Hey everyone. Had a freak accident, and wife had to call 911. My left arm is out of commission for at least a few days, so can't produce products, or packing.

Please be patient, and I'll be back up and running as soon as possible.

Prayers are more than welcome. Appreciate you all! 🫂

It turns out that running ETL jobs on 5GB of CSVs takes a while on a laptop.

Moderns have spurned family, community and God. The only thing they cling to is life, which is severely debased as a result of their spurning.

Looking at the geopolitical situation in the world, I am officially placing WW3 into my 2026 bingo card. 😭

Nostr currently has ~14k-32k users. It’s great being here with the freaks. There isn’t as much pressure to be an influencer. You’re free to be more genuine and weird. There’s probably extreme alpha here too, but people from the outside wouldn’t even think to look. Everyone is so radically individualistic that much of what’s said here wouldn’t compute to a collectivist, polite-society outsider.

You have to train your kids to be able to handle money properly.

But I don't believe that giving your kids money early on in their lives automatically means they will be lazy and spoiled.

It is a challenge to find the balance.

There is a large group of U.S. adults who will vote for and philosophically defend the position that theft from productive members of society and businesses should be enforced by the state and that plundered wealth be reallocated to provide free housing and “harm reduction” to homeless criminal drug addicts.

Truly insane and unbelievable.

All these foreign shitheads came to America to take advantage of us because we are inherently good people.

I refuse to have my values used against me by complete fuckwads who can't do anything but lie, cheat and steal.

America is for Americans and I am sick of pretending that we don't know what that means.

“A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children”

‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭13‬:‭22‬ ‭

I’ve never understood the older generations’ desire “not to spoil” their kids. It’s an excuse to spend it on themselves.

If you aren’t leaving an inheritance for your children and your grandchildren what’s the point?

nostr:nprofile1qqsywt6ypu57lxtwj2scdwxnyrl3sry9typcstje65x7rw9a2e5nq8spramhxue69uhky6t5vdhkjmndv9uxjmtpd35hxarn9ehkumrfdejszxmhwden5te0wfjkccte9e3xjarrda5kuurpwf4jucm0d5k2j70t

Set up a new gaming PC with Windows 11.

Fuck Microsoft for trying to force you to have an online account tied to your operating system. And fuck their insane captcha system that I wasted half an hour trying to appease.

Eventually I got frustrated enough that I searched for the command line hack to disable the online registration requirement.

Civilization begins with *God* ... who creates *families* ... who must have *private property* to survive and thrive.

Take away any of those three (at scale) and civilization shrivels into hell.

Let's look at all three.

✅Centuries ago, Western states decided to ditch God (i.e., Christianity and His morality).

Instead, the state would decide what is good and what is evil. It could be a dictator ... a democracy ... "representatives" ... it doesn't matter. What matters is that man took the place of God to decide what is moral.

✅The State did not, and does not, create the family. The state wants total loyalty from every atomized individual to itself.

Western states (now separated from God's morality) attack what constitutes a family from every conceivable angle.

To the point where a human baby is something that can be easily disposed of. After all, the state says it's "legal" and that's all that's necessary. It decides what is moral.

✅ Private Property is the enemy of the state. Private property equals independence. The state seeks to own all property for itself. The most rapacious want to own all of the property in the entire world! Each individual will "own nothing, and be happy."

So course birthrates are plunging!

The West has fallen.

All of the important pillars of civilization, which naturally lead to the drive to create more life have been stripped away.

Fun fact about Mike Brock.

nostr:nprofile1qqspfrgnv6j7geetzvs6muqry9mclp4zxudyhklfjyel9r0sk0fjlggprpmhxue69uhhqun9d45h2mfwwpexjmtpdshxuet5qngdep once asked him to come over to clubhouse and explain the work he was doing at TBD. He jumped into the room and

I began the conversation in good faith, but it soon became obvious he didn’t know much about bitcoin.

nostr:nprofile1qqsttvnpjka059akcl97qyqt9yvwc0z7z6xwfaqrxl08dag89l8sffcpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ez6ur4vgh8wetvd3hhyer9wghxuet5qy8hwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnddaks28zqh2 and nostr:nprofile1qqs9n5ytwcgntrktgu7x8n2peh9z4jnn6xgnurq9xf259k59zzm4y2spp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqpr3mhxue69uhkummnw3ez6un9d3shjtnhd3m8xtnnwpskxeg3n6xsx started tearing him to shreds about his lack of technical knowledge and social justice policies. He kind of stammered incoherent Silicon Valley shitcoiner platitudes in retort and the room turned on him.

