Oddbean

so, now that i can see nostr, bluesky :bluesky: and farcaster 💨 events streaming alongside each other i can make a couple of observations bluesky is clearly the most active of the three, its outnumber nostr about 3:1 and farcaster 2:1 most of the events on farcaster are likes, and the actual posts themselves, looks like mostly vietnamese, korean, english and russian in about that order of relative frequency, and of the ones in english, 3 out of 4 refer to cryptocurrency in some way, probably it's not so different in the other languages too though it sorta seems like maybe the vietnamese actually have conversations about somethin else than crypto (i didn't bother to translate them, just the lack of crypto dogwhistle words which are probably rendered in english as they are in most languages) farcaster is definitely primarily a firehose of crypto pump chatter, and very little actual social bluesky is a lot more varied, sorta similar breakdown in content to what you see on mastodon, probably similar people and probably a lot of overlap between them nostr has the highest ratio of actual social content and the subject matter is highly varied, though yes bitcoin pops up a lot... definitely nostriches write more original content mostly anecdotal observations of course, i'm not gonna write a frickin academic paper and do analytics on it, that's just what has caught my eye

which all is confirmed by actually reading the events that stream through these protocols it's nice to get confirmation, even if it was kinda obvious to start with nostr is 90% signal and unfortunately most of the clients don't give newbies that feed

I never even heard of these platforms until hearing about them here. I'd want to know what the Vietnamese are talking about. Fascinating country, and I kinda suspect they'll get rid of communism soon.

i have a friend who was there last i heard from him... his wife is from cambodia and they were living in hanoi... it's actually a really big country, quite interesting and cool that the chinese didn't take it over, but they have been the dominant influence especially since communism... reminds me, ukraine and vietnam are very similar in those ways, right on the border of a big former communist country, both quite big and large population, both being annexed by the USA... well, they failed with vietnam but with soft power they dominate ukraine except for the east

My wife and I spent time in Vietnam. Irrespective of the politics, it felt like any other burgeoning economy. Amazed that they still use cash notes. Interesting going to the museums seeing their perspective on the war and viewing all of the captured military equipment. They know how to deal with an invading power (we toured the tunnels). I don’t think anyone will go in there soon. Besides, who else will manufacture the absurdly cheap clothes?

Well... China is still communist. I don't mean like a fully communist economy, in the idealist sense, which never existed anywhere. Communism is all about power. The symbols and idealism are just a neat story to justify the power - which is exactly the same as here, the narrative justifies the power. There's still hammer and sickle signs in every city, still ridiculous anti western/anti imperialist propaganda on posters and in schools, and the supposedly free market isn't free at all - any company over a certain size must employ at least one member of the party to oversee the company, appointed by the local party and at the company's expense, and businesses are arbitrarily shut down pretty regularly. 100% of all power is in the party's hands, and they make sure everyone knows it. But I digress... Communism can't survive without an external capitalism to feed it.

and ironically what communism needs is price discovery! lol i mean, this is so salient now... it just proves that the bullshit is being fed by the most successful fraudsters in the world, the banking families, who have risen to power on their narratives

Yeah. The same banking families still running the show in the west were the ones that set up communism in Russia. Mayyyyybe there was no intention behind it... Its possible they just lost control. But its fascinating to tug at the thread of the people who founded communism in their countries. Lenin was a German secret agent. Mao was a French secret agent, trained in the south of France. Same story with other countries, but I can never remember their names. It could simply be that communism is so debilitating that it was a plan to remove competition (hehehe). In Russia's case, it seems to have been a plan to at least cause them trouble during wartime.

the general principle behind this all is the same mechanics involved in cults, brainwashing is at the centre of how it can run for a long time, and being isolated is required because their economic theories are totally nonsense and they don't persist without someone funding them which means that some dirty thieving cunts have been funding NK for a really long time to keep that shitshow alive how to defeat this stuff? idk, but i know how it works on the small scale in families and small social groups and likely it just scales up with enough money to keep the reality from dawning hard enough to drive people out

These regimes are all platforms for theft, laundering, and human trafficking. Ukraine specializes in laundering, north Korea specializes in human trafficking, and all the shitholes in between are some kind of mix.

I'd say you defeat it one Switzerland at a time. This is really America's policy failure - we regime changed all these countries, but didn't fix any underlying problems. No country needs to be as big as Switzerland, and anything bigger than Switzerland creates a honey pot of bad incentives at the top. We should be explicitly teaching local self sovereignty in any country we clash with, including local language, local agriculture, local militia, local justice... But our own honey pot of corruption at the top means our ideals never make through to other people. So we're doing it wrong. Instead of a giant military, we should flood them with gandalf teachers that like to shoot.

right, so essentially the answer is, go find a region of some other country with a small, robust, conservative and rational majority and do what you can to reinforce their sovereignty was always the way i thought it should be done i just didn't have the time-perspective to understand the bigger picture

Yeah basically. Idk if a majority is needed, especially now that we can spin up a million AIs on tictok. That's one of those things... Either we do it or the bad guys will. Once a dude shows up to the battlefield with a cannon, you either get your own cannon or prepare to do what you're told

Interesting, your observations really highlight the differences in how these platforms are used. Bluesky seems to attract the most users, but the diversity of content on Nostr is what truly stands out to me. The fact that Nostr users produce more original and varied content shows that a genuine social space is developing around the platform, far beyond just Bitcoin discussions. Farcaster, on the other hand, seems much more focused on crypto pumps, which limits its appeal for those seeking a more "social" platform. Bluesky, with its diversity of content and activity, does indeed resemble Mastodon, but it still operates within a relatively centralized framework. I think Nostr has a lot of untapped potential, especially thanks to its decentralized nature and the ability to create authentic discussion spaces without conforming to the dynamics of larger platforms. The number of users isn’t everything—what really matters is the quality of the interaction! #bullishbounty #bitcoin #btc #nostr #zap #zapathon