Daniel Miessler's Blog, page 51

Thinking About Different Types of Digital Value Exchange

I’m using this post as a place to take some notes while thinking about this whole NFT/blockchain thing.

The way I see it there are multiple things happening at the same time, but with a common theme: low-friction, granular value exchange—done digitally.

To me this is a human development, not a technological one. It’ll be done digitally, and therefore with some sort of tech of course, but that tech doesn’t have to be blockchain, and it doesn’t have to be on any tech that even exists right now.

But here are the things that I think humans want, and therefore that I think are inevitable on some timeline and in some form.

Peer-to-peer Value Exchange — a.k.a., micropayments. Examples: tipping for physical services, tipping for good content online, rewarding kindness, etc.Creator Economies — Influencers, artists, creators (whatever you want to call them) create their own coin on the blockchain and they offer different levels of access for X amount of that coin. Loyal fans earn currency just by being awesome fans, but you can also buy and sell the currency for real money. And there could even be sub-coins that can only be earned by loyal fans and aren’t for sale. And of course, different levels of access and perks are only available to people with certain amounts of certain types of coin. This is just like Patreon (tiers or service) or Twitch bits, except in an actual digital currency customized for a creator.Granular Investment — Investing is prohibitively difficult not just because of the knowledge required but also the capital. Most people don’t have large quantities of money lying around. In addition, there are only certain things that you can invest in. You can invest in stocks and bonds, for example, but you can’t invest in someone’s career. Or your favorite sports team. Or your favorite influencer. Soon we’ll be able to do that. You’ll be able to invest small amounts of money in almost anything that has or could have value in the future. That includes real-world things like someone’s future earnings, or ephemeral/digital things like a one-of-a-kind sword for a popular game.

On the last one here—Granular Investment—I’m prepared to make an actual prediction. Like, a real one.

I think we’re about to see a type of company pop up that manages micro-investments for “the other 90%” of the planet. Kind of like a distant cousin of Affirm, where you can buy lots of stuff spread over time, this is where you can invest in lots of stuff—in tiny amounts—that accrue over time.

Here’s an example: Andrew loves Disney. His whole family does. He doesn’t invest in the stock market and doesn’t really plan to. But he’s smart and he knows that Disney+ is big. He signs up for one of these fictional new companies called Fraction, and he logs in.

He sees that he has the option to connect his paycheck to Fraction, or to push a certain amount of money to Fraction every month. And he also sees a giant wall of logos. Media companies, favorite TV shows, celebrities, sports stars, influencers, YouTubers, etc. In fact, he can type virtually anything into the search box and they’ll come up. From investing in Gold to investing in his friend’s blog.

So he goes through and selects a bunch of stuff he likes:

Disney+ (Company offering)Marvel (Brand)Star Wars Mandalorian (Show)Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi (Show)Frozen Princesses (a meta group)Smitten Ice CreamUnsupervised Learning (my newsletter/podcast)

Once those are all checked, he then uses a pie chart and some sliders to decide how much of his monthly budget goes to them. So whether he has $5 dollars a month to spend, or $3000 a month, he starts squirting investments in them.

Then he does the same for donations! So this is the granular level of support he gives his influencers per month, just because he likes them.

Then, everywhere that creators have a presence, e.g., YouTube, Twitch, their websites, their podcasts, etc.—there’ll be a Fraction button (or some generic form of that button), which allows people to click on it and give kudos. Meaning money.

How much money?

That depends on how much they’ve designated as being available for that budget within their Fraction account! So if you have $100 in your Fraction budget every month and you give 100 kudos, everyone gets a dollar. And if you only give 2 kudos, they both get $50 dollars.

A company called Flattr tried this years ago, but they were just too early.

You might also be able to give money to other people, but only in their PIF (Pay It Forward) account, which means they don’t get it directly but it goes into their budget for giving to creators.

You can also give money in the form of investing for someone through Fraction. So if Andrew does something cool for me, I could give him $500 dollars in investment in Marvel, which instantly gets added to his own Fraction account.

