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expectations vs reality, dumb crypto events, and zodiac signs on the move
bad networking events, good Portland food trucks, and updated astrological chaos, plus some links your algo would never give you.
Laura Winberry
September 16, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
In partnership with
gm and welcome to issue 35—thanks for being here. 🏴☠️
Last week I wrote about how I’m building an app and, thanks to vibe coding, so is everyone else. This week, I’m continuing the app-building/startup thread and sprinkling in a few crypto-centric thoughts and links for good measure.
Consider this next phase of Babe yet another “learn with me while I do this app-building startup thing I’ve never done before, but am just Aries-mad-scientist enough to take on and believe I can actually do.”
btw, have you heard about the zodiac sign updates? The tldr is that because of the earth’s wobble our view of the stars has shifted over time. As a result, our zodiac signs are roughly 2k years out of date. Which means that even though you’ve got that Leo tattoo across your upper back, you may actually no longer be one.
You can scroll through the neat/free NYT article I just linked above, learn the why/how of things, and then input your birthdate to view your updated sign. When I did this—entered my birth month and year—the calculations showed my sign as both an OG and an updated Aries. 100-fucking-percent ram. Coulda called that one.
K onward to the rest of this bish.
not not a ram
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***back to my shit***
Last weekend I drove to Portland (Oregon) for a blockchain event. Whether I didn’t read the marketing around the event thoroughly enough or the marketing around it wasn’t that thorough, it was not what I’d expected.
What I expected: an intimate setting with cute drinks and a cute dj spinning chill beats in the background where we could network in a non-sleezey way and nerd out on web3 and intermittently hear from informed speakers about current local and/or federal legislation initiatives related to crypto.
It was, after all, put on by Stand With Crypto, a “nonprofit that champions for clear, common-sense regulations for the crypto industry.” One could see how I might have expected such things.
What it was in reality: vendors and groups shilling things; crypto-themed carnival games (whack the gas fees whack-a-mole!); strangers announcing things on stage that no one could actually hear; other strangers prompting the crowd to chant stand with crypto! in unison; me refusing to chant bc whenever prompted with an “everybody say…” it makes me want to do the exact opposite, please and thank you; the opportunity to pay for overpriced drinks with USDC; yelling over loud music to try and have a convo that was worth a damn.
🤦🏽♀️
Ok I’m being a little dramatic. Really, attending this thing just reconfirmed for me that events of this ilk are not my style. Sure they’re someone’s style, just not mine.
I did end up meeting one really nice woman, a fellow SheFi alum. We got to meander the loud-ass carnival, enjoy a really nice sunset over the city, and chat. We of course talked blockchain, investing, yield farming (she’s very into it), and other non-crypto-related things, and now I kinda have a new local friend in the space which is neat.
I also ended up having the loveliest weekend because I:
1. Left the event early and got to ride through the tree-filled, garden-filled Portland night and hear coyotes yipping from a thickly-wooded Rose City golf course.
2. Ate a home-cooked meal while sitting on a friend’s kitchen floor.
3. Spent the next day thinking and thinking and wildly working on my app.
Peninsula Park Rose Garden ftw
4. Found a food truck that serves gluten-free stadium food and reveled in a gf (I have to! otherwise I shit myself!) corndog and funnel cake and literally teared up because it reminded me of my childhood on the Jersey Shore.
5. Smelled a lot of roses, solo and with two good friends, and generally just got to wander and people watch and feel like a kid taking the world in.
And 6. Caught a half hour of Original Practice Shakespeare (Julius Caesar) unfolding at the Mount Tabor amphitheater.
“The only way I know to be awesome at startups is to be obsessively focused and pegged to the floor of the deep end, gasping for air.”
On the drive to/from Portland, I also finally started listening to the StartUp Podcast and holy shit is it GOOD. It aired from 2014-2019 and the first season documents the making of Gimlet Media, by the founders of Gimlet, in real time. One of the founders, Alex Blumberg, worked with This American Life and Planet Money and you’ll def recognize his voice. The whole season is pretty meta, wholly informative, and totally worth a listen. Parts of it also made me lol—enjoy.
Speaking of startups, have you heard of Cyan Banister? She’s a a wildly successful angel investor who grew up on a Navajo reservation and was homelessness by age 15. In this Dialectic Podcast episode, Jackson Dahl sits down with Cyan to talk about a lot of things, mostly her unique approach to life. I highly recommend.
Well, that’s it for issue 35. Thanks for hanging out—send me your non-sketchy links, and I’ll see you here next week, nerds.
xoxo,
lw
PS: Subscribe now if you want in on this arithmetic. Miss the last issue? It’s right here. Also literally none of this is ever financial advice. I’m sharing what I learn through Babe, and perhaps you’ll learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, maybe, who knows, ily. Also if you’re not already, come hang with Babe on insta, Farcaster, and TBA 🟦.
Next week in Babe: More links ily!