You can get a lot of free stuff, but it takes a lot of time and effort.

This is not true of welfare, and it's why I find it unnatural and stupid.

HI've noticed on Threads, Bluesky, and even some apps here on Nostr that I’m shown a lot more content from people I’m not following. This is often due to reposts, quote posts, or just the algorithms at work. While this content can be engaging and spark conversations, it’s often not healthy.

I see people posting obviously or maybe obliviously wrong things, which then get corrected and boosted, creating a vicious cycle. For example, someone mentioned considering a hyphenated name for their kids. I shared how my hyphenated name caused issues with computers, especially with international travel. This led to many calling me a bigot because the original poster was a queer woman. It’s odd because I’m queer myself, but it seems they felt an amab queer shouldn’t share personal experiences directly related to the topic.

I also saw clickbait articles about triathletes vomiting at the end of an Olympic triathlon, blaming it on a polluted river. Yes, the river is polluted, but triathletes often throw up at the end of races, and the swim was two hours before the nausea hit.

These issues occurred on Twitter too, but I didn’t experience it the same way there. I used Twitter daily from the moment Jack invited me and our coworkers onto the service, and for me, the conversations were healthier. I understand that many others had negative experiences, though.

On Nostr, I see zaps often rewarding hot takes and posts that signal membership in one group or another. This seems to exacerbate the issue, as people are incentivized to make posts that cater to specific in-groups rather than fostering genuine dialogue.

My worry is that maybe we’re actually doing worse with the new platforms. Is this something other people are seeing? How do we navigate this and foster healthier online conversations?

Most people who I know that think the CIA invented bitcoin, are not very familiar with the pre-history of Bitcoin including work by Back, Szabo, Finney, etc.

I'm not saying that certainly no intelligence agency created Bitcoin, but rather, I'm very skeptical of the certainty that many people have around that topic.

Because, when you are somewhat familiar with that pre-history and look at it from an engineering perspective, you can clearly see the pieces gradually falling into place. In the1980s there was work by Chaum about how to build a database run by mutually suspicious entities. In the 1990s there was work by Back for proof-of-work. As things moved into the 2000s, there was Szabo's Bit Gold, which is very similar to what Bitcoin ended up being, and Finney's Reusable Proof of Work "RPOW" tokens. Finney hadn't solved the centralization issue, and Szabo hadn't solved the issue of better computation causing supply inflation over time, but they were collectively within shooting range of the solution. Others as well. Meanwhile global bandwidth was getting better, encryption in general was getting better (and there we've got an actual intelligence agency contribution), etc.

And then Satoshi added to that work, including the difficulty adjustment in particular and many other details, with a full implementation.

Basically, if someone thinks that Bitcoin just kind of magically came out of nowhere, then it's pretty easy to see how they'd be inclined toward a conspiratorial assumption.

However, if one sees that, just like any other industry, there was a series of engineers building on each others' work until someone finally got it over the line, then it looks a lot more organic.

What’s your most popular opinion?

This note will get a 100k sat zap

You have better things to do than spending time with people that suck.