Anyway, the point is that all of this will likely be made possible by either a blockchain or some other technology that works like a blockchain. And with digital currency like Doge or Bitcoin, or something that works just like it.

I think everything on this page is 100% inevitable because it’s a natural evolution of how humans will interact with each other. What I don’t know is when it will happen or whether any of the tech we have right now will be part of it.

It could all happen this year built on Ethereum and Dogecoin (which I’ve invested in by the way), or those technologies could completely die off and get replaced by something else.

I think it’s important to think this way, i.e., about what parts of a given movement are the human layer and which are the implementation/tech layer. It’s possible to make some really bad predictions—and investments—if you confuse the two.

So that’s pretty much it.

When people are talking about crypto, and NFT, and micropayments, and all this crazy stuff we’re hearing right now—take the time to break them into their components.

I think in general they fall under a banner of “new ways of doing value exchange”, but I like making the delineations and assigning some labels.

It helps me think about them more clearly.

A Dogecoin Primer

Crypto (“coins” not “graphy”) are going crazy, and one of the strangest ones is DOGECOIN. Here’s a basic primer captured in bulletpoints.

It was created in 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. They were at IBM and Adobe at the time.The coin’s mascot is a dog—specifically a Shiba Inu, which is an ancient Japanese breed used for hunting.

Watch The Exact Moment Dogecoin was named after.

Dogecoin is pronounced, DOHJ-coin—like Dodge the truck, but with a hard “o” and soft “j” sound, like Taj Mahal. This is not up for debate, as this video has Jackson Palmer stating this very clearly.

The pronunciation comes from Homestar Runner where his buddy spelled “dog”, “d o g e”, and Strongbad said, “Dohj”? So yes, this currency was seriously named by Strong Bad.

The original meme image.

The Shiba Inu dog is also part of a meme known as Doge (pronounced “dohj” like above). It’s basically the internal dialog of a Shiba Inu dog speaking in broken-dog-English, all printed on a picture of a dog in Comic Sans text.Elon Musk has been pushing Dogecoin heavily—seemingly mostly as a joke, but you can never tell with him. At one point he said that it’d be super ironic if a coin started completely as a joke ended up taking over. Plus he keeps tweeting about it with allusions to the moon.Dogecoin is a proof-of-work coin based on Luckycoin, which is in turn based off of Litecoin.Dogecoin is an “inflationary” coin because there is no limit on how many can be mined. This is in contrast to Bitcoin, for example, which already has a maximum built into the system.Most investors don’t see Dogecoin as a serious play because of its history and the fact that there’s no limit to how many can be made.One possibility of legitimization, however, hinges around using it as a casual, friendly, and fluid exchange of small amounts of money, e.g., for tipping, or for donations to creators for their content.

News & Analysis | No. 276

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4 Writing Styles I Admire

Image from Anonymous, Pixabay

There are a handful of writers for me that—as the cool people say—live in my head rent-free.

They are:

Sam HarrisChristopher HitchensScott AdamsMark Manson

These four styles have served as models for me over the years, so I wanted take a quick look at what I like about each of them.

Sam Harris

Sam almost doesn’t belong on the list because I feel so similar to him—possibly because I was heading that direction in my writing already (back in the early 2000’s), or because I bit his rhymes so thoroughly that I just think that way now. Either way, I am indebted.

His style isn’t so much a style as a lack of one. It’s pure clarity and precision. He does have a tremendous talent for metaphor though:

He especially does this when speaking.

This is how you play tennis without the net.

Sam Harris, Being Pissed at Someone Cheating

The combination of extreme clarity with occasional mental imagery is piercingly effective.

Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens was the most eloquent writer or speaker I’ve ever heard. I regularly re-listen to God is Not Great just to feel inspired as a thinker and a writer.

