Tag: Whistler

Launchpad Israel: The Aftermath – 2006 and Beyond

– part 1 of 5: Beyond Blacklists: EXPOSURE!

updated: 13 June 2023

In Israel, I believe or rather know that I was “downranked” within that society in late 2006 via extensive personal observation. This continued for many years. It is a conscious effort to neutralize someone’s influence in society… and quite possibly much, much worse within an “orange-ray emotional blockage” context.

This was done utterly unfairly, I feel, and corresponding to my experience street-drumming where gangs could “start on me,” I think it was a way to assert dominance. This “downranking” was done from the top-down and of course unbeknownst to me. The judge, jury and executioner never knew me, or barely, with lies probably making up for solid information – if they even had any.

It’s also worth noting that:

“Absent a basic document protecting human rights (Israel has no written Constitution), the Supreme Court is considered by many as the last bastion protecting the civil rights of citizens (and non-citizens, including Palestinians) against government actions and laws.” – src, 2023

The country is in the Middle East after all. So the key to assert power over someone is to keep them blindsided of hostile intent so they can’t bring it to court. And those courts are in the process of being weakened anyway.

The place can easily resort to Jew-on-Jew thug life based on social and economic violence. I have even said elsewhere:

“I have a hypothesis that the only character trait that Israelis have that extends beyond their toughness is their idiocy.”

So shouldn’t those protesters be yearning for a bill-of-rights? Wouldn’t that garner more positive international attention? How does a brute un-brute him/herself? The God of the Torah can be very vicious too, unless someone is reaching deeply into the Kabbalah. Those secular protesters probably have a lot of self-righteous indignation and they’ll lose that fight. It could be a good time to start a new political party – The Judges Party, People First or Reversal.

Regardless, I suspect this downranking came after a series of 3 blog posts (from late 2006) I wrote about interactions with VCs that I had had at the time. They weren’t critical blogposts I feel, more “matter-of-fact here’s how my experience went that day.” The posts might’ve been something like you’d find on thefunded.com (launched early 2007) – but in reality much less innocuous.

I don’t even think they were critical at all – but people can believe what they want to believe. The main, or rather only reason the posts went up was to create new content and to write something from a boots-on-the-ground, fresh perspective. The Launchpad Israel (LPI) blog was unpopulated at the time. If I visited or spoke to a VC about my startup, why not write about it?

Moreover, the blog posts came in context with the work I had already started in Melbourne in 2003, for which I had even previously met a VC firm there – Momentum VC. I met 3 individuals at that firm at the time, with the main contact being Tim Ingram. I also met Ron Finkel very briefly and also saw Doron Ben-Meir who many years prior was my tennis coach.

source

And I retained this vision into my Israeli VC meetings a few years later, and below are screenshots of the VC-specific vision I was working toward in 2003: Awarenex.

[1] [2]

Phase 1: Awarenex is a venture capital brokerage firm utilising the Web to match opportunities with investors. Essentially, AwareNex aggregates startup investment opportunities and matches each one to its network of angel investors. Startups companies pay AwareNex a commision for each investment made by any angel in its network. 

Phase 2: Awarenex creates and manages a venture capital fund that pools its investors' money over the web from a cartel consisting of high net-worth individuals who are clients of Awarenex's alliance partner banks. The fund partners with top-tier, venture capital firms to co-invest in their syndicate deals.
 
~ source

Part of the problem in Melbourne was that the VC scene was practically non-existent, perhaps Awarenex could’ve changed that. Also, perhaps it was a mistake to mention Awarenex in Israel with VCs as that would invoke rivalry – I was meant to be an entrepreneur and not coming in from a financier’s perspective. Often I wasn’t sure if I should be pitching GrooveTip, Awarenex, LPI or simply for a job. I pitched both GrooveTip and Awarenex to Tim Ingram and his suggestion for Awarenex was to start with a newsletter and with GrooveTip to first find revenues.

Launpad Israel wasn’t Awarenex, but it was aimed at adopting this vision specifically for the Israeli VC scene after funding and customized software development. LPI had multiple functions with a blog being only one. It was also meant to become a database of companies, people and events.

Another site, StartupIsrael.com started very soon after LPI launched. However, according to this post (and shown below), StartupIsrael launched first – in November 2006 – but I dispute that. LPI launched in October as already mentioned here and shown below [see post]. I also don’t consider it a competitor.

