Escaping the technocracy w/ Gabriel Custodiet and UrbanHacker

I'm super excited for this. For, for those who maybe don't know either of you guys, do you mind just introducing yourself, telling us a little bit about what you're up to, and then we'll roll from there?

That is, you know, moving around and, and things of this sort and other kind of radical topics on, on privacy. So that's Watchman Privacy. I've been doing that for a few years and I leveraged that after a couple years into a shop called escape the technocracy.com and so urban and I work on that. And that is a. A online shop that sells tutorials and toolkits for like cryptocurrencies and things of this sort that is privacy related, educational stuff. We have a newsletter as well.

And so that's kind of the big picture overview of where I'm coming from. I've been living a pure privacy lifestyle for a few years now. Basically, a few years ago, I really decided to go hardcore on privacy. Very hardcore. And so I just really went down the rabbit hole. I had been consuming a lot of Michael Bazell's resources and I thought it was very refreshing, especially his take on physical privacy, which I didn't think was talked about enough.

So I really went down that rabbit hole and followed a lot of that advice. I found some of it lacking. I found he was maybe not talking about certain other things. So I decided to go my own direction and start my own brand. And yeah, a few years later, we have a podcast that's going on almost 200 episodes. A lot of them are interviews with a lot of interesting people talking about these different topics. And that's what I've been doing for the last bit of time.

And nowadays it's just becoming so, so much harder. And I kind of went along with it. I also have a passion in video game development and I've worked in, in that era as well. And it's something I try to bring into my presentation. I always try for making something that is engaging, that is interesting and try to avoid, you know, the typical very boring, you know, sysadmin explaining you things. So I try to make things as interesting and as entertaining as possible.

So that's, that's my background. And yeah, we can go a bit more in depth later on.

I am really curious, like, I know that we've talked about this a little bit privately, but how did the two of you get connected? Like, what brought you together to start working on these things as a pair instead of just doing these things solo?

He complements certain things that I am less knowledgeable on on the technical side, for example. And so it's a, it's, it's a good relationship. And as I said, I think we complement each other. And it's one of those partnerships where two people working together is, you know, we. We produce much more than 2x with, which is always a good sign of a partnership.

So we've been at this now, you know, talking and chatting and helping each other for the last bit of time, and only recently really kind of decided to put our heads together and form Escape the Technocracy. So, yeah, that's kind of the background there.

Definitely recommend that. But a little bit more about that podcast. I mean, you've been doing this for a few years now. I feel like as a podcaster, you get some, maybe some insider insight into the privacy world, into what's going on behind the scenes with the guests that you get to have on, like, what have been your.

Your main takeaways and lessons learned from the Watchman Privacy podcast, whether that be, like, guests or topics that have been most interesting or maybe just kind of like what has worked, what's failed as part of that process. What's ****** you off in the privacy space? Like, I'm curious, your take with kind of being in the. In the trenches of privacy education for a few years now?

And he didn't talk so much, let's say jurisdictional privacy that is internationalization, you know, living in a van, things of these, things of this sort, which were more radical, I think very important topics. And so I kind of just started off, you know, discussing some of the more forbidden topics. I think the algorithms have hated me ever since. I also brought in philosophy from day one.

I think that if you don't have a good sense of the correct moral philosophy of individualism, you know, you're what, what are we talking about? I, I remember the early days of getting into privacy and checking that God awful privacy, Reddit, subreddit and just a lot of screeds against, you know, huge corporations and capitalism and surveillance capitalism. And I just thought it was a very shallow take. And I don't think that communism has any support within its ideology for privacy whatsoever.

Uh, communism, socialism, left leaning whatsoever. I don't, I don't think there's any room for privacy in a lot of those philosophies. So I brought in philosophy from day one, talked about some forbidden subjects. Cryptocurrencies were always a big topic from day one. And you know, I'll talk about cultural things as well. So I'm just looking at some of my early episodes.

We're talking about central bank, digital currencies, we're talking about privacy and psychopaths and how, you know, understanding what a psychopath is can actually help you to understand some of what goes on in terms of politics and the world and the people who do not believe that you should have privacy because they literally cannot conceive of other people, which is what happens when you're a psychopath and you don't have empathy.

And so the show is really, I would say it casts a wide net in terms of how we understand privacy and the politics that need to be in place, the philosophy that needs to be in place in order to have privacy. And then of course we do absolutely get into the tactics and we keep it pretty broad as well. One of my early guests was somebody who creates pods where you can live out in the sea and basically become a sovereign citizen out in the ocean.

