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.

Just saw someone wearing a mask while driving alone in their car.

In the year of our lord 2025.

🙌🏽 nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a

There's an annual contest for indie-published fantasy books called SPFBO, and it's been running for ten years now. When looking for indie novels to read, that's not a bad list to start from.

Anyway, here's a review of "The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids", which was the first winner of that contest.

It's the first in a five-book series that focuses on a thief named Amra Thetys. Amra is kind of your typical anti-hero thief; she grew up in a rough spot and does some bad stuff but basically has a heart of gold. At about 200 pages, the book is a short read, but I guess the series as a whole is like one 1,000+ page book.

I liked the first half quite a bit. It's fast-paced and gets right into the story. The prose is solid enough. Amra quickly gets pulled by her friend into some criminal mess, with some dark omens sent her way, and we go from there.

In particular, a bloodwitch came up to her on the street once she got pulled into the mess, and said:

"I See blood, and gold," she said, her voice gone all hollow. "I Hear a mournful howl. Fire and Death are on your trail, girl, and behind them the Eightfold Bitch makes her way to your door. One of Her Blades has noticed you. But will it find your hand, or your heart? Unclear, uncertain..."

Amra was freaked out, because bloodwitches can turn your blood to rust and see the future. So I was like, "alright, you've got my attention."

But the second half was somewhat disappointing. Things were just kind of happening, there was a rapidly expanding character list, magic kind of just did whatever it needed to, and I wasn't very emotionally attached to anyone. The ending was okay, but it primarily set up the rest of the series.

I probably won't pick up the second book in the series anytime soon, though from the ratings and how this one went, I could imagine the five of them all being a fun enough read.

Whenever we go to the local Italian restaurant, the waitress asks if we want dessert or coffee afterward.

I know it's a common thing, but for the life of me I don't know why anyone would want coffee after a big meal at night.

Mt Everest had its first documented climb in 1953.

The first person went to space in 1961.

It's kind of crazy to think about how "new" mankind's spread over the world is. My father was already a teenager the first time someone climbed Everest, and in his twenties by the time someone went to space.

If we start the "modern era" as roughly coinciding with the telecommunications age (ie the dawn of the cross-continental telegraph in the1860s), it's less than two consecutive human lifetimes old.

Everything is new.

Moorish Spain was the period from the 8th to 15th centuries when Muslims ruled the Iberian peninsula.

Anyway, here's a book review of The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, which I've had time to finish on this fine Thanksgiving day. It's historical fiction written back in 1995 about the final years of Moorish Spain.

Guy Gavriel Kay is known for writing stories that are mostly historical fiction, but with a small touch of fantasy. In this story, Al-Rassan refers to the southern part of Spain/Portugal controlled by Muslim city-states, while three Christian kings rule their mini-kingdoms in northern Spain/Portugal. In this book, Muslims are called Asharites and identify with the stars, Christians are called Jaddites and identify with the sun, and Jews are called Kindath and identify with the twin moons over this world (which is a touch of the aforementioned fantasy element).

Ultimately, it's a story about love and friendship across cultural boundaries, but duty that sometimes has to separate them.

The three main characters are Ammar (an Asharite poet-swordsman), Rodrigo (a Jaddite noble knight-leader), and Jehane (a Kindath physician), and it spans a few years as the Jaddites and Asharites grow increasingly hostile toward each other. The story is probably best summed up when Ammar laments that the concerning way things are headed, it's likely not going to be his poetry that he's remembered for.

It's not as simple as two sides of a war, though. The Asharite city-states of Al-Rassan are rather secular, as are the Jaddite mini-kingdoms in the north. But the Jaddite clergy seeks to push those secular Jaddite kings to have a holy war and retake the peninsula, and the Asharite warlords back across the strait seek to push those secular Asharite kings to reclaim their peak of power of the peninsula as well. So there are basically four powerful factions in conflict, along with the Kindath as the fifth minor element.

The word "Lions" in the The Lions of Al-Rassan refers to men without equal. Ammar and Rodrigo both represent basically the pinnacle of their sides, and it's a story about what happens as those two "Lions" meet in the waning days of Al-Rassan.

I mostly enjoyed the plot, as well as the main three characters. Guy Gavriel Kay is kind of an "author's author", meaning that several authors consider him one of the top authors out there, but his books only have moderate popularity compared to the top bestsellers. Kay also helped Tolkien's son edit The Silmarillion back in the 1970s after Tolkien's death.

