general feedback from a lot of people. So that's about just the new thing. Yeah, I I've had I've had I don't know, it's too I haven't had that much personal experience with the foundation like I like Josh the person. But yeah, it does seem like they could probably improve their like communication by a lot. But you're thinking

like when you know some of these when these things debut? And there's both like, you know better UX and therefore like better mass uptake and a lot more pressure to have to respond to things plus like competition where the OEM is more responsive than you are like, etc. I think that kind of stuff will improve pretty rapidly.

Yeah, I agree. I think there's gonna be a lot of competition like we talked about the investment club the urban incubator, I think a lot. I've just noticed a lot of like, energy is happening now like physically on orbit and less it actually a lot of the groups I'm in are kind of dead. And like maybe I'm in the wrong groups. But even like the network state one, it seems like it has a nice group of people. You know, there's like 50, arbiters and some questions are posted. But when I compare that to like, the level conversation happening, I don't know, like our discussion of like autonomy, or just like going back and forth about the frontier like Bitcoin versus eath, like two hours, top energy that's just like, very different provide a nice chat message that's been sent to them or you've been doing let's talk about network state and like, the energy just seems so much stronger among the people who have met up in person, and like, it's just what I'm noticing on her bed.

I think that's there's there's something that ties that to the whole like clear net urban difference, right? Like we're used to this sort of clear that mass social media environment where everybody is talking like in the same spaces and views each other talking and like the way you communicate with people, yes, in this like highly group, transparent public kind of fashion. And like urban turns that on its head and all kinds of waves that are good, I think because like, you know, massification of human behavior and mass transparency has been I mean, it's terrible. But like, in many ways, it's a fucking disaster.

Yeah, it hasn't really created any beauty. It's sort of led to like, a couple people who do things and everyone else just watches. That's like, Yeah, that's probably my like a lack of agency during the 20th century, especially where it's just sort of like Let's vote our way out of it. Or like, let's listen to the one thinker who like must have the solution.

Retweet, retweets, or, you know, 250k follower accounts are way out of it. Yeah, right.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, I'm a little biased and that, like, I don't love Twitter. I mean, I think I'm kind of like you and that I prefer talking to people in person, typically. And so, I mean, that sort of led me into doing what I'm doing, but yeah, so yeah, there's definitely this big difference on urbit. It's interesting to kind of, I guess, we could dig in a little bit to the network state, like, have you read Balaji is not the book. I think it's too soon, but what about like the blogs or the sort of general philosophy right,

you're in there, you know, like, I follow him on Twitter and when he says something interesting enough for me to actually like follow it back to the blog, like I'll read something from the blog. Yeah. But not like in depth or anything. I was looking to some of his like, his epic four hour Tim Ferriss interview. So

that kind of covers Yeah, I think the Tim Ferriss one like, more or less covers what he's thinking. I haven't I've yet to hear much new stuff that people have gone out of the book. I read it, but frankly, skimmed, definitely large sections, including, I didn't really want to do another historical analysis because we've read a lot of good history books at this point. And like, a century of war that like serfdom, you guys recommended is like, so much better than most history books that don't really want to hear like a PCS take on history.

Yeah, it's funny where you I mean, it says something on Twitter and for the kind of people you meet on Twitter, that the person the source of that recommendation is a friend of mine who's like this like you Q pilled. conspiracy theorist friend that like I've known for, like 2016, like exclusively via Twitter. And he's, he's a little a little too promiscuous or credulous about like his conspiracy theory. By and sometimes, but like, his sources are fucking fantastic when they're good. So like, that's, you know, those people are Goldmine analysis from like, sayfudine or Balaji, which you get like an infinitely better one, you know, from the kind of person that you meet or like weird conspiracy, Twitter.

Yeah, and then if you can find their reading list you're like set because that's like all you need. I mean, angle I just fuck it. I think angles sharp is hell and like, even his book on food was like, completely blew my mind when he was just like, oh, you get population numbers massively. up because if you control marginal food supplies that you control government's like, Look what just happened in Sri Lanka. You just kill the revolution them based off of food prices going too high. It's the same strategy

herbs. Yep. Right, like good price shock. Which, you know, funny how much of that had to do with Goldman Sachs. Right. And like the commodity agriculture.

If the world is like incredibly sensitive to minor manipulation of food prices, then you have a lot of power and like Arab Spring didn't really work out amazingly for the United States. But it could have been worse. What pretty well, I mean, Qaddafi died, like

the dominant pattern, but like, postwar United States, to me, or at least like, after the 50s, like 60s at odd words is like, you know, do these like manipulative interventions, it spirals out of hand, and at the end of the day, like, maybe you're like 6040, or something like that, like you didn't really control like you played with fire didn't really control the outcome. And it kind of worked for you at best.

Yeah, like kind of like, it definitely like removes it's sort of like a flatten everything approach to like, I don't know if it's like you're like weeding a garden, and you're like, you just kill everything and you're like, well, at least we'll have any weeds. Just like spray roundup on everything. And like, you know, at least the garden doesn't have weeds. You know, it's just a patch of dead Earth, that you probably couldn't grow anything on anymore. But at least the weeds aren't there.

Yeah. They're getting on this scorched earth. Definitely.

Yeah, yeah. So I'd highly recommend angle. I mean, but yeah, let's talk a bit about the frontier because you have a lot of ideas on the frontier. You know, frankly, I didn't get a ton of new thoughts from reading Balaji. So I don't think it's that relevant. We don't need to discuss blush in the context, but maybe more. I guess it's more of like a sovereign individual lens a little bit this idea of like the frontier and sort of, I don't know having space you can actually build so I guess in the lens of like, sovereign individual, what are you noticing about the frontier that you're seeing like you're doing a drug trial? And Doris, you lived out of Ukraine for a couple months, you're living in Mexico. What are you seeing in terms of like the emerging I don't know, like, I guess the ability for people to kind of do more of what they just want to do and not be necessarily overly governed. By like a strong state that prevents it?

Yeah, I mean, I think, coming out of the US, like we're really accustomed to this mindset that, like, every interaction, anything you want to do, has some kind of like pre existing regulatory format, and Burton, and like, maybe don't always follow that, like, you know, like, shoulder that burden or follow that format, but like, it still dictates what you do. Right? Because like you're having to actively evade it. And you know, you have to think about your risk tolerance with regard to evading it. And like, you just assume that like, there has to be a high risk tolerance because there is like a strong state behind it. Yeah, that state especially with regard I mean, like obviously the FDA, it was to me the FDA is like the worst example of this, you know,

and what we see similarly bad like SEC has come down super, they're just like, they come down hard on any they're doing the scorched earth to crypto, anything that kind of emerges, they kind of you know, try to slow down.

Yeah, what's worse about that is like even compared to like the UK, so like, you know, in the UK, if you are defi project, like you can go to the UK financial regulators and say like, is this a security is this legal, and they will give you an answer. You may not like the answer probably won't like the answer, but like they will give you one whereas the SEC strategy is to refuse to even give you an answer and then retro actively decide like who's guilty and who's not guilty. Yeah, which is

like, kind of explicitly one of the complaints like that the Patriots

have atmosphere of like presumptive potential guilt with respect to this just arbitrarily vast regulatory regime. And then so like besides maybe like, you know, I don't know like buying strawberries on the side of the road or like your your pop dealer or something. When you just you don't have you don't really have free market interactions, in the sense of like, there's nothing to this interaction other than like, this person does this and is selling this to me, and I'm buying it, and it's, it's up to us, right, and there isn't anything else to it. And that's like, and that also applies to governments. Well, there's been getting ahead of myself, but like, you know, in Ukraine you do you get this with like exchanging money and with labor, same with Mexico, right, like, you know, you can hire a laborer, and it's just like between you and them, and you can buy like, anything in Mexico. I was just this afternoon to places sells crocodile and lion

like meat. Living.

Yeah, it was pretty dope. Actually. I didn't buy any crocodile this time, but maybe we'll make some crocodile steaks in the future. But anyway, yeah,

yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, that's like the kind of shit that's like, plucking off about living abroad. Like, I don't know. For me it was kind of like the volcano tour. Having like, Blonko the security guard went with a shock and walked me up the mountain was nice. Yeah, it's like little things.

