Last summer marked the beginning of the decentralized, friendly competition to the longtime centrally-organized Porcupine Freedom Festival. Some people called it Somaliafest, others called it Shirefest, still others came up with other names. What it ended up being was a couple dozen liberty-loving people camping with each other, a couple of great parties (one including Will Coley as the DJ), and a nationally syndicated talk radio show recording in the campground.
This year, New Hampshire’s decentralized liberty camping event is back, once again to be held Jun 14th-18th (the five days prior to Porcfest). However, the talk radio shows on LRN.FM have been calling this year’s event Forkfest, a name created by Liberty Lobbyist Darryl W Perry.
Why Forkfest? It’s an embracing of the idea of “forking” or when a movement (cryptocurrency, political, religious, or whatever) has a split, usually when some perceived impasse among a growing group is reached. It’s something that has happened in New Hampshire’s freedom migration over the last fifteen years on multiple occasions. Such schisms are natural with large numbers of people, which most libertarians don’t have if they are outside of New Hampshire, so libertarians aren’t used to it. Given the ever-increasing number of liberty activists moving to NH, they were inevitable.
Ernest Hancock and Will Coley Broadcasting from Forkfest 2017
Unlike Porcfest, which is a great festival in its own right, Forkfest differs in that there is no organizer, no board of directors, and no one in charge. That means that everyone attending must decide how to self-organize. Throw a party, perform music, put on speeches, sell food or merchandise, whatever happens to be your inspiration! Or, if you just want to take it easy and camp around the company of other libertarians, voluntarists, and liberty-minded anarchists, no problem! Just lock down your camping, RV site, or Motel Room at Roger’s Campground for June 14th-18th and enjoy. There are no tickets to Forkfest.
If you’d like to plan something for attendees to do, see what else is being planned (there’s at least one party, athletic events, and a marriage already scheduled as of this writing), or just connect with other Forkfest attendees, visit the Forkfest forum (part of the Shire Forum). Also, you’ll find links to Forkfest chat rooms and an event to which you can RSVP on the unofficial Forkfest website at Forkfest.party.
I accept the FSP Award for “Spreading the Message”
In 2016 at the Free State Project‘s yearly “Liberty Forum” convention, there was an excellent awards ceremony called the “Liberty in Action Awards” put on by Andre Rosa and a large cast of volunteer performers. Lots of production value and practice was required to make the entertaining and very funny stage presentation. The awards were given out in several categories where the nominees and winners were selected by popular vote of FSP participants. It was a fantastic show and really well done.
The performers put a lot of work into this, so why did it take until now (over two years since it happened) for video of the awards to be released?
Despite paying a professional videographer to record the whole ceremony with multiple cameras, the official video was never released by the Free State Project. The official videographer, Free Keene blogger JJ Schlessinger, reported he completed the video shortly after the event and delivered it to the FSP per their contract with him. No one outside JJ and the FSP board of directors has ever seen it. Thankfully, there was an independent videographer present who was not hired to be there by the FSP! Paul Gibbons of Red Pill Recording has now released his video of the event from start-to-finish:
I still can’t believe it. I just watched this video by CNN about a New Hampshire man who is able to live his entire life on cryptocurrency. I’ve come close, but he’s got even me beat. Truly an impressive feat. To learn his secret, watch this video:
HB 1283 would prohibit DUI checkpoints in NH. It has already passed the house. This is full video of the senate judiciary hearing on the bill, featuring libertarian rebuttals to the head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving!
Proving he’s the most consistent, longest-running activist in the Shire, Dave Ridley from RidleyReport.com once again returns to Keene to occupy the hallways and confront bureaucrats and politicians with tough questions. If you want to jump straight to the encounter with Keene Police, it’s here. However, if you have time, it’s one of a series of entertaining videos Ridley recorded while attempting to attend a “public” meeting at Keene State College.
Ridley is known for his excellent “ambush” interviews of politicians and bureaucrats and this series doesn’t disappoint with ridiculous reactions a-plenty. In the initial video in the series, he actually gets some answers to his questions from city councilor Phil Jones:
Immediately after, the interactions return to what longtime Ridley Report viewers expect from bureaucrats and political people that Ridley ambushes – evading, cowardice, and excuses: (more…)
This weekend there were nationwide anti-gun protests across the United States and one of them happened in Keene’s Central Square on Saturday morning. Nationally syndicated talk radio program “Free Talk Live” co-host Chris Rietmann came out with a sign announcing he was an AR-15 owner and inviting people to talk to him. Another talk show host, Vincent Freeman from “Questioning Authority” was there to document:
Also appearing in favor of freedom in the video is Robert from Vermont, a regular Free Talk Live caller. For all the people in NH who want to ban guns, they should just move to Massachusetts and they’ll instantly attain their goals.
Rietmann is a regular Thursday night co-host on Free Talk Live and Vincent’s show is live on Saturday nights. Both shows are streamed live now on Twitch in HD and of course are available in audio form via streaming and satellite on LRN.FM.
Now, in just the first quarter of 2018, an explosion of competition has hit the Manchester area. Two national Bitcoin Vending Machine operators have entered the NH market and added several machines. One company called Coinsource dropped three BVMs into Manchester back in late January and within a month, a Nevada-based company Coincloud placed a BVM one block north of the original CVM at Murphy’s Taproom in Manch at a vape shop called Vaporamas.
Manchester’s CVM Explosion, as of March 2018
That same company has also placed units in brand new New Hampshire markets, also at vape shops in Nashua and Salem! Finally, New Hampshire’s newest BVM just went online about a week ago in Manchester’s Mall of New Hampshire in the food court. It’s a smart location – people sitting around eating have more time to get curious about the machine and maybe check it out. The operator of the mall unit is the brand new “Simple BTC LLC”.
That’s a total of 13 Cryptocurrency Vending Machines (though the units from Coincloud, Coinsource, and Simple BTC are BTC-only at this time) in and across Southern New Hampshire. Sadly, the Twin Mountain BVM in the North Country closed when the gas station housing it went out of business last year. Compare NH to Massachusetts, where according to the excellent website “Coin ATM Radar” there are 24 CVMs for 6.79 million people, which is one machine for every 283,101 people. In NH it’s 13 CVMs for 1.35 million people, which is one for every 103,846 people. New Hampshire is crushing Massachusetts with more affordable rates at its machines and nearly three times more CVMs-per-capita! NH even beats out NY, CA, and FL ranking at #5 nationwide for CVMs-per-capita, with almost ten machines per one million population (using 2015 numbers and data from Coin ATM Radar). You can see where your state ranks on this spreadsheet. (more…)
