1992: Spellbound from take to mistake!

The body soon knows where the nose goes!

(updated: 16 February 2025)

Timbertop next year (early 90's - Sep + Feb)

* In the video above, I mention using my brother Luke’s stereo and bike accessories (tyre pump) after he left for boarding school.

That clip was shot in February ’92 and when he returned for term 1 holidays, I admitted to using his stereo and other stuff. It was just a casual conversation we had. Sharing is caring, right?

My mother was somewhat okay with me doing so, but only under certain conditions.

He also used some of my stuff in the following year. We ultimately shared our stuff… within reasonable limits under the constraints of the time.

Also, from 1989 onward we used to share a number of things including a single 8088 XT clone for school work and gaming. Luke had the computer in his room for a while (so I was in there a bit) until it was moved into the family room, and it was often a source for conflict or disagreement.

[ colorized ]

Who knows, maybe it caused my visual short-sightedness (I got glasses in 1994) and derailed my handwriting but I was handing in printed assignments at school before anyone else and topped the class consistently, except for Hebrew.

So in around 1990, my mum was kind enough to bring home a pair of Bauer rollerblades from the USA (around a decade after giving birth to me.)

Then by 1992, Bar Mitzvah = gifts = much unused clutter.

1 2 ..

At the end of that year, I broke my nose snowboarding in France and I had only just started out shredding

[Buller, 1992]

And before that, Jeremy had initially lent me his board – an early Burton.

That was a year or two earlier and the boots weren’t great – I think they were rentals, though.

 

So I didn’t find snowboarding easy, but it was fresh and fun. So I ended up with a bump, like so many others.

[ Courchevel, early 1993 ]

Like being in Luke’s room, maybe I shouldn’t have ever ventured onto that steep run. I think it was Face de Bellevarde (Val-d’Isère) the Olympic downhill run and it was so foggy that day that I never intended to board there. Also, I lost my way and ended up tumbling over some rocks on the the side of the run at the bottom section. It really hurt.

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Unless you’re nosy.

It was a week or two after the pics below.

1 2

So my grandfather once told me he broke his nose, I think during the war, and he just used his bare hands to snap it back into place. There were no doctors around. He laughed about it.

But for me, I didn’t think of that. When I told my mum a few days later she suggested seeing a doctor. But I didn’t want an operation, and if I could still breathe through it, and it looked okay, I’d be fine. Yet perhaps the doctor could’ve manually reset it like with Fred. That’s possible if done within a week of breakage – but they could also wreck it more. Interestingly, I recently learned that mouth-breathing is actually risky to dental health, as it disrupts the oral microbiome.

“France is not really herself unless she is in the front rank,” wrote de Gaulle at the start of his war memoirs The Call to Honor. Only the French ?!?

As with de Gaulle, Freddy too also fought in the French resistance, whereby some fighters helped him cross the Pyrenees on his escape to Barcelona from Toulouse where he learned Spanish. I don’t think he handled a gun and am not sure how long he was with the group, though. I think he said his nose was broken in a battle – not sure. So he left in January, 1944. His younger brother (Jacques,) sister (Lily) and mother (Manya) followed in July with the help of “passeurs.” It took them 4 days and nights to make the trip over the Pyrenees to rendezvous with Freddy in Spain (see below.)

As a child, Fred showed me once at Mount Buller how to pierce an egg and drink the contents through it, which the resistance fighters did. Must’ve worked. Interestingly, to this day (Nov 2024) my mother speaks French and Spanish – both very well, as did her father.

Anyway, prior to the ’92 trip, I had also skied in France in 85/86.

With ski instructor Lionel at Club Med, Tignes Val Claret, for a 2-star award… great teacher and person.

So I had two other risky falls that trip while skiing in early 1993.

On the first day, I took a minor fall but a single ski catapulted almost to the height of the chairlift and almost landed on my head. I didn’t see any of it, but that’s what I was told. Some time later, I took a fall and ended up sliding down a steep run (in Val Thorens?) with only one ski attached, but picking up speed.

