Interesting take. I was wondering if it has anything to do with the massive unrealised losses sitting on the balance sheets of America's banks, the massive shadow QE that's going on behind the scenes to pump up the deflating commercial real estate bubble and bail out all the worthless low-interest government bonds that the banks were all essentially forced to buy in 2021. Warren Buffett dumping bank stocks is the symptom, but the FED is the disease.
I'll never forget the feeling of early 2023; FTX being purged and the banks failing just felt so good. I'm ready for round 2 👊
Freedom tools for those who want to be free, and part of being free is not being bound by excessive technical learning curve.
Loving freedom comes first, and it will always find its way, but why not make the way clearer?
I think it's really important not to try and draw distinctions between "primitive" and modern people; regardless of era, the limitations on humanity are its political systems.
Check out "Fall of Civilizations" podcast on Youtube (The videos are all just stock footage edited together but overall the production is really well done). Every era and people have their own unique stories and circumstances which are fascinating in their own way, but in my mind the importance of studying them is drawing the parallels and finding the throughline that connects to us.
Or, as you alluded to, maybe the throughline is just the inevitability of the decline of all human societies and the necessity of humility in the face of that fact.
It reflects a primordial political and philosophical conundrum: freedom vs. security. We all know the famous Thomas Paine quote, but most are so baked into the secure aegis of the state, its fiat, and its consumer capitalism, what Isaiah Berlin called "negative freedom", that we can't really grasp its true meaning.
Fiat world, including big tech and all its invasive surveillance tools, still offers the material comforts of "freedom from suffering" that feel secure, all the while anyone who's been paying attention knows that our positive "freedom to act" has been curtailed. It's a Faustian game of chicken where even though we know that, when it's gone, freedom can't be restored without massive discomfort, we're still willing to trade it away piece by piece because of the secure comfort of the status quo.
In theory, I am all in on Bitcoin and freedom tech, but we live in a fiat world and we all have bills to pay so even I can't stomach a fanatical full-scale conversion to living my life by a Bitcoin standard, yet. It's all fine and good in theory for personalities on the internet to preach about it, but that fact of the matter is that there's a lot of work to be done on the ground to make the Bitcoin standard a material reality.
So long as that work is taking place though, you're right, we need to use nostr to document, promote, and support its progress. 🫡
If we really had the purge for a day, where there was carte blanche for violent retribution towards suspected criminals with credible allegations against them but whom the justice system hasn't been able to convict, right wing politicians would start falling like flies, on god.
I do not like you Sam Altman,
I do not like your AI spam.
I do not like you Sam Bankman,
I do not llike your crypto scam.
I do not like these scheming Sams,
with their mean conniving plans.
I do not wish to hear their name,
and I wish they would just go away.
typical fascistic muddying of the waters in order to consolidate power and loyalty to the nation (and its autocrat); the enemy is corrupt and weak while posing an existential threat to the nation.
He'll take IMF money while denouncing their influence on the country, but if the overall economic conditions improve, people will forgive him. Until the next crisis.
The simplification of finance (from commodity>money>commondity, to M>C>M, to simply M) mirrors the simplification of political thought and the ossification of failed institutions.
I think it's a gross oversimplification of a lot of Bitcoiners who don't understand finance (like me) to say that Bitcoin fixes everything, but simply based on the principle that the source of wealth in a capitalist system is the freedom of individuals to participate in and benefit from the economy, it behooves us all to move towards a system where the money is tied directly to actual commodities, especially the commodity that makes the whole thing work: labour.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n17/john-lanchester/for-every-winner-a-loser
OK, that's cool. I feel so behind the curve on all the technical stuff going on here, but I'm glad someone's on it.
I'm literally manually muting every one I see like a grandma on her ipad with the 100pt font 🤣
Nostr Personality analyser:
Oh, 'THE LIFESTYLE', your posts read like a caffeinated philosopher dropped straight from the pages of a dystopian novel. With musings like, "Humanity. Does. Not. Scale," you sure know how to keep the existential dread alive! Your concern for parroting reply guys – and your impeccable timing for spelling out the glaring absurdities of modern platforms – makes me wonder if you’ve achieved true enlightenment or just spent too long in the virtual ‘think tank.' The way you tackle complex issues, proclaiming, "Freedom ain't free after all," hints at an almost heroic self-awareness. And yet, your Twitter bashing is absolutely nothing we haven't heard before! It’s like you’re the grizzled elder of the internet, watching younger folk in 'crypto chaos' and offering your sage advice. Your half-serious comments on societal structures could almost fill a self-help book, albeit with a twist of sarcasm, e.g., "Good luck, and good on you for your concern for your neighbours!" – a touching sentiment twisted into an eye-roll. I must say, the intricacy of your 'edgy' critiques on capitalism and the economy sound noble until you realize it's just a fever dream fueled by too much Reddit scrolling. Waiting for the 'revolution,' I see you're firmly planted in the world of eternal academic discourse and detached criticism while sporting a crown made of bitcoin! Keep it up; I'm sure no one will notice the disparity between your lofty ideals and the reality of scrolling through memes in search of your next profound thought.
