Hey Hubski! Hey thenewgreen! It's uh, it's coffeesp00ns here! It's kind of weird to actually hear my own voice because one of the things they don't tell you about being a trans person is that you have to kind of re-learn how to speak and I'm still kind of in the process of doing that. So my voice is kind of sort of half of boy voice and half of girl voice and it kind of depends on how much I'm focusing. So we'll see. I'm sure you'll get a range of coffeesp00ns.

So here are the questions.

First question is: What is something I do well?

As someone who is incredibly self-critical this is pretty difficult to answer but I like to think of myself as a pretty good bass player. I have my Master's in bass now and I've done relatively well and I'm you know I tend to get a lot of compliments on my playing but I always think of the things I need to do to get better because those are the things that have kind of been drilled into me over time. Just because that's kind of how it is in classical music. No one, it's very rare that you have someone say "Good job." You mostly just get, "Ok, well, that was okay but this is wrong. Or this is wrong now. All right, that was a little bit better but now think about this instead because you need to work on this." There's no blanket positive, or at least very rarely there is. It's uh, I don't know, ingrained at this point.

I'm also a pretty good cook. I've gotten into cooking since I started working in a restaurant though thankfully I don't work there anymore.

Second question is: What would I change about hubski if I could?

I think I would make it uglier. Just to make it a total turn-off to the people who aren't going to care about the community. I know that that's probably like a stupid thing to say. But, I find that it would almost get rid of a whole bunch of people who aren't here for the content. Maybe it would prevent some people from being here even though they would be good contributors. But I don't know. It just seems like an interesting thing to do.

And the third question is: What is my message?

Well, in the wake of the things that have just happened as I record this, it happened on Friday and it's now Sunday. There was the attack in Paris and previously there was also an attack in Beirut and also in Kenya. And I think the thing, the message that I would like to give people is that giving into fear and painting others with broad strokes and allowing yourself to be controlled by someone else's message are all really dangerous things. It's easy to say that all Muslim people are bad or that all people from the Middle East are bad or what have you. But it ruins, and completely eliminates so much of the complexity of the situations and the frank realities of the situation. Take the Islamic state for example. There's maybe 1000 people who are active members of IS. Considering the amount of Muslim people there are, that's like .1 or maybe even .01 of the amount of Muslims in the world. And thinking all Muslims are like that is like thinking that all Christians are like the Westboro Baptist Church. It's just insanity. So love each other. Be critical. And don't forget to be awesome.

Thanks for having me.