People on the chair were shouting at me but I didn’t know what they were saying. I managed to break my slide by doing some kind of self-arrest with the poles. Later from the chair I saw I would’ve dropped and slammed really hard into a traverse track had I kept going, maybe over the edge of a cliff.

Around this time, Rikka’s father saw me fall at the bottom of Bull Run chair amongst the moguls, when he stood there and said “Nice Stack” in a French accent. At least he was honest.

I had taken big falls on race courses too, unwilling or unable to ride the big ruts when they emerged in the fog.

[ 1993 ? – Shakey Knees, Mount Buller ]

Yet, I had been skiing since I was two so how could I overcome the discontent?

Maybe the equipment was the problem. Why carry poles if they were never even planted? I wasn’t using poles while rollerblading. My uncle once suggested to wear weighted gloves as an experiment. But in the end, the ‘right’ technique was dictated by the ski shape – yet that wasn’t enabling me to become the endorphin machine I know was possible.

1994 05 05 Endorphinmachine

So a little over a decade later in 2002, I did an introductory ski instructor’s course at Mount Buller, but didn’t end up teaching. A good thing as ski schools have very clear ideas of what’s right and wrong regarding technique. Yet so did I. I have the certificate somewhere.

That year I had started to Heartcarve in New Zealand (Mt Ruapehu) on some of the earlier parabolic skis and basically never fell from then onward as a result of my quiet revolution in style.

[ Salt Lake City + Snowbird – March 2003 ]

So skiing then became a sport about endorphins for me rather than adrenaline and that became possible due to my rollerblading practice and analysing the planes of Heart-motion, which I ended up describing in an article in 2008.

[ diagram ~2003 | March 2008 ]

And people on the Newschoolers site wondered if I was serious or not.

There are actually 6 separate carving styles within these planes. This deconstruction and re-imagining of skiing occurred consciously as I thought about new ways to use the parabolic skis that began arriving in the late 90’s from Elan which I had yet to use. I wanted a way to abstract myself away from the micro-management of movement that can lead to rigid thinking and limit flow-states. As mentioned elsewhere, “if nothing else, free the left-hand,” yet “free the heart” would also be great.

So Heartcarving was enabled by an evolution in ski design.

[ 2007 Buller x 2 | 2008 Whistler ]

And by January 2013 I was fortunate enough to be able to head to Zermatt with a pair of custom skis that I designed in snoCAD-X, were built in France and then sent to me in Jerusalem.

[  2012 Chamonix (Idris) ]

Skis on roof [Jerusalem late 2012]

Just ask Pierre.

"I've never seen skis like that!" [Jan, 2013]

Because who wants to break a leg?

[ Aug, 2017 ]

Furthermore, upon returning I started buying inexpensive crystals from ebay to help continue with this shift to the heart in day-to-day life – well that’s what I believed or wanted.

Heart Rhythm Meditation was something I came across in 1999 – and to me it makes sense to be aware of the heart and lungs simultaneously – along with everything else going on. The idea is to get more exit from the mind and more presence into the body because the body is always present. That’s what St Germain spoke about also in 1999.

"Rhodizite is an amplification stone." #crystal #rhodizite

[July 2014]

Others have said that the heart chakra is the most important one because it keeps the others in balance.

And even though I haven’t skied since 2013, (as of 2024) I feel I am possibly 50 years ahead of my time. Time will tell. And those custom skis ended up warping anyway, so perhaps the delay can mean better materials to construct true super-skis.

To this day, I don’t see why the body can’t naturally restructure itself to its original blueprint. Perhaps it never will whilst under a Witch’s Spell.

AC/DC - Witch's Spell (Official Video)

The original blueprint – can carving take me there?
✓ 7 months ago

Lifelike

Life is what you make of it …or paint of it!