It quickly became a circular firing squad. Mike was shook. It was one of the most brutal beat downs I’d ever seen (wish it had been recorded).

He had only planned to stay for 20 mins and ended up staying for 3 hours in an attempt to convince the room that he actually was very smart/knowledgeable. Nobody bought it. He even called Brad after to complain about being brought to the room in the first place.

Never saw an ego get crushed that bad in real time before or since.

We all want adoption, but adoption does not start with payments. It starts with meaning. You cannot force people to zap and you cannot lecture them into caring. We have to build something worth caring about first.

We are building a new neighborhood here on Nostr, and zapping is part of the experience, but it is not why people show up. They come because it feels different. Zaps are not the only form of value. Relationships, connection and purpose all have value.

Eventually, zaps will take care of themselves. We should not have to explain the rules or etiquette. People will zap because it feels right, not because they were told to.

I am not very technical, but I've taken the time to get a good number of solutions set up. I can't say it didn't require some time investment. It is worth it, though! I think projects like @Start9 are great and continue to become easier for non-techy people to use.

Either I'm not online enough or my focus on decentralized solutions is paying off because I don't usually notice when these "internet outages" happen. Kind of like the government being shut down.-Can't say I really noticed that either.

You’re not here to go viral. You’re here to build signal in hostile territory.

This is Nostr. Protocol, not platform. There is no algorithm to save you. No corporation to beg. No moderators to blame. There is only what you say, how well you say it, and how often you show up.

Most will treat this like old ground. They’ll post into silence and call it censorship. They’ll mimic Twitter and call it decentralization. They’ll wait for results they didn’t earn.

That’s not you.

You’re here for war.

You take ground through engagement. Precision comments. Zero fluff. No reply guy flattery. You bring weight. You bring blood. You make the thread better or you don’t belong in it.

You quote posts to extend signal. Reposts are passive. Quote posts are tactical. You contextualize. You escalate. You reframe. You don’t say “look at this.” You say “this matters, and here’s why.”

Replies are your presence. Quotes are your force. Zaps are your vote. Don’t zap for dopamine. Zap for doctrine. Zap to build the world you want to live in.

Ten disciplined strikes in threads already burning are worth more than fifty lonely broadcasts into the void.

You are not on a platform. You are operating in a protocol. Everything you do is permanent, public, and proof of your thinking.

There are no excuses here. Only execution.

The infrastructure is neutral. The outcomes are not. You win by working. You rise by showing up. You build by speaking clearly in a fog of noise.

This is theological. This is tactical. This is cyberwar with a keyboard and conviction.

No shortcuts. No sympathy. No algorithmic welfare.

Just proof of work.

Just you.

And the wire.

Unfortunately I agree but the arguement for the last 14 years was that BTC was not crypto its something more because it has to be. BTCs raise happened because people recognized we have to at least try to break the debt based system. Then the people that became millionaires are trying to convince everyone after us that Microstrategy/blackrock ETF shares owning 10% of the supply is good for bitcoin.

Praise God. A new baby boy. A long few nights, but here he is. 8.2lb

This is kinda a case of, "you don't have to run faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy." Let them make themselves targets.

curious what the bitchat bluetooth radius is

I do believe this time Iran is very angry.

Iran's Defense Minister met Vladimir Putin and Russia's military leadership in Moscow

I have zero interest in selling

The market has no respect for what we hold

8 hours later I actually know now how bitchat works (not every part yet but most of it). it's pretty nifty: every phone is a BLE server and a BLE client at the same time. the app optimistically connects to peers that it can find through a scan. all messages it receives are relayed to all other connections.

I've tried it with a chain of 4 phones each connecting to only their next peer and the message propagates like a lightning payment from one phone to another.

need to implement message chunking (the protocol already defines it but there's no working implementation lol. it's strange because an LLM came up with it but it didn't implement it on neither ios nor android

freaky

I hear ya. Nothing else to do about it anyways.

A big long rant on the madhouse that is Bitcoin...

Ever find yourself in a room full of people who just give you the ick—and you can’t help but wonder, “How did I end up here?”

That’s been me looking around at the Bitcoin world for the past ~3 yrs. It’s been a rough few years on the personal front. I changed my social circle and parted ways with dear old friends. But don’t get me wrong, there are still amazing people here and the Bitcoiners that I now hangout with I genuinely find to be the most interesting and impressive people on the planet. I’d pass on a ticket to the Met gala to go to a dive bar with my fav Bitcoiners! But, looking around at the broader space… it’s ugly out here.

