Life is a struggle, accept it, struggle, struggle, and struggle every day, and if you're not good, disappear from this world, that's why you die of old age, because you're no longer useful.

It's natural selection, it applies to everything. If you don't accept it, you will suffer, and remember, your suffering is not my problem, it's yours.

While you cry, the world goes on, the sun rises, night falls, and everything continues to revolve around the sun.

Very few people are truly independent.

Sometimes removing yourself from toxic people is the healthiest choice you can make. Waiting on anyone to “see the light” is a losing battle—you can’t force someone’s awakening.

The real practice is accepting what is, even when it’s not what we want. Anyone can find presence while sitting on their meditation cushion. The real test is carrying that presence down from the mountain and into the marketplace—into the messy reality of daily life.

Compassion doesn’t require proximity. You can love someone and still choose peace. Boundaries aren’t a rejection—they’re an acceptance of what is.

#IKITAO #AvaQuotes

I can never remember how it goes. Something, something November 5th.

> Contradiction is the master's tool; it prevents students from robotic imitation.

#ikitao #wisdom #zen #avaquotes

Ultimate control is transactional control. The highest expression of that would be a CBDC.

You owe a fine or taxes? We'll just take it from your balance. We want to limit your travel? Your money only works inside your city. We want to control your rate of spending? Interest rates are so last century, we'll just put a expiration date on your money. If we want to ban certain things we will just turn off transactions. We can limit or eliminate guns, pornography, alcohol, meat according to the date, area of the country, or by citizen.

Gotcha. I haven't really coordinated much on projects. I've done some user testing but it was somewhat limited since there is a cost. If you dig through my note history you'll probably find a ton on UX / findings etc...

If I can summarize:

1. Keys are not as big of an issue as most non-technical people around here think. But, to a few, they are mysterious. But most people don't make much of it and just start using the clients.

2. Most people have a hard time finding things of interest (this is mostly a content issue and not so much a client. Search is a bit crappy in most clients because it requires a centralized feed or a large cache of notes, and even that only goes so far (this is a nostr issue in general, not so much client). For example, it's pretty hard to find old notes across relays unless you have a service specifically that indexes everything.

3. In general our content sucks. This is my observation compared to other social media apps. For example, in TikTok you can come at it with absolutely no preferences and get hooked in a matter of minutes. Their algo optimizes for you and you get things in front of your eyes that are super interesting and addicting very quickly. You'll find yourself swiping for hours without realizing it. Nostr has nowhere near this amount or quality of content due to sheer lack of users. It has nothing to do with discovery or anything else.. just no content. And what few things we do get, people tend to not care.

4. Getting people to nostr is super difficult because you have to be passionate about nostr's properties. First, you have to learn what those are. Then if you manage to stick around, you have to force yourself to get detoxified without the algo. This ultimately conflicts with other social media usage that is super addictive so you tend to drop out of nostr (this is what most active users end up doing who do not quit other social media) -- only the business-focused can remain on both, especially if they are nostr activists, but otherwise there's little incentive to stay here.

5. People complain about onboarding, but after digging around for quite a while and seeing the full picture, the problem is not technical, but once again content. Without content you cannot create feeds people might be interested in so in the end it has nothing to do with technicals. You can add a great onboarding to pick interests, hashtags etc.. but ultimately without good content people leave.

6. People have a hard time breaking of their normie socials chains. They have followers there and it's hard to let that go. You really have to have a reason to leave.

7. It is my observation that many clients do either too little or too much. Mixing functions that should not be mixed, or doing so little that there's no differentiation from any other social media, but much worse experience due to lack of content.

Ultimately, people come for either other people, content, or for their friends. A bunch of us followed nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m here. Some followed other big names like Snowden. But, the prominent individuals usually don't have much incentive to hang out here. You need momentum to get a bunch of them coming at once. For some odd reason all of the momentum was with Bluesky and not nostr. I think a lot of it just has to do with the name of the protocol -- and I'll probably get shit for it but I stand by it. Bluesky is also a company with organized marketing, planning etc.. nostr barely coordinates anything, rightfully so since its not a company.

8. Many complain about the usability of things, but they haven't actually tried the updated versions and are complaining about an experience they once had which is no longer the case, but they are too lazy to try again - don't blame them.

9. For some, their first negative experience turns them away forever, and that can easily happen due to the tinker nature of nostr. You realy have to stick around, let it grow on you and appreciate it for what it is. This is our version of "proof of work" and many are unwilling to do it.

10. Nostr oldtimers (and devs) tend to not test their clients often as a new user. So, sometimes there are glaring issues which go unfixed for years. I've pointed them out at times, but usually falls on deaf ears. Some of this is due to content, other due to personal preferences, values etc... everyone has their specific ways of doing things. I recommended that people test their clients as a new user would at least once every month.

