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I. I grew up in a religious cult where disagreement with the doctrines was punished with ostracism. As a smart and honest kid, this was terrifying. I saw flaws in the doctrines of my faith, but I kept them to myself. I feared losing everything if I stated my doubts. I couldn�t comprehend what it would be like to be cut off by everybody I knew. Would I be homeless? Would I starve? I was just a kid. I lived with a primal fear, paralyzing me, rooting me in place. Officially, the Jehovah�s Witness organization prides itself on allowing open inquiry into its doctrines - which are collectively referred to as �the truth�. But it�s a farce. Every question has an official answer disseminated by the organization. Once you�ve received the official answer to your question, you�re not allowed to keep questioning. �This book�s argument for Creationism seems to have a flaw in its attack on evolutionary genetics on page 5� - nope, you're outta here. You are also not allowed to seek the answer to y...

Securely storing bitcoin is hard. Most people trust a third party, like Coinbase, to keep their bitcoin safe. But these third parties are big targets for hackers and indeed many have been hacked and lost their clients' funds. People who are truly security conscious keep their own wallet on an air-gapped machine that never connects to a network. I like using Electrum for my wallet software but I've had trouble figuring out how to use it on an air-gapped machine for two reasons. First, the Ubuntu installation instructions  for Electrum use apt-get and python setup tools, both of which require a network connection to download dependencies. This is a no-go if you want to have an air-gapped machine which has never touched the network. Secondly, Electrum translates data into a custom base 43 format before encoding it in QR codes. QR codes are a secure way of transferring data such as signed transactions off of an air-gapped machine. But I ran into a problem that other software doesn...

Like a lot of people I know, I used to be afraid of experiencing other people�s emotions. At restaurants, I said my food was good when it wasn�t so that the staff wouldn�t experience anger or shame. I avoided talking about problems in my relationship with my girlfriend because who knows what box of emotions that would unleash. If I saw someone in visible distress, I avoided them. I figured it was someone else�s responsibility to help them. What could I do? That changed drastically over the last 12 months. I am a hundred times more free in expressing my thoughts and feelings in all sorts of situations. Whatever outcome I feared would happen doesn�t happen. Most of the time kindly expressing my opinions makes my relationships more real and satisfying.  Ignoring emotions didn�t make them go away. I used to have this voice in my head ruminating on all the things I wished I had said but didn�t. But when I speak up, I find that inner neurotic voice is silenced. In some circles, they call...