So that was, that was kind of just representative of the way that I thought about this. Like all options are on the table, right? I don't want to get in trouble legally, but for the most part all options are on the table. In the podcast and you know, 200 episodes later, we're talking about cryptocurrencies, we're talking about self defense, we're talking about gun laws, we're talking about obviously the technical stuff as well, in kind of a more of a lifestyle way instead of getting.

Although Urban has brought this later on, instead of getting into the nitty gritty of the technical stuff, we just kind of use it as a way to understand. Here's how this will apply to your life as opposed to just something in the abstract. So I think it's an interesting show. I think we've produced some really cool episodes. And yeah, I encourage people subscribe to Watchmen Privacy. Just scroll through, scroll down to the bott and check out some episodes that interest you.

I really wanted to like, only get practical, but I quickly learned that the, like, just like you mentioned, if you only focus on the technicals and the specifics, not only does lack a certain weight, like there's not a deeper seated reasoning for the things that you're doing, but also it's. I found it's really easy to become demoralized when you, you don't have like a, like, for lack of a better term, a core worldview around how you're approaching this stuff.

Like why you're approaching sacrificing some convenience for better privacy, or like why you're approaching looking into moving to a different country so that you have better laws protecting you or less stringent laws stopping you from doing things. Like, unless you have a kind of a framework to work through, it can be really demoralizing quickly when you just see the state of things falling apart in so many jurisdictions. So I definitely agree with that.

Like, some of the most interesting conversations to me early on in my pod were not the technical ones, but were the ones where people got really philosophical. Like, I had a guy who goes by Smuggler. He came on the podcast, he had some fascinating ideas around, like, how privacy is necessary for human intimacy.

And like these just very fascinating topics that aren't aren't your normal, like, use signal to protect your messaging, but actually getting into more of the broader topics on like, why this stuff is important. So I definitely do, definitely do value that.

And I also like that y' all get very broad in what you talk about because something that's also very important is if, like, if I focus too heavily on just the things that I'm interested in, which is normally what I do on my pod, it makes it very narrow in focus. Whereas for people who aren't sure exactly that they want to be like Seth for privacy, maybe you don't have the specific interests I do, or you don't have the specific threat model I do.

It's really nice to be able to kind of like taste and see what else is out there in terms of threat modeling, in terms of how hardcore you want to go in terms of the tools and technologies. So I definitely have enjoyed that from your show over the years.

Portugal is the best place to get started if you want to get European Union residency. We have one on how to protect your medical privacy, where we basically explain how you practically as a human being can arrange your life so that you're giving as little information to, you know, medical facilities as possible in terms of, you know, getting private treatment and refusing to give information when you go to the hospital and things of this sort. So very kind of practical, hands on approach.

Not just, you know, talking abstract, how do people protected, protect the data, but like how you as a person can actually go and refuse and engage in social engineering and whatever else you need to so that you're getting your medical privacy. We have one talking about trusts recently. So yeah, it's a broad range and I do want to try to cover basically every topic that might interest people.

Because there's the technical people, Seth, and then there's the, let's say the people who are seven years old and they're really never realistically going to download Linux or install it. But they are interested in, you know, protecting their home address. Right. For example, they are interested maybe in creating a trust.

And while I don't really give legal advice and things of this sort, it is a topic we can kind of open their minds to and you know, have an expert on who talks about these sorts of things. They might be interested in leaving one of the five eyes countries to somewhere else. Right. So Portugal or you know, a different country like that. So do try to keep all the options on the TABLE realizing that, well, I do love the digital stuff.

There is a whole other world out there that we can certainly take advantage of and a lot of the privacy. As I got into this, when I think of either Michael Bazell's stuff or I think of another great book, which is how to be invisible by J.J. luna. The late J.J. luna, he doesn't talk at all about digital stuff in that book and it's still very useful and very practical. So I love talking about this social engineering, just refusing to give information and all that kind of stuff.

And obviously especially security is about far more than just the digital. Like they certainly go hand in hand. But it's one thing where if you don't have both, you certainly have a problem. I think Urban, right under Jameson Lopp's tweet, said people who focus exclusively on digital privacy are missing half the problem. Physical privacy is as important, if not more. How are y' all thinking about that in the content you create in Escape to Technocracy?

