SPELLing:

Words carry intention. What words and how we use them leave imprints within and outside.

Use language wisely 📡🧠✨

It all comes back to that: “May we all heal.” thank you for being so wonderful and kind 💜

#nostr #meme

Today marks 25 years since my country was bombed, in the operation called “Merciful angel” or “Angel of Mercy” - whatever.

In 78 days of air strikes:

- 420k bombs were dropped on us

- 4k died (81 child)

- 25k homes destroyed, plus:

- 14 airports

- 18 kindergartens

- 39 hospitals

- 69 schools

- 176 historical sites

- 500+ kilometers of roads

Etc

I was nine. I remember my nose bled from fear. I don’t know how me being scared caused my nose to bleed, but it happened.

I remembered the duffle bag packed next to the door, with a few cans of food inside of it, some clean clothes, passports, and all gold jewelry we had- cuz we didn’t know if it would get worse.

I still have ptsd triggered every time I head air strikes sirens. Luckily, I don’t hear them much- only when they are testing if those still work, or when are paying tributes to the casualties.

Anyway, for years to follow, my father would use any opportunity to gift us gold jewelry. Why? Because: “If it gets bad again, money won’t worth much. We learned that in 1994. You exchange these ear rings/bracelets/necklaces for food or anything you need.

Nowadays, I don’t have a run away bag prepared. But trust me when I tell you, I could pack one in jut a few minutes.

Nowadays, I don’t buy my kid gold jewelry, I stack sats.

It could be one of the reasons why I’m bitcoining. It gives me a hope. An escape plan, among other things.

As for the first part of my note, let’s stop for a second to think about all kids around the world, their traumas, bleeding noses from fear and sleepless nights. Let’s pray for their beautiful souls and innocent lives.

🇷🇸

GM! What we learned yesterday, after my note about bombing is, people are either:

1. Anti-war, full-stop.

2. Anti-war, BUT….

My heart bleeds for every child that has ever felt a terror of the war. I don’t care about their nation, religion, skin color, or who caused the terror. If it was caused by my own kind, more reasons for my heart to bleed. I’m sending a lot of hugs to those in the second group, and I pray you find peace- God knows you need it.

I go to NYC several times per year for one reason or another. For work, for friends, etc.

Part of me likes it, but part of me gets fucking frustrated multiple times per day every time I am here. (Sorry, this is a Nostr Lyn post).

There are plenty of neat things in NYC that I can’t do at the same scale/quality elsewhere in the world due to the network effects around the city (broadway shows, financial district, etc), and yet after a day or two all I want to do is leave. It feels claustrophobic on multiple fronts.

People all have different vibes but for me, major cities are fun to visit but smaller secondary cities or suburbs around cities are so much smoother to live in. I can’t imagine living all the time in a major city.

The same applies to Cairo, to which I have been in far more total days than NYC. I like Cairo’s satellite cities but not Cairo itself other than going briefly.

Every time I am in a major city I am immediately reminded of the luxury of space, nature, quiet, parking spaces, and chillness of not being in a city. Everything I take for granted normally is now a luxury to fight for in a city.

Even politics are largely correlated to urbanization. If you live in rural or suburban areas, you likely drive around in your own car, you might have some land, etc. Your interaction with the local government exists in a moderate sense. The potential weakness is that you are more likely to always be around those who are similar to you, which minimizes your worldliness.

In contrast to all that, in major cities, everything is so tightly packed, and people rely on public transportation, and even a momentary lapse of government services (eg trash collection) becomes an acute catastrophe. But on the beneficial side, people are around those who are different than them more often, which breeds worldliness.

That’s why I tend to like the zone between rural and major cities. I like secondary cities or suburbs of major cities, because I get a bit of both worlds. The density and interconnectedness of major cities briefly, and the space and self-autonomy outside of them most of the time.

And yet I was born and raised in that sort of inbetween state, and so maybe it is just my upbringing.

What about you? Can anyone sell me the idea of NYC or other major cities that I am missing, especially in the remote work era? I see glimpses of how it could be attractive if you are used to it and know every detail of your neighborhood, but it really does feel limiting to me.

The majority of people have a strong tendency to want to be part of something that is bigger than themselves. It is why they not just get up in the morning, but why they are *energized* to get up in the morning.

Clans and religions were among the earliest bigger things. People know that they will die, and so they invest into their descendants, honor their ancestors, and contemplate metaphysics and the nature of life. Many people will willingly sacrifice themselves for their children or for their highest ideals because of this.

In the modern era of printing presses and telecommunication systems, there is also a broader set of choices for people to group together around, either combined with those other ones or sometimes instead of them. Sometimes they choose nationalism. Sometimes they fight for a political ideology that transcends borders. Sometimes it is a professional guild or professional recognition. Sometimes it is the environment. Right or left or anywhere in between, you can often tell what someone adheres to as their highest ideal.

A powerful exercise is to 1) identify what you feel a part of in the bigger sense (it could be a few things) and 2) whenever someone’s behavior confuses you, stop and think about what they likely feel a part of in a bigger sense, if anything. You might feel that what they associate with is fucking retarded, but if you can at least identify it, then that is the first step toward successful communication and debate and rebuttal.

Using myself as an example, my professional experience is in a combination of engineering and finance. Separately, my ethical philosophy is grounded in virtue ethics (that’s a whole other longwinded topic), and as a result, what I feel a part of in a bigger sense is various social movements and protocols that utilize technology to bring financial autonomy to people. That’s where I put my time and capital toward.

Successful commerce involves the combination of value and communication. Therefore, I want people to be able to communicate freely and transfer value freely. As such, I strongly associate with the leading technologies in those fields, such as Bitcoin and Nostr.

If I thought they were weak, I would sympathize with them but not invest in them or have much hope for them. That was my view for a while. But if I view them as technically capable and achieving of network effects, then my rationality combines with my sympathy and becomes full support.

I don’t care what peoples’ race, sex, orientation, ethnicity, or nationality is. Instead, what I care about is doing whatever tiny part I can to bring technologies to people that allow them to transfer value and information to others, or to educate people on those technologies, etc. That is where my time and capital is focused on. Outside of family, that is what makes me energized in the morning to work toward.

What is yours?

GM

Whenever you feel good at something, take a moment to remind yourself that people can solve rubiks cubes in three seconds, or shoot pro arrow shots on horseback, or weld a complex thing while underwater.

Financial benefits often consolidate toward a few professions, but happiness itself tends to spread more broadly and is only partially correlated with monetary success. nostr:note182lxku4dk78cu0n4rlerm5lz8vlffpj474hr7kj8sph64wjr5tvsx4nnp9