Tag: Peter Thiel

Lis – Drill (2022)

 

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✓ 3 years 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 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.

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

When racism is real, one should be aware of it to avoid danger and also find new opportunities – but I think it should be framed differently to make it less real long-term.

By this, condemning racism is only a stop-gap measure in transcending the problem of disunity because if the condemnation doesn’t work, then what? Banish the racists, get violent with them, join with them? It’s still disunity.

Perhaps it’s even hypocritical to condemn someone who is condemning someone else. Condemnation in one’s mind is the problem with racism being just a derivative of it.

So what are the options?

Look for new language —
In one respect one can condemn “racism” but to condemn its synonyms mentioned here ie skin-centricity, color-bias, third-eye blindness, anti-fam seems wrong. It’s not about winning the fight, it’s about transcending the fight, and those new words should negate the fight associated with the R-word.

See “condemnation” as an illusion —

The Seventh Illusion, the Illusion of Condemnation, may be used to experience the fact that you are deserving of nothing but praise. This is something that you cannot fathom, for you live so deeply within your Illusion of Condemnation.

If, however, you lived within the heart of praise every moment, you could not experience it. Praise would mean nothing to you. You would not know what it was.

The glory of praise is lost when praise is all there is. Yet you have taken this awareness to an extreme, taking the illusion of imperfection and Condemnation to new levels, where you now actually believe praise to be wrong — especially self-praise. You are not to praise yourself, or to notice (much less announce) the glory of Who You Are. And you must be sparing in your praise of others. Praise, you have concluded, is not good.

The Illusion of Condemnation is also your announcement that you, and God, can be damaged. Exactly the opposite is true, of course, but you cannot know this truth, nor experience it, in the absence of any other reality. And so, you have created an alternate reality in which damage is possible, and Condemnation is proof of it.

Neale D. Walsch, 2000, page 59

Aim a crystal point at the third-eye —

It sounds silly, but to see the world (and people) differently may require a different sense organ to be used. Furthermore, consciousness travels and it may even help create the new community people feel is lacking. The third eye not only detects light – I think it projects it too.

Connecting to the Inner Eye | NewEarthTeachings.com

Ignore victimhood (but not victims) and seek enlightenment and justice —

 

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So now what?


✓ 4 years ago

Israel Tech Scene 2006-2011

– part 3 of 5: Beyond Blacklists: EXPOSURE!

I attended a number of tech events in Israel – really I could have gone to Israel straight after uni, 4 years earlier… or not at all!

last updated: 27 October 2022

The first event I attended was the IVA Annual Conference 2006 – press release (now removed, April 17):

src | 2 | 3

This was a great conference and Shimon Peres even accepted an award. Amazing days just before mass use of smartphones!

I had a few meetings in Herzliya Pituach after that event in order to raise finance for GrooveTip or whatever came next.

In June 2008 whilst living in Tel Aviv, I went to MashBash and in July 2008, I went to TWS2008.

In August 2008 I attended iDrink #9 at Beach Bar in Herzliya Pituach.

Then in September I made it to Mobile Monday.

Forum Nokia at Mobile Monday TLV, Sept 2008

On 14 Feb 2009 while building Twitya.com, I attended the tech workshop Eurekamp.

Pic 3 Yossi Vardi can be seen sitting.

פרק 31 – Eurekamp 2009 from Yosi Taguri on Vimeo.

..see me at timecodes 3.14, 3.22, 6:03, 10:38, 12:20:

I have no personal photos of me at Eurekamp except for the video stills above, but I can be seen wearing the same Industrie jacket below. My name is also on the attendees list (source) and I did give a talk called Web Conglomerate.

CV 2008 | Extra WebC info: 1 2 3

Further notes on my Eurekamp 2009 experience, please see here.

So after building Twitya.com during this period, I attended the TechAviv Town Hall Meeting on 2 Sep ’09 having already begun work on Bopgig.

Then I submitted a business plan on 17 Nov ’09 into the TechAviv Angels group for judgement regarding Bopgig (then GigPop.)

[pic 2: 16 Nov 2009 | pic 3: 17 Nov 2009]

It got into the top 10 out of ~45 entries, which was considered a very good result especially because there was no working product at that stage. I ended up sending that business plan to Michael Eisenberg, but he did not reply – that really raised a red flag with me. When I asked if I could send the business plan, he replied “Send Away!” I suppose I should’ve called as well. I had never actually met Mr Eisenberg before but we did exchange a few emails prior to this although I am not 100% sure – I am locked out of a gmail account.

As an aside, I met Ariel Finkelstein at his office for a job at Kampyle in ~2007 and was rejected – that rejection may have been related to all this.. or not. Pity, I could have really assisted him. I enjoyed meeting Jacob Ner-David around this time – nice guy – many vegans are! I also had a job interview at Kontera in ~2008 and was also rejected… but perhaps my rough sketches were a little too… rough, or was it something else!?! I got a call from a woman at Wix at one point when it was just starting for an employment opportunity but I waxed and waned. I was in contact with Ori Soen from MuseStorm, and if they had only raised a new funding round, I may have ended up working there.. or nipped in the bud.. or were they nipped in the bud?! I met with the late Alon Hochberg (SeeToo) and Vitaly Sirota (FoxyTunes) together but that was more for brainstorming. I remember sending suggestions to FoxyTunes back then and they were acquired by Yahoo in 2008. I also met David Kariv from Copenda for a Yogo ice-cream in Neve Tzedek and suggested to keep the site as simple as possible to emulate Plenty Of Fish. This led to a redesign. But the only date I was seeking was a date with destiny!

Continuing, I also spoke to Sequoia and they were interested, but ultimately said there was overlap. Randy Ditzler spoke to his partners about it after speaking to me. Did they call up the “Israelis” to see if I was “legit?”

I was irked when I saw that EventBrite obtained Sequoia as a new investor.

This announcement came prior to my conversation with Mr Ditzler because I remember mentioning Roelof Botha in the call. I am confident (but not certain as yet) that the announcement came after I submitted my business plan to the firm. I am presently attempting (unsusccesfully so far) to enter a Gmail account that should clarify this. Also, my startup was called Gigpop at the time and I switched to Bopgig because I liked the reference to Bebop or a “Bebop gig.” Today I’d use Gigpop with ‘pop’ referring to a father that’s into gigs or just “the father of gigs”.

source

Interestingly, before my discussion with Sequoia I listened to a long interview with Rupert Murdoch, and in my conversation I think I was channeling his style which left a good impression.

Platonix weren’t interested in working with me although the emails with Yishai Beeri were fun. In the last minute, it stayed platonic.

Continuing, I proceeded with Bopgig using US-based developers after the TechAviv comp.

In April 2011, I went to TheMarker Com.Vention while still working on Bopgig.

And that was my final tech conference attended in Israel… for now.

* NB: I also attended OpenCoffee Club and GarageGeeks meetups. In addition, I went to a few one-off events, some even in the CleanTech space as I was interested in wave energy and I was working on an idea called WaveTrific.

Note: Izhar Shay is shown here because I came across him more than any other person out of all the tech events I went to in Israel (except for Shai Tsur.) He even spoke at the IVA Annual Conference 2006 – its press release was removed some months ago (shown at top.)