Although Kay is praised for his prose, it's not my favorite. I prefer more concise, straightforward prose, whereas this is somewhat poetic in nature. To me there's a slight distracting element when prose is written like that. The author Brandon Sanderson has used the analogy of clear glass vs stained glass when it comes to prose style. Sanderson's prose is "clear glass" meaning you read for the story, not the prose. Kay's prose is "stained glass" meaning that you read partially for the prose itself, with the trade-off that it's harder to see the story/characters as perfectly clearly through it. And then of course there are many subtypes. Kay's prose just doesn't vibe with me well.

I think it's a great book, with strong themes and intricate politics and a broad cast of fascinating characters. Some will quite enjoy the prose, but it made me slightly detached from the characters as I read it.

I find Bladerunner 2049 frustrating, because I *almost* love it.

The characters, themes, acting, and the overall plot structure are great, imo.

However, villains give melodramatic exposition monologues, villains leave heroes alive for no reason other than the plot needs them to, important things are left thinly guarded for no reason other than the plot needs the heroes or villains to easily get at them, etc. In other words, there are distracting writing/execution issues in what could otherwise be a masterpiece.

The first time I watched it, I didn't love it. It did stick with me though; I think about it sometimes, for years afterward. And watching it a second time I appreciated it more, but still was frustrated by the same things.

What does everyone else feel about it?

What if humanity could find some alien tech and thus greatly accelerate its own technological progress? But what if that tech was hoarded by a small group of people?

Anyway, here's a review of Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen. It's a 22nd century hard science space opera set in our solar system, written by a retired engineer. One of the more successful indie sci fi books in recent years. It's also one of the most successful books to have bitcoin in it; it's a small background role, but bitcoin is one of the leading types of money in the solar system.

Marcus, an indebted down-on-his-luck asteroid miner (and secretly, a bit of a space pirate as of late, given how bad things have gotten) finds his ship taken over by a wealthy genetically modified corporate heiress named Miranda. She has bought his defaulting debt contract that his ship collateralizes, and has gained admin access over his ship's computer. And she knows he is secretly a space pirate, which altogether gives her multiple types of leverage over him. She wants him to take her on a mission to the edge of the solar system to do something she won't say, involving unimaginable treasure, and he has little choice but to go along with it. Secretly, however, he plots how to regain control of his ship as they go, because he recognizes how much of a suicide mission it is because of who guards the space out there.

Pros:

-The hard scientific realism in the book is great. The type that basically takes an engineer to write. No wonder he has endorsements from like, the co-founder of Autocad and such. It's also a smooth read, all from Marcus's perspective.

-Although the story mostly takes place on one ship with a few characters, the worldbuilding is a solid start. I assume it'll be expanded later in the series. The technological situation and structure of society are very fleshed out relative to how little we actually see, given the tight setting. The world feels realistic and lived-in.

-High nostalgia factor. Fans of Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, and more recently the Expanse, and all sorts of classic sci fi literature over decades, will find a lot of references or similarities in a good way. The author is very well-read on the genre.

-The audiobook is pretty unique and great. Unlike most audiobooks, it has a full-cast production, meaning that each line of dialogue sounds like the person speaking it, rather than just one person reading a given chapter's narration and dialogue. I listened to this one rather than read it. You can only buy the audiobook on the author's website though, not Amazon/Audible. (Amazon/Audible have been kind of shitty to authors lately.) The other version of the book are available on Amazon.

-AI gets a really good treatment here, and the third main character, an AI, is my favorite character in the book.

-There's a lot of suspense throughout. Most of it is not really predictable how it's going to end since it doesn't follow a basic tropey structure. Even if you don't particularly like some of the characters (and indeed they're designed to be rather unlikable), you're likely to find yourself reading further to see what happens.

Cons:

-The book is about 500 pages, and I think 50+ could have been cut out of the middle to make it stronger. The dialogue between Marcus and Miranda gets rather repetitive after a while. And because of the limited setting (mostly on one ship), most of the worldbuilding is done via exposition by Marcus. So if readers hate "info dumps", they'll probably get annoyed at this. I personally don't really mind exposition as long as it's good, so this wasn't a dealbreaker for me (the "don't do exposition!" advice to authors is overdone in my view). I just think the middle could have used a trim. And although most of the book is not predictable, one aspect imo very much is, and that's where a lot of the repetition is.

-There are some unnerving aspects/scenes in it. I can't really say what they are without spoilers. Let's just say being in Marcus's head for 500 pages isn't, uh, my cup of tea. The book is self-aware about it, though. It's an intentional choice to have put these unnerving aspects in, so it's not a con per se but it's more something that will put off some readers. And it's a little more understandable by the end.

