I keep trying to note-Zap you with the “Cheers 🍻” message (which is supposed to come with 5000 sats but I don’t think it’s working.
Yeah, very cool!
How can I zap you 10K sats?
I tried zapping to your profile ⚡️ but 10K exceeded the max.
Hey White Rabbit! You’re the only entry so you win the10K sats!
Yours is the first entry, White Rabbit! Even though it’s AI, if it’s the only entry, you’ll win 10K sats!
10,000 Satoshi Snowman Challenge!
Best Satoshi Snowman posted here gets 10,000 sats!
Warm-weather Bitcoin folks can post sandmen, dirtmen, etc.! 😆
Your snowman must have the sat symbol on him and you have until December 31st!
Here’s my own (pretty lumpy 😂) entry.
⛄️
Do we even get the benefits in the northern winter when the sun is low on the horizon? (Asking for a northern-dwelling summer-lover.)
Thanks for saying so!
I anticipate that 2026 will be a much deeper Nostr year for me… and hopefully for many more years to come.
It’s not just about wanting to step away from the stinkiness of the content slung around on X… it’s also about wanting to be more a part of a distributed and more state-attack resistant system.
I just put a time limiter on X. Deletion will be my next step!
I’m just realizing I need to be on NOSTR way more and X way less.
Spent ten minutes on X just now and the vibe I got is that everything in the world is going to shit… but then I remembered that there is this little digital village of happy Bitcoiners and tinkerers here and suddenly I ask myself… what am I holding on to? And why? It’s not like X is my livelihood or anything like it. Why am I still fucking with all that X-negativity so much?
Anyway, consider this a statement of intent. A pre-New Year New Year’s resolution, perhaps. I want to be among the free people more. The lifeboaters that have already started rowing for shore. Or are already there and building. I want to be with the ostriches. Not the pigeons.
And here’s a sunrise for ya.
This post contains my response to a collection of anti-filter arguments collected by Beeforbacon1 on twitter.
I've posted a screenshot of the arguments below and will reply to them one by one. 
Source: https://x.com/beeforbacon1/status/1975501515021594825
> 1. Outdated policy - The 80-byte cap is ineffective today, users bypass it using Libre Relay, private relay networks, and direct miner channels. Loosening relay policy strengthens the free Bitcoin's open relay layer.
This argument commits the survivor fallacy. You only see the spam that bypasses the filters, so it's easy to "claim" every spammer gets around the filter. But you don't know how many spammers saw the filters and opted not to bypass them, or tried to bypass them but failed.
Moreover, the people who seek out and use spam-friendly tools like libre relay, op_return_bot, and private mempools are mostly "high-effort" spammers. They are likely to succeed. But the filters work great against low-effort spammers like this guy:
https://x.com/AchimWar/status/1975406333584363932
> Restrictive defaults push activity into private mempools
This is a false dichotomy. To say "do not put spam in public mempools" is not to say "put spam in private mempools instead." Spammers have another choice: do not put spam in *any* mempools
> fees, not arbitrary limits...[should] decide what gets relayed - strengthening the free market
Spam filters are selected by the free market whenever a user chooses to run free software containing them. It is not coercive to police your own mempool -- it belongs to *you,* not spammers.
Also, this argument is defeated by a simple "reductio ad absurdum:" if ejecting "spam" from your mempool was coercive, then ejecting *anything* from your mempool would be coercive too, as coercing is coercing regardless of the content -- it is a verb, not an adjective. But it would be absurd to object to ejections "in toto," as to eject "nothing" from your mempool would leave it open up to a variety of DoS attacks. Therefore ejecting is "sometimes" okay, and the question must be "which" content to eject. Crying "coercion" fails to do that.
> The cap just encourages worse hacks (like UTXOs, witness stuffing) that bloat the network more than OP_RETURN
This commits a similar false dichotomy as the second argument. To say "do not put spam in op_returns" is not to say "put spam in utxos and witnesses instead." The spammers have a third option: do not put spam in the blockchain at all.
> Miners already accept larger OP_RETURNs if paid. The default should reflect this reality
This argument has a faulty unstated premise: that all mempools should match whatever miners are doing. But in reality, bitcoin core's mempool policies are "intended" to be modified by end users to suit their own preferences, e.g. see https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/policy/policy.cpp
Some users might "want" them to match the "average" of whatever miners are doing, which is fine if that's what you want, but other users want to use their mempools for something else: to assist with the relay of transactions they want to see more of and to hinder the relay of transactions they want to see less of. And a big reason why I oppose relaxing the op_return limit is because I want to see more of the latter.
> Simplification - Removing rarely-used config knobs (like datacarrier=0) avoids fragmentation of policies across nodes.
This config is not "rarely used." Over 20% of bitcoin users have switched to Knots precisely to keep using it. Moreover, "fragmentation of policies" is not a bad thing; as mentioned previously, bitcoin core's policy file is "intended" to be modified by end users to suit their preferences.