I even met with Mr Shay after that event with regards to GrooveTip and an internship. In that meeting I suggested that he start a blog, but he said he was interested in keeping a low-profile. It is surprising to see how that self-image has changed over the years. He moved into politics in 2019 alongside Benny Gantz at the time I was working on Ormus King 5.

At the 2006 IVA event, I remember Shay saying on stage something like “the enemies of Israel are not with us anymore” – what did he mean by that? Who can speak for Israel as a whole? What was he talking about? People found to be enemies already residing within Israel? Was that going to be me? Did he mean the enemies of the Jews or the enemies of Israel …am I not remembering correctly? At Aish HaTorah Essentials in 2005, Rabbi Ken Spiro mentioned the enemies of the Jews all eventually disappearing in his WorldPerfect talk.

Also, I don’t necessarily agree with Shay, Iran has been a nuclear threat to Israel since the early 2000s. In 2021, to me going after Iran (as has been done) is like someone chasing their own shadow. Why haven’t they disappeared yet?

At TWS2008 (Prime Sagol), Shay walked up to me outside the hall and acted entitled to hear a pitch of mine. I think he saw me speaking to his friend Ofer Wald and that demonstrated some sort of social proof, yet at the time I was already speaking to many entrepreneurs over email, and had even met a few in person. I even covered TWS on my blog.

– Mr Eisenberg second from left, Mr Shay second from the right | source

Before he left, he asked about who my relatives were in Israel, to which I replied an aunt. Perhaps I told him her name as well, or I told him her name at our initial meeting at Aroma (Herzliya Pituach.) I did not end up pitching to him and I think that irritated him. He also blatantly inspected the top of my head, I presume to see if I was wearing a yarmulka. So I was “off the derech,” but was I ever on it ?!?

From 3 days to around a week later an IDF officer thumped 3 times very loudly on my door at the Great Twitya Pad.

I was sweating after having been rollerblading. He spoke in very loud Hebrew but I could only reply in English. He kept speaking, but I didn’t understand. He walked off in a huff. At the time I was over 26 – the usual conscript age-limit.

I think I was geolocated using my phone and was to have “rank pulled” on me. Then again, this officer may have just been lost or looking for directions. Many people did knock on my door, but I’ll never know – I doubt it though because he was very directed in the way he walked off and the knocking and tone of voice was abnormal.

At the TechAviv Town Hall Meeting on 2 Sep 2009, Mr Shay came and sat two seats away with his new associate (I think it was Adi Pundak-Mintz) right next to me. Shai Tsur (who I had first met before at the 2006 IVA Conference) sat down a chair or two away at about the same time. Scott Tobin (and his associate David Sokolic) sat behind me who I even said a few words to when he forgot something mid public intro. The only thing Mr Shay said to me was “you can stay” while looking at Gil Dibner who was sitting on the riser – and that’s the last thing I heard him say directly to me. Also, when I introduced myself to the room (I remained seated) and announced my idea for BopGig to sell downloads and tickets, he leaned over in full view of everyone and tried to disrupt me – or at least signal to the room something about me – something bad I presume. I got the impression that he was smug about his new associate also seated next to me – a position I may have taken when I was interested in an internship back in 2006.

Then, when someone spoke to the room and complained about VCs micro-managing entrepreneurs, I saw a few people begin staring at Mr Shay. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did micro-manage entrepreneurs. I also got the impression that he had Anal retentiveness * back at TWS 2008  when he checked to see if I was wearing a yarmulka (mentioned above) because he also blatantly checked my shoes. I was wearing Converse All-Star at the time.  He also exhibited some strange body language where he was looking around to see who was looking at him. ​Anal retentiveness is something that I think can be determined with certain micro-expressions such as leaning onto tiptoes and staring intensely onto people – something Mr Shay did to me.​ It can also be overcome with Yoga. That’s my own theory (I’ve seen someone else with AR tendencies do it to me) and Anal retentiveness also doesn’t need to be taken literally in terms of someone with a tense sphincter and could be used as an adjective of someone’s character.

* I deny being vindictive here although I am passing judgement – as I perceive he and others have done to me. I have no ill will. In practice, it means he is someone I would not actively seek association with in the future – and he probably feels the same! Who needs the stress?!?

When I first met Izhar Shay in late 2006 after 2 thoughtful cold-emails to obtain such a meeting (after hearing him at IVA 2006 – he came across as very smart,) his expression turned to horror when he first saw me – there was no profile pic of me online prior to that. Also, when I first met Mr Dibner at Genesis Partners, he initially shook my hand like he was holding a wet rag that he wanted to let go of as soon as humanly possible. At least they met me, but was there hidden prejudice?

A relevant quote from Dec 31, 2021:

"Rich and proudly unpopular is a whole thing in today's political scene."

...

"Yep, a lot of people who don't like criticisms of capitalism fail to understand that this system is disguised as a meritocracy but in reality it's a game and you win it by shaking off any moral scruples and stepping on everyone else."

- Hacker News comments: Peter Thiel hires disgraced ex-Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz

That said, I should never have setup those meetings and I had a strong feeling not to go to those meetings or get too involved in that scene at all. Those were timelines I was (and am?) steering clear of. However, the rational, business-oriented, western-trained mind is very strong. Rather, I think my role was to simply live in the holy cities, avoid cults and meet whoever I needed to meet. Even my time studying Gemara was really too powerful for comfort. If I was a Torah master in a previous life, why should I become one again? I can just dream up knowledge whenever it’s needed. Sometimes one doesn’t need to learn.. they need to remember.

Continuing, when Mr Shay finally stood to leave the event, the final look in his eye (as he looked at mine) was very strange, like he was on a mission and something had gone very awry. Maybe it was part of a “Tom and Jerry” scene that I mentioned in Israel Revisited because the look corresponded to my previous discussion with him at TWS2008 (mentioned above) that may have resulted in an IDF officer thumping on my door a few days later.

When Mr Dibner introduced himself, I saw Mr Shay on the edge of his seat (to my left) and ready to tackle me to the ground like I was about to pull a gun or throw something at the riser. Then, when Mr Dibner introduced himself, I got the impression that Mr Dibner was very faintly crying for a few moments whereby I heard (and saw) a sniffle or two just as his boss Jonathan Saacks stared at him (from a few meters) to his left in slight embarrassment (possibly anger.) Yet although there might have been guilt, I doubt there was shame whereby despite all odds, I had made it to a sought-after entrepreneurs’ meetup where people were supposed to help each other and not hinder each other. To me, this only signaled to those opposed to me to step up their efforts. “Why is this Adrian guy even here?”

Ofer Wald, Shai Tsur and Yoav Leitersdorf weren’t too keen to speak to me at this event. Interestingly, I spoke to both Wald and Tsur pretty easily at the next TechAviv event and even have a recording of that (see further down). That next event was after TechAviv Angels.