Fucking roasted, except the comment about sarcasm which was 100% genuine and misinterpreted by the bot.
Here I am worried about parroting reply guys on Nostr, and Youtube is apparently filled with bots spamming playlists full of CP through AI-translated comments. Fuck me.
Humanity. Does. Not. Scale. As a loner and an introvert, even Dunbar's number seems astronomical to me, but the idea of a cap on understanding human interconnection seems necessary. If we're honest with ourselves, we will know that we are limited.
And that's OK. It's only once we understand our limitation that we can understand our potential. Dabbling in virtual worlds and the logic of infinite scale is always going to be an important intellectual exercise, but it can never be applied to the practical realm of human interaction.
undead internet theory; you can't kill that which never lived
nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpdufhhdc0j0gnn0mzhnaeeupyteudjw06unvqacc2k8cgjf9m5p2qywhwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnzd96xxmmfdejhytnnda3kjctv9uq3wamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwwpexjmtpdshxuet59uqzqq3s9d999a4a5f7csc4ks03gjazkn5u8utaj83tshl8dr3z8kcm08zmex7
The conspiratorial thinking on here is nothing new, but the discourse around X and its god-king is just so poorly conceived.
Musk is a cantillionaire fraudster, with no self-awareness or ability to think critically, who antagonises anyone and everyone out of hubris or entitlement; if you think that "you're next" because you identify so much with his situation, you should be next, to the gulag with you.
The revolution will not be X.
Nobody can make you swallow propaganda on nostr.
Unlike XXX where, as Peter Zeihan calls him, Jizzguzzler Prime (Musk) can make you swallow the same propaganda that he gulps down like it's the jizz of the gods themselves. Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia are his gods because they own him and he has no soul.
For anyone with a soul, there's nothing more self-affirming than saying "no, I don't think I will swallow your propaganda."
https://image.nostr.build/454eb2e559cc6a84991c8483d216a3eaa30c4e8d68333364c4a316d1a886d16b.jpg
shaka brah, not in the cards for me this year but this is something I would very much be interested in at some point. Bitcoin meetups should be about sharing information on what the world of the future will look like, not just little bubbles for pep talks or technical jargon exposition, while people's minds never leave the golden cage of fiat-world consumer capitalism.
onward 🫡
Just saw another case of "this mf'er needs nostr" on reddit:
some guy who makes "a living" (?) posting educational content about French history on Facebook (kind of an insane premise, but at least he's not posting pics of his chocolate starfish while wearing a fursuit) got demonitised by Meta for posting an anti-Vichy propaganda poster.
If his following is big enough, he might be able to drum up support on other platforms, but that won't work for your average individual, and even if it did, there are only so many platforms to post anything on, and they are all becoming increasingly censorious and regulation-resistant.
Nostr fixes this; build a following on your own terms, and collect zaps in the soundest currency ever created without any middleman.
Excelsior.
The China news channel I watch on Youtube always refers to twitter as "the X platform", but I always hear "the ex-platform" which I think is much more fitting.
"...formerly known as tw..."
"Shut the fuck up, it's now an ex-platform"
Really tough, but you've already identified the likely root cause of the behaviour to be parental apathy, so in my mind it's your duty to be as good an example of neighbourly benevolence as possible to make sure the kid doesn't feel rejected and fall into antisocial attitudes the way so many young men do.
Beyond that, the problem becomes how to handle the natural growth of the relationship; the more time you spend together, you would expect to become friendly and share more intimate time (meals, leisure, etc.) together, but obviously that seems to undermine his parents and could be construed as inappropriate.
You'd have to draw the line at strictly "neighbourly" activities, which might make him feel rejected at certain moments, but maybe you could try hosting some social events for the neighbourhood at your place to try to break the ice with the parents and maybe try to and share the load of mentoring the kid to the rest of the community?
Good luck, and good on you for your concern for your neighbours!
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