And you think that was like, I don't know make you less comfortable or something. But like, in fact, the idea that security is just like, a good that can be acquired and purchased and like it does its job and you pay for it to do its job. And that just works. But as opposed to I have to depend on the police, right, whose incentives are mediated by the city, the votes and so on, and like the ability of any private security to protect me is like, sharply constrained by that kind of infrastructure is actually much more stressful.

It's way more stressful because you don't know Are the police even gonna, like show up if you call them in the US? So it's like, I've got a police force I pay for it. I have no idea if they're going to be reliable at the exact moment. I need them with a private security guard. Like I know he's there. And it's the same with

healthcare, right, like going out kind of biomedical stuff with prospera. is like, you can go you can you can go and have your principal concern be what is my insurer going to pay for? Like what can I find a doctor who through his professional association is going to be willing to listen to or prescribe or whatever. And it's really all about your interaction with these institutions. Or it can be like, you know, I can do a little bit of research myself, I can pick a person I trust in contact with them. Whatever we decided to do, we can just do it. Yep.

Yeah. I mean, like, Americans, I think don't even realize how much energy they spent interacting with these institutions. Until they, I guess if they've gone through it, they remember like my aunt is trying to get some drug covered for like, some sort of autoimmune condition and the even with a doctor's note, even when the doctor appeal, they're not covering it. So now she's like, shit. So she's spending all this time interacting with doctors and insurance companies. When like, first of all, it's just like, hey, here's the drug like in India, it's a you can literally just afford to buy out of pocket. And in Canada, it's like you know, she's not poor. So she can she's actually fairly rich. So she can afford to spend like, I don't know, 500 a month, and she's like, Oh, Canada is 5000 a month. I'll just do that. And then, but the US is like 2000 a month, which is kind of a more than she'd like to pay for like a random drug. That's like a lot of money.

And the EU is the same. I mean, the contrast, like, you know, last year going around Europe, and just constantly worrying about like, how am I going to fill my prescriptions, like if I have them, you know, if I have like my family, fill them in the US and then ship them like, how much is how much is the ransom that I'm going to have? To pay? Like customs? Yeah, three, you're gonna get returned. And then in Mexico, it's like, I go to Puerto Vallarta, and I can just buy it.

Yeah, just like it's not you exchange money for a service directly. You have to like research it as a thing. There's no like haggling

realize like to your point. Like just how much mental overhead and how much restriction on agency. There is like until I have been out of the US for a while. Yeah, is really enormous.

And there's also like, there's this question of like, who's going to build it? And like in Mexico, it's like, well look, like I've just got drugs available to me over the counter. In Ukraine. It was like they had lab work that I could do for 20 bucks was so easy. And then they had like, you know, they had a private mail service that was like, as good as Amazon. Like it was two days shipping to like any facility around Kyiv. And it was like, usually within a block of your apartment.

Yeah, and Mexico. Same way, like Mercado Libre is great.

I haven't even used that. So it's like kind of like a just online store.

Yeah, it's kind of halfway between Amazon and eBay. It's like in terms of there being a Kardos by like, you know, third party or individual sellers, but like, you know, they have a shared deliveries of delivery and payment system that works quite well. The places that don't even have a street number that somehow they can still find me. None of that. It's it's kind of Santa like,

yeah, it's pretty awesome and it's kind of like, it's like, weirdly, what I noticed in other countries is this sort of service culture, like a culture of like, better service people serving you and kind of like things available, kind of like what you'd said earlier, you can just contract with people. And it's like doesn't I don't know like, I guess there could I do sometimes think about, like, what's the downside risk? And it seems low. Like if you have someone who speaks Spanish, like a personal assistant, which are insanely cheap out of El Salvador, then you could basically have no risk living in Latin America. You just be like, Alright, here's my personal assistant. They're gonna like yell into the phone for me. It at worst, that's like, and that's not even happened to anyone so far living in Mexico. Or

yeah, I mean, we've had a lot of people now coming from Central America, and, like the worst problems we've had are like cops soliciting bribes.

Yeah. Which has only happened in Mexico City. Yeah, yeah.

It's just a long standing problem with cops like anywhere. Yeah, really? Yeah.

And it's, I don't know, it's like, well, at least the other safety levels pretty good. No one's been mugged in Mexico. And

I've never even felt like close to being

No, I don't even notice like shady people like walking around. Like, I don't know. I'm careful at night in general, even in Boston. Like I just don't know. Yeah,

I mean, living in Brooklyn. Like, if you have to go anywhere in Central America, that is any worse than significant parts of Brooklyn that I had to walk through at night. I mean, like East New York.

Yeah, New York is I mean, I've gone through bedside that was horrific during even during broad daylight. But even like, even somewhat hip areas, like I was just in New York, I've been in New York a fair amount recently, and it's just staggering. Like the number of drugged out people the sort of like, it's unpredictable. Like, I don't know if that drugged out person. It's just like yelling, like benignly, or if they're gonna like, literally come up with a hatchet like what has already happened. And that is the thing about like

police forces and also to an extent organized crime that have like Freer rein is that you don't like the Goodfellas line like we were the cops people looking at go to the cops is accurate, like they do keep control of their own streets, you know, and it is not good for them, like above a certain level for like tourists to bring in money to like be accosted. Right or for them to be random criminal activity happening. Yeah, and like you see, I mean, you compare with the homeless population in New York or San Francisco. So like Mexico City, or San Salvador, especially since Salvador,

since everyone has

moved one, you know, in the US, they're just like, you know, there's somebody screaming at you on the subway. There's people all over the sidewalk and there's like, no one who's in charge.

Yeah, it's, there's not even anyone who could get in charge. Yeah, like no candidate for like someone being in charge because like, the police were told not to do it. The cities don't want to do it. The average person doesn't want to get cancelled for like, yelling at a homeless person to like, not tax someone. It's just sort of like this like culture of like, honestly, lack of agency is just what keeps coming to mind.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is like the concept of a narco tyranny. Right, like, yeah, it's tyranny that prevents us from bringing actual order, like a tyranny dedicated to the maximization of like effects of anarchy, like not in the

foot, the fun kind of anarchy. It's like the it's like disproportionate anarchy where like, one side can hit you and you can't hit back. Right? Whereas it Salvador. Height of anarchy in the 90s was like, Well, you just had a private security guard. He cost like 400 a month. It wasn't a big deal. Like it was like anarchy to a little to some extent, but you could quickly and easily like handle it. And like remove the unpredictability of the anarchy. Yeah, just doesn't seem like I have that option in the US, like whatsoever. And that's not just like New York. It's like Austin, Texas. It's Miami. It's definitely Boston. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's pretty much like you're hemmed in by something that doesn't even perform you know what the objective of the having end theoretically is, which is like producing a background order. Right? Yeah, it's just different senses of anarchy, right? Like there's energy and like the Ernst younger, kind of sense of like the anarchy, which is like synonymous with agency, right? Like there is no like, pre given sort of legal and metaphysical background that dictates what you can and can't do, like people just act among each other. Right? And then there's energy in this anarcho tyranny sense where it's like, you know, we have these metaphysical, legal, regulatory and so on structures at like, what they do is produce pure noise outside of their immediate structures, as its its energy as a kind of spontaneous order, like Cadillac, see Austrian economics kind of sense, versus as like chaos, and just slow decay and destruction

and sort of like enforced chaos like there's no way for it to ever get an equilibrium it's just yeah, so we're Have you noticed or other places that have like similarly declined like the US. Is it just a US problem or is it like a European western world problem? Where has this issue

Paris, Paris was a big example of it working like this, like, just the the cab ride from Charles de Gaulle into the city centre was like, very eye opening, but there's just like this ring of total poverty, like immigration that amounts just like dumping people

with like, zero integration or like, or, like,

crowds when we leave the cab drove through like crowds of 100 guys, like, you know, Somali or something like that. It's just like sitting around on the sidewalk in the middle of the road, like putting gas in cars and this and that, right, there was there was no sense at all that there was like, a social organization and the intake process like any reason for this to be happening, or that anyone again was in charge of it, and I guess, impressed with the city center in Paris, which is still very nice. Yeah, right.

