I'm not religious, but a particular legend has stuck with me:
> A philanthropist once came to Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi to complain that he felt he was giving charity without sincerity. “Without sincerity? Nonsense!” replied the Rebbe. “There is plenty of sincerity. Perhaps you are not sincere in giving charity, but the poor are very sincere in receiving your charity. Even if you don't mean it, they do!”
As someone who's thought about starting restaurant-based meetups around various hobbies, wondering if you can fill in why this is a bad idea, to save me the trouble of finding out the hard way.
Regarding 3, I think it's a very interesting notion that normalization/cool-ification of tech work may have obviated much of the drive for meetups. Can you also please elaborate on "maybe not much longer given what Big Tech is doing"? I'm wondering if we're talking about a stance on tracking/facial recognition (although maybe it's something else?). Regardless of the stance, what would the "not much longer" entail?
Beachhead