Like, how do you, how do you balance and approach both the digital privacy and digital security, but also the physical privacy and physical security?

If you ship your hardware wallets to your home, your Bitcoin hardware wallet to your home, and then that hardware wallet company has a data breach and then now somebody has access to your order to your, maybe your name, your home address.

Most importantly, and we've seen, we've done an episode on that string of criminals in the US who actually track down some of this data, other kind of breach data, other publicly available information, and went around torturing people, Americans and basically because they knew they Had Bitcoin. So if you're not protecting your home privacy, which means that you don't give out your home address in almost all cases, I mean, I don't know my home address, so I never give it out.

If you're not doing that, then, you know, what is your digital privacy really getting you? It's problematic. So what are your thoughts on that?

And I think if you see the often the weakest point is always the physical. Right? Because you mentioned about Smuggler, one of your guests, as he said many times, you have mitzvah space where you actually live, where your body is physically. And if somehow someone can reach your body, they can make it very painful for you in all sorts of way. You know, they can physically restrict you, they can torture you, they can do all those things.

And I mean, it's crazy that it happened today, but we have seen like also like the one of the CEO of Ledger that, that got this and in many of those case, what, what is horrible is that with all those crypto influencers, they publicize some of the stuff they do, you know, they might show their wallet on screen in a live stream or something. They don't realize the risk.

And then you have harmchair chain criminal, like blockchain criminal that look at, you know, the blockchain, try to find how much you have. And if they didn't worth it, they will kidnap you. And there are many, many ways that you can mitigate this, you know, and it doesn't have to become, you know, the prepper in his basement. They are like middle scenarios. And it's something that sadly is almost never addressed.

I mean, Jameson Loop, and a bit like a wise elder in the mountain is reminding with his tweet every couple of weeks that this happened. But we don't really see anyone else bringing attention like this. And everybody is focusing on money, money, money and number go up and all of those things, but they forget about this. And if you want to be independent and use this as digital freedom, how much is digital freedom? Is your physical freedom is not secured. That's kind of the point. Right.

Um, so, yeah, that's, that's something. And we also try like, that's like the, the criminal aspect of it, you know, protecting yourself from criminal. But we also try, you know, all sorts of things in the physical world. Things like exchanging bitcoin peer to peer, going to meetup, seeing like how the scene goes. And, and maybe we could touch a bit on that. And that's also something that people should, should. How to say they should master more their physical environment.

You know, instead of looking at their phone constantly, they should be aware of their surroundings. They should see if something goes wrong. You know, when I see cases of like kidnapping and you know, things like this robbery, often it's not the guy who is like super aware of what happened, but it's more like, you know, the random Joe that is constantly looking on his phone and not really paying attention to what's going on. So there is a lot of things behind this.

He discovers that, you know, that this had happened. And this kind of stuff happens all the time, right? You don't have to be a celebrity, although we do consult with celebrities, you know, minor celebrities and things of this sort where they, you know, they need to leave, leave where they are because their home is compromised. Because I can go to truepeople, search.com and type in a name and get a whole bunch of information just from one website, right?

And there's hundreds of these kinds of websites. So your physical privacy is something that we don't think often enough. And as people who also do a little bit of Osint on our end, we, we use a lot of these tools all the time and we can find all sorts of things about people where they live. Of course we have ways of looking at, you know, Instagram posts and seeing, right, Where's. Where's the. Where's the sun in this particular photo of this person doing a selfie.

And we can get a sense of where they live and people expose themselves in so Many ways. And in an. In an era of Internet outrage, that can easily lead to physical violence, that can lead to visits to your home, really undesirable, undesirable people. And in the world, of course, cryptocurrencies, which are very. It's a pretty tempting thing to steal because it's so permanent. And if it's, you know, there's ways to scrub this that you maybe wouldn't be able to scrub, you know, US Dollars.

So there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of threats to people's physical home address privacy, and that's really what we also try to protect at the end of the day.

But hopefully, like, the reason for sharing some of these, like, really dark examples is that you see that there is a real need that there can be real problems that come out of choosing poorly about not taking steps towards personal privacy, about not thinking about physical security, and take steps before anything like that happens. That's definitely, definitely a goal here. And I know that y' all cover a lot of these topics in Escape the Technocracy.

I'd really like to learn a little bit more about, like, I know we talked about the podcast, how you started that a few years ago, and the reasoning behind that. But, like, what led to creating Escape the Technocracy and what's kind of the focus? Like, what do you want users to get out of it? What's the key goal? What are the main areas you cover? Yeah, I'd love to dive into that a little more.