I was just embarrassed. Like, right before I'll sound like man. Yeah,

but it makes it feel like, like Disneyland like this unsustainably, like preserved kind of negative some Disney land in the middle of like wilderness and like rapidly intensifying. Mm. Yeah, and that just it felt London had

this to I don't know if you've been to London recently. I went there twice this spring and it felt really similar to what you described, like enforced nice downtown. But then if you go like even to a little bit out of an outer ring, it's just like, tons of unemployed hooligans just kind of like hooligans, but a very literally, I guess that's where the I feel like the word kind of it was like, describes like a soccer, like the British person. And yeah, there's just a ton of them. It's like random immigrant groups that haven't really been integrated, or it's sort of like just trying to Celts like, I don't know. It's really not all immigrants, not all British Isles. Yeah, it's not all for the outside. So I've just always been that way. But hasn't been I felt like the

Athens was interesting in this regard. The Greeks are very good at like, informal coordination of society is what I noticed. I mean, they're just like, they're very good areas. It's always like, always in a classical sense, but like, it has long been like a very importantly governor's like sort of Mediterranean

sort of like a Talion how they like don't necessarily need laws, it's socially enforced.

Exactly. But you still do you know in the downtown area of Athens, like I just sort of accidentally discovered because I went for a random walk and like, got a little bit lost. And suddenly, you know, not that far from the Acropolis. I'm in. Like, it was actually probably one of the scariest neighborhoods in my entire time. No no.

It was just it was Greeks. It was Greeks or like random refugee populations,

random refugee population. Yeah. And it was like pretty much like a ghetto, like you would not have even known that these people were displaced was there until you happen to walk two blocks in the wrong direction. And then suddenly, you're like, holy shit, like,

yeah, in Brazil is famous for this.

What the fuck is this? Yeah.

Yeah, Argentina, sadly, has a lot of that two pockets. Yeah, it makes it hard because it's like, I don't know. There's a little bit well in parts of Western Europe, like Germany and um the cities I went to they didn't seem to have bad sections like Salzburg doesn't really have a bad section Austria Munich doesn't really have what I could tell them Munich didn't have like a bad section. It like the the train station. There were homeless people it was like, but it wasn't didn't feel unsafe. And it was small numbers. So there's like some countries and then Ukraine, I guess. So yeah, talking about the areas that like yeah, I guess what have just been your favorite areas. Like where would you go back? Like you've traveled to a ton but where would you like live out of for like six months for like three to six months if you had to.

Budapest. Really enjoyed Budapest. And like, so I'd have to see how I felt when I went back because like so I went to Rome and Florence when there was hardly anybody there. Yeah, because of it. And that was like, I was amazing. Like no lines for the Colosseum or the you know, the barely any lines for the Vatican

flooring. Busy again. I was there in May, Florence is that? Yeah.

Yeah, I wish I could go back to you know, the period of Florence when there weren't a bajillion other people there. So that was nice. Let's see. So Budapest. Barcelona, even as touristy as it is, I really liked Barcelona. I mean, like, yeah, it's a great city. About 15 minutes train to the mountains. 15 minutes walk to the beach and it's like, you know, beautiful, well organized, etc. Madrid has a lot of fun. It's pretty much like it struck me as the New York of the Mediterranean. It has that same kind of like, hustle energy,

yet it didn't really like shut down for COVID that hard, like when I was there in shit when I was I was there at Christmas 2021 sort of last Christmas and it was like, very alive. like way more than a lot can actually Barcelona, because I think Barcelona did take COVID Like super seriously, whereas like, Madrid is sort of the New York of the mad like they just don't really give a shit.

Yeah, the Catalans, like Barcelona is kind of the it's like the San Francisco. Yeah, the region and the Catalans are also a little more blue blooded. I don't know something like that, you

know, they're willing to protest. They're pretty liberal. Yeah.

pricy, you know, like, they, like refused to speak Spanish to like, our Spaniard friends, like, from New kept trying to approach cattle and girls, and he would talk to them in Spanish, and then they would just like talk back and Catalan or like refuse, like to communicate with them. Kind of like that kind of people was like the Madrid Spaniards like, you can't suppress the Roomba energy. Like they're suppressing the life in that place.

Yeah, yeah. I totally agree on Madrid. Yeah, and then of course, you've done you had Ukrainian residency right or did you not go through that?

I mean, I finished it. I like it, but I finished it. Like literally I think I sent in the last of the paperwork on like, February 1, or something like that. So well, no way to know what's gonna come out of that.

So you didn't get you haven't gotten the the card?

I haven't re entered Yeah, no, I haven't re entered.

Okay, but you did like the last step before entering the country with ticket so you have it in your passport but not the car like

I could theoretically go to the Ukrainian embassy and like get the stamp reentering got the card but obviously

Yeah, well, we'll see how that plays out. It's a shame. So you think so you're mostly hanging out in Mexico City you thinking?

Yeah. I think Mexico City, El Salvador. Costa is like I expect to be like my main circuit for the foreseeable future. And like other places in Mexico, too, like I really like Puerto Escondido.

Yeah, it's my favorite beach town. City is no beach. Yeah, very beach. Yeah, Leo definitely worked on that. It was a slow lipid egg. And then everyone got like incredibly beach belt. And like, oh, actually, I did not send me a Salvadorian ocean a single time that month because of the pools that we had. It just was like

I did once like there's clearly a lot of like, multinational like plastic dumping that occurs because there's, I don't know it seems like relatively trashy water, like at least the ones bought that I was,

or the Yeah, I think Costa is better. And then the East is really nice beaches. But yeah, it wasn't it's just the beaches closer was

like or Costa del Sol sorry, was like I really I want to check that place out for that was gorgeous.

Yeah, it's one of my favorite parts. Although it looks more like Costa Rica if you go east it has like a nice mountains meeting the coast with like the flat beach. That's sort of like fine sand. So I mean, yeah, if I had to go back on it, honestly, the eastern part is like the prettiest. Well, I love that drag to Masada with the jungle. That's like awesome. But I need to do that I saw I didn't get a chance. It's like next level. Beautiful. There's just Yeah, although the whole country I just had I just enjoyed it more than Costa Rica because of the ease of transport that I felt like I could actually get to places and it kind of relates to agency. It

also has like real highways. We have a bit it is a lot of fun driving the Land Rover like through the river and you know the dirt roads and on the beach and shit and Costa but like you know bigger picture it's nice to be able to take a highway to get somewhere

yeah, it just like goes back to agency for me like I felt like I had agency you know Salvador to kind of do whatever the fuck I wanted. Like I could just be like, Alright, I'm gonna drive east whereas like Mexico, I love Mexico, especially Mexico City and Porto Escondido. But I didn't have agency to like drive like it's not even safe to drive from Puerto Escondido to the capital of the province. You know, which is a nice city. Well, haka. Is a

very my sister out there and that's not to say that's not a safe drive.

No, Ted's cousin did it and basically got pulled over by the cartel and it was sort of dicey. When I tried to tell me, yeah, and even the Mexicans. I was hanging out with this Mexican girl in New York and she was like, Yeah, next year, you can't just drive it even as a Mexican. They're like don't drive the country. So like Costa Rica, El Salvador. I have way better security on that front. Which is kind of nice. Yeah, yeah. Okay, it's

like doing whatever the fuck you want. Yes. Is like I was going to finish thought earlier is like, as far as you know, being able to just like contract with people, right, is that at a certain level, this includes governments, in these places, you know, that like, the idea that like a government is actually supposed to provide, like value and services to people imagine that. You know, I know like crazy talk, right? Yeah. No, I've been very nervous, like retarded Leviathan that you just have to, like, deal with the structure, but you can actually talk to people and say, like, this is what we do. Like, can we can we do something about this? And they'll be like, yeah, yeah, that was that occurs. granularly like with the Honduras example, that like they build these charter cities. And it's possible to just like, do medical trial, like, you know,

so talking about that. So that's out of prospera because there's a lot of talk about prospera. I'm talking to their chief of staff actually on Friday. He was just an introduction.

Trent thinks Yeah, trapped. Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool.

Sometimes terrible. So like I've heard so this is like my current understanding of prospera got a charter in the in the Honduran constitution that was supposed to give it 75 years of sort of independence where they can basically like operate off of this 1000 acres and kind of do anything they want, which is, you know, awesome. But then the government's changed. The new government is very anti prospera. The new government has a supermajority in the House of Representatives or whatever, and is promising to kill prosperity charter and switch the constitution to remove that clause. So

and they also they also have a very liberal, whatever their equivalent of the Supreme Court. It's like the high court or something like that. Is like sort of stocked with leftover left us.