TechAviv, a still-running startup community which I joined, even began during LPI’s operation.

I listed one angel investor on LPI who was based in Monterey, California and he said he received multiple leads after being on it. I think he made two investments because of his listing, I am not sure. My concern was that after seeing MySpace take-off, I realized I missed that opportunity because GrooveTip used off-the-shelf software and really needed proper custom development to integrate its components – which I was looking to do anyway, but I wasn’t a hardcore programmer.

Continuing on, I even removed the most controversial post – the one about Mr Dibner (with its one sentence about being rejected)  after I was queried on the post by Jon Aizen (JA) who later said in an email “The issue was dropped when you removed the post.” However, it turns out it wasn’t the case. Removing the post and even taking down the blog in hindsight was really the mistake. It was never about the post… I think it was about me.

So once I took my LPI blog and twitter down, I was much more open to slander and misinformation. And even if this is an unjustifiably paranoid statement (I don’t think it is,) it’s still true regardless, whereby if  one removes their online presence, and others don’t like your presence as a whole, then alternative narratives can more easily arise without proper information to counter those narratives – especially if one doesn’t know about what’s happening.

After this, JA and his CEO Eran Shir uninvited me (and someone else) to his startup’s (Dapper) NYE party and I had been providing solid feedback to them up until that point. Perhaps JA was even interested in having me as an early employee. Over email, JA asked me for an apology for Mr Dibner, but instead I just removed the post about him (and the other 2 VCs) about 4 days later. I didn’t apologize on that day because I didn’t believe I did any harm to Mr Dibner, nor did I intend harm. And whatever I apparently did to him (ie nothing,) over 15 years later it has never stopped him from launching 2 VC funds.

To this day, I have never met JA in person, or even spoken to him verbally and lost contact soon after. I know nothing about who was involved in this “request for apology” and the merit or consequences that it entailed. I also felt it was strange to have JA used as a messenger boy for victim consciousness. I didn’t even know what JA looked like… he had no online profile picture. Yet more importantly I don’t think I did either (or videos of myself,) and did that make me somehow less credible as a person and rather more as a potential target-for-life?

Straight from victim to villain-by-proxy!

Must one be in the corridors-of-power to have any power?

Being uninvited to Dapper’s NYE party was the watershed moment for me. My blog even received around 80 visitors in the space of a few minutes while the VC posts were up – Israeli visitors. The posts had caught the attention of people – negative attention I suspect.

pic

And when I finally left Israel in late November 2018 with my belongings, I received many visitors in a very short period of time at the beginning of the month.

Those photos were posted on the 5th of November and taken at the Dizengoff center. The influx of visitors probably had nothing to do with me leaving. Or was it because the Ormus King was escaping with his life?… nahh.

Continuing, Dapper was acquired by Yahoo in 2010. And as with Yedda and Moshtix that were also acquired in those years, with all 3 I had been providing solid feedback and help to those firms in their startup period only to be eventually ignored – or worse. But if nothing’s in writing, that’s part of business I suppose… to a certain extent.

Interestingly, my twitter account @bitrific (since renamed @adrianboron1) I feel was instrumental in promoting Bitcoin in its earlier years, with content drawn from Hacker News.

source 2

Hackers and other users were using this account to chime in on conversations about Bitcoin on Hacker News.

Also, my other @btcprice account linked every tweet to the following price page that I created especially for that account (although the first June 2011 tweet did not.)

1 2 3

I was in contact with Meni Rosenfeld and Vibhu Mohindra back then too.

At the same time, a couple of years earlier in 2009 I had setup some very pro-Israeli (and US) unofficial twitter feeds including the all important debkafile and a number of others including israelnatnews,  israelnatbriefs, israelnatopin, investisrael, lpijobs, globesbiz, stratforintel, globesec and amthinker. I still run these to this day.

In 2009 I also wrote an interesting piece on regime change in Iran (and also on the Two State Solution.)

source | 2

I was in contact with the editor at American Thinker for the Iranian essay, but for some reason it was never published there after some emails. Perhaps my heart was in the right place, but my vision was not. Maybe I was “checked out” beforehand. Today, in 2021, with barely any real changes to each of these wars, I am more of the view that they are staged for political gain or armament sales – aren’t many wars?