I’ve never heard sentences constructed or woven together so brilliantly as in that book. And to hear him speak these words is doubly powerful. We’re blessed to have many recordings of him at debates, and most importantly—narrating the audio versions of his books.

He was especially talented at alternating between long, complex sentences and short crisp ones.

My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can’t prove it, but you can’t disprove it either.

Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

Douglas Adams

Adams is the author of Dilbert, but he also writes non-fiction and maintains a blog. I’ve fallen out of like with his actual content since around 2015, but his style is still worthy of study.

He takes minimalism to the extreme and also has a tremendous mastery of flow and tempo.

A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

Scott Adams, from a Blog Post

Mark Manson

Mark is the king of a new style of writing that emphasizes rawness and honesty. He basically just says things.

This is best captured in his most popular work, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, where he says things like.

You and everyone you know are going to be dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give. Very few, in fact. And if you go around giving a fuck about everything and everyone without conscious thought or choice—well, then you’re going to get fucked.

Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Reading Mark is like taking a bath in truth and honesty. It’s most refreshing. He’s not hiding anything. He’s not trying to sounds smart. He’s just telling you—in a very conversational way—how he sees things and what he thinks you should do.

Most people—including me—could use more of that honesty in their writing.

Summary

So this is the extracted DNA from each of them that I look up to and hope to include in my own work:

From Sam, extreme clarity of thought punctuated by imagery and metaphor.From Hitchens, a poetic flow and eloquence.From Adams, brevity and impact.From Manson, a direct, honest, and casual style.

As far as how close I’ve gotten, I’m 90% there with Sam. 20% of the way towards Hitchens. 80% of the way towards Adams. And—depending on the piece—around 70% towards Manson.

Where are you? And who do you look up to?

How to Avoid Losing Another Generation of Artists, Inventors, and Builders

Image by Anonymous, Pixabay

I think the highest calling for humanity—long-term—is to become artists, builders, inventors, scientists, and other types of creator and explorer.

Let’s define wealthy as Top 10% income.

But wealthy parents around the world seem stuck in what I call the Climbing Trap. This is where, despite being successful enough to promote creativity in their children, they instead raise their kids with a single goal in mind: financial success. And specifically—more financial success than their parents.

This is the gift that such parents feel the obligation to pass onto their children. It’s called many things, but “creating a better life for our children” is the usual capture.

Our sources of meaning are in transition.

The reason for this shouldn’t be disrespected. This made sense for hundreds or thousands of generations of humans. Life has generally been hard for us, and financial security has always been the most dependable defense against war, disease, and famine.

So the problem isn’t that we took this approach to raising kids for so long. The problem is that we haven’t asked ourselves if or when it was time to stop.

I talk a lot about meaning, and I believe it primarily comes from struggle towards a worthy and distant goal. Surviving war, disease, and famine most certainly qualifies, but at some point that driver diminishes or disappears for societies and families that are successful.

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce, and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelaine.

John Adams writing to his wife Abigail — May 12, 1780

That is the precise moment of transition. It’s where the old model of climbing the generational financial ladder stops making successive generations happier, and when the need arises for a new source of meaning.

This has already happened for countless people and families in the last couple of generations. I believe this is why so many successful people in their 30’s and 40’s—who did everything right—are asking themselves why they’re not happy.

Traditional religion is a great source as well, but suffers from no longer being believable.

In my opinion, this is because the old source of meaning (more education, better job) has stopped producing milk, and it’s time for another source. And again—in my opinion—the only logical source outside of religion is the exploration of the boundaries of human experience and knowledge.

That means art, music, science, exploration.

While a family or society is dealing with terrestrial life challenges like previous generations, these pursuits are soft and theoretical. But once threats to security and health are relieved through peace and technology, our struggles should move to higher planes as well.

I am a soldier so my son can be a shopkeeper and so his son can be an artist.

Possibly George Washington

The problem is that success-driven people aren’t particularly self-aware. They’re too busy grinding, which is what makes them successful. And that’s fine…until it isn’t.

