Those people don't understand the economics of bitcoin:
https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Lunar-Fallacy
> Production is the source of trade and therefore all economic activity results from investment.
Production can result in digital goods as well as physical goods. The value of the Software as a Service business model demonstrates that. HODLing seems to conflate holding money with production.
Yep it's worth getting involved and flexing the muscle of a Bitcoin-mediated economy. Part of that, though, is knowing when to let go of the medium on order to obtain a more permanent good.
I hope we never have to live through such a disaster, but you're right that it would really wake people up.
I certainly do find it odd that the physical/digital distinction is getting lost. Maybe younger generations who have a digital presence from a very young age blur that distinction too easily.
Perhaps the digital world is the realm of thought. In that way it would be similar to books. A writer can exert presence through a book just as an influencer can exert presence through a TikTok video. The reader or viewer who receives that receives ideas, which are without a doubt real in the mind. So, one can say that someone may have an online personality just like we say someone has an in-person personality.
The consequence, though, is that the more time we spend online in this realm of ideas, the less we associate the self with the physical body. The self feels extended across the digital world, present in some way wherever anyone is reading one's internet posts. So it would seem the loss of physical/digital distinction is associated with a loss of locus of self.
I think this explains much of the appetite for constant reinvention we see among young people today, manifested in tattoos or hairstyles or gender "transition." When your self is spread across the digital world, the body is just an avatar.
That's part of what I mean by "liquid modernity," and it definitely overlaps with some of the concepts of transhumanism.
Yeah that's what I mean. It seems some Bitcoiners are just hoarding it against the future in which Bitcoin becomes the default currency of the entire world. What if that never happens? Bitcoin may be a great means to an end, but it seems insufficient as an end in itself.
Admittedly I was trying to sound smart a little. But also I've come to be familiar with terms like "liquid modernity" through reading and podcast listening, and I'm using them to describe a specific idea.
I'm not sure what sort of reality digital goods have, but they do have *some* reality, as far as I can tell. As such, digital goods can certainly be bought, sold, and exchanged. Hence Bitcoin.
I just don't think Bitcoin is tangible enough to serve as an end. It should be used to obtain things of more concrete value. Which, really, is what currency is. Bitcoin seems to me to be a currency well-suited for a digital economy, but I don't understand the HODLers. They seem to miss the forest for the trees. Your original post got me thinking along those lines.
To me, Bitcoin is at one end of some spectrum, and the other is the life you described in your original post. That life has real, concrete value to me in a way that money, be it physical or digital, does not.
I've been wrestling with what sort of reality digital space has, and Bitcoin definitely falls into digital space.
You know what, fair. I need to work on being more clear in my speech.
Nevertheless, I still don't grasp how Bitcoin is a tangible asset. We can't possibly encounter it except as numbers on a screen. The exchange of Bitcoin is nothing more than the moving of electrons in a computer circuit. That's not tangible in the same way as things we can touch and interact with in physical space, or people we can look at and communicate with.
Bitcoin is peak liquid modernity. It's intangible and flows easily and quickly across the digital realm.
Perhaps it's one of the best things to come out of liquid modernity, but that doesn't make it any less liquid or any less hyper-modern. True value this side of Heaven is in community and place.
Check out nostr:npub1wtuh24gpuxjyvnmjwlvxzg8k0elhasagfmmgz0x8vp4ltcy8ples54e7js's relay, wss://nostr.thesamecat.io.
There's a 500 sat sign-up fee when you add your npub, then you're good to go.
I got inspiration and templates from this video:
Halloween costume check!
The mask is cardboad, hot glue, and paper mache, all made by me. My wife sewed the robe and cowl.
I figure the Nephilim were neanderthals or something similar. Scientists say from DNA evidence that humans cross-bred with neanderthals at one point. The Biblical reference to the Nephilim could have something to do with that.
A shame the US project was never built
My wife and I visited Enchanted Rock, Texas. It's been raining the past several days, so the vernal pools in the granite dome were filled with water.
I kept thinking about how nature is fractal. These little pools and grasses are a landscape in miniature, mirrored on a much larger scale by the rivers and valleys nestled throughout the Texas Hill Country.
So are small zaps going to go the way of the Dodo? I saw a lot of buzz yesterday about high transaction fees for self-custodial wallets.
I feel so dumb. Last night just before bed I turned off the light, turned toward the bathroom door, then walked face-first straight into the doorframe.
I think those who seek to use Halloween to glorify evil are co-opting a Christian holiday to try to justify some sort of neo-paganism. Evil cannot create, it can only corrupt. Halloween only makes sense in the light of All Hallows' the day after, but our commercialized vision of the day eliminates all of that entirely.
The main point I want to get across is that it's quite all right for Christian parents to send their kids out trick-or-treating, so long as the festivities are kept in their proper context of All Saints' and All Souls' Days. If you don't want to celebrate Halloween, that's quite alright, but there's no need to cede the vigil of one of the high feast days of the year to neo-paganism just because our consumer culture focuses on the wrong parts.
On a slightly different note, the common depictions of the devil with red skin, a pointy tail, and a pitchfork are intended to mock him. Such costumes were used in Medieval passion plays, and the imagery even appears in some quite humorous passages of Dante's Inferno. I suspect this tradition is another contributor to Halloween customs.
https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/satan-proud-and-powerful
Now you're changing the subject. Your first post was about Halloween which has pagan origins.
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.
This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.
https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween
First of all, Halloween is simply another name for All Hallows' Eve, the vigil of All Saints' Day. All Hallows' Eve -> Hallow E'en -> Halloween.
Second, the pop history claim that Samhain is the origin of Halloween is just false. Halloween as we know it today is a result of the American melting pot of various European peoples with their disparate cultures and traditions. I wrote a long-form article explaining the subject, if you're interested.
nostr:naddr1qqyxgwfkv5unjd3cqgs8qy3p9qnnhhq847d7wujl5hztcr7pg6rxhmpc63pkphztcmxp3wgrqsqqqa28zzxljs
All respect to Papa Francesco, but this is big boomer energy.
"The economy isn't bad, just learn how to code!"