They were both and probably not sustainable. After world war 1, Germany was suppressed and constantly drained of money/goods by the winners of the war. People were starving. The communists who slaughtered millions of people in Russia and Ukraine were quickly gaining momentum. Many Germans were not forced into collectivism by the government but joined to fight their way out of the situation successfully. Hierarchies were accepted and success mattered in this goal oriented collective society. When you look at communist societies, people are depressed. Perceived effort matters. Success is often punished by peers. Hierarchies exist unofficially while the citizens have to say that everything is flat. Peoples lives get worse and worse over time. The more typical real world left stuff.
muscles aren’t that important. It’s good to train, but you don’t really need to be strong.
I think of money as the backbone of collective decentralized decision making. When AI become smarter than humans btc will drain from humanity to AI until incentives to improve or at least respect human conditions are gone. Fiat on the other hand could still be created and distributed by nation states.
European perspective: 50% Tax feels normal. 10% price increase in the supermarket feels like a social contract gets broken.
A recent meme has been “Nostr Lyn” where I am more raw here than anywhere else. I love that. Nostr is raw truth. Here is some meat for those willing to be here, purposely enjoying a decentralized and small protocol/community. No filter; just me.
I eat healthy, I exercise, I minimize problems, etc. I am one of those people who, when I first experimented with a keto diet nearly a decade ago, measured my ketones with a blood test on a regular basis to ensure I was in ketosis, and plotted out my blood sugar and ketone level on a regular basis, to see how it matched with my subjective well-being and various biometrics. I was doing science and various if/else observations. And now that I have experience in this dietary regard, both subjectively and biometrically, I am more flexible in terms of seasonal ketosis, broadly low carb, mild/moderate cheat meals at restaurants, and so forth. In other words, I precisely know my dietary limits where I feel bad vs where I feel good generally. I bike most days, and run and lift where possible. I enjoy a nice glass or two of wine with a nice meal on occasion, but little else.
But on those very rare occasions when I disregard moderation, well, fuck. “All things in moderation, including moderation. Sometimes you gotta party”. During the depth of my recent burnout phase in the past two weeks, I went out and… I ignored moderation one night in terms of wine and such. In terms of numbers, I only get hungover like once per year. I do, afterall, live near Atlantic City, which has plenty of clubs and so forth. I don’t even like marijuana, but I did marijuana too (which is legal in this state).
The next morning? Holy shit. I hadn’t been wrecked like that in a few years. Not only was it my yearly fuck-up, it was my multi-year fuck-up. It was a culmination of working 16-hour days with no weekends for months in a row and then the release all at once. My advice: don’t do that if you can help it. Especially if you are in your 30s or older, where you don’t heal as quickly as if you are in your 20s.
I had an interview with David Lin at like noon the next morning and my base case was to cancel it at the last minute due to how rekt I was. But I had *never* done that before, and Lin is an amazing interviewer and an acquaintance of mine, so I couldn’t do that to him, and I knew he could handle it if I was a bit lackluster. Tens of thousands of people would see this.
So, I rolled out of bed, drank some matcha, and somehow got myself in front of my camera to try to replicate what I would normally do every day with no issue. While I was doing it, I felt so off-base, thinking, “Anyone watching will know I’m so fucked right now that I’m like almost half-drunk from last night. This might be my worst interview ever. They’ll notice, right?”
I was almost afraid to go back and watch it. I only watch a small subset of my interviews for iteration purposes, but because this was my potential fuck-up, I went back and watched it closely. And you know what? In terms of views and comments and content, it was above average.
Probably it was because I was so mentally focused at the time to not fuck up. Where I lacked energy, I made up for in focus. I looked for signs in myself in my after-review, and the *only* place I can see it is in my eyes. I often squint during interviews because I am thinking a lot, but in this interview my eyes are constantly squinted/dead because I am barely able to even be there. That’s the only small sign where my multi-year fuckup hangover becomes apparent. All of my verbal content is normal, and leans above average.
