Avatar
pixel lust
367da3eced1b26914cee61963787b40bb732eb888c895041b04b42c6ed81bd2e
we love pixels. we love keyframes.
Replying to Avatar Lyn Alden

Losing someone young, or losing an older person while you are young, is always hard.

When my father passed away from cancer while I was in my early twenties, it wasn't surprising at all. This fact had been coming for two years, slowly. But when it came, it hurt just as bad. And till this day it still hurts.

I was at work and got a call; it was a hospital. They said my father had been suddenly transferred to hospice, and it wasn't looking good. He probably had a week at most. He was in another state. The doctor transferred my father to me on the phone and my father was weakly like, "hey...." and I said hello, and I said I'm coming now. He said, "No don't... uhh.... don't worry... you are far and have work... I'm fine...." I asked then why was he transferred to hospice if things were fine. He was like, "uh well... well you know.... uh.... it's fine...." And I was like, "holy shit I'm coming right now."

So I went to my boss and looked at him. I had previously told him that there might be a moment where I would have to just immediately leave without notice, no matter how important the meetings and such, because of my father. So in this moment I literally just looked at him in the middle of a busy day and was like, "I gotta go" and he was like "of course". So I drove there, two hours away and went straight there. My father weakly said on the phone not to go, but he never sounded like that, so I went immediately.

I got there, and my father was in a hospital in the death ward, and the guy who greeted me was a pastor rather than a nurse, which was not a great sign. I asked what was going on and he told me straight up that this was not good, that my father was likely dying within a week. So he brings me to my father. My father is barely awake. His memories and statements are all over the place, but I just hold his hand and tell him that it's fine and I love him. I'm just there. He kept fading out and I was like, "it's okay, just relax". He could see me and talk in a rough sentence or two and thanked me for coming, but started to fade away.

And then after like 30 minutes, he went fully unconscious. He was still roughly gripping and shaking the bed headboard and so forth but wasn't conscious (and I was like, "Are you all giving him the right pain medicines, this doesn't look good", and even the pastor was like, "yes I have seen many and this is not comfortable" and I was like an angry 23-year-old so I went out in the center area like, "what do all of you even fucking do here?! He is shaking the bedframe and looks in pain, and even the pastor agrees. Holy shit." So I went and got medical attention to deal with this, but felt slow and ineffective at this. They gave him more morphine and it calmed him down, but while it relaxed him, he ultimately didn't wake up again.

I spent the next couple hours there, and then left and called various family members for my second round when he was unmoving. I said if they want to see him, come now, in the next day or two.

But a little while later after I left, I got a call and was told he had died. Only I (and the nurses) saw him while he was still briefly conscious.

During that call itself, I was stoic. I was like, "Yes, I understand. Okay." and then hung up. And then I sat there for like five minutes in silence... and then cried. I got over it quickly and we did the funeral in the following days. My father had been struggling with cancer for years, so this wasn't fully surprising.

But what lingered was the memory. It has been 13 years now, and yet whenever I am in my depths I still think of my father. The memory never gets weaker. I think of his love, or I think of how attentive he was, or how accepting he was, or what he would say about my current problems.

People we love, live on through us. We remember them so vividly, and we are inspired by them.

If he was a lame father, he wouldn't have so many direct memories 13 years later. But because he was a good and close father, he does.

All of those memories are gifts. All of them are ways of keeping aspects of that person alive in our world. It's how we remember them in the decades that follow. Their victories, their losses, and everything in between. Virtues they quietly did that you find out later. Virtues you realize only in hindsight how big they were.

i always thought it was strange how we don’t get to choose our memories. we remember lots of bad ones yet forget lots of good ones.

i agree that the ones that we do keep are for some reason gifts. thx for sharing so candidly, bitcoiners are so lucky to have you.

yah saifdean made the same claim that it’s enough for bitcoin to act as a “monetary batman” lurking in the shadows of the financial system. whenever central banks acted too criminally, bitcoin would be there to put them their place by acting as a caped crusader for hodlers of sound money by virtue of being an unconfiscatible, uncensorable, digital store of value that governments and central bankers could not steal or manipulate.

dude prague had amazing duck too

not the same comparison, you should compare one religion’s body count to communism since communism is just one political ideology. the more accurate comparison should be religion’s body count vs political ideology body count (democracy, communism, socialism, libertarianism etc).

so true. defining yourself and ignoring your community/relationships is pretty much narcissism/psychopathy. you need to have feedback about your self-constructed identity: are you really that virtuous? are you really that smart? are you really that good looking?

if you need to keep insisting that you really are virtuous, smart and good looking and you ignore feedback, then you are living in a delusion.

obviously don’t go too far and let society define you or be a people pleaser: you need some self respect/awareness. maybe existential crises are the universe’s way of signalling to you that the reason you are suffering and feel misaligned is because you are living in a delusion and need to adjust your distorted perception of reality.

Replying to Avatar Fix the Money

Hi nostr:npub15dqlghlewk84wz3pkqqvzl2w2w36f97g89ljds8x6c094nlu02vqjllm5m:

What is your succession plan?

Interested in the game theory behind this? In 10 - 20 years, it's unlikely that any individual will match the size of your stack. So when the time comes for you, its going to have a significant effect on the landscape.

Have you planned anything out yet? Will you make it public?

Cheers. I hope you can give some insight.

he’s shared in interviews that he’s not a fan of trusts, charities or succession plans with bitcoin.

trusts eventually will stray from their original mandate, think about if rockefeller would agree with what the rockefeller foundation has done with his wealth all these years since his death. charities are notoriously inefficient/corrupt at distributing donations. giving wealth to successors sounds noble and prudent but statistics show inherited wealth is wasted away by the third generation.

what he thinks makes the most sense is to die with your private keys because you pro rata (evenly distribute) reward every hodler no matter who you are or how many sats you have.

by permanently making the bitcoin supply more scarce by destroying your private keys you are “donating” to every hodler by making their stack more valuable.

brilliant insight that i first heard about in saifdean’s bitcoin standard. makes sense that something we take for granted like purchasing power of our money - when that gets eaten away by inflation slowly over decades it subconsciously affects our incentives then eventually our health like buying cheaper less nutritious food.

when money works like on a hard money system, it encourages a low time preference mentality. we take for granted that hard work pays off and that we can store away savings for the future and the purchasing power will be able to cover our necessities and some luxuries every now and then.

but when money is broken it encourages a high time preference mentality. it’s hidden from the public that because the purchasing power is being devalued through central bank policy is the reason why our hard work doesn’t pay off and that what we save isn’t worth as much in the future and that we can’t afford even the necessities so the incentive is to go into debt and take bigger speculative risks just to keep afloat.

looking forward to the next episode 👏

i like what jordan peterson says about motivation: it’s not enough to have heaven in front of you to strive towards because anyone can have a goal and it’s often the case that a goal isn’t enough to motivate you. you also need a hell behind you to run away from.