  • pic ref and source below.
  • Mr Saacks in the navy blue top and beige pants (legs crossed) looking directly at the camera.
  • Yaron Samid stands.
  • Mr Dibner is on the far left of the riser (unseen) although that vaguely looks like him with arms-crossed.
  • Myself, Shay, Tsur, Tobin, Sokolic off-screen behind Wald (dark red shirt with laptop looking down.)
  • Uri Levanon – dark gray shirt with left hand at chest level, two seats up from Wald.
  • By the end of that meetup, there were people overflowing into the entry hall unable to find a seat and I vaguely recall seeing David Nordell and also Erez Perlmuter who I chatted with briefly as I did also at Eurekamp sitting at a table.

Two months later I later went to the Nov ’09 Meetup and then straight afterward got a lift to the Tel Aviv Hilton with Boris Nadion and his team to meet up with my mother and grandmother. Initially in the foyer a bunch of guys were staring hard at me with the ‘evil eye’ until I turned my back on them – why?

While I sat near Nadion and his team during the actual talk, at that event I ended up speaking to many people in the foyer and auditorium and I actually recorded those conversations (including with Nadion) along with much of the talk itself. Someone even kindly gave me Yossi Vardi’s mobile number. I was ready to continue interviewing my grandmother that night at her hotel, and I decided to place my recorder in my pocket. This allowed me to later evaluate my pitching style and rapport.

Continuing, I had already spoken to Nadion at iDrink #9 (see pic higher up with him next to Sun Microsystems logo.) I had also met with Nadion and his team prior to iDrink as a team-for-hire. I almost hired them for Bopgig but ended up using the USA guys I found on Hacker News.

Also, I was at a Water Tech event in Tel Aviv (Watec 2009) around a week earlier, and Shai Tsur when he was standing next to me whispered in the ears of a couple of people sitting down close to him and their expressions turned to horror as they stared at me (very similar to Mr Shay above.) What did he say to them? Was it about me? I think they may have been partners at his firm Giza Venture Capital. All I was interested in was wave energy (my WaveTrific bringing SDE to Australia via Energy Matters) and water desalination. It was during the afternoon, outside, and underneath a sun-shade. Interestingly, SDE turned out to be basically ineffective in delivering, so I moved on.

Also, another Israeli firm Eco Wave Power adopted an essentially identical design to SDE in 2011 as founded by an ex staff-member, Inna Braverman.

What if you could charge your Tesla with the power of the waves

I wonder if this design will ever become popular without a massive shift in consciousness – not that the tech isn’t good, but due to “industry resistance” – same with zero-point (free) energy. Eco Wave Power has only seen 2 small-scale installations setup so far. Is society ready to move to wave energy on a large-scale or will it stagnate? However, it is publically listed so that should bring encouragement.

Moreover, I highly doubt their design has defensible IP due to the Prior Art of the SDE system that was launched in 2010.

SDE - sea wave power plant installed at JAffa port

source

That doesn’t mean Eco Wave Power isn’t, can’t and won’t do a great job – it just means competitors could come from anywhere.

“Eco Wave Power holds 17 patents and patents pending, including patents in the United States and Europe, as well as an International PCT on its proprietary technology.” source

… I should hope so. Mr Ovadia has many patents listed on his LinkedIn page.  Wouldn’t Eco Wave Power’s clash with these? Are Mr Ovadia’s patents still valid? Are they in the public domain?

See here and here –  “System for conversion of sea wave energy” (also – 1 2)

Interestingly, Mr Ovadia filed a patent in 2013 that was withdrawn in 2014 suggesting he wasn’t collaborating with EWP at that time… or was he? Maybe Mr Ovadia has a stake in EWP or they have licensed his designs. Maybe not. I also wonder if Ms Braverman signed a non-compete with SDE as I did.

With regards to Braverman, I was in extensive email communications with SDE and I met the CEO Shmuel Ovadia in person twice (first in October 2008 with a family member present.)

At one point, I showed him the sales agreement I received via email and he was shocked to see it. I ended up using that agreement to talk to Energy Matters (via Jeremy Rich) in Australia.

Mr Ovadia spoke English reasonably well but all the emails from SDE were of very high proficiency and were sent from “Shmuel Ovadia” in the footer (unless that was blank.) More than likely it was either Ms Braverman or someone else acting as an intermediary for Mr Ovadia, and even a sole source. I ended up emailing General Electric on SDE’s behalf to request a meeting for finance, to no avail.

Mr Rich’s (middle below) main concern about the SDE device at first was corrosion from salt and mine was the physical security of the system. I had known Mr Rich since primary school. We could have fairly easily got that wave device setup and even distributed if SDE had been more willing and able –  although I was still a bit hesitant of the final design with hydraulic arms exposed – and still am with EWP. It seems deceiving in the EWP video above that the hydraulic arms aren’t shown. I had already worked at Energy Matters a year or two earlier on their IT and Mr Rich was very enthusiastic about the idea of wave energy – also he probably didn’t want to compete with me.

[from reunion]

I did actually come up with some designs of my own that I mentioned (but didn’t actually show) to SDE over email, including the logo above. As mentioned, I also signed a non-compete agreement with SDE and SDE threatened to sue me at one point. I wonder if that was Ms Braverman who made that threat because she was ready to compete directly with SDE and didn’t want me implementing that indefensible buoy design with Energy Matters exclusively. Or was it actually Mr Ovadia worried I’d work directly with that design without him? I really need to know more about who was working at SDE during those years. There may have been someone else working there and Inna Braverman has never heard of me.

Australia should have a good wave energy sector and the SDE / EWP floating buoy design can be a great starting point for anyone, anywhere. If EWP can use SDE’s design, then anyone can.

I have the idea that pivoting buoys identical to SDE and EWP should be built within (or retrofitted) to the pylons of off-shore windfarms and drive flywheel accumulators rather than
electro-hydraulic accumulators (as with SDE and EWP) kept within each pylon. Then, if wave heights get too high (which can be sensed by windspeed), the buoy should be retracted into the pylon or elevated up the outside of the pylon. Can I do that without legal repercussions? EWP seems only limited to breakwaters at present. Thus, don’t windfarms still have this opportunity to obtain more energy in this way? Finally, couldn’t someone directly copy EWP and then challenge EWP’s patents based on the existence of SDE’s patents and videos?

Unlike the Porsche flywheel, the ocean flywheel would be driven mechanically by the buoy’s oscillation, but similarly it would use a torque-vectoring device on the wheel, offering resistance to its spin and the buoy’s oscillation to create current.

Best of luck to Ms Braverman regardless: perhaps she can start a fashion blog too.

Not just knee deep?

Continuing, later Shay ignored an email I sent to Canaan Partners about Seedcamp (or Startup Stadium) while I was doing Bopgig (around 2012.) Some years later (around 2017) he even befriended my Israeli cousin Dhalia on Facebook after I made my friends list public – I’m still unsure if it was a coincidence or not.

All very odd indeed – and overall that’s how I would describe this person based on experiences interacting with him.

Yet at the same time, one of my VC blog posts in late 2006 was about Mr Shay, and perhaps he found this odd – I don’t know but I did email him a link about it and spoke in the meeting about Awarenex. I said Awarenex would only be open to high net-worth individuals… accredited investors.