So they can kind of get a there were multiple decisions

that have been bad for the ER they called the Z, Z ECS. Something like that. Yeah.

So it sort of leaves Prospero in this weird situation where like, legally they were supposed to have 75 years and you can't change it. But then like in practice, it actually doesn't matter. And Honduras is an independent country. They're just gonna fuck you.

Well, yeah. And actually, like Prospero is charter or their agreement with the Honduran government says that, like, you know, the provisions of this agreement. are immune to future changes in political regime. And there's, like, certain, like, humor to that because it's like, well, like the, the enforceability of the contract is dependent on the political regime. So this is like literally an impossible laws.

Yeah. My dad's a lawyer. I've done a lot of law stuff. Myself. And like

practice, though, like, you know, even a new political regime is not going to want you know, at some level to just ignore contract language completely like that contract language existing like it does mean something because there are international courts of arbitration that like Honduran companies do depend on for their relationships to international corporations. And so like, you know, it's funny, but it's not completely meaningless. I think it's sort of common law away that like, the precedent is there purely restricted to the Honduran jurisdiction?

Yeah. Sorry, one second. Window. crossbreeds and

I also so I found out Prospero is not the only one there to operate in charter cities. It's just that the other one is much more like Honduran native focus and just generally low key

so just haven't like, hit everyone's radar.

I met somebody like a crypto guy who's in like mining and for coins like some bitcoin cash fork whatever. Whoever lives there. It's like marathoner or something like that. But so there were a couple and

it's like, Apple, they haven't taken down yet. Yeah. And it's possible they won't kill all charter cities like they might just hate for whatever recent prospera and so what's the deal with your clinical trial? So you're doing that out of prospera? Is that right?

Yeah, so it's, it's a clinic like a teal backed gene therapy clinic located in prospera. They're incorporated in like a Texas Gjerde or like, part of their legal framework is in Texas, part of the legal framework is in prospera. Yeah, they operate on prospera and they're doing gene therapy clinical trials that have sort of given you know, obviously in the US, everything has to be targeted towards like sick people with like a pathological diagnosis. You can just do like, performance enhancing.

Yeah, just looking ridiculous. So if we want performance, just ridiculous. It's yeah,

but so they're actually they're doing things that like, are generally performance enhancing. And also, target specific pathologies, like cam targets was ologies, because those two generally overlap, right? Like if you're doing something that enhances muscle mass that also targets people with congenital muscular dystrophy, and so on. And so they're, you know, they're in Prospero, they're able to run this clinical trial, they're able to offer it for payments concurrently, and they can do this while running like an FDA auditable trials that they can ultimately try to apply for acceptance of the treatments in the US,

I think some people have done that. Like I have a friend who runs clinical trials out of India for like, I think a large pharma company and he he's an older guy, but he's been doing it for a while and he's like, yeah, basically like run it in India, then he can get you approved sometimes in the US the same data.

Yeah, apparently Thiel recommended this to them. It's like sort of a play but an existing playbook. Yeah. And so it's like it's an opportunity for medical tourism. It's an opportunity to do research that you can't do in the US and then you know, export it to these first world nations later. Yeah. So the work that I'm doing is fall statin level enhancing. So fall statin is a myostatin antagonist. myostatin is a hormone that inhibits muscle growth after a certain point in response to activity. So follow statin inhibits that. People who have like us or myostatin knockout animals or people. You can google pictures and they look like you know, like, hell hound dogs and

just try to go the movie Akira started

with that insane. It just like it doesn't completely inhibit myostatin. But it does other things, you know, reduces body fat and increase cholesterol balance and cardiovascular efficiency. And that's pretty awesome. Your most excitingly like reverses. Slash slows epigenetic aging. So in mice, it leads to a 37% increase in lifespan which for human would mean an expected lifespan in your 120s to 130s.

All right, well, I'm glad you're testing this out. Sorry, glad you're testing this out. I might need so this myself. Yeah,

I mean, it's been studied. It's been done in primates. For like, over three years without a single report of an adverse side effect. So

I'm better than some treatments that came out recently.

Yeah, no kidding, right. So I'm, I'm comfortable and excited to be in like the first 100 people who do this.

So what are the details of the trial? So do you have to pay for it? You fly in to Honduras,

pay for the treatment itself. I just have to pay for my own diagnostics and travel. Do you have to do like I did a blood panel this morning actually for it. It was a lot of blood. I was still kind of woozy, like a couple of

hours. Yeah. Jared Bowie collapsed during his blood work in Ukraine because they did like a lot of tests. I just did testosterone. I don't know. So you had to do like multiple vials.

Oh, Nine Mile.

Oh, holy shit. What? Why don't they do that Boltzmann days. Do nine buyers.

We had to fast in order to do someone who took nine vials of blood or an empty stomach.

Dude like Sharon lever labs calm five. Just like Oh man, I've done blood. work because I was like a sperm donor. So I did blood work for that a fair amount that was like never more than three vials at a time. shit you know and it's

not it's not that big a deal. Like you got lightheaded. I mean, it's basically like being like mildly drunk

yeah, I don't know if I do this I definitely gonna be like, Hey guys, I'm gonna do it three takes

like for the clinical trial itself, right because it's so they want us to do the blood at the same time. And so also do like a body scan for like body composition fat versus bone density and that kind of thing. And so you do that, like two months before one month before at time of treatment. And then periodically for like six months thereafter, because we're trying to see what the actual

like Yeah, I used to work on for pharma for like three and a half years. So I would drop my statistical studies of drugs across I worked with like, I don't know, 10 to 15 pharma companies, and most of the biggest ones, just as like outside consultant for stats. So yeah, it's really interesting. Are there other trials like that happening? Is it like

they have some more in the pipeline? Sure. So the next one in the pipeline is just dosterone enhancement.

Let's go to is,

I think probably the most exciting is on cloth Oh, which is it's a protein that regulates like. Like potassium, it does a bunch of things, but like, it affects the kidneys heavily and it deals with like potassium clearance and so on. But like the upshot is, it improves both cognition and longevity. So like the optic Genesis and plasticity, and also like epigenetic indicators of aging, so like, if you stack so if there were to just be a complete stack between the effects of this one and that one. Yeah, it would put us in like 160 lifespan kind of range, as well as improving like memory and learning.

Like 106 year old Leo who was like way, like, just like sitting cross legged, a temple, like, come to me for my wisdom.

I keep like, every two hours, like I have these thoughts. I'm like, Holy shit, I'm about to be transhuman or holy shit. Even I might be friends for 180 years. Like Well,

yeah, I mean after qualifying because you guys were separated at your birth, and you didn't meet your brother until until 2022. Like you and Liam, were me and more or less biological brothers, but you were separated and raised in North Carolina instead of Australia. So that is

pretty accurate. We have we have gene tests from nebula genomics coming. And so we're actually going to see what like our genomic diff. Which will be interesting. Yeah, that'll be like to use that you know, with because we want to do similar stuff to many circle in El Salvador. And like our you know, one of our specific like, business model trajectories is that what is many circle do? You constitute like two very similar data points for like a potentially very valuable phenotype to like, you know, identify and target genes and, and so it could prove, like quite useful to see

well Liam's the last of the offender halls, he's probably at least 10% of vanderhall.

Well, maybe not 10%

The average Western Europeans to I think he looks like you could equal

ranges like one to five. We both have. So like Neanderthal DNA. The most gross indication of Neanderthal DNA is a pronounced occipital bum. So if you like touch the back of your head and there's like a ridge like a horizontal ridge that's an indicator of Neanderthals

horizontal Oh, horizontal, rich, interesting. Like you feel like you just have a big depression. There. I don't have like, I don't have a huge range of just like depresses between the neck and the top of the head. There's like a fairly large

imprint. Yeah, that's like it's a seam. Yeah, basically, like when your neural crest diverges, like into your cranium and brain it leaves like, there's like it actually seems almost like fabric sense. That's pretty. That's there. But yeah, so that bumbling portion of the occipital lobe corresponds to like a large visual cortex, which was characteristic of Neanderthals, like related to why they had a larger cranial volume than it was Sapiens does but yeah, so like Neanderthal DNA is almost certainly part of it. Because both of us, Liam and I both have it. Well. Yeah, I mean, and we're both just like the ethnic background is very similar. Like, I'm Anglo Irish. Yeah, it was most of Australia. Yep. So yeah, it'll be it's gonna be really interesting to track all that.