Overall, a unique story. And for the audiobook, I do think that over time more audiobooks will be made with this more complete type of cast. Audiobooks used to be very expensive and a small piece of the market, and only in recent years have they become very popular. As they become a bigger and bigger share of the fiction market up to some substantial percentage, I think more work will go into their quality and details.

In a couple of decades, what percentage of people do you think will be using centralized systems for money and communication vs decentralized ones?

GN

In the entire original Star Wars trilogy, no two named female characters ever spoke to each other.

In fact there, were only four named women across the trilogy, throughout six and a half hours of content spread across multiple worlds, and for most people they can only name Leia.

I'm not bringing it up as a criticism; just an observation. Sometimes guys wonder why their girlfriends/wives don't love their favorite fiction quite as much as they do.

It's not to say a given story *should* have more characters of XYZ demographic, but basically if a guy tunes into a movie and no two guys ever speak to each other in it, and it's ladies everywhere with hardly any men around, you'd basically just get the vibe pretty quickly that this wasn't written with you in mind at all. If you like it, that's great, but it's kind of by accident since you just weren't really considered as part of it being put together. I do like Star Wars, for example.

I love the Breaking Bad show, too. The premise didn't appeal to me on the surface (middle-aged guy with cancer, young drug maker guy, and to the extent that there are women in the show it's mostly the wives of the important characters), but my husband told me it was great so I watched it with him and loved it. Wouldn't change a thing about it.

And then of course, since we can't have nice things, over the past decade the attempts to put more diversity into fantasy or science fiction have been pretty ham-fisted. Rey is a trash character, basically. Almost any attempt with this sort of stuff is lazy. Books have generally done it better because it comes from one author's mind rather than some committee.

I think part of why the TV show Arcane was so well-received (especially the first season) was that it had a ton of different characters in it but it wasn't *about* that diversity. It just happened naturally as a byproduct of good writing and care. A bunch of very different characters dealing with themes that are about technological progress vs safety, economic disparity and sovereignty, extremism to achieve goals, etc. Young and old, male and female, rich and poor, all different colors. Rather than feel forced, it just seems obvious in that setting.

I've put some thought into this when writing fiction. Men and women, and people of various cultures, do have a ton in common in the fiction they like. Probably more than most realize.

-My number one priority is to just write good stuff and tell the story I want to tell. By default there are a broad range of characters in a story like that, at least in my head. Otherwise it would feel boring. Unless I was writing a specific period piece (something like Saving Private Ryan set in WWII battle zones where obviously it would almost all be men), I'd have to go out of my way to write a story where no two men ever speak to each other, or no two women ever speak to each other. That would take effort.

-My second consideration is to of course think about my audience (which a lot of current media trends ironically don't do- they just create a piece to fulfill their own grievances and forget about the main demographic that would actually want to watch/read what they made). How would different people experience it? That's where beta readers are helpful, but also just a basic 101 test of imagining like five different people reading it and getting the vibe of whether it's written with them in mind, or not. The goal in that case is certainly not to write for everyone (eg most stories I think of tend to be quite dark and violent, and with substantial complexity, which is a combo that already excludes a lot of people), but to at least be aware of the types of people I might be writing for. The natural state of things in a sufficiently complex setting is a broad range of character types.

Basically when I exclude types of readers, I want it to be a conscious decision rather than "huh, I hadn't considered that."

Completely agree! Remember flying down to do a Lex Fridman podcast about why #bitcoin just as Elon was changing his tune about it. Never aired because it didn’t fit the narrative.

I’ve found it. My least favorite book I’ve ever read. And here’s a review.

Digital Fortress by Dan Brown.

It’s a techno-thriller about encryption, published in 1998.

Now, it’s certainly not the worst book out there, by a long shot. There are AI-generated slop books, there are indie books that are scribblings by madmen, etc. But this is the worst book out of ones that I’ve actually read cover-to-cover. It’s from a major publisher, and a best-selling author. Amazon rating 4.3, Goodreads rating 3.7. So, it’s a serious book and people do like it. When it came out as Brown’s debut novel, it was a flop, but Brown’s later giga-best-sellers (eg the Da Vinci Code) retroactively made this book a best-seller too by association. So, I’m punching up here; not punching down.

I’ll start with the good. The opening premise is interesting, and it’s a page-turner, as Dan Brown books all are. There’s a story here. Not a great story, but a mostly coherent one. Some of the antagonists are presented with sympathetic, complex motives, although in some cases that evaporates when convenient. In every other aspect, I was basically hate-reading it, as though watching a car wreck that I can’t turn away from. So, I’m going to give the book 2 stars out of 5.

