You know what would be crazy? Just deciding to skip punctuation.

Cormac McCarthy, the bestselling and Pulitzer-winning author of books like No Country For Old Men, The Road, and Blood Meridian, famously didn't like quotation marks, felt they cluttered the page, and so he didn't use them.

When dialogue happens in his novels, there are no quotes around it, and you as the reader just have to figure out when a line is narration or dialogue. He also didn't use semicolons or exclamation points or certain other forms of punctuation. While he didn't exclude commas entirely, he did minimize them, and instead used extra "ands" in place of where many other authors would use commas. He used periods normally.

His prose isn't my cup of tea, but there's no denying his success, and it goes to show that you can kind of just do things.

I continue to use nostr to flesh out ideas in real time. For a while this has been the case, but I want to express the following.

If I’m being intellectually honest, I can’t call myself a progressive anymore.

Labels (such as that one) are tools. When a tool no longer describes your thinking, you don’t owe it loyalty. I don’t fit with that group anymore. I’m more in the left libertarian/anarchism camp for sure. And the modern progressive movement has gone far more faith in technocratic regulation, redistribution via bureaucracy, “expert”-driven solutions, moral language without material empowerment, than ever before. I don’t believe in its solutions, or its leaders. Progressives used to be hyper focused on anti-war, occupy, and suspicion of concentrated power. Now it’s like the opposite.

For the record, I didn’t move right, I didn’t stop caring. I just stopped outsourcing my ethics and what I’m supposed to say or believe to institutions I no longer trust. I think more of us should do this, whether the “right” or the “left.”

That’s not regression imo, that’s maturity and following my intuitions as I navigate life and its social complexities.

Eating factory farmed meat is so fiat.

In the first Expanse book, Leviathan Wakes, there is a scene where a detective is looking through space port logs.

There’s one ship called The Badass Motherfucker. It’s owned by the MYOFB Corporation (presumably, “Mind Your Own Fucking Business”).

They don’t elaborate. The detective passes over it and eventually finds the ship he is after. This particular ship and corp never comes up again.

I feel like we need a spinoff covering whatever the hell these guys are up to, lol.

Bitcoin maxi (left) with pre-coiner (right) at first day of Bitcoin school

Many people have gotten on my case over the years, especially recently, about pitching Bitcoin and having “the left” accept and understand it. The left, as it exists today.

But here’s what I have to say about that

Many bitcoiners (myself included) fighting for greater freedom and freedom tech are counter cultural

So why is it so hard to understand that the current culture may be resistant to it? It’s not about making Bitcoin and our collective advocacy fit into that culture

It’s about culture change. I hate to burst your bubble if you want or need me to be someone I’m not.