We write about 15 pages of information of our travels around the world. How we're using these privacy tools in action. All sorts of practical, tactical things. Had an article recently on how to understand phone charging. How do you charge your devices in the most optimal way possible? For example, if you have a battery pack and you're charging in the correct way, that you could charge that about 10 times as fast as you could your phone. So you would always want to charge that first.

But it depends which, you know, battery pack you have. So we get into some. Some technical things. I did a review recently of a bunch of Faraday bags on. On that newsletter. We had an article recently where we're in a foreign city in a third world, and we're going around trying to find somebody who will accept Bitcoin. And it's kind of a hilarious and a little bit depressing journey of navigating this city and understanding that bitcoin is not as widely accepted as people want to think.

In these websites where this shop accepts Bitcoin are not updated, certainly, and are, in some cases, pure fiction. So we kind of take you on our journey around the world and using these privacy tools in that newsletter. That's kind of our main thing there. And then we just have an assortment of other products where we're showing you on the screen. They're basically presentations, video presentations.

Whether I'm walking you through how to get South Dakota nomad residency, which is something that, in the broader privacy world, it's been an excellent tactic to get an address that is not your home. Okay. That is not your home, where you can, you know, get an address that you can give to banks and all these other sort of important institutions that need an address. Right. And especially if you want to be a nomad, this is the path that you might want to take getting South Dakota nomad residency.

And I cover how to do that with an expert on the topic. And then, you know, we have a basic digital privacy course called Escape the Technocracy. And for this audience that, you know, probably you. You guys already have that covered. We have a basic cybersecurity course. And then we. We brought on a gentleman who is really serious kind of preparedness guy, and he has partnered with us and. And we talk about things like emergency food preparation, which is really cool.

That particular course, preparing for a active war zone.

So we have a full course talking about that as well as a course on how to make a video game using AI, which is something that Urban put together. So there's an assortment of things on here. We're going to be releasing one on the basics of 3D printing in upcoming months and some other cool stuff. But yeah, that's just a overview of some of the things that we're passionate about.

You know, it's not just about, oh, I gonna have, you know, super incredible encryption app or things of, like, how does this help you in the everyday life? I mean, we have seen things like, you know, now you have like, spywares that are installed on phones of employees, you know, and then you end up like, I know a friend that has happened where they were discussing salary with sms.

And then basically the company saw that, you know, their whole discussion, not out of malice, but just because this tool was reporting everything they were doing on their own phone and they didn't think about it. So how do you hope negotiating with, like, it can be as simple as that? And the other example, like, after following the course for, like, the Navy SEAL deployment, I recently went on traveling and I have to say, my phone battery never died on me.

And I always had like, all the connectivity I needed at all the time. And previously it was chronicle, you know, you land in the country, you're at the airport, you have no battery, you don't know what to do, you cannot contact, etc. Etc. And this didn't happen just because you Apply some strategy. So they are very, very practical things that you can basically deploy immediately in your life and it's going to make your life better for that.

Whether that's personal privacy, protection, preparedness, energy sovereignty, these are sorts of the, I would say that's the kind of the main theme, the main strain of where we're going with this brand is we call it escape the technocracy and we purposefully keep technocracy kind of vague. Right. But just the idea that we want to be in control. We want to be in charge of not just our data. Right. But our own, you know, our own protection and everything in between.

And I think it's the, it's similar with this idea of sovereignty where it's not necessarily that everyone is going to be a, a prepper and have a bunker and have hundreds of guns and food to last them 10 years or something like that, but rather just giving you the choice to reclaim as much sovereignty as possible. Like giving you the tools necessary so that you can say, hey, I'm really concerned about digital, about energy sovereignty. For instance, my country is importing everything for energy.

They constantly have outages and issues. How do I gain some more sovereignty in that area? And just thinking about like, for you, practically the listener, what are some areas where you want to gain more sovereignty? Not that you have to go like whole hog, go crazy, become that crazy prepper, but you can figure out again, just like digital threat modeling, this idea of what do you want to protect, who you're trying to protect it from, and what lengths you're willing to go to protect yourself.

Those same things can apply to many of these scenarios.

You know, the first month is going to be easy, but the second month we expect you to start, you know, getting to our level. Right. And, and that's kind of how we, we treat things.

