This is also something I want to know. I love what Alby is doing, but a new user, it wasn't easy getting it figured out or sorted. There's no way I can put my friends or families through all that. Plus, if I ever wanted or needed to start over fresh, I'd want a very simple way of doing so:

1. Client.

2. Wallet that sends and receives.

It works. Nothing else.

That is actually not a bad idea.

Grok is generating images now. I tried generating a picture of myself + my dog, and it broke... ahahahah.

So here's a pretty picture instead.

All day, I've intended to get to a task I feel is important. All day. I have an hour left of my day. And I here I am.

"I'll just check the notifications. It'll be quick." Then, "I'll just check the latest feed. What can possibly be there?"

HAHAHA.

Because of things I found in the feed, I ended up learning about a slightly new topic, went down one rabbit hole (partially), and ended up backing up my entire password manager with a different one.

I intended on none of those things today.

I don't spend all day on social medias, but I spend quite a bit of time switching between platforms, websites, and communities. Each day is a different.

The social graph on iris.to reminds of the graph view in Obsidian.

I see. I figured it would include several things like this. Thank you for a breakdown.

This is nostr:npub175nul9cvufswwsnpy99lvyhg7ad9nkccxhkhusznxfkr7e0zxthql9g6w0

And the ironic thing is -- I didn't have time to get to Best Buy. I was going to feeling like I would have had a better experience, but I couldn't get there.

I'll keep my eyes peeled next time I venture out that way.

👀

I can't speak for everyone, but I know growing up in America, being taught what it was and what it is and what it's supposed to stand for definitely does not match up to many things we see today.

For me, over the last several years (tiny cracks in the narrative started after 9-11), I've watched a layer here and layer there fall apart. When you face it, it causes an emotional grieving to take place.

When you really look at it and see things for what they are -- I know I went through a grieving process.

I still have hope for America, but I no longer pretend it's something that it isn't. It was disheartening to come to understand just how far back the rabbit hole goes.

Many Americans today are either waking up and beginning that grieving process so they can find their forward or, like you mention here, they stay willfully ignorant.

But now I know why.

Many people cannot face the truth of what things have become. It' too much.

If they did, it means the narrative they've been taught to support all these decades isn't 100% true. And if that's not 100% true, what does that mean for their life, the choices they thought they were making back in the day, and for some, even the military service they took part in.

Then let's say they get through all of that, process it, grieve it, etc. Now what?

Now they can see the corruption in the places it exists and they can kind of predict the behavior and see the propaganda where they couldn't before.

Some will get through this part and feel completely hopeless and despondent because they feel like they will never be able to change things.

It's a huge mental crack and most people cannot bear it.

I never want to lose that hope that things will turn around, but I'm definitely more guarded about the impact of the corruption.

I needed the gear today. I bought something that was good enough.

Thing that bothered me the most was being discounted and the total unwillingness on his part to hear me or investigate further. My experience and knowledge didn't mean anything to him because "It says so right here." And that was the end of it.

I felt like I was watching this scene all over again.

After I'd explained to the tech guy at my local office supply store what I was looking for and what I needed with exact specifications, he said, "We don't have that." Then, he explained something different than what I'd requested.

When I further explained that I'd seen those specs on boxes and product descriptions for the items in question because the technology is smaller and these items contain it, which is why I was specifically asking which of those items in the store had that, he simply said, "Uh-uh. I looked it up."

He points to the Google/Gemini-#AI-generated blurb of what I'd asked for and says, "That's not what it is," then tapped on his phone. "It says so right here."

I kept a straight face, took a breath, smiled sweetly, thanked him for his time, and proceeded to the cash register with what I had.

I have no words.

BTW, I shared this article in three separate places. I never do that.

So here's a very serious question:

How does a person truly remain private in communicating their thoughts via an electronic or digital medium?

There has to be a way around this.

For example, my current npub uses my real name and face. There may come a time when I want to start a fresh one but have it completely segregated and private as possible, yet still communicate with the outside world via Nostr.

How does a person truly do this?

Some basics:

- Never use your real name, face, job description, etc.

- Never post pictures of buildings that can be used to identify your location.

- Use a VPN before you launch the Nostr application

-- But what else? --

I'm editing some footage.

I found raw content I filmed in January. It was kind of basic and crappy. I've gotten better at it since then.

Hoping to take pieces of the earlier videos and use them in lessons on how life is always changing.

With Nostr, I feel like I'm in a coffee shop where people are talking.

Except, you're free to join conversations and others are mostly welcoming to your contribution. Then you can leave again and go back to reading your book in the corner with no pressure or expectation.

Regardless of what you do, others are happy you're there. Even if you never spoke to anyone, it feels like I spent time with people.

Except, unlike other places, I don't feel the need to perform.

On Nostr, notes don't live forever necessarily.

They only live if they are still part of a relay that's communicating.

Now that I think about it, I probably would not have resold the rummage items. My parents might have. Back then, I was more interested in the stories I could find or invent.

Something always had a story.

- The story behind the jacket that was hung earlier or the old postcards in the bin by the books

- The legend of how the valley was protected in the deep winters

- How the china dolls in the stamp and stationery store came to be

- Whether the Pony Express came through and what their lives were like

- The truth behind the late nights the sheriff and his deputies put in back behind the conference room. The upholstery was from the '70s, and their ashtrays were full of butts.

- How many novels my English teacher had actually written

So many memories and interesting things.

Until technology enables us to speak to our future-future generations without someone in the family line screwing things up, my goal is to do so through preserved #handwritten journals. I haven't worked out all the details yet, but I am under the firm belief there's not enough handwritten diaries to pilfer through for the occasional obsessed family historian that eventually rises up.

When I was a teenager, my family of four had to move into an 18-foot Class C RV.

My dad took a job across the state, and we had nowhere to live and no money. My parents did the best they could.

We eventually moved into a little double-wide for rent in town.

People might look down on that, but I'm telling you right now that summer and the next 18 months were my childhood's two most memorable years.

We did free things and drove almost daily into the region's outskirts. My brother and I would explore the ruins of abandoned cabins, peeling back layers of wall insulation of the day (newspapers) to reveal dates from the early 1900s.

We played outside because the inside was really only for sleeping or shelter during storms.

We went to every museum and attended every free event downtown put on.

We became experts at which washing machines and dryers worked the best in the local laundromat.

We spent copious amounts of time in the libraries, especially the one that had the basement where a rummage sale happened each week.

We experienced extreme weather bouts where we learned so much about ourselves and the world around us.

We hiked on the weekends.

Mom had to take a part-time job. I used to help her periodically and learned some things by doing that, too.

I learned about angry yellow jackets, bucket rides that helped you scale mountains, and legends of the local Native Americans.

Forest fires happened the following summer. After that, we joined the mushroom pickers for a chance to make extra money. I remember I got to keep around $20 for putting up with Dad dragging us up the mountainside.

Mom wasn't 100% pleased, that I remember, but it was a good adventure, and by the end of the day, my brother and I were too tired to argue.

The wildlife was unmatched for that part of the world.

I'm sure my parents had an entirely different perspective on things, but those two years were full of imagination, awe, and discovery. Thirty-five years later, I still remember the most details from that period.

I never would have had those experiences had we not moved into that tiny RV, no matter how temporary.

#story #stories #memoir