Alright, after watching 5+ hours of Dune part one and two, I’m going to need someone to explain to me why this is a good movie.

Whatever other people are seeing, I am not seeing it.

Dice.

The majority of people have a strong tendency to want to be part of something that is bigger than themselves. It is why they not just get up in the morning, but why they are *energized* to get up in the morning.

Clans and religions were among the earliest bigger things. People know that they will die, and so they invest into their descendants, honor their ancestors, and contemplate metaphysics and the nature of life. Many people will willingly sacrifice themselves for their children or for their highest ideals because of this.

In the modern era of printing presses and telecommunication systems, there is also a broader set of choices for people to group together around, either combined with those other ones or sometimes instead of them. Sometimes they choose nationalism. Sometimes they fight for a political ideology that transcends borders. Sometimes it is a professional guild or professional recognition. Sometimes it is the environment. Right or left or anywhere in between, you can often tell what someone adheres to as their highest ideal.

A powerful exercise is to 1) identify what you feel a part of in the bigger sense (it could be a few things) and 2) whenever someone’s behavior confuses you, stop and think about what they likely feel a part of in a bigger sense, if anything. You might feel that what they associate with is fucking retarded, but if you can at least identify it, then that is the first step toward successful communication and debate and rebuttal.

Using myself as an example, my professional experience is in a combination of engineering and finance. Separately, my ethical philosophy is grounded in virtue ethics (that’s a whole other longwinded topic), and as a result, what I feel a part of in a bigger sense is various social movements and protocols that utilize technology to bring financial autonomy to people. That’s where I put my time and capital toward.

Successful commerce involves the combination of value and communication. Therefore, I want people to be able to communicate freely and transfer value freely. As such, I strongly associate with the leading technologies in those fields, such as Bitcoin and Nostr.

If I thought they were weak, I would sympathize with them but not invest in them or have much hope for them. That was my view for a while. But if I view them as technically capable and achieving of network effects, then my rationality combines with my sympathy and becomes full support.

I don’t care what peoples’ race, sex, orientation, ethnicity, or nationality is. Instead, what I care about is doing whatever tiny part I can to bring technologies to people that allow them to transfer value and information to others, or to educate people on those technologies, etc. That is where my time and capital is focused on. Outside of family, that is what makes me energized in the morning to work toward.

What is yours?

I go to NYC several times per year for one reason or another. For work, for friends, etc.

Part of me likes it, but part of me gets fucking frustrated multiple times per day every time I am here. (Sorry, this is a Nostr Lyn post).

There are plenty of neat things in NYC that I can’t do at the same scale/quality elsewhere in the world due to the network effects around the city (broadway shows, financial district, etc), and yet after a day or two all I want to do is leave. It feels claustrophobic on multiple fronts.

People all have different vibes but for me, major cities are fun to visit but smaller secondary cities or suburbs around cities are so much smoother to live in. I can’t imagine living all the time in a major city.

The same applies to Cairo, to which I have been in far more total days than NYC. I like Cairo’s satellite cities but not Cairo itself other than going briefly.

Every time I am in a major city I am immediately reminded of the luxury of space, nature, quiet, parking spaces, and chillness of not being in a city. Everything I take for granted normally is now a luxury to fight for in a city.

Even politics are largely correlated to urbanization. If you live in rural or suburban areas, you likely drive around in your own car, you might have some land, etc. Your interaction with the local government exists in a moderate sense. The potential weakness is that you are more likely to always be around those who are similar to you, which minimizes your worldliness.

In contrast to all that, in major cities, everything is so tightly packed, and people rely on public transportation, and even a momentary lapse of government services (eg trash collection) becomes an acute catastrophe. But on the beneficial side, people are around those who are different than them more often, which breeds worldliness.

That’s why I tend to like the zone between rural and major cities. I like secondary cities or suburbs of major cities, because I get a bit of both worlds. The density and interconnectedness of major cities briefly, and the space and self-autonomy outside of them most of the time.

And yet I was born and raised in that sort of inbetween state, and so maybe it is just my upbringing.

What about you? Can anyone sell me the idea of NYC or other major cities that I am missing, especially in the remote work era? I see glimpses of how it could be attractive if you are used to it and know every detail of your neighborhood, but it really does feel limiting to me.

If the cost of the book is in anyway prohibitive for someone due to personal circumstances or jurisdictional issues, I happily endorse them pirating Broken Money.

There are always ways to pirate stuff anyway, but like, I'm not taking any action against you to make it harder, and my spirit is with you. ☮️

Definitely! Strike's ability to receive dollars over lightning is huge! Great way to pitch Bitcoin to businesses that otherwise wouldn't care about it.

Mine has probably bought some bitcoin at this point lol

Gotta post about that steak!

Thursday the 28th, 8:47. “69” is a good way to start the day!

Alright, after watching 5+ hours of Dune part one and two, I’m going to need someone to explain to me why this is a good movie.

Whatever other people are seeing, I am not seeing it.

we need a hashtag to use when something seems written by ai assist or a bot & the poster did not specify. like how champagne is just from champagne, france and the rest is called something else so we get people identifying when they use it. i am all for using it but think the public should know. #botpost or #aipost or #promptpost

What bitcoin lightning wallet do you recommend, Lyn?

Thanks for the explanation. As a blockchain noob: What I can’t wrap my head around: if servers/relays are non-central and people can see stuff in different relays: how am I able to explore / search things that happen on different relays where I am „not on“ and how is somebody able to share something from a relay that I am not on. also: who owns the different relays and how are they able to keep those relays up (how do they make money?) . Thx for anyone patient enough to explain 😊

Thanks 🙏🏻 very useful and important 🙏🏻

Bitcoin vs global liquidity:

For those that are new to Nostr, hello!

What’s cool about it is that Nostr it is an open source protocol. It is not a centralized company, but rather is a protocol that individuals and companies can build upon.

This means that you can use many different applications to access it, or even build your own. And it means that there is no central authority that can take down posts or delete accounts; there are different servers operated by different entities that are storing the data. And there is no central algorithm for determining what posts people see or don’t see.

You can hook up a bitcoin lightning wallet to send and receive tips (“zaps”) on posts. Nostr itself is not a blockchain or crypto and has no token, but the Bitcoin blockchain does complement it well via zaps.

Nostr is still relatively small, and a bit rough around the edges. But the community here is great, and familiarizing yourself with the technology and concept is useful in a world of centralized social media. It is a new method of decentralization that balances various trade-offs in a novel way, and the protocol can be used for a lot more than just social media.

Welcome!

I had one of those false wake-up dreams.

I generally check a couple things on my phone when I wake up, including the bitcoin price when it is within a raging bull market or bear market, and so in the dream I checked it and it was $84,254. I was like, “oh, nice”.

But then of course I woke up and it was just $72k. And then I was like, “Geez even your dreams are lame. $84k and change? Not even $100k or some flashy number?” It was even plausibly correcting on the screen, like it was coming down from a spike to $86k with a perfectly plausible consolidating price chart. The most mid-curve normie dream imaginable.

But then after chilling with my husband in the morning sun and drinking some tea, I checked my phone again and saw Craig Wright get totally rekt at trial, which is way, way better than $84k bitcoin.

I like MSTR long term, but at the moment the price is very high vs its net asset value.

The company does a great job of raising capital to arbitrage that situation when it occurs, but outside investors need to be careful when those types of wider-than-normal gaps develop.