After the interview, since I was non-functional, I went back to bed, and vowed not to fuck up like this again. This was my biggest hangover as a serious adult. Sitting there and talking about macroeconomic content for 45 minutes was an all-out massive effort.
But I also learned something, which kind of goes back to my martial arts days, college days, early work days, and goes back to various business memes. A common business meme is, “Most of success is just showing up.” Much of that is actually true, but I would rephrase it as, “Much of success is taking initiative, finding ways to show up, and then be consistent with quality."
You can’t, for example, be 10/10 in most interviews and then 2/10 in some interviews. You need to be 8/10 or better all the time. So, whether it came to my engineering work, my analysis work, my media work, etc. You just have to *fucking show up in good order* no matter what. Consistency of quality. Every single day. You traveled and had jet-lag during an important meeting? Tough. Your baby kept you up all last night? Well, you're paid the big bucks to tank that anyway. You got rekt in Atlantic City? Deal with it.
The first order advice here is don’t drink and party at clubs in Atlantic City the night before an interview or other serious work as a way to relieve an unusual amount of work stress during the prior months of over-work.
The second and probably more important and broad takeaway is about minimizing your weaknesses- when you do fuck up, be able to handle it. We all have moments of weakness. Success is about showing up with intention and quality. When it matters, you need to be there, present. You have to summon the strength to get through an hour about math and macro and sociability or whatever it is that you do, where you are half-dead, where your problems are only visible in your eyes, and just get it done.
I’m better now, but that was a low point. I was still running my research business, concentrating finishing-touches on a year-long book, and just literally working 80 hour weeks. Sometimes we need bursts of that sort of thing but it’s important to minimize it and get back to work/life balance, and ultimately when you are at your lowest, still find a way to be there.
Anyway, this is the current issue of "Nostr Real Thoughts". Enjoy the interview. Spot my failures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXujV7P_hZc&ab_channel=DavidLin
After looking for underperformance in this interview I came up with a short list:
- your microphone
- your camera / scenary
my father does this too. The bad part is: what he shouts is the password
That is true. Blockchain is the best ledger. But I suspect that reducing the block rewards for miners to zero is a mistake that will harm the security of the chain and reduce incentives to invest/innovate. They perform a service for the store of value but will get the rewards only from current transactions. That feels wrong. The inflation from mining should help to motivate investments. Why should inflation be 0? It could be greater 0 or negative (by burning a part of transaction fees). 0 is a nice number but why is it the best?
good point!
I hear bitcoiners say that civilization/technology advances (like it would be a law of nature) and therefore money should increase in value.
The question that I miss is: how should money be, such that it advances civilization/technology best.
when mining rewards become small compared to the value stored on the chain and most transaction are made on lightning miners would need to take very high fees to secure the chain. But because there are few transactions they would compete and accept fees that are too low to finance the necessary amount of mining for a secure chain.
also, production of efficient mining hardware could be a single point of failure. Only some problems can be caught by nodes.
A backdoor could be used to cause all miners to reject transactions with an ip from a targeted country.
not Saylor but Micro strategy. A public company held my many people
Communist states have a history of preventing citizens from gaining anything and shooting them when they try to leave
I think it was 30-60 min somewhere below the anaerobic threshold. Running or cycling while being able to somewhat comfortably talk would be an example.
I think intense cardio was less effective in this regard. But it is also difficult to find participants who are willing to be randomized by a coin flip to either train intensively every day or don‘t train at all for an extended period of time.
country A has fiat and can finance a war against country B. Country B has bitcoin and cannot finance its defence.
yes. Moderate cardio exercise elongates telomeres. Epi-genome is more complicate to quantify.
Point 2:
Decentralized consensus on how to proceed takes time. The chain will halt and need to be snapshotted in a temper resistent way. Courses on centralized hubs will crash.
Mining hardware will become useless forever and miners immediately lose their source of income. Different people will lobby for solutions that fit to their capabilities.
Modifying code in chaotic and stressful circumstances may lead to bugs that get exploited later without being noticed long enough so that snapshots will not be an option.