(updated: 27 July 2025)

I saw my late maternal grandmother, Ina Rose at the Tel Aviv Hilton in November 2009 with my mum. I recorded an interview with her during the morning of the 25th. I saw her again that night after TechAviv after a lift back there from Boris.

In our discussion, she describes her meeting with Albert Einstein in the USA sometime between 1945-1947. It was her being an artist that sparked Einstein’s interest to meet her.

During the war, Ini was freed from an internment camp and ended up hiding in Toulouse, France. There she learned French and followed the painting style of French Impressionism. Ini went to the USA after the war to meet her mother and sister.

[ Einstein ’46 | Ina’s WWII story | Australian naturalization ’56 | Marriage to Frederick ’47 in Melbourne ]

Ini mentions Fred (my grandfather) and Toulouse in her 2000 postcard to Luke and I below:

They met in Toulouse and even spoke French to each other at home in Australia as the norm. My mother, Jacqueline, speaks French very well to this day. I learned it for 3 years but struggled with it, unfortunately.

Anyway, my immediate family actually lived in an apartment down in the dip of Washington Street (but before I was born) before we moved up the hill to #38 that was sold in 2006.

[pic 2 – 2006 | pic 3, 4 – early 2000’s]

Continuing, Ini’s second home in Melbourne overlooked the ocean in Alimart Court (she actually named it after her children), Brighton, where she lived for many decades.

I have fond memories of going there a lot as a child.

Watching National Lampoon's Vacation in late 80s (Wally World)

I rode a two-wheeler bike there for the first time – in an Austrian ski helmet, ghostbusters tee, no socks and sweat-band watch.

[ 1984? ]

… I ain’t afraid of no ghost!

Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters - Iris Face Remaster

So the house was filled with her art and that was her main line of work for many years.

She held a couple of exhibitions over the years, one even well into her nineties.

The last time I saw her was in July 2013 back at the Hilton (below left) and to her, Israel was fantastic and that was a great realization. She had gone to Germany a few years prior and that really stirred up negative memories.

Also, the first and only time I met her mother, Elizabeth Kaplan was in January 1986, in Boca Raton, Florida.

Elizabeth had a concentration camp number tattooed on her forearm and survived it by being enslaved as a translator for the Nazis. Also, that trip took us to Disney World and EPCOT in Orlando, which was a very fortunate experience to have.

17 years later in 2003 I reconnected with the late Stewart Springfield again in New York City who was Elizabeth’s grandson from Ina’s sister Rita, and a really nice guy – at least he was to me. He was walking with a limp but I didn’t ask him about it.

Wait, isn’t that VP Kamala Harris schmoozing Hillary Clinton behind me? That’s not a photoshop either.

In the 80s he sent us a box of sunglasses for no charge as that was his line of work.

In 1986, Stewart told me that his mum was listed in the phone book as “R Springfield” and ended up getting a lot of phone calls from female fans looking for Rick Springfield and he ended up hanging the phone up on a few.

But ladies were checking Stewie out anyhow down at the beach when I went down there with him in Florida, and he popped off his shirt too. Later in the day he showed us cable TV and we settled on WWF.

Stewart’s mother was Rita (blue pocket below, and striped shirt) and father was Steve.

I think he committed suicide around 2010, but in truth, I don’t know the full story as yet. I may be out by a few years too.

src [ link inactive July  2025 ]

Anyway, at Venice Beach on Superbowl day, (26 January 1986) some sort of street comedian pulled me out in front of a crowd and said I looked like Dan Quayle (“Who was that?” I thought) and then people cracked up laughing because I was Australian. I was an instant hit.

[src]

The wild thing was that as a result, Andrew saw me and came over and said hello, and he was in the extended family (below, red tie.)

The four of us only had 2 nights in LA waiting for a connecting flight and the Challenger space-shuttle blew up around the time we were leaving the country although I’m still somewhat perplexed as to the final sequence of cities eventually reached.

I remember it being really cold in Florida and being told to “put on layers,” and that the weather ended up taking its toll on Challenger.

