"Most of the kids I played with, are probably dead. They almost certainly died horribly. Maybe some of them became child soldiers, and killed and raped. I could have gone on about how I had to treat PTSD, from my experiences over there"
Lol. I actually wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. Now I don't believe you at all. And you have no idea what the essay is talking about - your post and reply could have been the entire inspiration for it.
Take it from me my friend, you know next to nothing about Africa and Africans, or how most Africans live. Your entire comment is representative of the kind of people who think they do.
Well said. In general there's no winning on boards like this. Most people here are ignorant of most of Africa and Africans in general, but that doesn't stop them from pontificating and being condescending know-it-alls
As an African, born and bred who "looks like I came from Africa", I really really hate it when a European person writes about Africa. They tend to end up writing things like the energy and enthusiasm of the African people is inspiring as hell with no clue whatsoever how immensely condescending and patronizing that comes across. Let me transliterate that so you have a little bit of an idea: the energy and enthusiasm of European people is inspiring as hell. I know the poster is probably well meaning yet the post comes off ironically in exactly what the essay is describing - as if the poster didn't read that before saying their piece about "Africa"
I was with you up until you mentioned Christoper Hogwood. Not that there's anything wrong with him just that that wouldn't be the first name to pop up in my head when I think music vs 'stodgy music for wealthy old people'. It makes me think what you're trying to say in so many words is that you prefer music played on period instruments using something close to the orchestra that would have been available to the composer in their own time. That would limit you to music from sometime before the mid 1800's since composers since then pretty much have had the modern orchestra we have today so 'period' orchestras would be anachronistic and not what the composer intended. If you like period orchestras you should check out recordings of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in San Francisco. They also play 'Hogwood' style on authentic period instruments.
If you've dealt with VC's or lawyers before you'll understand this example. Of course many probably worse examples from Academia or restaurants or military or whatever but if you're a software entrepreneur these are very good examples.
I'm a huge proponent of crypto and the many things it's going to make possible that were not previously possible. But the developing country angle is oversold usually by people just parroting it without really knowing what things are like in developing countries:
1. In many developing countries increasingly you can also use phone or card almost as conveniently as you can in the west. In fact some developing countries are more advanced as far as mobile payments go (out of necessity because of less developed banking systems) e.g Mpesa in Kenya. Generally visa/bank cards and payment apps are not as alien as you might think they are in many parts of Africa or India or South America
2. Using Bitcoins for transactions/moving money around with the current state of the art is a lot more difficult and less accessible than using western union and other financial services that are ubiquitous in these places. Since at present you can't really use Bitcoin for much you still have to convert it fiat which means using an exchange. Most exchanges have even more onerous kyc/id requirements than banks and many financial institutions in developing countries won't even touch bitcoin at all. And not even to talk of the relative technical sophistication required to use crypto services let alone maintain a wallet. As far as developing countries go crypto-currency at present is mostly a curiosity among the well-heeled and well-connected in the largest cities. It's going to be a long long time before the promise of crypto bringing salvation to the un-banked comes anywhere close to reality.