There she is, Enola Gay, on public display in the Udvar-Hazy Center. For those of you that may not know, she carried the first atomic bomb Little Boy that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in August, 1945.

I got goosebumbs all over my body standing in front of here and thinking about where in time this machine had been. One second, 78.000 people dead, children, women, man, mainly civilians. I had never been so close to mass destruction before. The only other place I had been that made me feel similar was Dachau, were 42.000 people died over a 12 years period. Dachau felt really evil. Elona Gay felt different, not from this planet.

I wondered why the plane was standing at random between other planes. No extensive display or historic context. What a lost opportunity.

Then I understood, people in the US must still struggle till this day with this part of history.

How would you have decided when you would have been president at the time? With all this responsibility for world peace and many lives on your shoulders, either way you decide. 78.000 people dead and ending a terrible WW2? Or sending many US soldiers in a terrifying death fighting Japan? We may all decide different. How a president must have felt very lonely taking it and accepting its burden.

The lost opportunity is that we do not think through this decision ourselves because the plane just stands there without context.

Do we have a different perspective today about lost civilian life in war? Like in Israel or in Gaza, or by Russian attacks on civilians in Ukraine, than 85 years ago, when Germans bombarded entire Rotterdam, or when British forces bombarded Caen, aiming to hit German soldiers, but killing thousands of French civilians?

I have read that earlier attempts to have more extensive displays of the plane ended in fights. I don't know what the script at the time was. It is true, you need a truly neutral and fact based display, not a moral story of what is good or bad. Every person looking at the display should decide for himself how he feels about it.

Enola Gay: the people that took decisions and executed orders deserve a proper display. So do the people that died. All of them had to carry a lot of load no matter how you see it. They should not be shuffled away, neither side should be forgotten.

Let's not close our eyes for the past as it is often our future.

Would one make a similar decision today?

While we are all excited in the anticipation what is to come when the flood gates are opened, let me also say that we are at the brink of losing something special the community had in the past years. It always felt like a warm blanket, opinions were respected, creativity stood first and we all somehow took care of each other. There was this shared view to be part of something that makes things better than is out there today. Freedom. And while change is what life is all about, and while we are all eager to go forward, I just want to look over my shoulder one last time and say thank you for being part of the experience.

We collectively will make focus, deso and the entire ecosystem great. Some by being personally engaged in the community, by posts and creativity, others by thinking how we can launch the next big thing on deso, or running a node.

While the social and financial part are the primary purpose for focus, I still think there is a lot of potential in the B2B market with industrial usage. We have tried but not reached our goals in this area yet. But we will not stop.

Enjoy the ride. Or like they say in MA: Live free or die.

number 223

Anyone out here who is working in crypto valley in the Swiss Zug / Zürich area who is willing to share some insights?

SEC chair Gary Gensler stepping down on Jan. 20 may be good news for @nader, expecting a more crypto friendly successor

What about keeping a FOCUS practice environment open for newbies once focus is on mainnet?

What is your view?

Will it lower the entry barrier coming from platforms like twitter?

Has anyone ever taken any effort to test and validate the technical claims made by the deso team, like number of transaction per second and alike?

Why Focus' launch delay matters

Speed and ability to execute are key

View this post at diamondapp.com/u/pruts/blog/why-focus-launch-delay-matters

#blog

First of all, I love the DESO blockchain, i love the concept, and i fully support it. So don't get me wrong.

Two things:
1. focus developers receive 40% of tokens, but the only ones who put real USD in are the people that make the reservations (28% of tokens) or buy $FOCUS post-launch. So these 28% are in the end diluted by the other categories of tokens. Or is the consortium backing up the 40% developer tokens with USD?

2. if I would be the consortium who has founded DESO, then I would participate in the platform as a user like SHARKWHALE or something similar and buy big saying how great $FOCUS is so others follow as well.

How do these things work? Am I too critical? Can anyone explain? I am seriously interested to learn.

I did reserve $FOCUS by the way. I was easy, real easy to do that. So that was great.

More difficult was reading $FOCUS tokenomics: at first sight a complex construct to fully understand its implications in all details. I find it a bit of a bummer to familiarize yourself with a lot of details before using a platform or application the way it is intended and get it wrong after all on a key detail, or rules get changed over time. Then again, change is the way to innovate.

I am in for the journey and plan to help build the platform.