Yeah. So you've got you've got all this shit happening like x padding. You've got the trials happening. What about like so you mentioned you're gonna start doing lightning like what's your what's your sort of day job plan or what do you well not day job, just call it but what are you planning to like, focus the rest of your time in and is it? Is it kind of urbit Or is it other projects?

It's urban lightning? Yeah, it does. That's what I want to do. And they're like, urban is the most absurdly well capitalized and forward thinking social network out there right now.

Yeah, it's looking crazy. And it's like, it's crazy. I like people aren't really making use of it. Like I just see it as like this insanely capable social network that also has a lot of money and interest in building the future. What more do you want as like a building block? Yeah.

I don't really anticipate like,

well, who's gonna fund lightning? Are you are you doing daily? Pay? So who's gonna like fund your lightning development? Is that just self funded? Because you've got DGN savings or?

Well, yeah, so my Dijon savings it's gonna take it seems like a couple of months for me to be able to cash some of that out. Because crypto winter Yeah, not the best time to be trying to like OTC cell token allocation and that kind of thing. But that's not necessarily like too long. Like I have enough liquid runway to make that work. But also, like, I expect talking to roll the foundation, and bitmap among those I expect to yield like, you know, some kind of response.

Yeah, like, here's a grant to like, build out lightning, because like no one's actually launched.

Like what my general plan is like, there is immediate, so allegedly, in like, I need to talk to Josh and like really, to decide whether I truly believe this, but like, you know, the lightning RPC client implementation that's been being worked on for like 18 months now or whatever is supposed to come out, actually like to view very soon. And if that so there's like, immediate low hanging fruit for stuff to do with that which is like pay for content, pay for membership in group and then slightly more difficult beyond that is streaming payment for streaming content or data. Cool. Do it

also for like, I agree with all those I think they're sick. You would also be cool to just do like pay for events on urbit. And then we just like check your planet, but like a QR code at the door. Because like, there's a lot of like social events happening, but like, I don't know, I'm like I'm doing I'm helping Mars have you with their social that in New York on Monday? It's been like a little bit of a hassle. But it's a good learning experience for me like because I I want more events to happen on urbit I think there needs to be more in person happening and I think like the the barrier to doing that. Isn't that high? It's just like playing around and seeing what works as a model. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, no, I totally agree with that. So okay, so you're basically that's a dependency that you're waiting on. Having that grant finishing up for lightning.

So my before I recently heard that it was actually almost done like, you know, I was just going to snipe it and finish the project because they've been working on it for so long, because I guess these guys are like, they have full time jobs. And this is like part time for them or something. Because I just want to get it done as quickly as possible. Frankly,

18 months was way too long and so whoever allocated that grant, like honestly just kind of fucked up, because like, at like 18 months to get,

like, there's so much to be done like after that. Yeah, right. Like that's just like step one. And then there's like this low hanging fruit of applications that you can do as a step two and then there's like actually building a bolt implementation. So like, this is just like so this will communicate with an external lightning node. And it will do a little bit of like, so if you don't run your own lightning node, that and if your star does, then you can do like, you know, a lightning hop between you and your star and then they'll communicate

like it solves a lot of the routing issues of lightning, right?

And what's the like, ultimately, we want to do all of that lightning routing and have a full lightning implementation like inside of urban Britain, and yeah, that's another one. And that one also, like, there's scaling stuff that needs to be done. With urban at large for that to be viable. Like, certainly remote Scrye, maybe new Mars, like in terms of access to the entire, like, memory resources of the underlying operating system. Yeah. Other improvements to aims that Ted has talked about, so like, Yeah, but the thing is, is like writing the bolts implementation period is going to take as long as it's going to take, you know, to do new bars for most cry aims, rewrites, stuff like that. So can we work out the gates because then that's a prerequisite to doing Taro. Which is like, So Bitcoin Miami this year. One of the head lightning labs developers Loulou. Osom token is one of the co authors on the original lightning paper debuted a protocol for doing fungible and non fungible tokens on Bitcoin using taproot that will be transferable via lightning. And so like my My ambition is for the first or at least like first successful implementation of taro to happen on urban Yeah, absolutely enormous. And, yeah, because doing all of that will take a couple of years. Like that's probably the length of the roadmap, but that's like, that's a real 18 month roadmap, not like a, I don't know, whatever the project is each month roadmap,

right. And like, I mean, it's interesting because like, a Bitcoin Bitcoiners have this sort of weird impression of urbit. Some of them are very urbit pilled, especially some core Devs. But a lot of them just view all of their development as suspicious by default. And so it'd be interesting if like urbit was sort of the pioneer of applying Bitcoin tech in practice. That would be like a really good time for that.

Exactly. Because like I am I mean, like you and like a lot of other people like I'm tired of the complacency in the Bitcoin community like I mean, I am like philosophically fundamentally like a Bitcoin Maxy but like, to the extent that like capital M Maxi is basically synonymous with a kind of like, complacency, intolerance, anti intellectualism, like very much not that and I think that we need to separate like the, the lowercase m and the big M from each other and that, if urban was the catalyst for doing that, that's, that's almost world historical. Possibly. I mean, that's a huge that

would be Yeah, I mean, it's the catalyst for z k proofs. Why not? Why not? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's got us Yeah, it's kind of well, I mean, computing is sort of obvious. Weirdly, I think urban is actually gonna be the catalyst for the whole network state, as well, like that entire idea of like, hey, let's like, create organizations that are multinational in scope, that allow you to network across the world that are kind of starting digitally, it's just like, Well, to me, that's just urban. At the end of the day, like Herbet is already literally does all that like we've done this already.

The metro network state, right, like it is the protocol for organizing network states on like, it's the substrate.

Yes, exactly. And it's it's also like, already done. It's almost done a village scale. Like it's like approaching like what we had in Mexico City. Over the winter was like, kind of like a village like we're often having dinners of like 15 to 20 people. That's like a lot of people that

Yeah, and it's very tribal. And like, it just it comes very naturally. I mean, I traveled with Ted and Liam and I traveled with Liam for the better part of six months. I mean, obviously, I knew sharpen before we were on our bit, but like for years now, like you live with Ted and Liam for three months. You just like keep running back into people who were all at maps placed in Costa that was like 11 people.

Yeah, it's, and it's weird, like really cool. I noticed how easy it is to like, keep in touch to if you want. Like of course, there's like the signal groups that are always going and it just doesn't feel like that weird. Like I had seen Tom since Costa Rica, and he shows up with no advance notice to El Salvador. They're just like, Oh, cool. Hey, Tom, like how's it going? Like, and it's just like, it's simple. It's like seamless. And like it kind of provides like, full freedom to do whatever the hell you want. Like I spent two months in like Christian communities. And then I came back it felt, you know, I missed a little bit of a beat, but it wasn't like big. It was basically like, All right, yeah. People had hung out in Puerto Escondido and now it's like, alright, we're all we're all in Salvador.

We just have this continuous shared context. Yeah, exactly. Technologically. So it was it was like libertex. Like, I mean, I met libertex. Like, for all of an hour, you know, and then he shows up in El Salvador, and it was like, great, like, we're friends. That's cool.