So we very quickly move on to intermediate and then more advanced topics and, and we expect, and we want people to go to that particular level and in the case of you're talking about our, our broader topics beyond privacy, this is why we partnered with a guy named Steven Harris who is a incredibly impressive and very serious guys. As I mentioned, he consults with certain, you know, elements of the US military and things of this sort.

But at heart he is helping individuals to become better, whether that's self defense, preparing for really bizarre, you know, scenarios where they have to protect themselves or nuclear survival. We actually have a course on nuclear survival.

He co authored the, the book on nuclear preparedness and he trained with a nuclear expert for 10 years in CO writing that book or in upcoming course that we're working on and that he's working on right now is how to have Internet anywhere in the world without cable. Right. And Starlink. Yes, that's one part of it but there's many other aspects to it as well.

And he's got some really, really cool ideas for just how to wherever you are in the world, be able to message people, be able to access the Internet. So these are the sorts of things that we, not just the topics we talk about but we want to go to the extreme as quickly as possible while you know, walking you, walking you step by step through how we get there but always realizing that the end goal is as much as you can stomach basically.

Like the more physical, preparedness more disaster preparedness side of things is really fascinating. So I'll be digging into that one for sure. One thing that I'm really curious about, like you touched on a lot of different topics, a lot of different things that you're trying to teach people how to prepare themselves for how they can best kind of arm themselves to be more sovereign, to take control their digital and physical privacy and security.

If you had to just, if you could get every listener to do one thing today to improve their personal privacy or security, what would that be? I know that that's like a, that's a really hard question to answer and a lot of times it's just what's top of mind for us in any given moment. But I am really curious, if you had to like distill it down to one thing, what would that, that kind of step be that you would want listeners to take?

And it, it can't be to subscribe to escape the technocracy. I'll blacklist that answer for this one.

I know that one of the themes of digital privacy is we want to make use of all the technology at our fingertips and we think that our encryption is going to make sure that we can be using cloud software and systems and still benefit from all these things. But everything has a weakness, right? And if your nextcloud, you're not updating that properly and doing things correctly, even that has potential vulnerabilities.

So I would encourage people, don't be arrogant in your understanding, in your confidence, in your ability to have digital privacy. Keep things offline as much as you can. For me, I try to do things, you know, I use Keepass xe, I don't use Bitwarden. I want these things offline. Of course we want to back them up properly.

But I think in the long run, having more things offline and fewer things connected to the cloud, fewer, let's say conveniences and I don't like that word because I think getting your information stolen is a great inconvenience. So I think that using things offline is actually quite convenient in the long run. I would say do more of that and don't fall back on, oh, I need to install this latest app, right? This latest encrypted app.

I would say what unencrypted or what encryption app can you uninstall, right. For better privacy today? So I'd just turn that on its head a little bit and encourage people. The more arrogance we have, the more we're going to get compromised, even if we are digital experts.

And at best are like a loss, like they're not benefiting us and at worst they're detracting from the quality of life that we could have because of the distractions that they bring because of the headache of managing the accounts for them or backups or something like that. And this idea of stripping away, doing as little as possible online can actually be very freeing.

Now it can of course go too far and you can cause yourself to lose so much convenience that it actually like hurts the quality of life that you have. But so much of what we do just does not need to be online. Just there's no reason for it. And they're fantastic tools these days to get a lot of that stuff offline. Even like an example is photo backup. There are some advantages to using an end to end encrypted photo backup service. There's some really good ones out there today.

But you can also have a network attached storage that sits at your house and you can sync back to that. But like you said, maybe you also just don't need photo backup. Like one change that I've been trying to make is just I don't take pictures and videos of everything because I realize that the vast majority of it I'm not actually going back and looking at. And yet it's distracting me from the moment.

And I'm focusing more on capturing the moment on my phone than I am about actually being a part of the moment right there in person. So I definitely, definitely love that, that thought process and kind of stripping back and doing more offline, less online. It's a big approach.

Mine is like, you know, practice, practice, practice. Like you, you think that, you know, you have your non kyc Bitcoin sitting somewhere, you know, in your deep multisig, on the ground, storage, whatever, right? You have, you've done this, you've covered, you're confident. How about starting to spend some of it just to see if you can access it, you know, just to see if you, if the whole thing works the way you expect.