Non-spoiler Premise:

During the 1990s, the NSA tried to stop strong encryption from existing. However, this was a ploy to feign weakness. In reality (according to this novel), they purposely “lost” the crypto wars because they secretly built a supercomputer that could break strong encryption. So, the whole world went on thinking it now had strong encryption, and the NSA could secretly break it all and surveil all encrypted stuff. However, one day (around 1998 when the book was published), some ex-NSA genius Japanese cypherpunk named Ensei Tankado (with strong Satoshi Nakamoto vibes, written a decade pre-Bitcoin, basically the only cool character in the story) seemingly creates a form of truly strong encryption that even this supercomputer can’t break. Everyone freaks out about it. Twists and turns ensue.

Non-spoiler Review:

In my view, this book is weak on multiple levels, from characters to plot to theme to the literal writing.

Most of the protagonists in this book work for the NSA. They’re trying to make sure strong encryption doesn’t exist in the wild. As the reader, it’s written such that we’re supposed to mostly be rooting for the NSA here, or at least certain good elements within the NSA, but seeing their beliefs get *mildly* challenged. In this narrative, all sorts of terrorist attacks have almost happened over the years, and were prevented only because the NSA could surveil all their communications that the terrorists thought were encrypted.

The book is often given credit for bringing up the ethical conflict regarding surveillance by letting the cypherpunk characters in the book (of which there are basically two, the Japanese guy who is cool and another guy who is an asshole) make their case and test the NSA. So, it supposedly “makes you think”. But it’s the super-basic 101 version; the cypherpunks point out the obvious “who watches the watchmen?” argument and protagonists are like, “hmm”. Which is more fair from a normie point of view in 1998 than now, but it's still not groundbreaking. Meanwhile, most of the plot and the stakes are around the NSA protecting itself and its powers. The NSA protagonists, to the extent that they reflect on the ethics of what they’re doing at all, do so for like a page and move on.

The primary protagonists are cartoonish. They're the type of descriptions that get satirized today. One is Susan Fletcher. She’s utterly gorgeous (everyone around her is in love with her and mentally undresses her when she walks by), and she’s the head of NSA cryptography in her 30s. She’s got a 170 IQ (the author makes sure to tell us, because people around her all know her IQ), and she’s very kind. She is presented as having no flaws. (As a reader though, I think she’s kind of a moron, which seems unintentional by the author.)

Her co-protagonist boyfriend, David Becker, is a super hot genius linguist that speaks a dozen languages, the youngest professor at Georgetown, super athletic and nice (obliterates everyone on the squash court and then treats them to a meal afterward). Romantic, friendly, thoughtful, but also humble enough to not fully realize that everyone views him as super hot. Becker has no flaws. Actually, Susan thinks Becker has precisely one flaw- he always insists on paying when they go on a date even though she makes more money than him. He’s “slightly too chivalrous” basically. He has a minor insecurity around his compensation because his linguistics field happens to pay less than Susan’s code-breaking and yet he’s the man in the relationship so has a provider instinct. That’s his flaw. He doesn’t overdo it, or make particularly bad decisions because of it, and isn't sexist. That’s like when someone in an interview asks you what your flaw is, and you say sometimes you work too hard.

The plot is all about this new unbreakable code, an action-adventure to find the private key, insider threats (not all NSA characters are kind), twists and turns, etc. I won’t spoiler it, but I found it rather boring despite occasional glimmers of interest. As soon as something would start to build some momentum, it would soon be fumbled. The opening premise itself was interesting (NSA tricked people into thinking they had strong encryption so they could just casually read it all- and the potential ramifications), but beyond that, nah. For the most part (a few nuances aside I can't mention for spoiler reasons), the stakes are that if the protagonists lose, it just means people would be able to communicate with each other without the NSA surveilling them. The horror. Some spoiler things do add a bit more stakes to dial that up, but then the themes around that are not fleshed out enough. And there are a bunch of plot conveniences, too many blatant miscommunications, etc.

With all of that, I at least expected it to be smoothly written. But it’s not.

-There are huge info dumps of exposition. Just page after page of context inserted in there. No attempt to drip it in smoothly with dialogue or have a character think it for a specific reason. It’s just like, we meet David, then we get three pages of David’s backstory. We meet the NSA Director, then we get three pages of his backstory. We meet Takado, then we get three pages of his backstory. We learn about the NSA’s codebreaking supercomputer, so we get three pages of backstory about how it came to be, etc. My editor would murder me if I wrote like this. It's so blatant, I almost respect it. Just chad info dumps everywhere.