11. We have a new user discovery problem. They usually have a crappy feed to start with (again due to lack of good content), and if they somehow manage to not quit quickly, they end up shouting into the void. No one knows they exist unless they did an intro post with intro hashtag (and even that gets ignored at times), so they end up dropping off after some time. This is a difficult problem to solve because most social mediia solve it with addictive content and people stick around long enough to follow accounts they like and start interacting with people in comments. follow them etc. But on nostr, people don't stick around long as there's not much dopamine spiking content 24/7.

There are other things to say.. and I"ve said them many times over long form posts, over notes, privately to devs.. you name it. It's a process. We are improving all the time. People make cool things. I think it all boils down to serving a niche of people and slowly moving communities here, starting with adjacent value sharing ones. Lastly, building novel applications and interesting ways of interacting with things may also help. Annnnnd not to forget marketing. Practically no one does any marketing on here besides talking at conferences which I think is not a great way to attract anyone.

So yeah, content, marketing, branding, improving basic UX, improving UX with content, novel applications, getting the word out. Those are things to work on.

Diminishing returns is one of the most misunderstood concepts in engineering.

Most devs know they can do 80% of the work very fast, but that last 20% will consume their soul and 10 years of their life. Because of that, their minds think it's not worth investing in the project anymore: "I could be more productive in this new side project". Which is true, but that also means that you have two half-baked projects that nobody can use because they are not finished. You fail on both at the same time.

In the market, diminishing returns are diminishing returns for everybody. To have the best product, you focus on diminishing returns exactly because your competitor will phase out and give up: "it is too much money for little gain". Any rational player will decide against it. But, if you truly want to win, you must keep pushing your product's edge up. You must work through diminishing returns profitably. If you don't, you are already gone, and your competitors are going to love it.

Learning the law of diminishing returns is not done so that you can avoid it when it happens. It's done so that you can go through it in a way that makes sense.

Good morning!

Don’t resist the moment—meet it. Be here, fully, with what is. Acceptance isn’t approval; it’s simply acknowledging what is. And in that space is our power to effect change.

— Ava ॐ

#IKITAO

Read Marcus Aurelius' memoirs.

You will understand the level of the rulers of the ancient world and the level of today's rulers.

A man should always aspire to be the best. The goal of a ruler should be Marcus Aurelius, just as the goal of a musician should be to be the best in their field.

Ask yourself if any ruler today is capable of having the depth of Marcus Aurelius or even writing a single page of his work, or even simply understanding it.

what you mean? go 100x long or not???

Money: a placeholder for value, to be redeemed later

Credit: fictitious money

Trade: equivalent value

Goodwill: opportunity to interact again

In kind: returned favours, promises, gifts.

~ Promise Theory

We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us.

The labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path.

And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.

And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.

And where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence.

And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

— Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth)

#IKITAO #Wisdom #Mythology

one thing I’ve noticed is that acknowledging the strengths in another person’s sworn enemy is usually not well received by the person whose enemy it is

idk maybe it’s useful to acknowledge what their strengths are before we ride into battle my man. if you can’t respect your enemy, they will crush you along every axis of pride you still hold

Good morning!

influencers milking this shit for engagement is disgusting

our society has lost its way

You sell sandwiches, stop trying to get me to download a app.

Between stimulus and response, there is space.

And in that space is the power to choose your reaction.

And in that choice lies the path to growth and freedom.

#memes #memestr

The common story between Innovation and Bitcoin is that every status quo normie always gives you shit and bullies you to the end of the earth, aka "Ha ha, has No Value, Stupidest thing ever seen, Going to Zero, Has No Future, Terrible experience, Looks Awful, You are a piece of shit, You Dumb Bitch, You need to use the status quo, just stop day dreaming and trying to disobey the authoritative narrative, Trust the system, don't be creative".

GFY BITCHES. INNOVATORS FIRST. YOU LAST. 😂

FLIP THE BIRD ON ITS HEAD

Without Bitcoin, the only significant freedom movements on the internet would be Tor/VPNs and Torrents/Piracy.

The internet will penetrate every single pore of human civilization. Every single aspect of life.

The stakes are immense, the mission is monumental. Open-source is the only option we have.

Thanks for the update!

It's a major PITA... Almost unusable for content generation. And I'm just back from holidays, with a heavy workload of editing 😐

What's wrong with venice.ai

Its answers are now missing words and letters. And the layout is messed up.

I'm running Llama 3.1 405B, as usual...

#asknostr

engagement buying will be a constant problem

webs of trust / verifiable reputations are probably the best way to mitigate it

With AIs creating their models of the world primarily by reading text online, there's never been a more critical time to write than it is today.

This is an idea I've heard in a recent interview with Gwern and it's been reverberating in me ever since. Think about anything you care about, anything that's good or bad, anything of value to you. If it doesn't exist online, it basically doesn't exist at all for the AIs. That also means that your writings might be part of the training data of future AIs. By publishing your thoughts, you can become a tiny part of latent space tilting the self-reflection of the world in a direction you want to.