Also, while I was developing Cleanzap.com in 2007/08 as a business directory for the CleanTech space to run alongside its own blog, Crunchbase was also launched as a directory to run alongside the Techcrunch blog, with both acquired in 2010.

CleanZap started as the next iteration of LPI to be a database alongside its blog – just as Crunchbase became to Techcrunch.

pic 1: 23 July 2008

So it was like I was doing R&D for Michael Arrington:

Who got crunched?

Also, in March 2009 I built and launched Twitya.com – a twitter browser and client.


Twitya was a “Better Twitter than Twitter” for me to read news as I disliked the “river of feeds” on Twitter home. I think amongst other things spammers used it to discover meaningful interactions of any given user.

I may well have been first to invent the “show more” drop-down list.. soon after used by YT for their video comment sections. I should’ve patented it. This evolved into Infinite Scroll. Twitya also used a client-side 3-pane floating interface Web 2.0-style. Perhaps I should’ve patented that too. I strongly suspect this was emulated in September 2010 by Twitter itself with its client-side driven floating 2-pane floating interface:

[ pic 1 | 2 | 5 ]

further info here

In view of all this copying, I am not surprised Disney used Ormus King as a starting point for The Rise of Skywalker which I elaborate upon here. That film had a box office of $1 Billion, and I suppose it could’ve been much worse without its emulated vision.

Interestingly, I don’t think I was the only one that experienced such a “downranking” thing. It must be part of Israeli life. At a tech conference, a fellow sitting next to me pointed out another person literally following him around and talking – ie spooking – everyone he spoke to almost immediately afterward to turn them off him. He described some sort of bizarre situation that led him to that one, and I quizzed him, “but why don’t you confront him on it?” and he said “then there’d really be trouble.”

During another situation, at Entrepreneur Perspective as a VC (7 October 2010,) the speaker (Eden Shochat) asked if there was anyone that preferred English, and I raised my hand, yet Mr Shochat  still ran his talk in Hebrew. The slides were in English. There was another person that only spoke English at the front of the room. Someone (from Intentia.co.il) gave me a lift home and said it was really odd.

My blog (Launchpad Israel) was removed from the blogrolls of Daniel Cohen (Dec 2008 -> Jan 2009) and Roi Carthy (Feb 2009 -> July 2009.) But by that time, my blog wasn’t in the same form as it was when originally launched.

By mid-2007 I was back in Melbourne living with my mum (after ~1.5 years in Israel) and helping Jeremy Rich and his solar startup with SugarCRM customization. We also went to Mount Buller together.

[pic 4: business process diagram: 17 Jul 2007]

Rich’s firm (Energy Matters) was eventually acquired in 2014.

Interestingly, during this period I also worked for a small Israel/Europe VC firm for 3 days but the spreadsheet work wasn’t at all creative. I covered the firm’s launch on LPI and this led me to the job – which I tried so hard to like – but at least I did it though. By the end of the year I had started a new site, “Adrian Wajsbrem Blog” that covered similar topics to LPI but with more music and hobbies.

[pic 3]

During this period in Melbourne I was always thinking about returning to Israel. I started reading Torah everyday. I also held Skype conversations (one recorded) with a couple of Israeli entrepreneurs including Nir Kouris (eCampIsrael) who I later met in Tel Aviv with his co-founder, and the other with Dudu Mimran for his blog-search site (strategicboard.com.)

I eventually returned to Israel in early 2008 after going through Canada for further Heartcarve research, which continued at Mount Buller in 2007 and started in 2002.

Lastly, my trouble could well have been related to non-conformity whereby I documented here “Price Tag” activism sprayed on a wall near to where I played drums in 2016. In decrypting it years later, I realized I could have (and could still??) “DISAPPER.”

One reason this whole drama is pertinent today is related to the Trump de-platforming:

"I think there has been lots of deplatforming of conservatives and I always think that the actual censorship that people talk about is just the tip of the iceberg and the real problem is the downranking. One of the top Google executives used to always say 5 or 6 years ago we never sensor anybody we just downrank people and the downranking was the far more insidious way to sort of tilt the playing field of the discourse. But there has been outright censorship, outright deplatforming and when you do it with the President of the United States, that does feel like you really crossed some kind of rubicon where you know I’m not sure you declare war on half the country but maybe a third, forty percent of the country and that seems really crazy. When you have Angela Merkle and Obrador from Mexico saying that the tech platforms have been too anti Trump, too mean to Mr. Trump that tells you you have probably really overreached.