-The point-of-view is inconsistent. Books are usually written either in first person, or in third person limited (ie you can see the thoughts of one character at a time like first person but it’s written in third person), or in third person omniscient (ie you can see the thoughts of all characters). This book moves between third person limited and third person omniscient haphazardly. Sometimes in a scene, you’re in one character’s head, then in another character’s head, and then back again, without a line break that is normally used to designate a shift in point-of-view. Some portions become vaguely omniscient, but then it goes back to third person limited. And then sometimes there *are* line breaks to change points-of-view, even though the point-of-view regularly changes without line breaks anyway. Some authors might try some artsy head-hopping methods and experimentation, but this isn’t that. It’s just sloppy; I detect no particular pattern about the “rules” of the narrator- it’s not true third person limited, nor is it consistently omniscient, but rather it is just kind of whatever the author wants it to be at a given time.

-Word choice and sentence structure are weak. Action scenes are mostly boring.

Attached is an example of the writing from near the start of the book, to show what I mean. Susan’s going to her NSA job, and we have a point-of-view line break to a guard just to tell us, the reader, how hot and smart Susan is. Then we go back to Susan, who thinks about David, and without a point-of-view line break we’re in David’s head now to get pages and pages of his origin story for how he met Susan.

Anyone else read this? I lost five IQ points for doing so.

A big conservative political podcast (seven figure YouTube subscribers) asked me to come on and talk about bitcoin (sat next to them on the plane out of the May conference in Vegas, which sparked their request).

Last week when I went on the show, they decided to emphasize a talking point of why tariffs are great and will usher in a golden age, and some questions about bitcoin.

When asked about tariffs, I generally disagreed that they would be bullish or usher in a new golden age, mentioned that the past three months of data doesn’t show a decline in import prices which means it has been a tax on Americans, and eventually we moved to discussing bitcoin.

They ended up not airing the talk, and instead ran the clip with someone else who agreed on the tariff points. Waste of time, basically.

It’s a reminder that a big percentage of what you see in heavily politicized media is about narrative framing and talking points rather than genuine attempts to discuss or explore. It reminded me why I normally decline to go on political shows; I had only agreed to this one because the catalyst was in person and so the agreeable side of me was like “sure, why not”.

Well, that’s why not.

Sorry, I don't use Primal much apart from posting podcasts but I thought I would share some of the work we are doing here trying to fix Bedford.

Beyond starting a football club and owning local businesses, I have become active in trying to fix the endless issues in the town.

We have economic issues, in that businesses are under pressure from the economic climate as well as growing government red tape. This is being compounded by a massive rise in anti-social behaviour. We have a plague of addiction issues, with large numbers of crackheads, alcoholics and shoplifters in the town. We have a rise in crime, including assaults on women.

This is not a good situation.

Two months ago I threatened the police, that if they did not fix the issue then I will. During August I am funding a private security initiative in the town, where 10 security guards will be deployed across the town as scarecrows, providing a security blanket for residents and businesses.

We have met with the local police and our activity will be coordinated with them. We are also trying to work with the local council too. I am considering establishing a shadow council in the town, outside of party politics, driving civic action.

Alongside the private security, we are building teams for cleaning, events and marketing to drive economic activity in the town.

I just thought I would share this. Bitcoin world has become a little stale to me, it is time to get out there and do things. The UK is pretty fucked at the moment so it is fight or flight time.

My accountant going through my Nostr zaps like

Apparently JD Vance made a Blue Sky account and got banned/suspended within like 20 minutes.

Today I traded in my old Hyundai for $500 and drove away with a Toyota with a working air condition feeling like:

Well, I’m going on live Indian financial news in 40 minutes.

Scheduled this a few days ago. Now it’ll be during the opening volley of a war which I’ll be asked about. 🤷‍♀️

Am I the only one in the world that doesn’t love the movie Akira?

With its violence and gore and dark psychological aspects, it helped pave the way for mainstream adult animation. And it had amazing visuals for the time, with iconic aspects that were replicated elsewhere. So like, it’s objectively important in the history of the medium. No doubt about that.

But in terms of watching it, I don’t find it subjectively engaging, nor do I find myself recommending it like “you gotta watch Akira”.

I know it’s popular to be all-in on moral panic these days, but I think Bitcoin is in a good technical place right now. I’m bullish.

I think Core devs are doing good work. And I’m glad that people can run Knots or otherwise fork if they don’t like Core. That’s part of what makes Bitcoin robust, and gives useful market/adoption signals.

Mining pool centralization isn’t great, but there are plenty of optional tools to use more if it interferes more with the network, and economic signals (eg the possibility of high fees for censored transactions) exist for precisely that context, to help it get unstuck if it gets stuck.

I think current functionality is great, but I also think CTV+CSFS is a sensible upgrade on top of that if folks end up coalescing around it.

Sometimes the sun is out. ☀️