Again, say top 10% of U.S. income, which is currently around $200,000 for the household.

We’re at that point now. If your family makes a really good living, it may be time to transition from teaching the next generation how to go to a higher-tier university, to get a higher-paying job, to make even more money—to thinking about a deeper source of meaning altogether.

In short, how are you going to avoid having your kids call you up in their 30’s or 40’s and say, “Why are we even doing this? What’s the point of it all?” Or even worse, have them be so lost with depression, seeking, and relationship problems that they can’t even form the question.

It’s frustrating to have done everything perfectly and end up feeling hollow in your 30’s and 40’s.

Every time we raise a new generation to focus on better school, better job we not only lose a generation of artists, scientists, and explorers, but we also expose that generation to a high risk of existential collapse at midlife.

We have to stop doing this.

Of course, financial security is still important. I wouldn’t advocate abandoning that message and swinging too far towards the bohemian end of the spectrum. Doing that gives the next generation the opposite problem, which is having the right goals but being unable to act upon them for lack of time and resources.

As with most things, the answer is balance.

We should strive to give the next generation the ability to be financially secure without teaching them that it’s a goal in itself. So yes—the right education and a good career—but all within the context of focus on bigger, deeper goals that provide true meaning.

Successful people are successful largely because they are relentless and single-minded. But in the case of pursuing meaning we need to look up for a second.

We have to stop this train of empty climbing before we load yet another generation onto it.

NotesApr 10, 2021 — Tim Leonard also makes an interesting point about not enough people being willing to serve others in roles like parenting, teaching, etc. I think this is a fantastic point, but one that’s orthogonal to this one. They support each other.Apr 10, 2021 — I’d put parents and teachers at another super-high tier of essential as well, but on a separate axis of value from creators. But both are absolutely essential for a healthy society. Thanks to Tim Leonard in the UL Community for making the point.Apr 10, 2021 — I adjusted the set of ideal creative endeavors based on input from Paul in the UL Community. He called out that inventing and building should be included, which I agree with.Recent immigrants from difficulty get a full pass on this in my book. They’re not stuck in a perpetuated illusion of fake progress, but rather have direct living memory of true struggle. So it makes more sense that they propagate this to their N-1.

What if We Made Paying Ransoms Illegal?

I was on Twitter the other day and saw someone suggest that we could fix people paying ransoms by making it illegal for them to do so.

I was a bit flippant with my response. The person making the argument appears to be a serious security professional acting in good faith, and my response was below my standard for civil discourse. Apologies @VickerySec.

Do you know how to stop ransomware?
Make it highly illegal to pay a ransom. Consider the files deleted.

Do not allow large payments of money to criminals, as it guarantees and aids future harm to others. We frown on that.

Ransomware would disappear in a month. This is easy.

— Chris Vickery (@VickerySec) April 3, 2021

A lot of what I reacted to was the notion that this would be easy. “Disappear in a month”, he said. That’s hyperbole but I should have ignored it and focused on the argument.

The part that most people latched on to, including me, was the notion that making something illegal can stop it from happening. As many pointed out, history has taught us that this doesn’t work many times. The war on drugs. Alcohol prohibition. The list goes on.

But what that leaves out is where it does work. It’s illegal to sell your kidneys and other body parts, for example. Unless I’m unaware of something, we don’t have a serious problem with poor people—at least in the west—selling their kidneys to buy a house or a car.

I think it’s safe to say that more people would do it, and markets would emerge overnight, if it were to be made legal again. So that’s an example of where making something illegal does work.

But that’s not even the real discussion here. That’s the red herring. The real discussion isn’t about a direct transaction that benefits the seller, like buying alcohol or selling a kidney.

The real discussion is about making it illegal for the victim to do something after being attacked—with the hope that by doing so it will stop future attacks for others. The difference seems minor, but it isn’t. In the first case above, the person selling their kidney or buying alcohol is doing so because they want something directly from it. It’s a positive transaction for them.

