Notneo🪐 @Notneocrypt - Twitter Profile

I was flying today on a quick day trip. It was an entirely uneventful flight. Smooth, routine, and just minutes from landing. Then a frantic voice broke through the headset. Our call sign. “Cancel approach clearance. Climb and maintain 3,000 feet. Immediate left turn heading 010. I have an emergency aircraft inbound. Guy lost his engine.” I read back the instructions and complied. My co-pilot immediately started looking for the aircraft on TCAS. After a few tense seconds, he found him. “He’s 1,200 feet below us.” Shit. That meant he was less than 1,000 feet above the ground. I listened as the pilot of the emergency aircraft told ATC he wasn’t going to make the airport he was heading towards. ATC told him there was another airport off to his right. The pilot answered: “That’s where I’m shooting for.” I looked out the window. This was a large metropolitan area. No empty fields. No clean roads. No obvious place to put an airplane down if the engine was gone and the runway wasn’t within gliding distance. If this guy couldn’t make that airport, I knew his chances of survival were bad. Then ATC keyed up again. In the background, I could hear the alarms. And then came the phrase you hear in far too many aviation accident recordings: “Radar contact lost.” The controller made one more attempt to vector him toward the closest airfield. Then silence. A full minute passed, but it felt much longer. The frequency went dead quiet in that heavy way where everyone listening knows what might have just happened, but nobody wants it to be true. Then the controller called again, asking the aircraft to confirm whether he had landed safely. I held my breath. A shaky voice finally came back over the radio. He was safe on the ground. I let out a sigh of relief. Aviation is a small community. I had never met that pilot before. Odds are I never will. But in that moment, every pilot on frequency was with him. Nobody was mocking him. Nobody was cheering for the crash. Nobody was saying, “Skill issue.” Nobody was saying, “No crying in the cockpit.” Everyone was silently hoping this man made it home. After landing and during my uber ride I couldn’t help but think about crypto. Because crypto is also a small community. We like to pretend it’s huge, but the people truly living on the blockchain, building, trading, launching, experimenting, bleeding, losing, learning, and coming back again - that circle is not nearly as big as it feels. And yet somewhere along the way, too many people forgot how to be human. We cheer when people get liquidated. We laugh when someone gets rugged. We say “no crying in the casino” when someone loses money they probably couldn’t afford to lose. We dunk on people at their lowest point because their pain makes us feel smarter, or stronger. But this space was supposed to be a financial revolution. And revolutions built by people who lose their humanity usually become just another machine that extracts. There is nothing wrong with accountability. There is nothing wrong with telling people the truth. There is nothing wrong with reminding people that leverage, greed, and bad decisions have consequences. But there is a line between honesty and cruelty. There is a line between “learn the lesson” and “I hope you crash.” Today, I listened to a man calmly fight for his life with no engine, no altitude, and no good options. And every single stranger listening wanted the same thing: Make it. That should not be rare. Especially not among pioneers. Especially not among people who claim they are here to build something better. So maybe the moral is simple: Root for people to survive the crash. Then help them become better pilots. 🫡 From the depths — The White Whale 🐋

WhiteWhaleLabs's tweet photo. I was flying today on a quick day trip.

It was an entirely uneventful flight. Smooth, routine, and just minutes from landing.

Then a frantic voice broke through the headset.

Our call sign.

“Cancel approach clearance. Climb and maintain 3,000 feet. Immediate left turn heading 010. I have an emergency aircraft inbound. Guy lost his engine.”

I read back the instructions and complied.

My co-pilot immediately started looking for the aircraft on TCAS. After a few tense seconds, he found him.

“He’s 1,200 feet below us.”

Shit.

That meant he was less than 1,000 feet above the ground.

I listened as the pilot of the emergency aircraft told ATC he wasn’t going to make the airport he was heading towards.

ATC told him there was another airport off to his right.

The pilot answered:

“That’s where I’m shooting for.”

I looked out the window.

This was a large metropolitan area. No empty fields. No clean roads. No obvious place to put an airplane down if the engine was gone and the runway wasn’t within gliding distance.

If this guy couldn’t make that airport, I knew his chances of survival were bad.

Then ATC keyed up again.

In the background, I could hear the alarms.

And then came the phrase you hear in far too many aviation accident recordings:

“Radar contact lost.”

The controller made one more attempt to vector him toward the closest airfield.

Then silence.

A full minute passed, but it felt much longer.

The frequency went dead quiet in that heavy way where everyone listening knows what might have just happened, but nobody wants it to be true.

Then the controller called again, asking the aircraft to confirm whether he had landed safely.

I held my breath.

A shaky voice finally came back over the radio.

He was safe on the ground.

I let out a sigh of relief.

Aviation is a small community. I had never met that pilot before. Odds are I never will. But in that moment, every pilot on frequency was with him.

Nobody was mocking him.

Nobody was cheering for the crash.

Nobody was saying, “Skill issue.”

Nobody was saying, “No crying in the cockpit.”

Everyone was silently hoping this man made it home.

After landing and during my uber ride I couldn’t help but think about crypto.

Because crypto is also a small community.

We like to pretend it’s huge, but the people truly living on the blockchain, building, trading, launching, experimenting, bleeding, losing, learning, and coming back again - that circle is not nearly as big as it feels.

And yet somewhere along the way, too many people forgot how to be human.

We cheer when people get liquidated.

We laugh when someone gets rugged.

We say “no crying in the casino” when someone loses money they probably couldn’t afford to lose.

We dunk on people at their lowest point because their pain makes us feel smarter, or stronger.

But this space was supposed to be a financial revolution.

And revolutions built by people who lose their humanity usually become just another machine that extracts.

There is nothing wrong with accountability.

There is nothing wrong with telling people the truth.

There is nothing wrong with reminding people that leverage, greed, and bad decisions have consequences.

But there is a line between honesty and cruelty.

There is a line between “learn the lesson” and “I hope you crash.”

Today, I listened to a man calmly fight for his life with no engine, no altitude, and no good options.

And every single stranger listening wanted the same thing:

Make it.

That should not be rare.

Especially not among pioneers.

Especially not among people who claim they are here to build something better.

So maybe the moral is simple:

Root for people to survive the crash.

Then help them become better pilots.

🫡 From the depths —
The White Whale 🐋

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Notneo🪐

@Notneocrypt

3 months ago

Arbitrum wasn’t as trustless as people thought… Hidden in its code were admin functions capable of pausing or freezing parts of the network. Not widely understood. Not clearly communicated. In a space built on “decentralization,” That changes the narrative. Code is law… until it isn’t. 👀

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