Also, on that trip at either Vail (Westin) or Copper Mountain (Club Med,) someone pulled out a dollar bill and showed me the “All Seeing Eye” and warned me about it, yet I didn’t really get the gist of all his fear.

It was a lot for a young guy to take in. He could’ve given me the dollar bill too, I would’ve taken it.

I also met some guys making a ski movie in the lounge and they wanted me to intro “Teton Gravity Research” or some words very hard for me to remember and I kept messing up as they filmed me. Was TGR even a thing back then – it couldn’t have been that!? I might’ve ended up on a bloopers reel.

This was a few seasons before China Bowl officially opened to skiers – but perhaps backcountry skiers made the trek as I saw badges and T-shirts for sale with that name on it.

It may be worth mentioning that a couple of years later I met some Americans in India – there was Maximilian, a few years older than me, an only-child and with his single mum, ranting about how Def Leppard was the best band ever and Pour Some Sugar on Me was the best song and he mimed it on a dancefloor and attracted a bunch of girls after demanding the DJ play it… something like that anyway.

Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar On Me - (In The Round In Your Face (HD/1080p)

I ended up buying the cassette. Okay, so they weren’t Metallica.

In the dining room I met a manager from Chrysalis Records, he asked me “What bands do you like?” I told him “Huey Lewis and the News” and a couple of others. He went beserk. He rattled off some other names and I said I knew them. He also mentioned Was (Not Was.) He was so thrilled he ended up sending a box of 30 CDs back to Melbourne for us to play on our new CD player including the entire Huey collection up until Small World, David Sanborn, The Proclaimers, Vinnie Vincent and The Pursuit of Happiness. Very generous and cool guy – a lot of kind people in the USA – great with box shipping too! It could’ve also been guerilla marketing.

Anyhow, back to Venice Beach – the fellow that took us to Venice Beach was an African-American guy who was waiting around the airport working as a city guide: quite a random encounter. I don’t remember much of Venice Beach except for Muscle Beach.

Danny Trejo on Muscle Beach 1986

But I also remember a large T-shirt shop with screen printing which was new to me. It was wall-to-wall with different t-shirt images. I may have even encountered Sky Ferreira’s future dad there – did his shop exist then? Was he old enough? I think there were a number of t-shirt shops in a row. Whoever he was, he demonstrated in front of my eyes how to run a flood-and-stroke T-shirt print.

Our tour guide’s name was Michael – I remember because I personally knew another Michael at the time and of course MJ. Strange stuff. I have my old passport somewhere so I Don’t Forget.

Don't Savanna (2017 + 2022)

So, a couple of years prior to Ini’s passing in 2015, she made this toast after relocating homes – but her art (and husband) came with her!

My mother now paints, and I’m starting to get restless hands myself!

[~’92 | ’93, grandfathers Fred and Oskar | ~mid ’00’s after leaving Brighton]


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✓ 1 month ago

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 israelnatnewsisraelnatbriefs, israelnatopin, investisraellpijobs, 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.

Carving Blackcomb 2008

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.”

Playlist: Different ones

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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✓ 2 years ago

2016: Go for Groove, not Wreckage


Chess Drumming - Usher Yeah

In Jerusalem, when playing drums on the street, occasionally teens would “start with me” – for a variety of reasons, and in the most extreme situation, a gang once formed against me – but a couple of friendly guys formed for me as well. It just happened, there was tension – and then it dissipated. It was beautiful and I was grateful. That has shaped my understanding of war and service. To me, gang warfare is a teenage activity – and ultimately it should stay that way.

Drop Bombs – Wisdom Bombs

I recently read a quote along the lines of:

“you create what you are, not what you want”

and a Confucius quote:

“real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

After having read an article about Itzik Saidian, a 26-year old ex-solider suffering from PTSD in Israel who recently set himself on fire as a protest against his treatment, I am of the view that Israel should aim for voluntary military service.  Also, solider salaries should then be raised, especially if enlistments drop.