Yeah, it's just like, the level of shared like, I like that how you said tribe there because that's really what it feels like. It's just like, the amount of alignment on core values is so strong. Yeah, that it's just like, Well,

again, from the US like, just so drastically. I mean, we're everything like has the implicit threat of the circular firing squad. Yeah, even with people that you know, were like my best friends in high school and that, like, you know, are still good friends of mine. But like, I was almost canceled for not doing the goddamn census. I was spared for 12 years, who were good friends. And it's just like, this distrust and like constant reflexive self policing. And

yeah, I think my high school friends they're suspicious of me. I went to a wedding maybe 10 days ago or is Yeah, Saturday of 10 days ago. And like, yeah, some of them are very nice, but half are very suspicious that I'm living abroad that I'm like, doing crypto stuff and they didn't have anything to cancel beyond I guess I did like an okay side and one selfie Instagram, but like, there wasn't just because I don't talk to them ever. They couldn't really cancel. There was nothing to cancel on. But there was like, honestly, I I know I could be canceled by them for basic statements. Am I even my college friends? Probably half of them. Half of them wouldn't give a shit. But then half would be like, yeah, we're never talking to you again. Just because you're I don't even know what they think I just Well, I'm not work. Yeah,

yeah. And it's just even if you don't, even if you don't actively say too much to fund work or whatever. You know, like you say just living abroad working in crypto not saying the right things, you know, creates this like defector vibe. Yeah, factor from this vast circular fire spiral firing squad that now defines like PMC society,

and there's so much fear because of living in that environment. Like I noticed, like if I just say things literally people are like they look around the restaurant. And they're like, worried. They're like, they've they've like they've gotten mind control. There's like a software in their brain that says like, you could be cancelled at any moment. And your life would suck if that happened. And so they're just afraid so they're kind of watching what they're thinking watching what they're saying. There's somewhat in surfed already. Like, actually to a massive extent, financially and mentally. Yeah, so it's been sad to see but like, it's just weird. I mean, I almost got canceled in Paris, like, you know, the waitress. When I'm paying the bill after getting I get yelled at by this random woman. And then the waitress is like Oh, I heard you're a misogynist. And you're like, what, like, me, you're hot. So yeah, it's it's just hard euphoria

in realizing that like, there is an outside to that and it's not just like being alone. Right like you don't have to be isolated in order to get outside of,

it's fucking awesome. Like, you can just eat raw eggs. You can eat ribeye, you could like sell your balls, you can say whatever the fuck you want. And you might get into a loud argument with someone. But it doesn't

matter. You have to have an argument about Bitcoin every six months. It's just like, Yeah,

I mean, I think our last argument was actually well, let's see, we've had three I don't even I don't know. It's just like, the way we talk. I think we've had we have three that I recall. So uh, Tommy about Bitcoin versus eath which was fair points. I mean, I want Bitcoin to win. Frankly, I'd prefer the coin one. It's like simpler and I can actually understand it better. So there was that one and then we had key food market. We had a very long debate about I think it was basically dahlias book, but it had come out yet it was a discussion of like, China's century it I don't even remember what sides we were picking. But it was like a chat.

Conversation broadly. But yeah,

there was some discussion of like, it was actually incredibly applicable to like Ray Dalio, his book, which hadn't come out yet, but it was basically like, Is there gonna be a China century? Yes, no, sort of in in response to like Afghanistan pull out and sort of the swords. Right. But I honestly can't even remember which sides you're taking it. I frankly, switched my own view of the world a lot in response to Russia because that really informed a lot of things and then the third was remote work. So all good topics, all very important that in Mexico City and Atlanta really restaurant. Yeah, is it Hello, Anna. Yeah. Oh, yeah. With the big. Yeah, with a big ceiling. I forget. Actually, I remember that. One. I think you took the position will probably be usually mostly agree very loudly.

really loudly converge on agreement.

Yeah. But that one was something interesting. It was a discussion about the future of remote work, and I feel like we've come so far on that sense. Like both of

us. Like, what we converge to in that conversation, as I recall, is like basically, like what we're doing and talking about now, with Alef. Right like of this, like, you know, digitally like cyber mediated physical community. Right, and like, yeah, the way they sort of mutually reinforce and assist each other and that is that really, the question was, you know, is like physical community or like physical location, now basically irrelevant because of rote work? And it's like, no, it's like it's modulated the relationship but like, is modulated and made more flexible? Right,

exactly. It's like New York. And then we had a discussion. I actually was wrong. I was. I was correcting one aspect where I said, a lot of Americans are just going to move within commuting distance of a city but kind of far out like an hour, you know, like kind of instead of being within 20 minutes, you're within an hour, because you don't have to come in as often. So I was right on that. I was very wrong. And you were correct on New York, and you basically said New York is not going anywhere. And I was like New York is dead because I wanted it to be. And I honestly thought I had gone to New York. He was so fucking dead during COVID. I got a couple times. And now it's back like New York. The thing that actually died was like, places like Philly are dying, but it's not New York that died because New York has these this massive network effects and says in San Francisco has died. Basically, I'm willing to kind of call that that one is like, seems dead. Maybe I'll come back. But yeah, it's totally wrong about New York. York's doing

it's like Madrid's Roomba. Energy, like New York. It's just unkillable.

Like, yeah, it's just fun to go there isn't much energy, and there's not that much competition for it because like Where else is there? It's basically Miami is the only city remotely like that type of energy and in the US, and maybe no la doesn't even have that. It's like really New York and like a tiny bit. Miami has the sort of Latin American Americana spin on that energy.

Yeah, and in comparison with La like, you know, the sort of the spatial construction of it actually matters a lot like the fact that LA doesn't have like a spatially contiguous structure where people can just go and find things that interact immediately. And you have like drive between all the little different clusters work. That makes a big difference, right, and Miami and New York, they're continuous

and that's kind of what I want to switch on. lf actually, is just having better information about where people are like shared calendars, and where people have set up so that you don't have to like, you don't have to, like somehow get into a salon off site to like get involved in X padding on orbit. You could just be like, hey, there's a presence in Mexico City for these dates. Probably definitely for winter, because winter sucks. And then El Salvador there's like this fairly permanent presence as well. Costa Rica, there's a nice resort, although, honestly, at our current scale, we probably doesn't look it'll look like it'll just be rented out normally. That's kind of what the map is leaning towards. And then you have like, this idea of like, sort of networks across the world like Portugal, like the hub and spoke model. Yeah, Lisbon is sort of like an obvious one and you can get really nice stuff outside of Lisbon like an hour away, like great villas for like 7k a month that can fit six people if you want to have six. I guess that's a different discussion is like, what level though? I think with the hub and spoke model, the beautiful thing is it's like you have a community hub, like a spot where you can go work and just hang out sort of like how serpins villa was sort of the hangout spot because it was the nicer one. And then you have, you know, the spokes that are just like other people doing whatever the fuck they want. And they

don't need to diversify or like completely as needed basis exactly like having that hub provides like the ground for that to happen. Yeah.

And so yeah, I mean, I think it'd be really cool. I don't know if you guys are in Mexico City long enough for like, permanently but it'd be really caught up in Mexico City because it just complements everything we're doing. Oh, Salvador.

That's absolutely the plan. Like when I get back from my brother's wedding, in 12 days or so, and I'm back in Mexico City. So like, you know, Raquel who ran the Tuesday night crypto dinner club like for expats and so on. I don't know like, what took her away but she seems to have basically chucked out on that. We present this power vacuum, organizational vacuum, whatever. So yes, that is the plan. We're gonna take over the Tuesday night crypto dinners. Yeah. Try to like marshal the expats here. Get people on to urban establish like a cultural presence. And yeah,

it's a great fucking idea.

Yeah, that's like Liam wants to get into the DJ scene.

Yeah, and honestly, it like the the stack is kind of like recurring. You know, it's like those Tuesday dinners which were frankly no money to run. You just have to show up and talk to people. Which like, isn't the worst thing. And the way that the weirdest thing is, I think what I noticed is most people don't have the sort of overarching thesis that we have about the way the world's moving so they don't want to put in small amounts of time that they're not getting direct monetary reward for. Whereas the way I view it is like, Look, if you're running the Tuesdays dinners, you can basically crowdfund whatever the fuck you want off of that organization. It's so if you have any business sense whatsoever, you can just create the thing or you could create it as like a literal Investment Club to it's like, Hey guys, this Tuesday, we're gonna feature this startup that's crowdfunded, who wants to read that?

Yeah, I mean, if you understand it, not as like this sort of contingent agglomeration of people who happen to be in Mexico City, and instead see that like, there's a trend here like, right there's like an outflow from these first world. Countries, and it's principally of like, skilled and well capitalized people, and they're moving for a reason. And that's why we're all here. And you treat it as such. Right? Like, it's a tremendous opportunity. It's not just like a hobby where I run a social club. Like I'm organizing, I'm organizing a you know, historical flow of people. And

it's, it's literally the cyber revolution happening. People are getting the fuck out. And they're getting out in modular ways where some people get out for the winter, some get out forever. Some go to multiple jurisdictions throughout the year like we did, and some just live in Mexico City as expats forever and so it's like, actually beautiful, like it's so much more. It's just awful. I'm just optimistic about it. It just seems like a better way to live. Feels good.

Yeah, like the energy of it is actually incredible.

