Oslo really is beautiful this time of year.

On our multi-hour trip to the airport (heading to Oslo soon), my husband and I had a long debate about fiat and bitcoin. I love this sort of thing.

He is super bullish on bitcoin, but has somewhat lower expectations than me for its total market size and importance in the long run. But more importantly, he is a really good debater and can steelman fiat arguments better than most of the actual fiat proponents can, so it’s very useful iterative process for me to keep sparring his arguments and refine how I describe things for maximum clarity and impact. He also edits all of my long-form articles and edited my book, so he serves as my first line of defense to make sure everything I write can pass a certain muster outside of my own echo chamber.

It’s really important to do this sort of thing. Debate with people you like but where you see some things differently, and assess how it all checks out.

The amount of lost time and productivity due to dealing with income taxes nationwide is insanely high.

The number of accountants, lawyers, and auditors that work full time on it, plus the percent of time that small business owners and individual taxpayers have to dedicate to it each year, costs an uncountable total number of lost hours per year. And just as bad, it requires a ubiquitous massive surveillance apparatus on all sorts of income to enforce itself.

No taxes are enjoyable, but income taxes are really the most counter-productive and onerous ones. Taxes on properties, imports, and retail sales have so much of a lighter touch to track and collect than income taxes.

はい、かんぱーい。自家製ジンジャーハイとトマトハイ。すぐ出る系。

#foodstr #sakestr #japan

You may be in a position where leaders in your company are hot to turn on Microsoft Copilot Recall.

Your best counterargument isn't threat actors stealing company data.

It's that opposing counsel will request the recall data and demand it not be disabled as part of e-discovery proceedings.

The threat that keeps your executives up at night are lawyers, not hackers.

What’s the best thing you purchased using Lightning this month?

What’s the best thing you purchased using Lightning this month?

There are these people out there…

- husband is tall/decent looking

- wife is a solid 7/8

- 2 to 3 children

- 115-125 IQ

- kids go to private/charter school

- house costs 1.1 million

- work in healthcare/law/finance/biz

- highly conservative in private

- politically reserved in public

- low to medium alcohol dependency

- love to gossip about others

- kids are smart, excel in school

- church on Easter/Christmas

- hobbies are travel/sports

- power consumers of most goods

- low risk takers

- slightly above average in all categories, far above average in none

And they run our society.

Random macro stuff I'm watching today: containership rates.

The broad crypto industry rallied hard soon after the White House threatened to veto the bill that would let banks custody digital assets. And now it’s making a big difference, with Congress voting strongly for it, the White House pulling their veto threat, etc.

While it’s right to pass that bill and let banks custody them if they want, it’s sad to see that the crypto industry response to that was like 100x bigger than the response to all of the anti-privacy stuff that has been happening.

The desire of people in the industry for banks to help pump their bags is way bigger than their desire to pave a way for freedom tech in general.

Much love to all those building and supporting real freedom tech.

I really dislike social media algorithms and incentives. Negative stuff is what sells.

There are so many times where I sit down with a good host and have a thoughtful discussion about macro finance, and then the Youtube title and thumbmail that their producer makes is some version of me smiling next to a terrible headline and often something on fire or blowing up.

This is the way. nostr:note1unyzxvkmlquk2wuhde2xvz9g42exywq3eehh99n732shjcfhfxyq2hr3kt

Most web3 enthusiasts are just in it for token speculation, not permissionless communication.

And the problem with that model, is that whenever there is a shiny new object in web3 land, they go to it. So it builds the opposite of brand loyalty and makes it hard for companies to measure any real user metrics.

If those users actually cared about permissionless communication, they’d at least spend a bit of time on Nostr.

Simple base protocols are what can actually last a very long time.

One day, when my 15-year-old Hyundai stops working, I’m going to get a Toyota.

The sheer completeness with which Wright’s documents were ripped apart by forensic evidence in the COPA trial, and the thoroughness with which the various lies were deconstructed, was a beauty to behold.