Hi Crowd!

So before we get into it, some good news this week: The ICC finally issued arrest warrants for some war criminals. That took too long, but it's in motion now and that's great. Matt Gaetz withdrew his nomination for AG because of too much attention into alleged "sexual misconduct" and payments to underaged girls. Quietly laughing about the people who told me over the last week that this was all unfounded smear campaign lies. Gary Gensler announced that he will resign in January. Baby steps. Bluesky has over 20 million users now, blowing past Threads with daily active users which is exciting to be a part of, and amusing to immediately see Adam Mosseri backpedal and announce that Threads is "rebalancing" their algo to show you posts from people you follow rather than mostly recommended posts from people you don't follow. If you are on Bsky, you can follow me. I'm spending less time on the Xitanaic as the lines between the site and the Trump administration continue to blur, and more data is finding how much certain messages are being pushed, and others being hidden there. Bluesky has none of those issues, instead showing you posts from people you follow and not penalizing people for posting links. It's fun.

I'm still chewing on an election post mortem which I may or may not bother writing because people keep saying what I'm thinking about saying and there's no point in being redundant, but it's wild to see so many people shocked that shifting right on policies and getting endorsements from the Cheney's didn't win over the left. Dems brought this on themselves and watching them point fingers rather than take responsibility, smile and shake hands with the people who for months they have been saying will be the end of Democracy and spend their last days in office doubling down on the worst decisions rather than taking every step they can to protect and lock in everything they possibly can is just disgusting.

More on that later, perhaps.. lets keep things positive for the moment.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm absolutely one to fetishize objects and things that are both older than me and were loved by other people rank high on my list of things to dive into. Many years ago, more than a decade now, I got the idea that I wanted a lighter from the Vietnam war. At the time I saw something about the creative etchings that soldiers would have done to personalize them, so they knew a lighter was theirs, and I liked the idea of something that was part of someone's EDC - something they purposefully used every day and carried with them for a reason. This is both an easy and difficult task, because while there are tons of "Vietnam lighters" available all over the place, the vast majority of them are either fairly accurate reproductions, or outright fakes. There's also a bunch of different kinds of lighters, and a bunch of different kinds of etchings. So first I had to decide what I wanted.

I wanted a Zippo. It's such a classic design and the lines are just perfect. They also show wear really nicely. So while there are a few different brands that were commonly carried by soldiers, limiting what I wanted helped narrow the focus. The etching was next - there are a few common categories to sort through: Patriotic/Sex/Drugs/Memorial/Cartoons. I didn't want an eagle or bomb or a crude drawing of some boobs, so eliminating that stuff was easy. There's also professionally etched or ones that look like someone carved into them by hand with a scrap of metal. I wanted something on the nicer side, and I wanted the etching to be relatable for me. Sorry Soldier Snoopy flying in for some weed and ass and the memory of dead friends, you are a hard no.

Then we get to verifying - how to know if something is real or a fake aimed at suckers like me? Zippos changed their designs slightly over the years, so it was easy to rule out sloppy fakes on modern models that were made to look old. I also decided that if a seller specialized in Vietnam lighters or more often several different flavors of Vietnam collectables, the chances of them being involved with the manufacturing end of that supply chain was probably high, so avoid. It took a long time for me to find the one I wanted and from a seller I felt comfortable with, but eventually I did. And if you know me, you know it's kind of perfect.

The person I bought this from wasn't a collectables dealer, and was convincingly able to establish a chain of custody. They had half a dozen or so items, all from the same person and same time frame. I can retell that if asked, but it's not really important in the big picture - what mattered to me was that this was real enough for my own story, and this did the trick. Some objects, when you hold them, you can feel the weight. Both physical and emotional, and I like to think this has some real substance to it and when I got it I thought it would be a fantastic addition to my own EDC.

I don't smoke, and they don't allow these kinds of lighters on planes anymore so carrying it around all the time wasn't working out so well. Recently Zippo made a bunch of new inserts, which is honestly a great idea that I'm surprised they didn't do earlier. Different types of lighters, but also a flashlight and what I was most excited about - a multitool. Switching out the guts also kind of makes it my own (though I kept the old guts of course) and I have a reason to carry it now, so even better.

I mention all this not because I'm some lighter aficionado - I'm not - but rather that I often talk about collecting and being thoughtful when buying things (as opposed to just ordering the first thing you see) and thought I'd share. The thrill of the hunt is real, but the thought that goes into deciding what to hunt for is also a huge piece of it. Recently my friend Ian wrote a bit after being asked about collecting digital art and I thought it was a wonderful journey through his own thinking and process. I like what he's getting at, though I teased him a little on twitter about the idea that people might be more or less qualified to appreciate different kinds of art. I'm a big believer in gut feelings and reactions being just as important as understanding technical ability.

In a somewhat similar yet still totally different vein, my very old friend Travis Keller (along with Joe Cardamon) who you might know from his site/label Buddyhead is making a movie which tells the story of both Buddyhead and The Icarus Line and several years of chaos and adventure and dreams and drama around them. Way before everyone was filming everything Travis was one of those guys who always had a MiniDV camera with him and everything in this film was recorded before 2005, so beyond everything else it's a pretty fascinating look back at life before social media and watching this trailer made me crazy nostalgic for the days of jumping in a van with friends and equipment and just hitting the road unsure of what you'd find when you got to the small venue in the little town you'd talked to someone on the phone about playing at. Though I don't miss the smell of the van I can tell you that for sure.

I can't wait for this film to get finished so I can watch it, Travis has been talking about it for such a long time and I really do think it's a great story, even if it's not about a "success" or perhaps maybe it is, but more about redefining what success means to you, regardless of how anyone else sees it. He's raising money for the movie the old fashioned way and if you want to kick in a little I'm sure they'd deeply appreciate it, they are trying to get $70k for the next stage of production and have a little over $12k of that in so far.

I say the old fashioned way because there's a stark contrast between pouring your heart and soul into something, and then asking people to believe in you and your dream and to kick in a few hundred bucks to help you make it a reality, and the absolute chaos of the bull market happening in crypto right now. As Bitcoin is seconds away from hitting $100K (and I remember when it was $30k last year and people said it was over) and today you have this guy who woke up and decided he was going to drop a memecoin and livestream until the marketcap hits $100M and as part of the hype building around it literally burned $400k this morning on camera, or earlier this week this kid who launched a coin, then rugged it for $30k only to have the community take over and send it to the moon and laugh about how his coins would have been worth millions. What a wild world we live in, and as shit as a lot of it is, if you can step back and watch it like a spectator sometimes, it's damn amusing.

That's all from me for the moment, hope you are all well.

-s

The Crowd Lights A Fire [269]