On the topic of tickets, I actually worked closely with a startup CEO in 2003-04 which sold tickets (Moshtix) and it was acquired in 2007. I helped it expand from Sydney to Melbourne. Its first signup was Bennetts Lane and I was at the initial sales meeting – one of many I helped setup. In hindsight, I should’ve also invested in Moshtix – and it was a real possibility to do so at the time.

While I don’t have a picture of Mr Dibner at the Town Hall Meeting (2 Sep 2009) – I didn’t take any, he and others mentioned are on the event’s attendees page (marked in red below.) I am currently shown as ‘Former Member.’ I also did comment on the event’s blog post, username Twitya.

Also, Mr Dibner can be found on the TechAviv members page from 1 Sep 2009 and Mr Shay and myself can additionally be found on the members page from 1 October 2009.

As mentioned, Jonathan Saacks was at this event as was Eden Shochat (both Genesis Partners – Mr Dibner’s firm.)

At one point, Saacks stood up and said “we back winners” while looking at me. Saacks is listed on the TechAviv Angels screenshot above, as is someone from Canaan Partners (Daniel Ciporin) – Shay’s firm at the time.

Also, there are additional people who were aware of me at this event to varying degrees. One person was Yoav Leitersdorf, a VC who I had interviewed for Launchpadisrael.com and who I worked for remotely for a few days. Another person was Ofer Wald, an entrepreneur who I had last spoken to at TWS2008 (mentioned above.) Ofer held Shay in high regard. At this meetup I was wearing my long-lost “Tara” cap and would’ve stood-out as I was the only one wearing a cap.

[ pic 2 | pic 3 – Ofer at TWS 2008 | pic 4 – Ofer from inside the actual room – full pic]

I did enjoy the event except for the underlying drama, which made imprints on my mind.

On the topic of Dark Retribution, earlier in the year I was removed from the IVC-Online industry database.

– 3 screenshots directly above taken 2 April 2009. The 3rd pic as linked from Google should’ve shown my full profile page (prior to its deletion.) The 1st pic shows that my name was still in the search index at the time even if the actual page was already deleted.

Regarding this, in the TechAviv forum on 30 August 2009, I created the thread: “IVC-Online a site failure or larger systemic failure”

– screenshot take 9 January 2010

This was created 3 days prior to the Town Hall Meeting and so I was expecting drama, especially since I had already seen what happened at Eurekamp.

A further oddity occurred on 8 June 2010, when I was blocked from viewing the Genesis Partners website after sending them a message through a form. It was around this time Mr Dibner moved from Genesis Partners to another firm in Israel – see his profile (snippet below).

I applied to Seedcamp Europe 2012 after meeting Reshma at TWS2008. I was rejected from that in around September 2012 and stopped working on the site at around the same time and focused on Bitcoin. Philipp (@pmoe) was fired (or quit) Seedcamp in December 2013 who I had been communicating with up until my application for some months.

Regarding Mr Dibner, who I have only met with once and only replied to the first of his two group emails sent to me. The first one was sent regarding leaving Genesis Partners and the second about starting at Gemini – both in mid 2010. My reply was a one sentence trivial response. But why did he even write to me at all? Also with regards to my blog post about Mr Dibner in late 2006 (1 of 3 blog posts regarding VC meetings I was having at the time), the only controversial thing I remember to have written was something akin to: “As such, we did not proceed with further discussions.” So I was saying in my blog post that I was rejected from him and that firm with regards to my ideas and propositions. Going into the meeting I did not sign an NDA and I recall sending a link to that blog post to the person that setup the meeting initially via email. Later I sent a link to the post to Mr Dibner personally, to which he did not reply.

In January 2014, he posted “Towards a VC code of conduct” [archive] which alerted me to the fact that I was potentially dealing with someone consciously hypocritical, and in looking back today I think he was just being silly or else treacherous. Probably hateful (see twitter results below.) That’s just my own opinion because no one with a “Code of Conduct” would ever do anything to harm someone, right? Also, that article had/has an image of the 10 commandments at top, why? Are they interchangeable?

By July 2014, I put up a picture on my FB.

Within a few months (possibly days) he put up a similar picture on his Twitter.

[ 1, 2, 3, 4 (22 March 22) ]
[5,6 – censored (23 March 22), 7 – uncensored (same day); censored again – or is this a bug with twitter’s UI?]

A dangerous chap. But he may not be wholly responsible for his actions if he has been strongly influenced by others and that is a real possibility.

Note: unlike Anakin, actual *baseless* hatred is still real amongst Jews – especially in Israel as sensed by myself and others. It’s the opposite of mateship – it’s hateship. Furthermore, in a documentary on prison life I saw once, an inmate said that many people would love the opportunity to “hate on” someone else – it’s an emotional outlet. Anakin had reasons for his hate even if they were based on complete misapprehensions. Baseless hatred on the other hand is like free-floating anxiety – no real cause.

Continuing, in his Crunchbase profile above, it mentions him being a team member at Yedda. Was he aware of all the tips I had sent that startup when he was defaming me at Eurekamp in 2009 (my contention) as mentioned in Part 2? Did/would those tips make him jealous?

At that point I blocked his FB. I then unblocked it in September 2015 at which point he almost instantly deactivated his FB. He deactivated his Instagram too, I am almost certain.

His wife (Millia) also deactivated her FB at exactly the same time… why? (*I never had anything to do with her or his family in any way, shape or form*)  I only knew about her due to his mention or reference to her, and I wasn’t following her.

7 years later Mr Dibner’s twitter profile picture still remains (as of 15 Mar 2022) and the aeroplane header picture has been there for almost the same amount of time.

[ pic ]


Very odd indeed.

I suspect he was following my FB for many years due to some similarly-themed posts although I might be wrong. That was a concern of mine. Was I in for more surprises offline? Would that have anything to do with him anyway?

The real crux and importance of this exposé is that people have disappeared in Israel after I have met and become friends with (starting in 2014) … and this should be elaborated upon in the greater specifics of Dark Retribution. In fact, I suspect an entire business that I worked for was shutdown. This was the CU-agency (2nd or 3rd floor, 50 Yitzhak Sadeh street, Tel Aviv) soon after mid-2017 when I mentioned it on FB in my resume and its manager Sharon.

It’s absurd, and I really might be wrong here, and even if I am, there are still many more examples to contend with.

But to me, it’s not about winning some high stakes game, it’s rather about waking up from an epic dream!

Referring to Yogo:

FENDACE: Fendi by Versace Collection | Campaign Film | Versace

Also see Versace:

 

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…from the video: “by connecting to existent man-made structures such as piers, breakwaters, jetties” (0:41) — Has EWP factored security-costs into each setup? Someone could stab or melt the hydraulic hoses and the units could be vandalized. Will owners need to insure against subsequent blackouts? At Jaffa port, acid could be poured over rubber surfaces and local Arabs would be blamed a few days later after failure.

 

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✓ 3 years ago

Social Proof, not Social Goof!

It’s about balancing the goofiness with precision … but don’t fail, though.

last update: 28 February 2025

I heard Lenny Kravitz for the first time with Let Love Rule on the car radio, probably around 1990 on PBS. I think my brother was sitting next to me and my dad was driving. Our car was passing a cemetery.

