The US government spent 185% more than it received in May.

The monthly deficit hit $316 billion.

Why must I use ApplePay and an app to apply for a visa?

This weekend, I’m travelling to Sydney to interview Yoel Roth for my upcoming Revolution.social podcast. I’m excited to talk to him because, after leaving Twitter, he wrote a paper about the trust and safety challenges facing social media protocols. If we decentralise social media, how do we govern ourselves without relying on centralised systems that can define who has permission to participate?

I need an electronic travel authorization to go to Australia and mine had expired. How hard can it new to renew it? Much harder than it should be.

The thing is, a visa is the most intense kind of government permission. And the permissioned and centralised world of technology almost derailed my entire trip. When I was at the Oslo Freedom Forum, I lost my fiat debit card. It wasn’t a big deal; I blocked it in my bank’s app, and I have other cards, so it wasn’t a major issue. I ordered a replacement card, but my bank requires me to use it physically at a store before they’ll allow me to use the new card for digital payments. And it hasn’t arrived in the post yet. No big deal, I have alternatives, lots of ways of paying for things.

Last night, I remembered to double check my Australian visa. To my surprise, I found out that I needed to renew it. No problem; I went to their website and they directed me to use their mobile app. Fine, I’ll download it again. But here’s where things started to go wrong. Apparently, the Australian government has decided that the visa should only be paid for with an in-app purchase! And because I had frozen my debit card, I couldn’t use that card. My bank wouldn’t unfreeze it because I had ordered a replacement card.

There is a website method, but it lacks any instructions, there are hundreds of questions instead of half a dozen, and it wasn’t clear to me what of the hundreds of Visa options I was supposed to choose.

So I’m waiting for my flight in Auckland but can’t check in because my visa isn’t set up. I need the app and to make an in app purchase!!!

Apple wouldn’t let me re-download the visa app because it has in-app payments and I needed an active card. Now I’ve got like 6 cards in my phone’s digital wallet! But Apple will only let me use a debit card with a New Zealand address! There’s literally an Apple Card with plenty of limit on this phone, but I can’t use it. I tried to use my new NZ company account, but it’s new and I only put $10 to test that it worked right before my trip to OFF! It worked but Apple had more delayed payments than $10, so it quickly declined more payments. Apple still wouldn’t let me re-install the visa app! So I immediately transferred a few hundred dollars from in to the new company account. Normally inter-bank transfers in Australia and New Zealand are immediate because both countries have small banking systems where all banks actually use a single centralized database. Not great for privacy but it’s normally very efficient.

I did an intrabank transfer to my non-blocked company account. But instead of being immediate they said it might take “a few hours!” So I tried adding funds to the new company account using debit or credit cards not those all blocked. Probably money transmitter rules about using cards to fund a bank account vs purchasing. Why provide the option if it won’t go through. Dunno. My guess is the bank was happy to accept it but the credit card companies I use blocked it.

I thought, okay, let me find a pre-paid NZ card. Turns out that there are tons of ways I could be a card issuer of prepaid cards in NZ, but I couldn’t find one which I could get a virtual card online with an NZ address.

Cash App was happy to let me use my BTC to fund some prepaid cards, but they all ended up with European or American issuing banks! Despite being marketed as New Zealand prepaid cards, but they all ended up being either impossible for me to set up to find or not actually based in NZ. Turns out that this stumbling through options lead to me getting a few prepaid no-KYC bitcoin-funded debit cards by accident! All this financial regulation and I stumbled in to anonymous credit cards.

Another option would be just switch my AppStore back to the US. But, Apple won’t let you change your country for your AppleID if you have any active subscriptions. I’ve got a bunch of US cards in my Apple wallet, but I can’t use them.

I missed my flight and had to rebook on a later one, not cheap. But kept going, trying to find a way to install this app. I tried to use my work Apple ID that I use for the nos.social app. While Apple lets you use phone numbers as 2-factor auth, it’s really buggy and doesn’t work for setting up a user in macOS or iOS. They really want you to use the own AppleID everywhere. I could log in to the US Apple account but only via the iCloud website, oh, and Apple Developer Connect. Useless for me in this situation. It wouldn’t take my US AppleID on my laptop or phone.

I also kept trying to find a debit card that Apple NZ would accept, get my personal bank to unblock my card, or even the new business account to work. Nothing.

If I didn’t figure this out, I’d miss my now rescheduled flight.

Eventually, I went through and got the very complicated website to work and spent $200 on a tourist visa. This same visa costs $20 if I use the Apple / Android app and their payment rails! The visa came back confirmed in a couple minutes, after paying the 10x “web tax.”

Right after that, I went through and got confirmation that the bank transfer to my new business account cleared. Honestly, it’s the first time since moving to New Zealand I’ve had an interbank fiat transfer take time; it’s normally immediate! Just when I needed it.

Why is this tech so locked down? Apple won’t let me fund my Apple “iTunes” account with my own cards, but only allows local fiat payments. Australia makes it 10 times more expensive to use their website instead of Apple Pay and makes the process much harder!

Billions get laundered through off shore shell companies and Wall Street but somehow banks, credit cards companies, the government of Australia, and Apple all worked to make nearly impossible for me to pay for a $20 visa waiver!? And instead I had to spend $200 on a sketchy website that barely worked.

Now just to be clear. I’m opposed to the existence of borders and nation states being able to control who can live where base on a corrupt system of visas. So my minor frustration is nothing in comparison to what a person from Nigeria or Afghanistan faces when they try and travel. It’s still frustrating.

What is 'Bikeshedding'?