Peter Thiel - vid here

So with my 2006 “Israeli downranking” (or worse) – and I have vast notes* on what took place with those starting off as unpleasant memories – the problem is that a sort of war on liberty is declared with everyone who once knew me, or wants to know me. Someone is telling them: you can’t freely associate with that person, you might have to deplatform yourself or even go into hiding in order to elicit a response from the target that we can then ideally prosecute. That is, legal prosecution; or alternately execution. And even if you disagree with all this, do it anyway.

* The notes were first taken in Australia and based on memories from Israel and I jotted them down because I had trouble sleeping and not out of vindictiveness – just like this set of articles.

Mossad is responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counter-terrorism. It is separate from the democratic institutions of Israel; because no law defines its purpose, objectives, roles, missions, powers or budget, and because it is exempt from the constitutional laws of the State of Israel, Mossad has been described as a deep state. Its director answers directly and only to the Prime Minister. ~ Wikipedia

 

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And so then that person becomes submissive (or faces the same fate.) So the question becomes, is all this top-down fear justified, is it healthy? Will a society like that even survive long-term? Why do it?

Perhaps it was because I was Australian and I could be used as a whipping boy (hurt me to hurt an untouchable other) or just as some type of scapegoat. For example, during the British mandate period, 1917-1948, members of the Jewish underground were imprisoned in Jerusalem in the Russian compound (below center and right, Ormus King 2) and then executed in Akko.

In this way, the Union Jack could (sometimes) be seen as a blessing to Israelis, but also a curse – due to the Balfour Declaration. However, if I were to resent something, it would be that Israel is referred to as a State (מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל‎) and not a Country, and this reinforces my view that Israel could be renamed to “The State of Israel-2B” – but to eventually be called “The Kingdom of Israel.” And to assist with this, I created an epic tale (documented here) that takes Israel in its current form to this idealized Kingdom which Jews around the world yearn for in their daily prayers, as enabled by a black messiah with his sidekick Adrian Boron.

So the reason for the downranking in 2006 could’ve been anything – or nothing. It was likely used for self-gain or sick sport. In the end, I started my startup BopGig in 2010 with American talent. “Too Bad” – and that’s the key phrase that no one seems to know how to use within this situation. And perhaps ironically, Indiana Jones actually saved me.

 

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✓ 10 months ago

Hate rears its ugly head too!

While travelling, anti-semitism is always a thing, but can be overcome.

(last update: 21 March 2023)

Vancouver, November 2005.

I was staying at The Dodson * in a troubled neighbourhood in a single room. In the room next to me (on the desk side, see below) was a man who appeared to have two prosthetic legs. I think he had black hair but was semi-bald – maybe 45-50. He was a permanent resident.

[pic 2 source]

* – owner notified

His walking style was very, very cumbersome. He came across as a loud, somewhat friendly (and charming) robot but with little to no empathy. He was speaking to almost everyone in the hallway who came his way and most people would slip away from him when they had a chance. He might have been a war veteran (or that was at least the lie he put forward?) – I only overheard him say something about his legs.

Spot a psychopath when the 'mask of sanity'/ 'presentable image' / 'persona' they normally project to you sporadically drops and it gives you a hint of what their real underlying character is. Over time, all psychopaths will begin to give themselves away through little clues and signs of their real underlying personality leaking out.

So I spoke to him briefly in the hallway and I told him about my travels and he asked if I was Jewish and I said ‘yes.’

On one of the following nights, I heard him engaged in the sexual act with someone. The walls were very thin. There were screams, groans and strange sounds, but most disturbing of all was the horrific anti-semitic abuse being directed at his partner in a stream-of-consciousness style. Vicious, unrelenting hatred against anything and everything Jewish for around 35 mins and possibly longer as I lost track of time.

Once the noises stopped I heard his door close and I opened my door slightly and saw what appeared to be a male prostitute in the hallway still strapping his belt and getting ready to leave.

I couldn’t sleep and lay awake. Then I heard the guy’s door open again.

I somewhat panicked. I snuck up to my own door. It was unlocked. I didn’t want to lock it as that would make a noise. Instead, I pushed my hand strongly against my door above the handle.

I saw the door knob rotate and felt pressure against my hand. He was outside my door trying to get in – or at least seeing if that was possible. I might even have been saving my own life! Did he want another orgasm at my expense? Was he carrying a knife and intent on entering my room? I don’t know.