Lenny Kravitz - Let Love Rule (Official Music Video)

Really, I think LK should put acoustic guitar to bass/drums/organ more often, if I may suggest.

I was thrilled no one changed the station during the song and thought it was one of the coolest tracks I’d ever heard. Then I recognised the music again at a friend’s place a number of months later and it all clicked and I bought the album.

In 1992 (above left) I owned the Digipak edition of LK’s 2nd album (middle) and in 1993 I owned the Digipak of album 3 (right.)

My dad’s first reaction was to his name – okay so he must be Jewish!

However, one of my cherished Kravitz CDs ended up severely scratched after I lent it to Tim in 1993.

[ Note, LK Digipak in bedside table under Branford Marsalis CD. ]

I think it was Let Love Rule because Sitting on Top of the World never played past the second bar without getting stuck in a loop.

He later said that the CD was passed around in the unit without him knowing and he mentioned some other people. It ended up on the wood floor somehow. Accidents happen. But people return favours in different ways. A few people told me to clean it with tooth-paste. Why not?

At least Stain remained …unstained.

[April?, 1993]

Blize (2014 + 1993)

Later that year the whole year group helped clean up after a flood – really puts things into perspective seeing people dealing with their whole material lives being washed away. I think it was Seymour.

Helped us see-more.

That said, speaking of messups, I took the woodshed 2 steps forward and 1 step back (or was it vice-versa because people couldn’t leap up onto the roof anymore) by making it bigger and higher in the rear but with a little less overhang in the front so it was more work to stack it out of the way from the rain. I think it was an improvement, but not by much.

[ the original boiler woodshed ]

Later, the unit master suggested I should’ve done more planning and there was nothing wrong with the original shed but he wasn’t around while the work was done. That was done towards the end of the year and no one really complained.

With Jun by my side, a bunch of guys stood around as I drove in nails – it wasn’t like I did it without any sort of tacit approval either, or formality.

Anyway, during this time LK wasn’t really hard, manly or grungy enough to be universally accepted, at least at my school. It could have been the falsetto, who knows? I just liked his music. Image was secondary to me, if not completely irrelevant.

Anyway, on 12 Feb 1994 I saw LK in concert and I even bought a long-sleeved t-shirt – but that’s over now.

At school, it was strange because I think a bunch of girls liked me (as they liked Lenny) but I didn’t really know that – female competition and jealousy was probably a deterrence.

At a house party, I took a skateboard taken that I had carefully constructed in 1994 during woodwork (in the Deaf School) and many years later it appeared at someone’s place with serious mileage on it. A chap I knew quite well, Rikka, (Mark) mentioned some other names that gave it to him and they were my buddies anyway. Strange situation, we were both stressed, and I let him keep it as it was so banged up and possession is 9/10 of the law. Did I have a choice though? I didn’t think about the police at the time.

Also, I thought deep down that having the board disappear meant it might well have saved me from having an accident on it. I was more into skiing and blading and designed a pair of skis that were built in late 2012 for carving (but very strangely ended up great in powder too.)

2013 (Zermatt)

They were never stolen, but I haven’t seen them in years though. I hope they’re still around.

So I found these skis to be extremely safe – I only took one fall in ~20 days of skiing and that’s because I was testing their limits. So these Heartcarve skis are for endorphins, not adrenaline. And due to the lack of pain and fear, skiing becomes a much more social experience and I ended up talking to many more people on the chairlift and simply overall. The biggest challenge was finding a pair of boots that fit well, because so much g-force is taken by the tongue.

Note, like downhill mountain-biking, my upper body is facing in the same direction as my skis.

Back in 2008, on off-the-shelf slalom skis after having worked on Heartcarving since 2002:

Carving Blackcomb 2008

(also vid 2007 – Tirol)

1 2 3

2007 – Little Buller Spur | 2007 – Summit Slide  | ’08 + ’08 (Whistler)

Today, I think the style could be comparable to an e-unicycle.

INMOTION V13 (Full Send Street Riding) Technical Fast Electric Unicycling

The whole “always keep upper body facing downhill” thing is a paradigm to me that causes tension and pain in the body. Even today’s modern carvers still do it to a large extent.

I suppose no matter what the skis or technique, one can always numb it all down later apres-ski. I’m centred in my heart… isn’t that goofy?

So all boots have a pain point when fitting in the shop and that has to be on the front of the shin because after a few days of skiing, the front of the shin develops a muscle to counteract that force. For me that was the Garmont G2 – a miracle find because it was for bony, narrow feet.

Anyway, back to the skateboard, in one way I was happy for Rikka because he was a really good skater and I hold no grudges. In the news, there are so many stories about small disputes escalating into serious offences, it’s important to keep things in perspective and this is why condemnation as a mental device (also mentioned here and here) is problematic as it leads to disproportional, emotive responses. I should have kept a closer watch on the board at the party instead of long hair and smiling faces. But it also shows I made a good deck because he said a number of people had used it.

It was a Magnusson deck (~1988) that I cut down.

I used full-size large wheels from another board I owned, tightened the trucks, loosened the wheel nuts – like one of today’s cruiser boards, perhaps. Ollies were hard, yet it was fast and stable.

No wonder it disappeared. And I thought people would think I was a weirdo.

It’s worth noting that that board had nose-to-tail, hell concave and I initially bought the whole thing second-hand at Huntingfield Road for about $25 from a friend of a brother of a friend.

He didn’t like the concave, and it was still in pretty good condition. It was my first “professional” board.

The board I had prior to that was an el-cheapo and it was slow and unwieldly but got me tinkering around with it to try to make it better.

And I’d already been building Lego for years prior to that.

So on the Magnusson, I removed the rail and tail sliders it came with, and would stop by rolling onto sidewalk grass or s-bending on the road.

Like my skiing, I didn’t care about tricks and wasn’t too good at them either, I just wanted to cover distance in style – as with life.

To this day, I think it was a great design because my feet could stay over the trucks and this kept the board parallel to the ground rather than bending as with a longboard.

[ src ]

Perhaps I should see it as me having “lost” it rather than having had it “stolen.” I just forgot about it long-term because it was so new to me and I was so focused on school work.  Thus, the whole time it had a “borrowed” status among some of my school friends. But I never did tell anyone “here, that’s yours now to keep.”

On the other hand, maybe it was straight up stolen or taken as “ownerless” one night at the party – maybe it was dumped and picked up. And Rikka was most probably right, I did last see someone using the board at full pelt up and down the street at that party. Or was that a different deck?

It was on that night that I turned to a couple at one point and said “love is a beautiful thing” and they both laughed.

I could’ve said it to the skater. Finders, keepers, right?

A lot of people ended up there that night, in Toorak in late ’94 or early ’95. Eden was there. And that’s probably it right there with Mark:

… or not.

So at least it got good use! The whole thing has a sexual connotation too.

Anyhow, I really wanted to go to my school formal with someone I had met at a party that had been at my house, P, whereby Luke met her randomly shortly before it (with her friend S also coming to the party.) Luke thought they were hot and I chatted with both of them in the back garden with Mike around where Desmond is below.

