Growing up I had a friend group of misfit boys, who discovered h4ck1ng and phr34king. But we also discovered slackware Linux on 3.5" floppies. We also had to discover ASM and compiling the linux kernel in order to do anything with it. Boys with machines. That wasn't what I needed either.

Later on we did have great things with tech. Google made the world searchable in ways Altavista didn't. I remember strapping the original iPod on my arm to go for runs outside. I didn't even need a car for a while investors subsidized my Uber rides to and from the office.

Now, it seems the US is balanced on a precipice. The economy seems to have an incredible amount of money desperate to grow, but to what purpose. In my lifetime, and in my parents, and their parents before them, when the dollar becomes restless the flag goes forth. The dollar follows the flag.

And here we are at war.

I got into scuba diving while living in NC, and it just happens that there's a lot of it off the coast! The other problem is that it's deep. Diving down to 130 feet sounds cool until you experience hours on a boat only to get a few minutes at the bottom. Eventually I got bothered to learn more about diving.

I headed down to northern Florida to dive with GUE. My instructor was a person who regularly got hit up to dive to exotic places all over the world. Missions like collecting/deploying samples, archaeology, recovery. Here were people meaningfully impacting the environment, science, and keeping technical know-how alive.

I don't know how to convey a the wonder I feel in text. Check it out maybe.

I don't believe these issues can be solved at the macro level. The US has many crumbling institutions and they are still ripe for the taking. Participate in volunteer events, the local FD, join the local Masons, or similar.

Engage with people directly, locally, even or especially with people who you assume hate you (they probably don't).