Not sure what came over me. I still have an X account, mostly because many of the commentators I follow post exclusively on X. But I generally restrict my own posts to Nostr. That said, while sipping on some Compass Coffee Bitcoin Blend this morning, I nearly Apple paid my way into an X Premium subscription – the blue check! Eleven dollars, and with Apply pay, two thumb clicks while staring into the screen is all you need. Ultimately, I didn’t do it. Time to get writing again on Nostr.

The summer kind of got away from me. Lots of happenings on the family front. There’s only so many hours in the day, and I’ve been making a more concerted effort to chop away at the pile of reading I’ve assigned myself. I’m also trying to be more balanced in what I read, making space for things other than Bitcoin books and the like. As Bitcoin becomes increasingly “normal,” probably time for me to do the same on the reading front.

Things I’m watching – the Middle East. I don’t think the tit-for-tat is over yet, although I suspect the overall decibel level of these actions is unlikely to continue escalating. But should the parties continue up the ladder of escalation, what might accelerate that doom loop? Keep an eye on Turkey. If the fighting in Lebanon expands, might Turkey step in to create some kind of safe zone in parts of Lebanon? That would put two US allies in geographic proximity to one another eyeball to eyeball. Just my own red team thinking.

And still aghast at what I’m reading about rescue operations in hurricane afflicted areas. The America I grew up in was better than this.