So then in 1996 out of the blue P appeared outside South Yarra train station as if waiting to speak to me, and I spoke to her for a bit, but being into my walkman and schoolwork, my mind was too linear for me to pop the question. Well spoken, she had been on an ABC television show that year too. Frustrating.

Some months later I saw her at schoolies in Noosa (Rolling Rock) and we spoke again by chance at nearby Funkies, funnily enough where Tim’s good friend Sarah worked who I also knew quite well from school, and later that pair wound up in the back of the Nissan at some point as we went clubbing in early 1997. Just needed to find a Kravitz concert to complete the night.

So to P, I said “there’s no sign I’m not compatible with” (Prince – Kiss) and she said “bull.” She was with a friend and that was the end. I should’ve just said, “hey, let’s all meet at Silvers tonight” as it was in the same building, and come to think of it, I did see P once at Silvers in I think early 1997 but we never spoke. She either ignored me or I ignored her, who really knows in those chaotic places? So a few weeks or months later Lucy (and Noah,) who Luke knew, would’ve been over with her upright bass.

Right about that time I started delivering pizzas for Giardino which became Vintage Cellars and was a few doors up from Fuji where Toby was dognapped.

src | 2 | 3

Michael Todd of the Australian Ballet (1978) (above-right, bare legs) was a waiter and said he felt I had a shielded or guarded personality and should loosen up … something like that anyway. I didn’t really agree with him – but he may have had a point – I don’t know – I was serious a lot of the time. Perhaps I should’ve popped on a clown suit. Good guy though, and we had some interesting discussions. He looked at my hair, touched a few strands and said in a professional tone that I should cut it really short, which I eventually did (but only years later) or else grow it long.  Dreadlocks would’ve been ideal.

He was at the tail-end of his career and had trouble finding work in ballet in his late 30’s – he had to move into choreography at that point. It must’ve been tough for him to transition from an acclaimed dancer into someone who some people would treat condescendingly at a restaurant. Every job has its downsides and my car was starting to smell like the restaurant.

One rare regret I have from the years 1997-2001 is the lack of photos I took of my fashion choices of the day.  All my clothes were thrown away from that time too. So my biggest tip while doing deliveries was a $20 bill for a $13 pizza and to “keep the change.” That was from Brian Blythe (1939 – 2022) of Spotless at the doorstep of Coonac, Melbourne’s most expensive home.

I wasn’t just grateful, but also in awe. But how would deliveries get me there permanently? I did take some shots outside Coonac in 2020.

Photo deliveries?

Anyway, I did some additional delivery runs for a pizza shop in the Balwyn area in place for Zoltak.

Interestingly, during my time at uni, but I’m not sure when – most likely 2001 – I had the idea to run a meditation class. But it wasn’t really a meditation class. It was just about getting a whole heap of people in the same room.

The idea never moved beyond the image above, I had no qualifications, and people could get the same feeling at a cinema just as the lights dimmed. Maybe it’s something people will do in 2050 …for whoever remains. A meetup in its purest form. I still think it has potential: expect nothing, receive the universe, charge anything.

Maybe a group-sleep could work like in kindergarten but for adults in a retreat setting.

src

Wait don’t people do that on aeroplanes? Maybe in hyperbaric chambers or sensory deprivation tanks? Too Goofy?

So in early ’97 at uni I momentarily met P’s younger sister P2 (and her friend E) on the tram who later brushed passed me after she saw me laughing out loud in front of the commerce building – during my conversation with Robbie about clubbing. Kind of gnarly to think about it all now. It must be quite common, a person is friends or even an item with someone, and really they should be hanging out with the sibling.

So Robbie lived around the corner from me and Jun met him one night and Robbie said Jun was a “top bloke.” Jun, Robbie, myself and I think Peck were in a taxi going to Crown Casino, and we passed the Arcadia Hotel and I saw a homeless/derelict person outside and I said “Can I have a dollar?” to him and we all cracked up laughing. I highly doubt the guy heard over all the background noise, and I said it facetiously to take the piss out of us all – not him. Anyway, if he gave me a dollar, I could’ve tried to turn it into 10 for him at Crown minus the carried interest!

These days I’d have to wonder who are the real parasites – the super poor or the super rich? Speaking of which:

Gary nails it—this rentier economy has turned ownership and hard work into relics of the past. Like Yanis Varoufakis points out, this isn’t capitalism in its original sense; it’s a parasitic system designed to extract wealth rather than create it. The middle class is being squeezed, not because they’re lazy, but because the rules of the game have changed. We’re forced to rent everything—homes, jobs, even our futures—while the owner class rakes in profits from systems they didn’t build, exploiting our labor and resources. And then they preach about ‘hard work,’ as if it means anything in a rigged game. This isn’t progress—it’s neo-feudalism, and it’s dismantling the social contract piece by piece.

Gary’s Economics | top comment | 6 Jan 2025

I’ve seen the behaviour up close personally with the leeches of the fashion industry as mentioned here. And the same in Hollywood, from my experience. What’s theirs is theirs and what’s mine is theirs. It’s the international money mafia, baby!

Yet from my understanding, Hollywood A-listers don’t have full control of their money, and they can only spend on certain things. That was according to one internet personality (now inactive with many videos offline for many years.)

If so, then Steven Spielberg can buy a superyacht for himself, but couldn’t buy one for me, even if he wanted to. That personality also spoke of R Kelly being innocent, with his convictions being drummed or even fabricated so he could be used as a sexual misconduct scapegoat, and also as part of some type of revenge thing – although that was for a case in the 2010’s so just a continuation of that?

[drums switcheroo] R Kelly - Flirt (2007 + 2016)

Speaking  of A-listers, why is Harrison Ford still working? Is it a clone? Why is Lenny Kravitz back on tour in 2025, is he on a hamster wheel? How does he hear anything anymore? Why did R Kelly, Lenny Kravitz, Bruno Mars and Kanye West all lose their mothers early on in their careers? The rules in the beast-system are different and clandestine. But once you’re on the “freedom train,” there’s no turning back.

Lenny Kravitz - Freedom Train/Always On The Run - live 1994

Gary from Gary’s Economics was on the finance trading floor for 5 years before retiring a multi-millionaire with great resistance. How many Hollywood A-listers or pop stars have even been able to retire at all, let alone after 5 years?

It’s like there’s a centralized ledger of who has what amount of money, and people have to request for a voucher any time they want to buy or sell something of any value. Actually, I have no idea if there is a system like that in place, but it wouldn’t suprise me. I think Dave Chappelle said to be careful of being paid too much – something like that. The last thing I’d want is to be more valuable dead than alive with the value of a song catalog rising as a result, the negation of royalty payments, the avoidance of fading glory and the freeing up of fans and fame for new acts. Same with film. And there’s also the risk of failing mind-control and the slipping of “secrets.”

So maybe the fashion heads want to reciprocate… but can’t! No one wants to be “deactivated” and thrown off the train.

src

Also, status is bestowed to those who inspire the next and that should go to someone important like an heir.

Not a goofy outsider.