With ransoms, people pay to undo a negative that’s already occurred. So it’s not that someone wanted to pay a ransom in the first place, whereas they did want the alcohol in the first place.

So when I and others say things like:

Or maybe…making things illegal doesn’t stop people from doing them.

…that’s not quite correct. It’s more nuanced.

So let’s look at the strongest form of his argument. Or as Alessandro Vernet captured…

Don't you think that making paying a ransom illegal would highly reduce the likelihood that a local city government, or hospital, ever pays one?

— Alessandro Vernet (@avernet) April 7, 2021

This is a great question, and I responded in the affirmative.

Anyway, after thinking about this for a day I think I’ve dialed in on what’s really bothering me about it.

It’s not so much that people find a way to do illegal things—which is the bandwagon everyone jumped on—but more of a question of economic incentives and externalities. So here’s my main question:

Assuming the ban worked.

What do these malicious actors do with the access they have when they’re no longer allowed to monetize it directly?

I can tell you one thing I’m terrified of—now that it popped into my head—which is a new market where state actors buy access from cybercriminals.

So they just show up, prove their access, and get paid as much or more than a ransom because China and Russia are willing to pay for that access for either espionage or disruption capabilities.

So they just start vacuuming up the access—essentially using the ransomware gangs as their initial access layer of the operation.

That’s scary as hell.

Of course, the other option that makes the outlawing of ransom payments illegal rather unlikely is that stuff just starts getting shut down. Our schools go dark. Our city governments. Our universities. Our small and medium businesses.

Like tens of thousands of them.

I don’t think people realize how much of our infrastructure is running right now because people are paying ransoms.

Oh, and what Army is going to do the enforcement?

Assuming people actually did stop paying them because it was illegal to do so, and stuff started getting shut down, I don’t imagine we’d have the courage to hold the line. I think that policy would get reversed—or become non-enforced—very quickly.

SummarySorry for being froggy; it was a real argument from a real security person.The illegality argument (like prohibition) doesn’t capture the situation fully.The ransomware gangs would still sell their achievement; the question is to who?NotesWe have to start worrying more about this “Access Marketplace” now, even when it’s still legal to pay ransoms. There’s no guarantee this isn’t happening just because the other is happening at the same time.

News & Analysis | No. 275

SECURITY NEWSThere’s been a number of major breaches at US universities, including Stanford, as a result of the Accellion vulnerability. More

Data on 533 million Facebook users was made available for download, and the breach is now in HaveIBeenPwned. More | Check HaveIBeenPwned 

Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, the top Republican on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, says Solarwinds hackers got DHS’s “crown jewels”. This evidently included access to the email accounts of the head of DHS as well as members of the DHS’s cybersecurity staff that’s in charge of defending against cyber threats from foreign countries. More

Github says secret scanning for private repositories is now available for enterprise accounts. More

It looks like Ubiquiti’s breach was much larger than originally announced, and people are pretty unhappy about potentially being deceived about it. I hardly react to vendor breaches anymore, but I do react to indicators that vendors don’t get the importance of good security and/or being honest with customers. Combine this with the news that they’re now putting ads in their admin interfaces and I’m officially concerned about their direction. More

The city of Seoul is installing new “smart poles” that are a combination of streetlight, traffic light, environmental sensor, foot-traffic counter, smartphone charger, wifi access point, and CCTV camera. The tops of the poles will also be charging spots for the city’s drones. More

Duo is getting ready to launch a passwordless authentication service. It’ll allow customers to log into services protected by Duo using security keys or OS-integrated biometrics. More

Vulnerabilities: VMware has released updates to multiple products, including for issues that enable system takeover. More Cisco has released updates to Hypervisor that can lead to denial of service. MoreBreaches: A call center provider called 200 Networks, LLC exposed a database of 1.48 million robocalls, including some callbacks. More
TECHNOLOGY NEWSMicrosoft is getting a contract worth up to $22 billion dollars to provide 120,000 AR headsets to the US Army. More

