I've always admired your ability to speak your mind without being a jerk. Always been a weakness of mine, even when unintended.

Bitcoin is a tool. A very useful tool. Probably one of the best (atm) tools. But I've been coding a very long time. Nothing avoids being replaced. There is no perfect software.

The values and philosophy behind Bitcoin is what really matters to me. Any system build on those fundamentals is something I can live with.

Privacy is an off-putting subject to me. The fact that I have to neuter my Internet connection and constantly play the "why the fuck doesn't this work" game with VPNs in order to keep some asshole online from attempting to fix me was enough I questioned my involvement in Nostr at all. I don't give a crap about Google knowing I like pimento cheese, or Amazon knowing I have an unhealthy addiction to t-shirts. I have no issue with Microsoft collecting data about my PC. I expect these things, and I use the conveniences granted by that data collection (yes, if I use an ad supported service, I would just assume the ads be relevant).

What I don't like is trying to use fundamentally worse software (SimpleX, Firefox, etc) *full time* for every single conversation I have with someone. I don't pay $1200 for a phone to reduce it to the feature set and convenience of a phone I bought 15 years ago. Then I scratch beneath the surface and find out the majority of these projects are funded by the same assholes I thought I was escaping.

There is toxic maximalism on a lot of subjects. People telling other people what they should or should not do without knowing the details of their complicated lives, their threat profiles, their needs... It all reeks of arrogance and hive mind behavior. It's not exclusive to Nostr, nor is Nostr especially bad in that regard. It's the whole Internet.

Thank you for being the person who shares the tools and benefits of using them so people can be informed, without making people feel stupid or small when they don't go as far as you do. It's one of your super powers, and why I always enjoy reading your posts.