[ 23 Apr 2018 | 10 July 2018 | 7 Aug 2018 ]

Yet at the same time, according to Primal Status Elevated, one challenge “new money” has is maintaining and monopolizing primal status within their sphere of influence and greater society. As with Hollywood fame, companies (and families) can also seek their own type of fame to create inter-generational wealth (“old money.”) This is outlined in this video. I don’t think Marta Ortega has a very good fashion sense myself – how is she going to uphold a fashion dynasty for decades to come? But does it matter? People can gravitate toward their strengths anyway.

If I publicly had over $100 Billion, I would look at aiming to hide the bulk of the money from the public anyway, like the Wallenberg family (apparently) over the course of decades.

[11 July 2018]

It depends on the context of course – in France I could pitch myself as the second coming of Napoleon but I still might need a private army and prison.  In North Korea, it’s either life as a serf or a soldier… is that what the West has to look forward to? If the super-rich are squeezing out the middle class today, then won’t the ultra/invisible rich eventually squeeze those out tomorrow?

So it may be an interesting strategy to create the appearance of being a billionaire to elevate status, and the nepo babies need help – and so do their parents if they want to turn their surnames into long-standing brands. Who do they let into their inner-circle?

Anyway, Peter Thiel recently alluded to the notion that to lift billions out of poverty would require whole new energy sources. Interestingly, that may end up lowering birth rates. Also, perhaps those futuristic energy devices exist but are purposely hidden through a lack of love.

The Lost Century: And How to Reclaim It

It’s interesting to note how restrained Thiel is in pushing the envelope. That said, according to one theory, JFK wanted to use his platform to rein in the Federal Reserve and look what happened to him. No one wants to be first to invest in anything too disruptive. Anything too good is siphoned away into a breakaway civilization for the chosen few, right?

So I read about a very wealthy guy that started to buy up radio stations in the USA and he was “put to sleep” as well. But at some point you’ve gotta fight the good fight, but if you hit people in the wallet they tend to swing back. Prince sung “What’s the use of money if you ain’t gonna break the mould? … All that glitters ain’t gold.”

prince 'Gold' RARE Extended Alternate Music Video 1995

So another girl at school told me I looked like Joaquin Phoenix or Daniel Day-Lewis.

Anyhow, in Newcastle, Daniel Johns was bashed because he wasn’t masculine enough, and his music was already pretty heavy.

Silverchiar- Daniel Johns Interview pt. 2 (of 3)

They were the cool guys, we were just the others guys that were in a band that wasn’t as masculine. (1:00)

So back to Kravitz, in May 2018, I took this photo in Atlit, Israel and by September Lenny had his album cover on the shelves:

Fast forward to October 2023, LK’s newly announced album Blue Electric Light seems to have followed from my April 2019 pics from Innot Hot Springs.

src

And I read an interview in the 90’s about Lenny re-recording Tony Breit’s basslines from jam session tapes and not giving him songwriting credits and that caused a lot of tension. Unfortunately, I don’t have the exact quote on hand. This was from 1993, however:

src | screenshot

[ IG ]

So I do remember going to my CD at the time and looking at the album art perplexed.

src

Breit’s only listed playing on 4 tracks. Chad Smith got writing credits on Blood Sugar Sex Magik and he was “just” the drummer. But they’re a “band” so it’s different, right?

Has Breit written anything with Lenny? He plays guitar too. Maybe I’m over-reaching but I lost some of my innocence at the time.

Best of luck to them anyway and maybe what was written was garbage.

Or not. I think it was Me’shell Ndegéocello that said she wouldn’t even step into the same studio with someone with her instrument unless there was a contract in place. And re-recording parts is nothing new. On Guns ‘n Roses’ 2008 Chinese Democracy:

"According to Ferrer, he is the only drummer on the title track; the rest of the album features drums by Brain and Ferrer, using Freese's arrangements. Bassist Tommy Stinson stated he had to rerecord his bass parts with each change in drummer." - src
Brain said Freese played on 30 songs before he split with the band. While Axl Rose admired Brain's feel, he was set on the patterns that Freese had played, so he had Brain replicate Freese's parts note for note. - src

This made it the most expensive rock album ever produced – $13 million.

Brain on Chinese Democracy

And Coco Chanel said that creativity is the art of concealing your sources, non? But it shouldn’t have to be this way and what goes around comes around.

In the 80’s, I remember listening to Genesis on the radio and turning up the volume dial only on the 2 and 4 and muting the rest – I realized I could do that on any song.

The rest is just filler anyway, right? It was so easy to record stuff as well onto tape.

When it comes to my playing, I could see how someone would want it optimized, as there is a sloppiness and unpredictability to it but also taste and groove. My timekeeping, at times can be discernibly off. Yet one could also use quantizing – Grohl’s bass drum on Nevermind was quantized, well that’s what someone told me when it came out.

Chess Bloom (1991 + 2015) [full]

However, I’ve got excellent hearing when it comes to placing notes in relation to a pulse – that happens looking at a screen, not at tom-toms.

For example, with my drumming “switcheroo” (enabled by AI track separation) of It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over, Kravitz may have liked it, but recognized the imperfections, and then re-did it to his liking.

Playlist: drums switcheroo

Well, I highly doubt it, but it’s worth understanding the temptation in these situations. It’s about balancing the goofiness with precision. Or in more opportunistic settings, being able to conceal the sources. It’d also be possible to take the best bars and loop them.

Anyway, at the start of this clip, I am keeping time on the hats and laying out a fill at the end of the section.

Funktion View (1997 + 2015)

Same with Krav.

Lenny Kravitz - How Long Have You Been Blind (Harry Belafonte Tribute)

Very generic stuff, but I think RaveDJ quantized my drums and was able get the drum overlap right, and, Krav put out his track about a month after I first released mine (30 March 2023). RaveDJ have since made my mashups unavailable on that site.

Also, following on from the Phoenix/Kidman film from 1995 (mentioned above) is a new Kidman/Dickinson film almost 30 years later.

OK, so back to 2020, and today a rainbow literally appeared in front of me through the trees as I started playing this on drums, and it dissipated by the end.

It’s in my squint at 0:29 … It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over… yeah… tell that to the Social Goofs who stare at the rainbows that no one else are yet to see!

pics
www.etsy.com/nz/listing/590425852/vintage-90s-1993-lenny-kravitz-universal
sg.carousell.com/p/arthcd-lenny-kravitz-are-you-gonna-go-my-way-limited-edition-digipak-cd-poster-147322884/

✓ 6 months ago

Fast and loose race at a slow and steady pace!

The story of Bopgig is a long one –  and not without hiccups. 

(updated: 2 May 2022)

(note: additional information about BopGig in Israel Tech Scene 2006-2011 and GrooveGuide)

2000: The name comes to mind.

GrooveTip in its inception was about tipping artists in the same way people tip street buskers. FairTunes.com (2000) worked on that concept, which had a WinAmp plugin. I took an interest in media metadata at the time as that should’ve contained the information for any funds to travel back to content creators.

I had thought… “once people have downloaded songs from Napster… then what?” … ideally, a voluntary tip by the listener/viewer to the creator!

src

2001: Final-year undergrad student enters MBA competition.

pic 2 | 3

2003: Multiple PHP apps cobbled together. Later GrooveGuide (more info here) is added – a free street-press magazine. 500 copies were printed and distributed around Melbourne. Problem: lack of app integration and hence automated signups.

src | 2

2009: Rethinking the business model and user experience. BopGig or GigPop?