A war veteran (and convert) murdered my friend Tony Rose in 2014 in a premeditated attack with an 18cm commando knife so it’s certainly possible. The chap knew I was Jewish from a few days earlier and I also have mentioned here the notion of Nazis gaining sexual pleasure from the usage of gas chambers. So it’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s reasonable to suggest I was in serious danger that night.

Perhaps I should have opened the door to see what he was holding but I think that would’ve been too risky. He had a cumbersome walk, but he could’ve had a slingshot ready or a taser if that was his intent. He might have acted nonchalant and lunged at me the following day – I wasn’t going to find out. If he was a war veteran, using a head torch, he could’ve thrown a knife at me and dropped a suicide note by my side if I was asleep… or just shot me.

Moments later he went back to his room and I locked my door properly. It took me a while to get to sleep and I propped something against my door as well. As a permanent resident, he may have known ways to overcome the locks or had a skeleton key (excuse the pun.) On the other hand, he may have wanted to brag about “the Jewish guy who left his door unlocked who I could’ve killed if I wanted to but didn’t so I must be a hero.”

The next day I told the (Asian) receptionist about what had happened and he said “That’s bad” and ideally the hostel should’ve installed CCTV in the hallway after I mentioned it. Anyway, I walked out never to return:

* The exact photo I took when I stepped out to leave for good – and feeling good about it! (see on Google maps)

A few days earlier the receptionist had supplied me with a small oil heater when I complained about the room being too cold and this was due to the in-built building heater not running. The heater he supplied was too small for that room – he probably wanted to keep running costs low and I didn’t say anything further about it:

So after leaving the Dodson, I found myself at the Samesun.

Prior to the Dodson I was staying at the Cambie Seymour Hostel which I had left  because I wanted a private room for less expense than what they were offering. It was also cold there.

[left] Dorm at the Cambie Seymour with its heater.
[middle left] Michael Buble at the Cambie.
[middle right] The same Cambie TV room in 2020 source.
[far right] At Malone’s Taphouse that is part of the Cambie building.

In another similar scenario, some months earlier in July 2005 in Donegal, Ireland, I remember leaving the Dooey Hostel under similar circumstances. I felt like some type of lynching was about to take place when I overheard late one night people talking about some “Jew who had come from Israel.”

It was hard to tell what was going to happen – I definitely may have been wrong. Regardless, I left very early in the morning when everyone in the dorm room was still asleep and left behind 3 paid nights. Sunrise was at about 5am at the Hotel California.

The Irish are some of the friendliest people I’ve met (if you can understand them) – including the owners of that hostel – but I think the whole Israel vs Palestine thing can be taken too personally at times and misunderstood. At least I heard what people were saying – the hostel can’t control who comes in.

Interestingly, on the same trip in Dublin there were some Poles staying in a dorm room with me and in the middle of the night I looked down to see someone rummaging through my backpack. I think the chap then pretended to think it was his backpack.

A few months later, I had a lot of things stolen from my bags in a hostel room at Jaffa port, Tel Aviv, including this favourite t-shirt that I had worn in Canada:

[At Painted Turtle Guesthouse, Nanaimo, drinking bottled water and generally calming nerves. I was happy to have picked up that jacket for $50 at a second-hand store even though it was basically new …jealousy is a curse.]

People also do things out of jealousy too and I only learned about this in my mid-20s! Perhaps I presumed good things came pretty easily to everyone. Jealousy is a foreign emotion to me – could it even be idiotic?! I’d help anyone who was jealous of me – as long as it was caught early enough. That said, sometimes it’s never reciprocated, and being kind to the cruel makes one cruel to the kind.

Speaking of jealousy, in Victoria BC in late September, I met an Israeli (/ American?) chap (Gideon??) in a mixed dorm and I could’ve been a good wingman for him (even though I didn’t and don’t drink alcohol,) but he was determined to be some type of alpha male or at least be seen as one, and this was also part of his pickup-style it seemed.

That’s the impression I got and to the point where I couldn’t have a normal conversation with him at the Ocean Island Inn:

But he still was a friendly and likeable guy, no doubt, and at least he didn’t try to steal my stuff like the person from Poland did. But I think that’s much more a ‘broke backpacker’ thing than anything else. By this, I’ve also had a pair of optical spectacles stolen at a hostel in San Francisco.

