Jason Putorti

Good news though is that the waiters all still love Murphy and bring him water and treats even before serving me 😆 here is Murphy getting tafelspitz fleisch from Plachutta

Arrived in my beloved Vienna this morning // my Uber driver from the airport told me he moved to Austria from Turkey about 16 years ago and loves it here. I mentioned how the Turkish and Korean language uniquely have similar sentence structure (I think just Korean, Finnish, Turkish, Kazak) …then he said before he moved to Vienna he had like 10 Korean people stay at his house. I was like “Warum?!” And he said bc his mom ran into this touring student group on the street, and she felt bad bc it was really hot so she offered to have them come over, then she invited them to stay …which they all did (sleeping in the single living room for 2 nights) LOL he was super jovial and good natured. We started talking about how wonderful Vienna is — saying the usual things that everyone in Vienna extols — that Vienna is like a museum, it’s beautiful and clean and safe. But then he added, “it’s gotten less safe these last two years.” I was surprised he said it out loud, but it has been my experience too. I’ve lived in Vienna for ~8 years (it feels like my home and the most beautiful, enchanting city in the world)… before and after that (starting when I was in college) I would always make it to Vienna for at least 1-3 weeks a year. Covid 19 pandemic lock down were the first years in decades I didn’t get to Vienna. After lockdown, my first time back (in 2022) I was surprised to find myself not feeling safe here. Usually I would walk home at any hour after many cocktails with friends and feel totally unbothered…but in 2022 I also noticed I felt uneasy taking Murphy outside of my super safe Innere Stadt located flat to potty late at night. I chalked 2022 up to me possibly being hyper vigilant from living in 2020s Gotham SF, having Murphy for the first time there, being in peak holiday season post pandemic crowd. But then in 2023 when I returned at the end of Ball Season when there weren’t as many tourist, and felt even MORE unsafe even outside of the Opera and most posh Hotel Sacher, there were shady groups of men spitting on the ground and cat calling or heckling (this is like, absolutely unheard of in sophisticated Wien). I quietly mentioned this shift I noticed to a couple friends — one friend said his friend’s sister was held at knifepoint when she was at at ATM by a group of men demanding she take out money for them (in Vienna??!!) and another told me that this is a politically incorrect thing to talk about but there is a lot of political turmoil around Vienna’s strong history as an extremely friendly refugee space re whether it they should close borders or invest more in cultural assimilation education. I have at least 3 dear friends (millennials) who were refugees in Vienna as children in the 80s (one Iranian, one Russian and one Bosnian) who have all become super successful, love Vienna, and feel Viennese to me. Anyway, being back now the 3rd year since lockdown in Vienna, I feel this definite uneasy shift still and it makes me so sad. Anyone know what’s going on? And Vienna is an absolute treasure and triumph of human civilization—we can’t lose this one refuge :(

@shaykevin A$aaaaaaaap

i returned to coinbase last year, and redesigned the app from the ground up with my amazing team / old friends to refocus us to become the world's best crypto exchange and bank.

@auderdy “Are you famous?”

Sadly didn’t get an Apple Vision Pro for Opera Ball, but still had the most enchanting night (!)