Yeah, and I feel very good of urbit could literally take over those meetups. That's I'm talking to Josh tomorrow at the foundation, about this stuff. And I'm literally going to include that in the pitch. Just be like, Look, Mexico City is like web three central. For this time zone. It's insane. It has everyone loves it. Why don't we like invest in like making herbs and having urbit Take over that. And then we get we would get the talent

in general? Yeah. I mean, you can just see the difference between 2021 and 22. I mean, the amount of people who are moving here, Europeans and America, Europeans and North Americans is just extraordinary. Yeah, I mean, you can hardly walk for the entire city center. You can hardly walk into a cafe without it being at least

usually, yeah, and that's Condesa is like usually three or 4x change

from 12 months ago. Yeah. Yeah. There's every reason for it to be a target for this kind of activity because it's beautiful here. It's great.

It's beautiful. It has consistent weather. Ya know, it makes me really optimistic seeing Mexico City and it also I think complements I see Mexico has more own space than El Salvador. Like you're not gonna have a massive volcano party there. But you can do a lot like you can do phase one and two of the model we've been talking about like, phase two is long term leases, a lot of regular meetups and that's kind of phase two is a lot phase two is like awesome. Like face yeah.

And there's like there's really like sort of modular like multiple intersecting life cycles, right? Where like, the current point in the life cycle, you know, you want to, like take over social and cultural capital, where it's at hand, right like Mexico City and the other hand, like you want to take over, call it jurisdictional alpha, right, where it's at, which is San Salvador. And so if you do both of these things, then in the next stage, you can build enough like cross regional capital at all levels, that you can actually approach the Mexican governments, right? Whereas like, right now, obviously, there's like, there's already a lot of people, a lot of capital, a lot of culture, you have to hit a certain scale or to break into El Salvador. But that's just a question of, like, how ingrained Are you how much capital do you have and the way we build up to the point where we can do that in Mexico? Is like through this kind of combination of activities. And by the same token, that's also how like, right now, Salvador is great jurisdictional arbitrage is one of alpha, but like, not much in the way of like, transnational social capital, and so on, but like, how do we get right? So there's this

there's a synergy and they kind of see each other like in terms of El Salvador is a nice vacation spot to go from Mexico City. It's incredibly cheap, direct flights. And then, so it's just basically nice vacations, and then you can do volcano raves, and like huge industrial warehouse parties really easy. In San Salvador

freezable Cana rave.

Yeah, it's one of my favorite raves. They literally already do that. Guatemala, and like we're so set up to do these in San Salvador. Though sorry, an hour from San Salvador on Santa Ana volcano with

so I'm just like the UFOs are.

Yeah, that place is gorgeous. It's insane. Marissa the guy we hung out with the brother Diego he just posted pics of it. I honestly we kind of need her Insta

planner. I told him I would give them plants and hosts

they have planets sarpa and someone give them planets trend given planets no one's hosting them forbidden you know surfing so actually I think it was Trent I'm pretty positive is Trent actually, but I don't think they've been hosted so they probably don't. They're coming to assembly and the experience is gonna be a lot better.

And they're very excited about that. i We had dinner with them the last night before we left for Mexico City. Oh, yes.

Yeah, yeah, they are. They're good guys. They're good guys. They're not. Yeah, they're good guests. They're very useful. They've already delivered on some aspects very well and they did the tours at a very high level. Yeah.

And by the way, I went to one of the Bitcoin dinners a couple of days before we left and I met Sharon and was talking to her about like bio. Yeah, I know. The like biotech regulation kind of question and I think I have, she's gonna introduce me to somebody who has the answers on like, how to pitch the government on favorable regulation, or deregulation. Yeah, that'd be so. So we've got we've got some progress on that front. Yeah, that's

great. And then my dad's just been kicking off memos to the Salvadoran government because they're just asking you for information. They're just like, hey, how do we do like a digital transformation? How do we get high paying software jobs like you created? How do we leave? Why would we legalize dowels? Well, it's for marketing reasons. They're just like, and then they're like, so I'm pitching them on sort of digital nomad thing. And they honestly but I mean, the current state of the visa situation is so beneficial. Costa Rica has a digital nomad one. El Salvador has a three month one that resets whenever you leave, and you can do it like basically automatic three month extension online if you're a tech worker, so that's six months in a row that resets. So that's like no one that even stays in El Salvador for six months anyway, in a row. Like we're traveling cocktail.

Hour of like, the Cancun. Yeah,

you can like I mean, I want to go back to Mexico City next year, like I don't want to just I want to like stop it and go to crypto meetups like it's great. Love it because you're just incredibly bullish

on like Central America as a whole, you know, between what's going on in prospera, Mexico City, El Salvador, like this is just there's tremendous amount of potential here. And I think it's bound to happen.

Yeah, I think I think Central America is where it's at, because it's so complementary to the US. You can literally just spend the winter there, and it's sort of a no brainer. And then if you like it, you can fly back and forth like El Salvador is 141 way from Austin. It costs more to fly within the US then to like El Salvador and Mexico City off to there, which is fucking wild. Yeah. And then the time zones are fucking great. Yeah, so I'm bullish on Central America. And it's made me very, it's made me a little bit less excited about Europe, frankly, especially with their whole energy crisis and like Germany saying we're gonna like not have heating for the winter. Gas is fucking expensive there. It's $10

has so many sclerotic baked in bad incentives.

Yep. Like and frankly, the people are kind of as hellish. A lot of the people have a bad attitude. Not everyone. Yeah, so I kind of see Portugal and maybe Croatia as the two exceptions within Europe, broadly,

Hungary, maybe.

Yeah, I think Hungary is Oh, Hungary. It's just not. If I'm going to Nomad, I'd probably rather be in Portugal or Croatia. And Budapest is lovely. I totally agree with you. It's one of the nicest cities in Europe. And it's very cheap, like lodging, especially is very cheap there. But there's something like epic about villas, in like, you know, Castle Tao.

I mean, you really can't beat like an old Roman city on the beach. Right? That's,

yeah, you just can't. And like, and for phase one, even phase two. You could just get the Portugal visa, digital nomad visa. It's like 300 bucks. It gives you two years and EU and then you can just go to Tuscany. You just go then like live like timloc out of a villa in Tuscany and they're very they're cheap and nice.

Yeah, I do like like a five to 15 year timescale. I wonder how long that

lasts, like the digital nomad.

Just it will just like how long does the EU hold together?

I could see the EU breaking quickly because France has a lot of energy from nuclear in Germany has nothing. So basically, France can be like, Hey, fuck you, Germany. We're not going to export any energy to you that could happen this year.

Right which like whoever said in the signal chat like, you know, revenge for the Germany's enforced austerity on the periphery countries. Yeah, that's definitely a possibility. And in general, just like, the EU is the opposite of anti fragile, right. Like it's almost like designed not to be robust in the face of systemic problems.

Yeah, it was sort of like we're all in it together.

And that's going to I mean, we know what Europe is. Like, historically, right? Like when they when overly complicated systems of alliances break down and they face systemic pressures. Like they end up killing each other. And like, so like is, Portugal's seems to be making what's basically like an arbitrage play. Right, where it's like, we're part of the EU, but we have a lot of ladder we have a lot of latitude in who we let exactly right. So we give in the EU isn't happy about college is dependent on a certain situation of stability. That may not, you know, it may not make it to 2025, much less 2030

I totally agree with that. I think. But I think there's a really big silver lining there, which is if Europe fragments, you actually might get a couple of countries that have nice old infrastructure of like villas, and they might suddenly be super open for business in ways that the EU never allowed them to. Like, do, Sire.

No, you're absolutely right. That is the flip side is like all the things that are wrong with the right now could also be

like you might get like a you might get like a Portugal it's not in the EU but it's like fucking awesome for like cyber economy. Or you might get like, you might get like Italy breaking Portugal.

I hope it turns out that Yeah, I mean,

I don't love the Portuguese people. No offense to 14 people listening, but I don't love the people, but the scenery is great. And it's like a mecca for like crypto in Europe. It's gotten so much and now it's got all the Ukrainians, that's even more beautiful, like Koreans are very beautiful people.