Anyway, he noticed the Kenvelo (“yes and no” / כן ולא) t-shirt I had on too and knew some history of the brand. Sort of sums up the acquaintance. But isn’t machoism a part of Israeli culture? What did I expect? Lead or be led. Whatever the case, hopefully age has mellowed him out and good luck to him! Travelling isn’t always easy, even for the best of us!

In Ireland, I met a female ‘Orly’ who I saw again in Haifa some months later as she was Israeli and I even went to her place by the sea. She was genuinely nice and along with a few of her friends, we went to Caesarea and one friend told me she thought Netanyahu was ‘shifty’ and he had just won Likud chairmanship at that point. Orly had studied English literature and wanted to become and an advertising copywriter. One trick at work when dealing with problematic characters (for whatever the reason) was to “go around them.” Speaking of which, up at the university, an Arab fellow followed me and gave me hostile looks for under a minute as we walked down the same path. Did he want to intimidate me, beat me up or was he gay and signaling dominance? If only I was part of a group.

“Safety in numbers.”

I am pretty sure it was at that uni where I spoke to someone with Orwell’s 1984 sticking out of his backpack telling me that “it is the future.”

[pic: 27 Sep 2020]

Or should that be “Danger in numbers!”

Regarding dominance signaling, at a bus terminal in most likely Haifa in ~2006 (Tsfat below,) I spent many hours sitting at a table playing Civilization IV on my laptop with all the bustle around me. Addicted, I skipped a few bus trips to keep playing. When it quietened down and into the night, a cleaner of the building came up to me and started yelling loudly. I was surprised but then he wiggled his head a few times to show me his solitary earing. I thought the bus station was closing and he was telling me to get out, but I later learned it was not. What did he really want? Ahh, the civility.

In any case, a fellow at my recent reunion made the observation that the Israelis he came across while traveling fall clearly into either two categories: cool dudes or total douchebags – or words to that effect. But wasn’t that too harsh? Why pick on Israelis: they live in a permanent state-of-war? But why not if they don’t give you a chance? This fellow, a year above me, presently works as a researcher for public policy. We didn’t speak for long and I hadn’t spoken to him since school. Really, I think countries and people sympathetic to the Palestinians should absorb them into their societies. The money they donate doesn’t have much effect – it funds personal Swiss bank accounts, right? Countries should have a “Palestinian Migrant Quota” to fill.

Nevertheless, in Whistler a few years later I spoke with a man from the US who was hateful against Israelis and I told him that all you have to do is think of one positive thing to say to free your mind. He did and days later he was a changed man and very friendly.

Anti-semitism in the diaspora is a double-edged sword where you can run, but you can’t hide… for long. It can separate people, but it can also bring people closer together.

Graves, trenches or foundations, it’s a digging contest!

see holding bottle –

 

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see shoes on grass at top –

 

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pics
pixabay.com/vectors/amputation-prosthetics-leg-crutch-156102/
pixabay.com/illustrations/door-apartment-input-blocked-1013678/
creazilla.com/nodes/56021-door-emoji-clipart
pixabay.com/vectors/stickman-stand-show-smile-design-310583/
pixabay.com/photos/hostel-youth-hostel-185156/

✓ 1 year ago

Heart Carving – A Retrospective v1.0

As I look back on the infographics above from my essay Heart Carving – skiing for precision, power and freedom (10 Jan 2012) I realize how much of those insights and observations became background thought (as opposed to foreground observations) as the shape of my ski changed from 2012 onward – and my skill level increased.

However, the focusing on the heart (and eventually the breath) is (and was) the key to elevating the experience of skiing.

The video below refers to the skiing done that was pertinent to the infographics at top. I did begin the Heartcarving journey in 2002 in New Zealand (Mt Ruapehu) and then Snowbird in 2003!

But the full paradigm mentioned above only started to form while rollerblading prior to 2006.


✓ 3 months ago

Some of the more successful or interesting photoshops posted to Newschoolers between 2013-2015 while I was living in Jerusalem. There is a strong photoshop culture on that site. I created a large number. Some have sexual or violent overtones (a couple with drug references,) but nothing unsuitable or banned for this site, which essentially targets teen skiers, ie a PG13 rating.
Note: not all of these were posted to that site, namely the rollerblading ones.

 

 
✓ 2 years ago