2010: A working prototype launches. A Y-Combinator application occurs.

Overworked and under-utilized. Music + Entertainment industry. (Jerusalem, 20 Oct '10)

John on the left, Sup on the right.

Bopgig from Adrian on Vimeo.

2011: Development moves from USA to Israel.

Bopgig pitch (Jan, 2011)

 

2012: Public launch and then a pivot into indefinite hibernation!

 

2020: Hibernation continues!

2022: Thinking about it again!

source

Gigwell Productivity Suite for Booking Agents & Artists

note: With GrooveTip 2000 in mind, I would instead look at making it easier for listeners to give rather than own. Maybe both.
✓ 3 years ago

Heartcarve – The Movie.
Draft storyline 1.2

Business leaders of planet Bazzu are seeking to create new “well-being activities” on their planet. They are an advanced civilization and scan Earth from afar and see huge levels of stoke coming from Danny on his new skis.

Into Italy (Oliver - Mechanical)

The leaders decide they want to emulate this activity on their planet. They come down on spaceships.

source

Bazzu do such pillages across the universe and also invite alien tourists onto their planet to run various exotic leisure activities, including rock concerts that bring in tourists:

source

They ask Danny to join them on Bazzu and he willingly obliges, Brigitte is with them on her snowboard, as they show them pictures of some of the mountains on their planet.

In order to emulate skiing and snowboarding, the aliens develop an exo-skeleton for themselves that allow them to withstand the high Gs of skiing. They also end up fitting rockets to the skis to get more speed because Bazzu is a low-G planet. They are also working to build a gravity generator that scientists expect to be ready in a few months.

Danny ends up breaking a leg. But forms a relationship with Brigitte who saves his life.

Eventually Danny’s leg heals and he brings the acoustic device that healed his leg quickly along with Brigitte and his new friend Zimmy back to Earth. Danny also brings an exoskeleton designed for him that allows him to ski much better. He also redesigns his skis on Bazzu to be even better.

source

Back on Earth, Danny enters big mountain ski races and cheats with the exo-skeleton. People copy his skis but can’t get the same results. His skis from Bazzu are extremely light and strong, with advanced base technology that can’t be emulated on Earth. They also have edges that don’t blunt: some type of alien supermetal. He’s fast. Same with Brigitte. People also get jealous and want to steal his skis, which accounts for an action sequence.

Also, just as Danny is about to enter a big mountain ski race wearing an exoskeleton and other racers notice this exoskeleton and see that he is a cheat and target him.

Additionally,  some pharmaceutical companies hear of his frequency device that heals broken bones rapidly because he tells a university professor about it who he meets on a chairlift. This accounts for another action sequence as they attempt to steal it.

The ski community is up in arms. Who made Danny’s skis? What are they made of? What is the exo-skeleton he is wearing? Why was Danny’s home targeted?

Eventually the gravity generator on Bazzu is completed and a Big Race is prepared for competitors across the universe on a gigantic custom terraformed mountain.

Danny holds a town hall meeting to come clean with the ski community. He also brings out Zimmy. A number of seriously injured people in the community come in the morning of the meeting, and the device heals them powerfully in a few hours. He gets a list of racers who want to compete in the Big Race.

One person in the audience records the meeting and brings it to the Intelligence Agency. The Agency determines that the best course of action is to kill the racers planning to go to Bazzu as a threat to global stability and the status quo. They also want to steal Danny’s bone healing machine, his skis and exoskeleton. They want to capture and experiment with Zimmy.

Before the assassins reach the racers, Zimmy takes them all back to Bazzu in a re-scheduled pickup. A “good” member of the Intelligence Agency (Corinne) warns Danny of the planned hit and wanted to convince the head that he and the racers are not guilty of a capital crime. The head classes Bazzu (and Zimmy) wrongly as a lethal foe entity.

During the race, the mountain’s gravity generator malfunctions and the race becomes even more difficult. Danny wins the race. After the race Danny tells the other racers of the assassins and that it is too risky to return to Earth.

Bazzu prepares advanced body armor for the racers based on advanced tech found there. They also prepare lifelike body doubles.

The attempted hits (as dawn raids) are recorded by cameras placed in the body doubles and then broadcast along with footage of the race to the world. Danny becomes a hero of “ET cooperation” and the people part of the agency that ordered the hit are dismissed.

A new division of the agency launched: Intergalactic Liaisons for Benevolent Advancement. ILBA. Corinne becomes its head.

There is a skier called Cozmoon who constantly teased Danny about his news skis when he made the first iteration and that he was “wrong” and a “troll.” At the end of the movie, he ends up skiing on Danny’s skis whilst Danny attempts to catch him on Rozboon’s skis. Zimmy also abandons Danny for Rozboon, just for a laugh.

The injured skiers who were healed by the device end up working for Corinne in the new division of the Intelligence Agency.

Brigitte quits the the snowboard school where she was previously a beginner’s teacher and takes starts taking high-paying private lessons, whilst also obtaining new sponsorship deals featuring Zimmy’s sister Helen who is a snowboarder. Large numbers of Bazzu aliens start skiing on Earth in their exoskeletons.

Additionally, Brigitte is Chinese and about 18 and was working in the USA on exchange when picked up by the aliens. Danny is about 25, he is Caucasian. There is tension within both of their families due to the cultural differences, and Brigitte’s English is not too good.

Froyo - Heart (Official Video)

They feel better when in the mountains, and that represents progression whereas the city represents stagnation. This is an overarching theme of the film: stagnation vs progression.

At the end of the film, Brigitte’s grandfather in China (note: this story should use fictional countries, see storyline notes) falls off a ladder and breaks his leg. Danny and Brigitte head over there and heal his leg with the device. Brigitte’s extended family accepts Danny, and he decides to live there for a year. One year later Danny’s parents head over there too, and the two are engaged with Zimmy as Danny’s best man and Helen as the bridesmaid.

– related vids

Most dangerous GoPro Footage – captured in Obergurgl-Hochgurgl

A central theme of the above discussion is Stagnation.
Peter Thiel on "The Portal", Episode #001: "An Era of Stagnation & Universal Institutional Failure."

In this story, the world adheres to an era of Dark Alchemy which sees the global rollout of trans-humanism irrespective of individual consent. This is a fictional viewpoint and is not occurring on Earth, to the best of my knowledge – it’s the realm of ‘crazy’ conspiracy theorists. As such, the head of the agency is its dark overlord, ruthlessly suppressing progression wherever found, especially when it comes to the evolutionary spirit within the body and then replacing it with an AI-based (instead of soul-based) mechanism. This agency is either attached to a fictional country or a fictional military contractor.

In terms of storyline, after the head is dismissed, at the end, he receives a phone call with the words  “we’ve got a job for you” (you don’t see his face) and ends up walking through the doors of an unknown giant office building in China (see storyline notes on use of fictional countries.) This should lead to a sequel… he’s going to work for some kind of military contractor… his services are still in demand, especially with the new alien assimilation/liaison (and benevolent technologies) in effect. They’re going to target the Indigo children.
✓ 6 years ago