And you know, also things like, okay, can you change, you know, can you change this into money somehow? You know, oh, it's, you know, it's a few money. Okay, well, practice. And what you will find is that this is much, much harder than when, what you can imagine, like, way harder. It's at a point where there have been exchange, for instance, where if you want to sell back Bitcoin, you have to send them the exact bitcoin they sent you. Like, this is coming and this is happening.

And if you think you can get away with it, I would say don't just think about it, but practice. And if you think it's inconvenient, I will say that life is, I mean, we're not the creator of this world, right? We are merely, you know, tourists, kind of in a way. So it's not me who decided this, but life is a struggle. And if you go and you become lazy, then you're gonna be eaten by something bigger than you that you don't realize that is gonna take your place.

And I know it's a bit like, I don't know, brutal to say it like this, but for me, like, I remember when I was a teenager, I created dozens of Google accounts and, you know, oh, and I was playing with trolling people. And up until recently, I was like, you know, what if I need a new Google account? No big deal, right? You can just create a new one. Wrong. Like now you need to go into like all sorts of check and KYC and they shut everything down without telling you anything.

So don't be comfortable, go out, experiment, see what works, what doesn't. It doesn't matter if you have, you know, gold, crypto, Bitcoin, Monero, whatever, just use what you think you have and adapt it. And you know, it's funny because we discuss about prepping a bit. In a way it's similar. You have prepper, they buy, you know, hundreds of gallons of certain food and pound of this and then they discover it tastes awful and their child doesn't like it and then it's kind of all to waste.

So this is why you need to try it out. You need to experiment with what you're setting up and you need to do it in a kind of like a rolling basis. If you have a cold storage, then spend from it regularly and it's fine. If you want to huddle like the maximalist details, that's okay, just put some of it back in it, buy it back in a week or so. But you have to practice.

And we see this so many times where people think they have this figured out and then when the dirt hits the fan, they realize that oh, this is not how they expected and then they panic. And when you panic, this is when you make mistake and then this is when you send to the wrong address, you give all your KYC data because you panic and you think there is no other way around and things like this. And you would be surprised. Sometimes it's easier than you think and sometimes it's way, way harder.

But if you don't practice, you will never know.

Because like there is going to be a time when you need these things, there is going to be a time when you need to actually spend your bitcoin on a good or service. And if that's something that you've done regularly just to push yourself, it's not daunting, it's not stressful, it's not problematic when you actually need it because you've been practicing up until that point and it actually makes life easier in my opinion.

Like yes, there's hard work upfront, but just like basically everything in life, if you're willing to put in the work up front, you'll reap benefits down the line. That applies to all of these things as well. So I think that that's a really important thing, too. And I specifically like that you called out this idea of, like, when you panic, that's when things go wr. And when you panic is when your. Your body and your mind rely on muscle memory.

They rely on things that they know how to do without conscious thought. And again, if you've never actually done these things, you will have no muscle memory, no subconscious patterns to rely on. You'll fall back into just a pure state of panic with no clue what to do, and you'll make bad decisions that could lose you money, could. Could get you in physical harm.

Like, there are lots of problems that could happen then, but if you're practicing, those things don't happen, or they're not as likely to happen because you're prepared, you're ready. So I definitely like that answer. Last question for y', all, and then I'll. I'll open it up if y' all have anything else you want to cover. But I'm just kind of curious. Like, I think it's.

In these conversations, it's really easy to get kind of dark and pessimistic, and I wanted to kind of pull out of that a little bit. I'm really curious, like, what. What is an optimistic take from y' all on the state of privacy in 2025? Like, is there anything on your radar that's helping to bring some hope to the kind of the dire straits that we seem to right now? What's an optimistic view on where we're at today?

Hey, this. You know, I was at a place recently, they don't accept cash. Okay. I'm not coming back here. Right? You can always opt out. You can always find an alternative. And that's what we need to be. We need to be like Bruce Lee, right? Be like water. Just Be flexible. And if somebody is not respecting our privacy, if this website is not allowing us because we don't have a vpn, there are always alternatives and we need to find these alternatives and support these alternatives.

And they're cropping up all the time. We have a lot of digital privacy companies, a lot of digital privacy software that is cropping up, that is useful. Multiple options these days. Monero is thriving, right? That is an easy option for people who hate all the bank KYC, surveillance bs. Easy option for people. Well, maybe not easy, but it's certainly an option. So there are ways to opt out.

