This has been the most important and eventful year of my life; and the best, so far..
In order of events:
- Quit my fiat job, had multiple issues with pay and they tried to stiff me out of 6-figures on the way out but I went nuclear and got paid in full
- Relocated from Australia to Vietnam
- Moved everything here that we didn’t sell; including my old dog
- Got married
- Had an amazing honeymoon
- Got in the best shape since my early 20s
- Learned Vietnamese to basic conversational level
- Made new friends, good friends
- Moved to a new house with a pool
- Had our first child
- Read 30+ books
- Put my time and energy into things that matter to me
- First Christmas with wife and baby
#Bitcoin works. It takes time, and I’m bound to have downswings ahead like everyone (12yo dog has tumours so I’ve got that to deal with), but none of this probably happened without it.
Watching Australia go to shit from afar is more bearable. At least I don’t have to deal with the constant stupidity when I walk out the door here.
I just put down the phone and the world around me is actually normal. Walk to the beach with the old dog, get a coffee for <$1, enjoy the Sun, people say hello and are friendly, work at home then go for great dinner with friends - a far cry from what my life was like last year and much more enjoyable.
#MerryChristmas everyone. Here’s hoping you all enjoy the best of life today!
This is theft. No matter how you look at it. This makes everything every artist has ever made free. If a library of books was stolen like this there would be lawsuits. I expect Spotify will sue over this, not that I support them or this activity. But I don't know what good will come out of lawsuits by a company only interested in self-preservation. What we need is an instant, global, frictionless way for fans to support art directly. Oh wait.... we have that! #nostr #bitcoin #lightning #lightningislove nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgqgdwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkcqpqyfg0d955c2jrj2080ew7pa4xrtj7x7s7umt28wh0zurwmxgpyj9sldm58v nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgqtxwaehxw309anxjmr5v4ezumn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tmwwp6kyvtkx46kv7tgx3kxketnd3nhs7rrvdkxwwrxxp585ct6dpshwdmjwdexsanxw96hs7ndxfnxkd35vvmny6rswv6r2m3swc6n7cnjdaskgcmpwd6r6arjw4jsqgr98zf9a0akv86p3kx86p6tachg4lthsuqamzg8psk6jdk4w8j4cv6qcgkr @truefans #grownostr ⚡️ We are almost there 🤞🏻 I desperately hope fans will support artists directly in the future. 🧡💜
> This is theft. No matter how you look at it.
Nothing was stolen, Spotify still has all their copies and they’re in the same state as prior.
So no, it’s not theft, no matter if you emotionally want to label it that because you don’t like it, but that’s simply not what happened here.
Yoga my man. Physio should be able to set you up with a routine, otherwise find another one who will. Back takes time but yoga will help you get there
Was it the way it was being taught or the subject matter itself that wasn’t fun any more?
Product description in the second image, $195 Dollarydoos for a branch lopper!
See I’m the opposite, I can memorise very well. But memorisation and recall is itself a skill, one that isn’t taught basically at all anymore, but which I managed to teach myself through interest in the subject.
But nobody is interested in a formula for the sake of a formula. They could be interested in it’s application or it’s history or weird quirks, but learning a formula itself is basically like learning how to say something in a foreign language but you don’t know what it means - you can remember it to pass a test, but won’t remember it 5 years later.
With maths there is tons of interesting stuff, a good teacher could easily make fifteenth century nautical tables interesting to a class of teenage boys even if it is pointless, but as Lockhart laments - their job is to teach the syllabus so those boys are ready for whatever bullshit they will be forced to learn in next year’s curriculum and all that does is sap more and more joy out of kids every year until everyone despises maths, which nobody should because maths is actually really fun!
Give this one a read Phil, it might reawaken something in you too.
https://annas-archive.org/md5/fdf0bef74e46b0bbba426246a7f2782a
Being divorced from reality I think is what kills it. When you’re made to memorise formulas without knowing how they were arrived at, why, what problem was being solved - you’re not really learning anything.
This short extract is a good example; being taught nonsense by uninspiring robots is bound to kill one’s interest in a subject.
Struggling to buy a gift for the man who has everything this Christmas? Watch this.
Also available as 520W tripod mounted mayhem!
https://v.nostr.build/volmC07Oiwbg29qZ.mp4
“A Mathematician’s Lament” by Paul Lockhart is a fantastic short read up next for #bookstr
This was a spontaneous read after I watched some videos about Newton and Fermat and Euler and wondered, where did the brilliant minds go.
In using a lot of AI this year I’ve frequently been thinking on path dependence. That’s a huge topic for another post but I wanted to know how these great minds were educated back then that Leibniz and Newton could independently discover Calculus.
