The Latest

Fire

Los Angeles is built on image. For those, like me, who call the city home, there is a certain high-energy dread that comes when local news is carrying live shots of palm trees ablaze. It really captures LA – this strange beautiful thing engulfed in flames, shooting sparks to ensure the spread of destruction.

Growing up in Glendale, which once famously claimed to be 20 minutes from everything, I remember fleeing in the night as flames seemed to be right beyond the ridge behind our house. Another time, when my parents were out of town, I was up on the roof with a hose, dousing embers from a fire I could see. After a long time away, I came back to the city in 2017, settled into a place in west LA, and just over a year in we had to leave our house as the Woolsey fire barreled its way toward us.

Now, of course, Pacific Palisades is gone. Altadena is gone. Among thousands of others, I had to leave my house in the Santa Monica mountains again; the Palisades fire came the closest to wiping me out than I’ve ever been. I’m thankful to the wind for dying, to the fire department and to a wealth of local knowledge and strategy about fire protection that’s been put into place for over decades in my little mountain spot.

I’m afraid there’s no link to web3 or blockchain this week. Except to say, maybe, that when I thought my house might burn down web3 felt very far away. While I love learning and writing about it, blockchain tech hasn’t directly changed my life yet. In times of crisis I need things I can touch.

My son goes to Palisades Charter High School, or what’s left of it. I’d gotten to know the Palisades pretty well as a result. It was over-the-top rich is a very LA way, not overly ostentatious but very very confident in its wealth. Pacific Palisades was beautiful and had a proportionality to it that felt really welcoming. I found a longer way home from the school that wound though its narrow streets so I could marvel at the beautiful homes, lined with Sycamore trees that are often shrouded in morning fog. As far as neighborhoods go, the loss of the Palisades is a fucking shame. The same goes for Altadena.

That way home is gone now, too. I haven’t seen the Palisades with my own eyes yet, just the almost comically horrendous news footage, and I’m trying to steel myself for the initial visit. It’s a loss of place, but the spirit will continue in the Palisades. It’s what LA does. The stereotype of LA people as being shallow, conceited and drunk on Hollywood has a touch of truth to it. But as a native knows, this city has always been far richer than that. The whole world lives in LA.

The palm trees are out for now, and the bargain we make to live in this wonderous city goes on.  – Matthew Leising, editor in chief, Decential Media

Have you read the definitive history of Ethereum? No? Well then get your copy of Out of the Ether while you can.