And a variety of policies is also healthy for the network in a similar manner to the concept of a "competitive federalism" -- just as the founders of the USA intended for each US state to compete with the other ones to adopt the best laws, various implementations of bitcoin can compete with one another to offer the best mempool policies. A one-size-fits-all solution hinders this.
Oh I have a question… would a higher percentage of nodes running filters be at all effective at raising the fee price of larger non-monetary arbitrary data transactions? Because even if it makes their transaction prices go up just a little bit higher (hopefully a lot higher for bigger data “dumps”) I’d be happy to make them pay more, in sats, as well as in aggravation.
This post contains my response to a collection of anti-filter arguments collected by Beeforbacon1 on twitter.
I've posted a screenshot of the arguments below and will reply to them one by one.
Source: https://x.com/beeforbacon1/status/1975501515021594825
> 1. Outdated policy - The 80-byte cap is ineffective today, users bypass it using Libre Relay, private relay networks, and direct miner channels. Loosening relay policy strengthens the free Bitcoin's open relay layer.
This argument commits the survivor fallacy. You only see the spam that bypasses the filters, so it's easy to "claim" every spammer gets around the filter. But you don't know how many spammers saw the filters and opted not to bypass them, or tried to bypass them but failed.
Moreover, the people who seek out and use spam-friendly tools like libre relay, op_return_bot, and private mempools are mostly "high-effort" spammers. They are likely to succeed. But the filters work great against low-effort spammers like this guy:
https://x.com/AchimWar/status/1975406333584363932
> Restrictive defaults push activity into private mempools
This is a false dichotomy. To say "do not put spam in public mempools" is not to say "put spam in private mempools instead." Spammers have another choice: do not put spam in *any* mempools
> fees, not arbitrary limits...[should] decide what gets relayed - strengthening the free market
Spam filters are selected by the free market whenever a user chooses to run free software containing them. It is not coercive to police your own mempool -- it belongs to *you,* not spammers.
Also, this argument is defeated by a simple "reductio ad absurdum:" if ejecting "spam" from your mempool was coercive, then ejecting *anything* from your mempool would be coercive too, as coercing is coercing regardless of the content -- it is a verb, not an adjective. But it would be absurd to object to ejections "in toto," as to eject "nothing" from your mempool would leave it open up to a variety of DoS attacks. Therefore ejecting is "sometimes" okay, and the question must be "which" content to eject. Crying "coercion" fails to do that.
> The cap just encourages worse hacks (like UTXOs, witness stuffing) that bloat the network more than OP_RETURN
This commits a similar false dichotomy as the second argument. To say "do not put spam in op_returns" is not to say "put spam in utxos and witnesses instead." The spammers have a third option: do not put spam in the blockchain at all.
> Miners already accept larger OP_RETURNs if paid. The default should reflect this reality
This argument has a faulty unstated premise: that all mempools should match whatever miners are doing. But in reality, bitcoin core's mempool policies are "intended" to be modified by end users to suit their own preferences, e.g. see https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/policy/policy.cpp
Some users might "want" them to match the "average" of whatever miners are doing, which is fine if that's what you want, but other users want to use their mempools for something else: to assist with the relay of transactions they want to see more of and to hinder the relay of transactions they want to see less of. And a big reason why I oppose relaxing the op_return limit is because I want to see more of the latter.
> Simplification - Removing rarely-used config knobs (like datacarrier=0) avoids fragmentation of policies across nodes.
This config is not "rarely used." Over 20% of bitcoin users have switched to Knots precisely to keep using it. Moreover, "fragmentation of policies" is not a bad thing; as mentioned previously, bitcoin core's policy file is "intended" to be modified by end users to suit their preferences.
And a variety of policies is also healthy for the network in a similar manner to the concept of a "competitive federalism" -- just as the founders of the USA intended for each US state to compete with the other ones to adopt the best laws, various implementations of bitcoin can compete with one another to offer the best mempool policies. A one-size-fits-all solution hinders this.
This was an incredibly smart and helpful read, Super Testnet. Thank you! (Also, I loved your interview on the Bitcoin Takeover podcast!) 🙏
Wonder if they’ll allow in-kind redemption? If not… just more paper bullshit.
You might want to find other men she kept in prison overlong and begin working with them on a class-action lawsuit.
https://prospect.org/justice/how-kamala-harris-fought-to-keep-nonviolent-prisoners-locked-up/
The flowers look more cabbagey on the left. But not in a yucky way… no worries if that’s what you’re going for.
Traveling together. Grooving as one.
Right on! When I first started diving deeper into trying to understand bitcoin I had a sense that some of those funky anarchists I used to interact with were messing around with it in its early days. No way of knowing… but it’s a hunch.
It was weird and a bummer because I got busy with things for a few months and didn’t log in to the old anarchy site and when I finally got back to it… poof, zero, nada. “That site does not exist.”
I just figured it was yet another firework that shone brightly and then faded completely into the digital night of the Internet.
Haven’t thought about it again until getting into Nostr.
😊