Any way, just something I’d never really thought much of, but mathematics was basically a hobby for most of these guys. Like you play Wordle or watch football, these guys would sit down after a long day at The Mint or as a Judge or whatever and discover new maths and physics. There was no path dependence for them back then.
Lockhart makes major criticism of mathematics as it’s taught today in rigid, rules-based, notation heavy gobbledygook without context, without meaning, and removed from actual problems to be solved.
His lament is that Maths is an art, which is meant to be fun, meant to be play, but the way it has been systematised and formalised and made mandatory learning of rules and formulas and shorthand without context, taught by the most uninspiring box-checking teachers who never explore maths for fun, has completely ruined the field. Sapping all joy out of it, the mental games we can play with it, the learning for the sake of learning, and the wonder in patterns of a realm beyond us.
Lockhart has some very basic solutions which will never reach standardised education but I really appreciated this short book regardless.
I excelled at maths as a kid competing at national level but by the time I got to High School and had a math-heavy schedule for my Uni path, I fucking hated it and nearly failed one of my two graduating math classes.
Lockhart’s lament resonated with me because I can still remember those early years where I did it for fun, and then I recalled that High School experience which was exactly as he described.
It’s inspired me to study Euclid’s Elements next year and see if I can rediscover some of the joy of mathematics for myself.
Highly recommend anyone with kids give this a read. It’s only 2 hours, very approachable, and it might save them from having the joy sapped out of maths as happened to me and I’m sure many others.
Annas Archive has ripped all of Spotify and put up as torrents.
300TB of audio files. Looks like the audiobook catalogue is there too..
Nevermind 10 years, you’ve got 5.
Keep your eyes on energy and the housing Ponzi.
They’ll be able to keep the housing Ponzi going (minus a US blowup), but they won’t be able to mask what they’ve done to energy. Your 2025 power bills will feel super cheap in 2030.
They will introduce a simple test to determine what constitutes hate speech, fear and division:
Is the person saying this an enemy of government power or the groups which provide it legitimacy?
Yes = guilty
No = promote as much hate, fear and division as you want to instigate those who will fail the test
In Australia, not much will happen until the economy breaks.
I think Europe and the UK might be a different story, they’re even further along with their tyranny and in worse condition economically, seems like they’ll snap first.
These people have no concept of stopping, they’re just going to go and go and go until something snaps.
Then they’ll double and triple down some more.
10 December 2025 - #AUStriches social media ban goes in to force, banning Under 16s from social media and requiring identification of adults
22 December 2025 - Victoria to introduce new laws to force social media companies to de-anonymise accounts accused of hate speech
I’ve been on #Nostr for 3 years because I knew this was coming.
The state of the Internet in 2025
“Me mum died in the holly”
Enjoy this mocking one-liner while you can anon.
Expect this to be banned by platforms and a criminal offence around the world within months. No way the Jews are going to let people post this willy nilly and completely undermine their narrative and guilt trip.
Vote harder so the Socialists in Blue Ties can agree with the Socialists in Red Ties on how they’re going to fuck you harder
Thinking your elected representative cares about your emails is more naive than thinking the stripper really likes you.
Please people, study #EliteTheory and save yourself from being this retarded.
J7 is a group of the 7 largest diaspora communities around the world which meet bi-weekly to discuss how they can share legislation and tactics to influence foreign governments to their will behind a unified message.
Facilitated and organised by the ADL (thanks Murica!)
And they wonder why people throughout history have gotten so sick of them that they keep getting exiled..
https://v.nostr.build/yBq89Du1hmXwSBGQ.mp4
nostr:note1ahksgppt7cwuqvnu0ctqydla8fq7t63fehmgpxq2s0vnh7fgezwqdde80e
I know, but Stack Hodler..
Oh well, fuck it. Looks like this cycle is mostly about getting new blood in the influencoor circles!
Like I said, I don’t think it’s the final innings as Dario does.
Plenty more cooking of books yet, Jensen hasn’t even made dessert!
Dario explains well the ridiculous ponzi that OpenAI, Nvidia, and Oracle (amongst others) are perpetuating.
I see only 2 ways the “this time is different” thesis plays out:
1. The bubble they’ve blown would destroy the Dollar itself, so Treasury will be forced to bail them out and cover their fraudulent tracks, probably via nationalisation ala Intel
2. The banks keep ploughing in made up money because some C-level retards can be convinced LLMs will become Gods and they can have their piece of it
Otherwise this is a carbon copy of the Dotcom bubble playing out. The same tricks, the same fraud, the same greed, the same good ideas too early.
Dario thinks it’s the last innings, again I think he’s too early; mania hasn’t arrived yet.
nostr:note1gwcsdgtrquasy8nhnh6x49jufpyeted0fjvexay80qxg8qpj93wsmlk2ec
We might go into 2026 just to mess with everyone focussed on the past