"Bikeshedding," also known as Parkinson's Law of Triviality, is a phenomenon where people in an organization give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. It's often seen in meetings where complex topics are glossed over, while simple, easy-to-understand (and thus seemingly easy to contribute to) issues consume an inordinate amount of time and debate.

The term comes from C. Northcote Parkinson's book "Parkinson's Law," where he describes a fictional committee tasked with approving plans for a nuclear power plant. They breeze through the complex details of the reactor itself (because they don't understand it), but spend hours debating the trivial design of the bicycle shed. Everyone can visualize a bicycle shed and has an opinion, so everyone wants to contribute.

NEW: Coinbase CEO said: "If the electorate doesn't hold congress accountable to reducing the deficit, and start paying down the debt, #Bitcoin is going to take over as reserve currency." 👀

#meme #memestr #nostrmeme

we can’t all be suitcoiners

Yes, most people are natural followers, only a minority are natural leaders. An even smaller minority are neither.

The flu psyop made this blatantly clear; perfectly normal, stable, nice people became rabid totalitarians overnight because the authorities told them to. That experiment in postmodern fascism would never have gone so far if most people were not sheep.

Since then I've given up on any hope that the masses will wake up. As Seneca said: the majority is always wrong.

Quoting from "The Bed of Procustes":

"They are born, then put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called “work” in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box; they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box; they go to the gym in a box to sit in a box; they talk about thinking “outside the box”; and when they die they are put in a box. All boxes, Euclidian, geometrically smooth boxes."

A Bitcoiner friend of mine, sent me a Swedish version of Shawn Bakers The Carnivore Diet. Giving #carnivore another attempt, for long term optimal health and energy, but this time I wont go as extreme as before. Will do 5/2 or such, just adding in more carnivore meals per week. But still eating normal with friends and on weekends now and then. So this week I had 2,5 days of carnivore, then of course pizza on Bitcoin Pizza Day. One of the main reasons is to get rid of my sugar cravings and even if I had a pizza, I could avoid the temptations of milkshake and nutella/banana pizza and sugary drinks.

Any guidance would be appreciated!

Introduced to bitcoin in 2021. Hodlr since 2024.

New to Primal/Nostr.

Interested in building a bitcoin future.

nostr:nprofile1qqsg86qcm7lve6jkkr64z4mt8lfe57jsu8vpty6r2qpk37sgtnxevjcpz3mhxue69uhkzet8d9ejuat50phjummwv5q3uamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dwfjkccte9ejx2un9ddex7umn9ekk2jyh9kw quote “8 billion people in service of 8 billion people” is my North Star.

Reading/listening to podcasts daily. nostr:nprofile1qqs2xpwv3yngvx7auhr3hwm06w2tkn82dm6lt7ryq2eynlzuavxwygqpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejszrthwden5te0dehhxtnvdakqtryn2j nostr:nprofile1qqstl90p53datmzu5r2zpa84tngpv3w8sj040lw38wx94lkya0wvsjqpzfmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ucpzamhxue69uhkv6tvw3jhytnwdaehgu3wwa5kuegr9u0m7 nostr:nprofile1qqspnzgrfett3asxcuj0gksje6z2zxzpvgd27uvz58m9vsuqh8zzw6cpzfmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ucpzemhxue69uhkyet5vyhxummnw3exjmpwvdsk6djj59d nostr:nprofile1qqsvfr3f7p95stxqrjslnmuvsmhcxxxqt8swjdfjx5tz7zq0yms5cygpzfmhxue69uhk7enxvd5xz6tw9ec82cspzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgscylmr some of my favorites pods (recs welcome!).

nostr:nprofile1qqswx2uaq5vlur2n2hrp2peaha4w64hpskev8e9wa6ldmtu2e4n2rygprfmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68yurvv438xtnrdaksz9mhwden5te0v35hyetrw3hhy7fw09skyafwd4js4x2w7j and I travel the world looking after peoples homes/pets. #nomadic

I want to contribute to the world in an impactful way. Fiat isn’t it.

Let’s not worry about the likely 10s of thousands, more realistically hundreds of thousands harmed and killed by this bullshit and their explicit, purposeful fraud… let’s just update the label.

nevent1qqszylyzl74np38apjp4v43h6qyu0hafsm89vcsc3aw7ezwsy6vzvssfvw0my

When you interracially marry and have kids, your own children will be more genetically distant from you than a stranger of your own race.

Your kids will also likely grow up feeling fractured in identity, not being accepted by those on either side, as humans are inherently racially-tribal, and always will be no matter how much the globalist indoctrination tries to convince us otherwise. (Ask anyone who's 50/50 about their childhood - they'll tell you they always felt like they didn't "belong" anywhere)

Aside from the social friction, your children will be robbed of that deeply-engrained pride of their ancestral lineage, as their feeling of self is foggy and obfuscated by the forks of their ethnicity.

I'm not one to tell anybody what to do — of course I believe everyone should feel free to love and marry whoever they want.

But IMO these downstream effects of ending your bloodline should at the very least be considered when choosing your partner.

It's no coincidence that the globalist elite don't just shut down these conversations, but spend an enormous amount of money/resources ENCOURAGING race-mixing (as well as the preliminary steps to increasing it organically, i.e. mass-immigration), as the earlier-mentioned fracturing of identity and homogenization of race weakens the population's ancestral ties, thus making them feel more disconnected, and thus easier to control.

Research "The Kalergi Plan" for more information on this very intentional push from above.

Ignorant Buttcoiners are simply adorable.

1 Liter, 1 Meter, 1 Kilogram, 1 Bitcoin