Yes, there is some lightning channel management necessary once you start your node. But the BTCPay server part is literally downloading a package and hitting “start”. There are some background configurations that are quite complex that the Embassy handles for you.

I’ll do some digging on the lightning node side for good resources, but honestly the best way is do some reading and talk with people. You’ll want to set aside some BTC—a few million sats at least, preferably more if you want to do any serious transacting. You can also buy lightning channels from liquidity providers so that you can receive payments. There are tons of plugins you can load and run that are configurable for all sorts of needs like a point of sale for an online store or even hosting your own podcast and accepting sats as listeners stream it

The BTCpay server docs are excellent. The hardest part of this is gaining SSH (command line) access to your embassy and setting up a reverse proxy to Tor so that you can allow others to access your BTCPay server instance in a regular web browser. But with zero prior knowledge I was able to do it—it’s like putting together a Lego set.

There are great step by step guides out there. I run an Embassy and it is a very straightforward process. Some tinkering is necessary to be able to use it on regular web pages (not Tor) but with zero prior knowledge I was able to follow the instructions and get it working to run a personal store for my garden veggies and eggs and to accept donations for our church. You can buy an Embassy direct from Start9, which is a small capital investment but it will work out of the box and put you on the path to digital overeignty. Or download the OS for free and run it on a dedicated machine you already own like an old laptop. Highly recommended and I'm happy to send more info!

This convinced me of the same:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crF0c96pXhI

Side of Burritos does a great job explaining this stuff like I'm five

The so highly acclaimed “dominion of man over nature” turned out to be merely an enormous capability to kill.

--Nicolás Gómez Dávila

To face the elements is, to be sure, no light matter when the sea is in its grandest mood. You must then know the sea, and know that you know it, and not forget that it was made to be sailed over.

--Joshua Slocum, SAILING ALONE AROUND THE WORLD

M. Gillenormand, who was full of life in the year 1831, was one of those persons who have become interesting simply because they have lived a long time, and peculiar because whereas they were once like everyone else they are now like no one else.

--Victor Hugo, LES MISERABLES

Remember your absent friends when you are with those who are present, that they may hear and know you do not forget them either.

--Eugene Vodohlazkin, LAURUS

Learn what you can, but cultivate Christian skepticism. It will keep you free—not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects of those around you.

--Flannery O'Connor, in a letter to Alfred Corn, 30 May 1962

To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one’s conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one’s moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity, and ‘being at peace with oneself,’ so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic conception of moral judgment . . . .

Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualistic ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others. Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the very idea of human nature.

--Pope Saint John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor

There are those who, while they recognize the glory of God as well as the importance of man and the call addressed to him in general, believe in false humility, that the call is meant for all others but not for their own person. They deem their own person too wretched to dare assume that they may refer the divine call to themselves. They would hide in a corner and play the part of mere onlookers. The sight of their wretchedness impels them to exclude themselves from the great dialogue between God and man. This ostensible excess of humility, for all the diffidence it involves, is not free of an element of pride. For here, once more, man presumes to decide himself where he stands, instead of leaving that decision to God. Yet, this is precisely the test of true humility, that one no longer presumes to judge whether or not one is too miserable to be included in the call to sanctity but simply answers the merciful love of God by sinking down in adoration.

--Dietrich von Hildebrand

The Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.

--Flannery O'Connor

That seems to be my only option now

I learned last week that Netflix is discontinuing its DVD by mail service after 25 years.

I have seen no commentary or chatter online about this. No surprise there--it is a legacy service to a dying form of media consumption. Sending a disc through the mail a few times a month seems ridiculous given the easy access to streaming platforms.

But I am sorry to lose this service. The limitations were its greatest strength. Having to think about what film I wanted to see days in advance meant that I only chose films I really wanted to see. I never killed time with one of those choices in the way I am tempted to with streaming services. Plus, the wide variety of little known films was unmatchable--films that were impossible to find on platforms that emphasized popularity over quality. And if the film was not to my liking, I was only out a couple bucks and didn't have to deal with a growing stack of DVDs I'd never watch again.

I'm sure Netflix has been losing money on that service for years and has to tighten its belt. Fine, business is business. I certainly didn't contribute much to the bottom line with my $5 a month (though sometimes that disc sat by the TV for months--I'm sure my average expenditure for a rental was close to just purchasing the disc). But I won't be signing up for their streaming service, or any other. I'll be waiting for something that doesn't pander to the impulse of the moment.

My single meeting with a billionaire confirms this anecdotally. I've never been so frustrated and confused.

This is a helpful breakdown.

Where can I find more info about why the receiver in a self-custodial lightning transaction lacks privacy?

[All] are taught some simple truths as children, only to discover as teenagers or young adults that those truths were far too simple and that they themselves were embarrassingly simple to have accepted them. They strike off on their own, leaving the comfortable mental world of their childhood to find a wider and stranger world of ideas. They may experience this world as disturbing or as liberating, but in any event it is more exciting. If they are fortunate, however, they may come to rediscover for themselves the truths they were taught as children. They may return home, as T.S. Eliot put it, and know it for the first time. If so, they may see that, although they first learned these truths as simple children, neither the truths themselves nor the people who taught them were quite as simple as they supposed.

This requires, however, the difficult feat of questioning twice in one’s life—of undergoing two revolutions in one’s thinking. It requires being critical even of the ideas that one encountered in the first flush of critical thinking in one’s youth.

--Stephen Barr, Modern Physics, Ancient Faith

It is commonly affirmed, again, that religion grew in a very slow and evolutionary manner; and even that it grew not from one cause; but from a combination that might be called a coincidence. Generally speaking, the three chief elements in the combination are, first, the fear of the chief of the tribe... second, the phenomena of dreams, and third, the sacrificial associations of the harvest and the resurrection symbolized in the growing corn. I may remark in passing that it seems to me very doubtful psychology to refer one living and single spirit to three dead and disconnected causes, if they were merely dead and disconnected causes. Suppose Mr. Wells, in one of his fascinating novels of the future, were to tell us that there would arise among men a new and as yet nameless passion, of which men will dream as they dream of first love, for which they will die as they die for a flag and a fatherland. I think we should be a little puzzled if he told us that this singular sentiment would be a combination of the habit of smoking Woodbines, the increase of the income tax, and the pleasure of a motorist in exceeding the speed limit. We could not easily imagine this, because we could not imagine any connection between the three or any common feeling that could include them all. Nor could anyone imagine any connection between corn and dreams and an old chief with a spear, unless there was already a common feeling to include them all. But if there was such a common feeling it could only be the religious feeling; and these things could not be the beginnings of a religious feeling that existed already. I think anybody’s common sense will tell him that it is far more likely that this sort of mystical sentiment did exist already; and that in the light of it dreams and kings and corn-fields could appear mystical then, as they can appear mystical now.

--G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

The thrust of his statement is that blind faith (especially when held in contradiction to reason) is no substitute for facts and logic

Usually even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn... If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe our books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow or their wiser brethren... To defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture, … although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

--Saint Augustine, On the Literal Meaning of Genesis

zap wallet activated 😄 Thanks man keep pumping the classic content