And I would say there's maybe never been more ways to opt out, even if there's never been more surveillance and discomfort in the way the privacy eroding systems are developing. So I would say it's precisely that we can always choose to go elsewhere and we can always choose to use different things. Right? Linux has never been more available, there have never been more VPNs, there never been more private ways to pay for VPNs. Right. We can send cash through the mail and get a VPN subscription.

Tor is still working and thriving. So yeah, we have the tools, we just need to use them more and be aware of them.

Where lots and lots of people who had never, ever, ever thought about using a VPN or about finding ways to be able to access sites and services without proving who they are as a human now suddenly they realize there's a need for this stuff and they're searching and they're paying for VPNs, they're paying for services that can help them with this. And that money can go into funding even better services like it.

It is something where, like I think we need to remember that as crackdowns continue, as things get more stringent, as insane laws get passed, as cases go south there, there are benefits to that as people continue to fight, to push back. And a lot of that, that sovereignty, the tools available, like you mentioned, continue to grow and improve as a result of that. Which is definitely a, definitely a hopeful Thing.

And because of the Internet, you can work remotely and all these sorts of things. It's never been easier to escape the place that you're currently in.

And I did this for like two years, building a relationship with her, you know, having her trust me, you know, and like becoming a client again, you know, not just like a data point, but an actual client that you know is well treated. And in the end I started to push for her to accept Bitcoin or Monero and she accepted it, right? So I created my own initiative and you can do this. You know, it's not hard. It's investing in the future. You know, it's like putting a tree.

You first need a seed and you need to let it grow. And if you don't work now on this, then you're never going to have it. And if you always chase for someone else to do, then you know you're going to end up like always following. And the side thing of this is humans are creator and creative and I think nowadays everything has to be convenient, you know, everything has to be easy, everything has to be simple. And I push back on that and I say no, it's good sometime if it's hard, you know.

You know what, what else is hard? Training, you know, training, going to the gym every day, going to the dojo, fighting, that's hard. But we know that it brings tremendous health benefits, right? It makes your muscle better, it makes you a better person. So if you always go for the digital convenience, it's the Same thing. You know, you're going to become digitally bloated. You're going to have all sorts of issues.

And you would be surprised how even with minimal investment but a constant one, you can do tremendous changes. And this is, you know, like build things yourself, experiment with 3D printing, experiment with, you know, building your own, your, your own things. And, and, and all of those are things. Because what you have to realize is I think there is a bit of a way like people feel depressed. And I think it's because we, we stopped creat. You know, we are only service worker.

We are the manager of a manager of a manager doing like Zoom meeting and, and Google spreadsheet. That's not that exciting. But like, you know, build something, you know, and go from there. And it's interesting what you said, Seth, about you know, taking picture. I was recently at a concert and nobody was dancing. Everybody was looking at the concert to the screen. And I'm like, you can go on YouTube for that experience.

You know, you can go on YouTube and put the name of the singer and you will get exactly that. And it's like, stop watching a screen and, and, and, and, and, and do something with your hand. That would be my, my recommendation. And it's not programming when I, when I say something with your hand, it's something actually physical.

Which means that they have to live in a particular area and they have to give their Social Security number and other information. They're forced to be on LinkedIn per the company's policies, whatever the case may be. So there's a little bit of a theater, I think to a lot of people in the privacy community. I'm probably hitting some hard strings for listeners right now. So if you're very serious about privacy, another thing that you need to do is to become fully sovereign with your life.

Which means you seek unemployment, which means that you approach the world with a company's name and not your personal name. And you're not having to give out a lot of this personal information that a company requires of you. You're not forced to live in a particular area and then tell them right what your address is and, and what have you. So seeking self employment and then potentially things like homeschooling and all the rest.

These are really big steps that a lot of people listening probably know that they need to take, that they should take, but that they haven't yet. So I'd encourage people to take steps in, in those aspects as well.

Now we do it with seed trays but you could do it with anything and you only need, you know, a few beads and a few strings and that's it. And you can find this and it's a cool thing to do and also to learn about this ancient culture and yeah, so do something with your hands. That's something very important. We are missing that in our society, in our digital society.

And we have a lot of those products where it's like you built, you built it yourself. If you go to Walmart, there is nothing, you know, there is no special hardware you need. So you don't really like. It doesn't scream. It is not like suspicious or anything. And you can do this with off the shelf things and we have a few like this, those kits that you can do. So yeah, I will send you the PDF set.

Y' all are doing doing amazing work. Thank you for coming on.