YouTube is testing the removal of the Dislike option on videos. More

LG is getting out of the smartphone business. More

OpenAI’s GPT-3 is being used in 300 different apps, by tens of thousands of developers, and is producing around 4.5 billion words per day. Those are cool stats, but the real question is how much of that is being shown to real readers as if it were written by a human. More

Ray Dalio thinks the US will outlaw Bitcoin. More

Companies Next Insurance has raised $250 million at a $4 billion dollar valuation. They use AI to provide customized insurance policies for small businesses. More Substack is raising $65 million. More
HUMAN NEWSGenX is coming out of the pandemic in a much better financial situation, and is doing well against its generational kin. More

A new study out of NYU shows that narcissism is driven by insecurity, not a grandiose sense of self-worth. More

Someone did data analysis on 51 cities and found that murder is up 36% compared to 2019. More

Argentina’s president has tested positive for COVID after receiving both doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. More

US church attendance has just fallen below 50% for the first time ever. It was as high as 70% in the late 1990’s and now sits around 47%. More

Disney+ is going to start shooting Obi-Wan Kenobi in April. More


CONTENT, IDEAS & ANALYSIS🔥 Frontview Mirror | 2021 Edition — My member-access annual look at current trends, how they may intersect, and how we might adjust accordingly. I’ve been doing this for a while, but this is the first in a new ongoing series of this name. More Get Access

The Consumer Authentication Strength Maturity Model (CASMM) v5 — My new visual model for helping people understand and improve their internet password/authentication hygiene. More

Disambiguating Mass Shootings — My new essay on the fundamental difference between shootings at schools and nightclubs. More
 
An Interview with Amir Majidimehr of Audio Science Review — I interviewed the most interesting guy in the entire audiophile world right now, Amir Majidimehr. He runs the Audio Science Review forum and YouTube channel and is absolutely snow-globing the entire hobby by introducing measurement into the conversation. If you’re into audio, it’s a must-listen. More


NOTESI put a lot of time into this new Frontview Mirror piece I just posted. Started small but once I got going it kept pouring out.

Last weekend’s UL Book Club was fantastic, and we had the best attendance so far. Tim L. from the community had a great suggestion to try something classic, so this month’s book is The Island of Dr. Moreau! Come join us!

I got my first shot like a week ago. Moderna. 


DISCOVERY  Malwarebytes — My go-to anti-malware tool on Windows and Mac. It’s what I recommend to everyone, and have been for nearly a decade. And as a show supporter, they’re offering us 25% off. [SUP] More

The Wayland — I’m trying hard very hard to not buy this pocketknife. More

ifconfig.co — The most detailed and geeky “what is my IP?” website out there. More

Roleplayful — Find people to play tabletop roleplaying games with, remotely or in person. More

Who Americans spend their time with, by age. More

Some interesting advice on how to make it as a writer (be weird). More

“A lot of software is free as in piano.” More


RECOMMENDATIONSI’m not a doctor nor any sort of physical coach, so use all the appropriate cautions, but—if you’re healthy and able—I highly recommend incorporating high-weight weightlifting into your weekly routine. I rarely feel better than right after I get done with 3 sets of 4-6 reps of as much weight as I can lift. I feel spent, which is nice, and I also feel strong. And to top it all off, the blood flow and endorphines (I guess) give me a massive rush of mental clarity and energy, which I enjoy even more than the physical aspects. Assuming you can do it safely, I highly recommend it.


APHORISMS
“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”

~ Bertrand Russell

Frontview Mirror | 2021 Edition

An annual look at current trends, how they may intersect, and how we might adjust accordingly…

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Disambiguating Mass Shootings

The site of a cafe shooting in Paris

I think the term “mass shooting” has become overloaded to the point of uselessness.