Blatant misogyny, political boot licking, tyrant worship, nonsensical infighting. This is not the behavior of humanity's best and brightest. And we think so highly of ourselves in this space, we are geniuses… right? Well how did all this madness wind up here, with us?

The breakdown of my relationship with one particular Bitcoiner friend of mine is very illustrative of what’s been happening here. This is a person who was a long time anarchist deep in the libertarian world. We connected over shared values, or at least I thought we had. Then the values got eroded, one by one. Liberty! …unless you are a woman, because of course women want to be led by a man. No rulers! …well except Trump, because he’s going to beat those evil libtards with the satanic agenda.

Pain will motivate you, and so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what happened there. I see three recurring patterns: the perpetual rebel, the disillusioned, and the power hungry.

1. The Perpetual Rebel

Someone suffers a deep injustice at a formative point in life. They engage in righteous rebellion, and that becomes their identity. When one fight ends, they seek another, just to keep feeling like themselves. They aren’t just fighting for something—they’re fighting to stay someone.

2. The Disillusioned

Sometimes there are reality breaking moments in people’s lives. Someone has been told their whole life that the sky is blue, but one day, they look up and it is red. Their whole model of reality breaks, they question everything, they trust no one. They become stuck in disillusionment, always doubting, never grounded.

3. The Power Hungry

Some rebel against their rulers. Their rulers are unjust and are suppressing them. They are filled with righteous anger and join the movements to remove the oppressive leaders. But, while they may have spent years chanting it, it wasn't that they actually wanted “no rulers”, they didn’t want “freedom” in a general sense. They wanted to not be ruled themselves. They wanted freedom and power for themselves. And so, when the time comes, they will support the tyrant that they see as giving them the power to be the ruler of others.

My former friend was to some extent, all three of these things, and the Bitcoin world has a way of attracting these types of people. Bitcoin is a wildly powerful and “disruptive” technology. When you see that, when you get it, it’s mind blowing! It’s a powerful tool for the rebels. It’s a bit of hope for the disillusioned trying to find a new map of the world. It’s also a method of enrichment for those who wish to be above others.

But the perpetual rebel and the disillusioned don’t just get caught up in Bitcoin, they also get caught up in social causes, politics, and all sorts of movements that offer them an enemy to fight or a new grip on reality. And when those seeking power are feeling wealthy, they will exert that power and seek to expand it. And when we recognize the high concentration of these volatile people in the Bitcoin world, it really shouldn’t be a surprise that we have the madness that we do.

But then, it gets worse. Bitcoin gets picked up by a lot of these people and becomes their identity, their religion. … In some circles, Bitcoin is a cult. Beards, guns, steak, and toxic maximalism. Those with a cult-like mindset are also drawn to Bitcoin.

I was born into a Christian doomsday cult and I have to admit, that’s probably a factor in why I find myself standing in this room.

My family left the cult that I was born into when I was 7, and both of my parents then drifted away from Christianity and religious extremism. But that mind set, the us-vs-them, the occult knowledge elitism, the righteousness obsession, that mindset was installed deep in the back of my head during those 7 years, and parts of it have stayed with me.

What really stuck with me was a sense of elitist righteousness as a form of safety from the evils of the world—a kind of magical thinking that promised security and fulfillment if I could just follow a rare, enlightened path and avoid the sinful, misguided sheeple. Given my history with religion, I couldn’t find this path through a church, though I did try a few times. Instead, I found it in economic and political ideologies—first in Austrian economics, where I railed against the evils of communism; then in Libertarianism, railing against the evils of collectivism and authoritarianism—and ultimately in Bitcoin, which seemed to unite these ideas and offer both a sense of purpose and a righteous path.

Bitcoin with its fringe status and world altering potential can really appeal to those seeking elite knowledge—the kind that feels like a righteous path to salvation.

But not everyone in this space is a cultist, a perpetual rebel, the chronically disillusioned, or power hungry. There are brilliant, principled people here. And people who came for the wrong reasons but stayed for the right ones. Still, it’s undeniable: Bitcoin is a magnet for the unbalanced, and that causes real problems.

It’s kinda an asshole move to rant about a problem without offering a solution. But I needed to find the patterns before I could start addressing them. I’m finally in a place where I can begin looking for solutions. And I will.

What do you think the solutions are? What do we do about this? What can we do about this?

Kafka is the Oracle of relays.