Sunday Ramble
Brasil no longer feels utterly foreign after ten days. Our little family has caught its groove with the pace of life, which means my work routine starts when everyone takes off to the beach. I try not to let my envy follow them out the door, but I’m grateful to have had a couple of weekends to experience the beach life myself. I get why folks settle in here and refuse to exit.
Speaking of exits, ours is upon us in a few days, back to the Peruvian rainforest and our routine. The contrast of being around friends has been the starkest realization for me. The line “the bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship,” by William Blake has resonated with me since hearing it. It’s not a new experience for me to build a social system and community — most recently, it took more than two years in Portugal. Talking with my surf buddy here in Brasil (our daughters are the same age), we were commiserating how, between work and family, the time to build friendships was non-existent. If it weren’t for our kids being the same age and hanging out, we’d not have cleared the requisite 50 hours it takes to move from acquaintance to casual friend.
That’s right, the classic saying by John Leonard that “it takes a long time to grow an old friend” is not wrong. A study published in 2018 discovered that 50 hours is the average time it takes to reach the first level of friendship. It takes an average of 90 hours to become regular friends and more than 200 hours together to achieve a close friendship. Between work-life and family life, where are two middle-aged dudes going to find that amount of time doing something together?
Doing something? Yep, guys aren’t great at sitting around and chewing the fat. It’s a rare exception to have a phone call with a friend last more than a few minutes. Ever notice how guy activities are shoulder-to-shoulder and not face-to-face — bars, bleachers, rowboats, campfires, surfboards, biking, running, etc.? You name it, but thanks to our tribal hunting genetics, the actions that cause guys to bond are based on doing physical things together, even if it’s just cheering for the same team.
No wonder middle-aged men have such few friends! Unless you’ve planted roots in the same place for more than a decade, I don’t see how anyone will find the daylight hours to build these types of bridges with one another. Heck, studies find loneliness in US middle-aged men has health consequences akin to obesity. Compound this with pandemic lockdowns, remote work taking away office interactions, the mobility of today’s workforce seeking economic opportunity, and we can chalk another point up on the scoreboard for society doing its best to beat the snot out of the human experience.
“Try harder” I hear some of the hecklers in the back chirping. But I don’t think it’s that simple. If the lion’s share of middle-aged men is in this predicament, myself included, it’s going to take some societal re-working to prioritize men’s mental health. My strategy is multi-faceted: arrange an activity with some ex-pats in Tarapoto, acquire more time by saving Bitcoin, which compounds on average at 170% per year, create excuses to get my work team together, and get some adventure on the books for 2022. Who knows — maybe before I leave my 40s, I’ll have a crew of friends across all three of the continents my life is now frequenting.
Rad Things on the Interwebs
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Weekly Range: $36k - $51.7k
Bitcoin managed to break higher than the maximum range I predicted last week ($44k), reaching almost $46k. It was soundly rejected and closed the week at $42k, however. From a technical standpoint, this week stands to be a make-or-break-it week as the bears are starting to show their strength with a macro backdrop of war between the Ukraine/USA/Russia brewing. A pullback would ideally close the week over $41k, but if that doesn’t hold throughout the week, we could see the price return to retest support as low as $36k. If buyers do not step in, then the door to the low $30k’s is back on the table. I suspect complicated price movement this week but, to simplify, any daily closes below $41k will open the door to the $36k region. Any daily finishes above $44.4k open the doors to higher prices.
Bitcoin Q & A
Q: What is a Bitcoin Dust Attack?
A: An attempt to unmask the owner of a Bitcoin wallet.
Dust is a term used to describe an amount of Bitcoin that’s less than the network transaction fees. For example, if the prices for a Bitcoin transaction are 0.00004 BTC, anything less is considered dust since it is more expensive to send than it costs to send.
A typical dust attack is when individuals send such small amounts to a wallet in hopes that it will be included in future transactions. The dust sender hopes to learn enough to de-anonymize the wallet holder by tracking these transactions. It’s important to understand that a dust attack cannot result in stolen Bitcoin. Instead, it is the first step in what could lead to stolen Bitcoin if the identity of the wallet holder can be discovered and then attacked in some other fashion. Learn more here.
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Gasp! My son thinks of himself as 'middle-aged'??? I barely think of myself as being there.... what the heck??!!??