Yeah, I'm curious what like the impact of the Ukrainian direct diaspora is going to be in different places

already having an impact on robinus rickford. He's going on a date with Ukrainian Yeah, so yeah, Portugal, dating Ukrainian Nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Wait, actually is

he's going on a date with her? I don't know guys. I don't know if it's a first date, I think. Yeah. This is how urban and crypto take care of your life in the future.

Which I was gonna say in that regard is just I was thinking this when I was saying, you know, the, the euphoria that comes to getting out of the really toxic culture of the US right now. Is that so right now this is true for us, right, who are you know, like basically, atomized males for the most part. And so we found like this just incredible validation and increase in agency through forming a tribe among ourselves. Yeah, right. And like the next question is like, how do you do that for a bigger group for like families and couples and so on like that's, that's the big aspiration is like, Can we do this like, at the level that proper society,

I think 100% Yes, because like, even look at like fab nev he has two kids, he's no matting. What you do is basically you have the hub where he can co worker get babysitting, and he gets general services from this community, but he runs his own independent household so he gets it on his own schedule, just like today, you as an anonymized male like you don't have to come it's no one's like you have to be in Mexico City. You have to like, you know, I mean weddings in the US for weddings right now. So like no one makes you do anything, but you get the opt in and so as a family, you could basically opt in and put in rent to house close enough where you can hang out with people like how found in Mexico City. He's running his own household, he's doing his own work. It's just you hang out and you get like the benefits of community and then you could go way more extreme like I have a lot of plans already somewhat written up regarding these. So I think it will grow. I think it does scale. I think the key is like letting people have agency and letting them do whatever they think is best. But sort of having like a community space that sets a general cultural tone of sort of like, we're building a new renaissance. We like urbit We like crypto. We're sort of tech futurists, we're open to ideas.

These things are the basis on which we can do things together. Yeah, right like or that we can that we can choose what to do ourselves, right, that we can do whatever the fuck we want, right? Like quote unquote, and also the way that we can do all that stuff together. Right? So like, there's like there's the common ideology has a basis that is consonant with people's ability to do what they want. And

so yeah, free Exactly. And from a very most foundational level, it's basically just American values and like 1800, so it's really nothing that new.

So Eric has a good like, his preferred point of comparison is like Renaissance Florence and the Renaissance Hollywood city states more generally, like Yeah, like those are two like the Renaissance city states and the early like, early American federalism, I think, yeah,

I think of the values as American federalism, but like the beauty is like, as city states like one of my chapters in cyber age, the book I've been writing is just like new Venetia, and it could be Florida. You know, Florida is beautiful. Forest is still beautiful often stuff built 500 years ago. Like their church there. The Cathedral of Florence is an insane cathedral that just inspires like even looking at a photo of it is insane.

Yeah, I know. It's like it's an odd thing, actually, that like, I recognize any photo of Lawrence that I see. It's just like, it's just so intrinsically iconic. That you see it all like this, like random Airbnbs will have like an aerial photo Florence or something. I'm like, Ah, like, I know that view. Right. Yeah. It's just like, it will always be iconic. And

the effect on the human is awesome. Like when I go around Paris or Florence or like even Ukraine, like Kyiv and Odessa i just feel inspired. I'm just like, okay, cool. I want to like figure out cool shit to do. I don't want to like watch Netflix. I want to like do like I don't I don't remember like watching any TV really in Mexico City, because I could just walk the city, and there's always fun shit to do. I was just like, I was just more alive. So yeah, my computer's about to die, and we've hit about two hours. So I think I think that's like obviously a pretty good place to cut it unless you have like, any, any kind of last thoughts you want to get across in the next five minutes or so.

I mean, not really. I don't know. I've just been spitballing the whole time. So

it was really interesting. Yeah, I mean, you're always football very eloquently. So like, puts out good. Well, cool. Yeah, it's good catching up. And frankly, just like from a, I don't know, from like, overall, like project of Frontier like pioneering. It's just cool to catch up and figure out like you guys are doing so.

So I was actually what is your you're going to South America and August, you're going to Uruguay and

yeah, so rough travel schedule is basically. I mean, the I'm in New York until the 20th. And I'm briefly in Kansas City visiting some communities, Christian ones. And then I'm in Austin, Texas, from the 27th to the 31st. Mostly just visiting, we're gonna have an urban meet up. So it'll be an urban meetup from sometime that weekend probably with like a bunch of guys actually. So it'll be good. And then and we're also doing the Mars review party on this Monday and then I'm in El Salvador for two weeks in August, early the first two weeks of August, and then I'm flying on the 15th on the 14th, down to Argentina, and then kind of playing it somewhat by ear and then flying from Santiago, Chile, to assembly. So there's sort of like the beginning and the end. is planned and nothing in between as planned. Yeah. Okay,

cool. Well, there's like there's no sense now I feel like we're pretty sure that like we don't we know we need to be in Honduras, in you know, the second week of September or something, and we need to be in Mexico for the one month before diagnostics, which will be I guess, what is today the 12. So, the 12th of August. Everything else is up for grabs.

But yeah, I really think you guys should come down to South America. It's not that expensive, right? Now. It's gonna be like not that touristy, because no one else is thinking of it. And so now Europe is sort of swamped Mexico City swamped. And like, I don't know, Buenos Aires is a great city. We could also hit up I'm thinking paraglide. I've been vetting it with Argentinians. And we're running into a lot of them and in origin in New York, hotels and hostels and yeah, they're saying really positive things about Paraguay and then chili. Chili is just beautiful. And then you can fly around and see Patagonia. There's just like a lot to

see. I would like to check out Patagonia Have you been to South America in general, and I can pull Liam on this because like, the highest UV indexes in the world for something your balls are available on the tops of Andean mountains. So there's,

they're gonna be kind of cold this time of year because it's winter, but their return. literally freezing your balls off how to add these Bowden. But uh, yeah, the Andes are insanely beautiful. Like, just, I don't know, I was looking. Do they? Yeah, I went to Argentina for three months in 2010. And it's like, beautiful. It's a collapsed country in some ways, but the tourist areas are still safe. So it's sort of gonna be like as safe as Mexico City and what is ours. And then from Buenos Aires, you can just fly to like, a lot of you can do Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Patagonia, Chile, like very cheaply.

Okay, so yeah, I think for sure. Oh, and the cost of living is otro you really

sick Yeah, the cost of living in Argentina is insanely low. Their currency is just dead. So like look at Airbnb prices and what Osiris or Emperor by essentially own or even Iroquois. It's all like dirt cheap right now.

literally know nothing about paragliders. So, I will do some I'll do a little research.

Yeah, we have. There's some videos on YouTube about it. It's getting a lot of German refugees from COVID. So that's a really good side. It also was sort of Nazi a little bit edgy, most of its male population was exterminated and award 1870 And then it had to be

replaced that have like, like breeding requirements.

Yeah. Yeah, okay, okay. It got it almost wasn't a country after it lost the war. Of the Triple Alliance where Brazil or acquired Argentina ganged up on a much smaller Paraguay. Right, right. Yeah. So it has a fascinating history. It's got a great climate for the winter. It's about seven degrees 70 all the time. And it's incredibly cheap and safe and essential. So yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, so yeah, totally. Let's do it.

Alright, so All right. Well, cool. Yeah, enjoy the wedding. That's coming up, right. Enjoy the wedding. That's coming up pretty soon, right?

Yeah. My brother's my little brother is getting married.

sick child. Yeah. This was

like actually just one last tiny aside before your computer runs out of battery. I will say the most white build I've been on the US was going to his bachelor party. That was like 20 guys. And maybe this is like you know, ultimately, it's not just the US or you know, some of the move abroad. Maybe it's white pilled on like Texas and Florida, like the South or something. But it was really cool to see like 20 guys in their 20s who were like pretty mold bug build Yeah. And we're just like, extremely healthy, like very much integrated into kind of social and church communities. And I was just, I was really impressed with them. So like, everything in America is not shit.

I think is really important. That is not yet. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think I got this go into the yard and meet up in New York on Saturday afternoon. And like my general takeaway is like American America still has some of the best people it's just the United States is a federal entity is fucked. But like the United the American people are still pretty fucking awesome. Like, we hang out with that all the time abroad. There's a lot of fraud. So yeah, I'm extremely bullish on Americans. I'm just very negative on the United States currently in tariffs. Yeah, resets. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think that's a good way to end. Well, yeah, I'll see you in South America then. Should be fun. Yeah, take care. Bye.