Perhaps all defense forces should operate this way, not just in Israel.

The Art of War is the Art of Surrender

According to WorldMask, on the battlefield, King David fought knowing that God was directing the battle down to every last sword stroke: he just had to flow with it.

Is this not the same as the flow of a great artist?

Thus, the real war is first waged against the egoic self to increase that flow – and that first takes surrender. Then, master warriors can successfully protect master artists, and the artists can support the warriors.

Peace With-inside is Peace With-outside

So what’s the point of removing national service? The point is to stop forcing people into fighting who don’t want to be part of that culture. There are natural born warriors – let them be warriors. Also, people can become warriors over time. Recruits should be able to enlist at any time. Itzik Saidian is why over the long-term, conscription should be abolished.

Abolishing national service from this paradigm is a sign of strength and wisdom and not of weakness and ignorance.

I’ve always said weakness is provocative. And if we show weakness to the Chinese or they perceive weakness on our part, it could actually provoke them into attacking Taiwan. And then it leads to all of the myriad of problems the Secretary pointed out and potentially war. The best way to prevent war is to be prepared for it and that’s the policy we have to pursue.- Robert O’Brien - vid below
Peter Thiel on US-China Relations at the Nixon Foundation

Young guy plays video game – killing is fun and social:


pics
pixabay.com/photos/angel-statue-angel-figure-woman-2636961/
✓ 4 years ago

Adidas Samba Millenium: February 2016 – April 2021

“Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes” … or kicked or danced!

In 2013, I was wearing Adidas Gazelle shoes. They were too hot but they looked alright.

I wanted a new pair.

Then one night in the Rivlin(?) square in Jerusalem in early 2016,  I chatted with a religious fellow, Yaakov(?), wearing Adidas Samba. This friendly, agile chap liked his shoes, and so did I.

He appeared to be playing footbag too!

 

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Soon after I bought a pair from Ebay. Interestingly, while he wore Samba, I chose Samba Millennium instead.

map

At that time I started to teach myself the Melbourne Shuffle. I wasn’t very good, but I felt obliged to do so given I was from Melbourne and Party Rock Anthem had been big for a while at that point.

LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem ft. Lauren Bennett, GoonRock

Designed for indoor soccer, the shoes were too heavy for easy dancing. The leather stayed in good shape because I regularly used Sno-Seal on them, even enabling me to use them successfully at Mount Buller in May 2020.

The shoes held together really well until April 2021 when I retired them to the trash because ultimately the soles gave out.

At least I outlived them and they didn’t outlive me!


 

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✓ 4 years ago

2016: Living Dangerously with Billboards and Posters!

People may ask: “What’s your angle?” My reply: “The Right angle!”

(last updated: 7 April 2023)


And eventually someone was bitten!

 

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✓ 4 years ago

Never Say Pink!

Due for termination?

(last updated: 10 April 2023)

To this day, I am unsure of the underlying message of this graffiti.

“Sometimes the different ones become the same and the same ones disappear.”

And I even pondered the phrase that night.

Graffiti Question (Aug 23, 2016)

Up until that point, I had already seen it frequently due to it being opposite to a place I played drums, but I didn’t pay any attention to it.

New Drum Stand (Aug 28, 2015)

I presume it is part of Price Tag activism (for want of a better term.)

Regardless, I do not condone or participate in vandalism (including graffiti) or hate crimes.

Lately, I have devised my answer: it’s about conformity vs non-conformity.

Playlist: Different ones

[2 takes, 29 October 2020]

So what now?
One year later…. never say pink!

[24 August 2017]

Aerosmith - Pink (Live on 2 Meter Sessions)

related:


But where’s JB’s flag or gun? The antic may have very vague resemblance to a Nazi march, and even then wouldn’t it be satirical, and seemingly unintended?

HITLER ON PARADE AT BRAUNSWEIG

 

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src: instagram.com/alessandro_michele (Nov, 2020 | 1 2 3) >>

 
✓ 6 months ago