A recent article by CNN says, “At least 20 mass shootings have taken place since the metro Atlanta spa attacks left 8 dead.” I don’t follow everyday news that closely, but 20 seemed high, so I read the piece and find the following:

Office building, 4 people killedApartment complex, after a dispute, five people shotCleavland night club, 7 people shot, all between 20 and 30 years old4 people in an SUV shot in ChicagoA man kills his parents, shoots three people at a grocery store, then kills himself4 people shot near a sidewalk in Chicago’s South Austin neighborhood7 people shot at a nightclubA shooting on a party bus injures 3Three shootings in Virginia Beach injured 8 and killed 2, ending in suicideA gathering in Chicago turned into a mass shooting where two gunmen opened fire wounding 7 and killing oneFive people shot in Memphis, shooter kills himselfTwo people shoot 7 people outside a golf and social clubTwo people were shot and two killed in an Alabama home10 people killed in a Boulder supermarket1 person killed and another injured at an illegal party in Philadelphia8 people shot with one fatality in Dallas5 people shot at a disturbance inside a Houston club4 victims shot in Gresham, Oregon5 people shot in a drive-by in Stockton, CA

Without knowing much about most of these, I see an important distinction between them: In one subset, the violence is relatively common and expected, and in the other it is not.

There are exceptions of course.

Whenever I hear that there was a drive-by shooting, or a domestic dispute, or a nightclub or party shooting, I don’t think “mass shooting”.

Mixing young people, alcohol, and guns has predictable consequences.

Same goes for a motorcycle rally, or a big car show in a bad neighborhood.

For example, if I find out that 13 people were shot at an Alabama event called, “Bubba’s Truck Rally and Wet T-Shirt Contest, Sponsored by Bud Light and the NRA”, I don’t think mass shooting. What I think is that it’s generally a bad idea to combine young men, women, alcohol, and guns all in the same location for more than a few hours.

If someone in a household, or extended family, shoots and/or kills multiple people in that household—yes, that’s technically a mass shooting because the number of victims was plural—but it’s not what people think about when they hear of a mass shooting.

Terrorism and Violence Are Not the Same

Mass shootings—like terrorism—are insidious because they’re unexpected based on time and setting.

Office buildingsSchoolsDaycare centersLibrariesGrocery storesShopping mallsStreetside cafesParadesRestaurants

These are places where the use of “mass shooting” seems appropriate. They’re public places where the expectation of peace is built into the setting as a core component of a functioning society.

“Ok”, some might say. Why do we care? It’s all violence, right? And therefore all undesirable.

Sure, but the problem is that terms have meanings have meanings and connotations. And if something means everything it means nothing.

Most deaths from guns in the US are from suicide, but there’s a reason we don’t think of them the same as others.

Few people know, for example, that roughly 6 in 10 gun deaths in the US are from suicide. If we listed those all as “shootings” and talked about every one of them on the news the public would think we were being attacked by ISIS.

Of course we still care about shootings in the context of domestic violence and suicide. Those are real problems that need to be talked about and addressed.

But they’re not nearly as important as people feeling unsafe about going to the grocery store, or sending their kids to public school.

That’s the fear of actual mass shootings, and what happens at the truck show or the nightclub should not be conflated just to have higher numbers for a headline or a narrative.

Interview | Amir Majidimehr, Audiophile Industry Disruptor

In this standalone episode I’m speaking with Amir Majidimehr.

Amir is an audiophile, but he has a unique approach to the hobby that’s literally disrupting the industry.

He’s basically introduced measurement, and what he calls Objectivism, into this very sensitive audiophile world that prizes itself on everything being a matter of preference, or up to the listener. Amir calls these types the Subjectivists.

So what Amir does is use his decades of experience, and his professional training, to actual test this equipment—much of which costs tens of thousands of dollars—to find out if their outrageous claims have any merit.

It’s truly refreshing to see in the hobby, and I’m excited to talk to him.

Amir has a degree in electrical engineering, he used to run the digital media group at Microsoft in the 1980s, and he’s the founder of Audio Science Forums.

And here’s our conversation…