Who I Had To Be To Get Here

2024 was a turbulent year for me. To talk about my 2024, though, I have to first talk about someone else: Deirdre Olsen.The Weed SceneThe year was 2019, and I had moved to Vancouver the year before to take a job with Tantalus Labs. I was working for Tesla of cannabis, and I really thought I had died and gone to heaven. I was living twin lives as a regulatory affairs executive and a social media celebrity.This is SunLab, Tantalus Labs primary production facility - I miss it a lot.SunLab was am...

#vibecamp#2024#cannabis#activism
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Being Seen

The view was breathtaking. I was at a mansion in Beverly Hills, having just watched some fire dancers put on an amazing show. I took a break to go back to the upper level of the mansion grounds, and look out over the hills on the rest of Los Angeles. I thought back to Vibegala 1 and 2, and how I had done the same back then. Those were my first real mansion parties, and I still remember the first time I looked out over the Berkeley Hills. I felt the same things both times: Overwhelmed, and tha...

#vibecamp#vibegala#being#seen#connection
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Doing The Right Thing

I’m still working on a piece about exiting Gray Tribe, but here are some immediate thoughts on disillusionment.I’ve been thinking a lot about activism, idealism, and when they do more harm than good. Trying to pinpoint the exact moment that I caught the activism bug. My formative media diet had a lot to do with it: Star Trek: The Next Generation was a centerpiece. Simplistic morality plays that often painted things very black and white; some things were wrong, and someone needed to do somethi...

#activism#idealism
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Next.JS Dynamic Imports

The final code for the project is here, and if you prefer a video walkthrough it's available on my YouTube channel here: The Quest For BeatsI needed to use an external component for a Next.JS project I'm working on: mixmotion-player which is a React front-end for assets stored on Mixcloud. Mixmotion is a client-side only react component, meaning it has some dependencies that make it tricky to integrate with something that does server side rendering like Next. It will depend on globals like wi...

#nextjs#code#devrel#react
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I Was Sexually Assaulted At Vibecamp

This is part 1 of a 2 part series on being sexually assaulted in 2022 at the first Vibecamp, and how that experience impacted me. Content warnings for depictions of sexual assault and PTSD. Background information that may be helpful is Erik Torenberg’s post on the ideals of Gray Tribe. A large amount of people in the Vibecamp community / The Network State movement identify as belonging to this social group:I was sexually assaulted at Vibecamp 1 in 2022. I was waiting at a bar, my left hand ho...

#vibecamp#trans#networkstates
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I Was Stalked At A Vancouver Rave

I went to the Vancouver edition of the Boiler Room event series on Friday, and was having a good time until transphobia reared its head in the ugliest of ways.What HappenedIt started when about halfway through the event I was leaving the bathroom, when a group of 2 girls said ‘THIS IS FOR GIRLS ONLY’. I found it ironic, given there was a large paper sign posted at the entrance stating the bathroom was trans friendly. It was the first time I’ve ever been accosted in a bathroom, so it shook me ...

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The Sun Came Out

Working on another piece on one of the women inside me, but in service of trying to publish something once a week here’s a quick little reflection on what it’s like to feel normal for the first time in roughly 20 years.It’s hard to say when I knew I was different. Not in the transgender way, but in the ‘I don’t act like other people’ way. My sleep patterns have been scattered since my early 20’s, and I always seemed to have that time of year when I could lock-in for 8-10 hours a day. Then it ...

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Basscaster - Week 1

With a mostly successful Basscaster unveiling, I'm starting a new weekly series around building it in public in the Farcaster ecosystem. Basscaster has been successfully birthed! On Tuesday I hosted a conversation with ChicBangs of Higher.FM, with a few dedicated listeners. The things that went well:Chic and I actually heard each other!The live chat worked for the most partUser tracking in the audio section of Basscaster worked as expected, ie people joining and leaving was accurate in real-t...

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Introducing Basscaster, by FarcastHER

On October 16th at 11 AM PST, Basscaster (by FarcastHER) will debut in /farcasther as a mini app with an interview and co-working session with the prolific @ChicBangs.Why Basscaster?Dan Romero has said there's not enough interesting content on Farcaster. The majority of farcaster content is text-based. Creators need reasons to post, and short-form video which has basic UX isn't enough. Farcaster also loses value when community energy goes elsewhere. Tavern.fm has become a popular hangout beca...

#oonts#oontz#basscaster#music#farcaster
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SheFi Season 11 - Crypto's Finishing School

SheFi Season 11 ended last month. At its midpoint I considered it as a full-on makeup lesson vs the fragmented TikTok video education path, but now I think it’s more of crypto’s finishing school. Maggie Love is a force of nature, and the content is incredibly well designed for its target audience. There have been plenty of pop culture anchors to complex topics like staking and DAO governance. The most important aspect of SheFi for me has been that it’s doable at your own pace. You can attend ...