These past couple of days, we've seen this argument that inflation numbers are fake (which they are) because the powers that be manipulate them through the substitution effect.

You know: "Your grandfather used to eat grass-fed ribeye. You eat industrial chicken instead because that's what you can afford for the same amount of money. So you spend the same amount of money, so "no inflation"."

Which is true, as I said. But it also works the other way around: your grandfather couldn't even dream of buying a computer, or flying regularly, or many other things that are now orders of magnitude cheaper.

What % of your grandfather's income was spent on that ribeye? How much did he spend on internet, mobile and travel? Are you sure if you completely eliminate all the things that your grandfather just did not buy, and you lived like he did, you wouldn't be able to afford grass-fed ribeye?

So either way, all we can do is compare the basket of goods that we actually buy. If you want to add a measure of the quality of those goods, you may think it's very straightforward, but I wouldn't be so sure about that.

And again, I'm not defending the obviously fake and manipulated official "data", I'm just saying that people tend to oversimplify too much, too often.

You look OK for a 70 year old man.

The music I listened to all the time was mainly circulated in bootleg tapes, so the first one that I actually bought because regardless of my personal taste, I have always recognized a genius, was

Even if we choose the charitable scenario, in which it's not about crushing opinions they don't like, but honestly trying to protect relay operators from State violence under the excuse of "illegal content", they fail to see that their proposals are, at most, useless. No amount of "moderation" is ever sufficient for those pushing for totalitarian control.

Do they honestly think that individual, unorganized, loosely federated, if at all, Nostr relay operators can censor better than Twitter, Facebook and Google, who are about to receive a major ass reaming from the EU, despite being completely and utterly "in it" with "the Program"? These people are DELUSIONAL.

The face of a man after a life of titanic work.

You're welcome.

More well-intentioned nonsense.

Instead of making sure that relays remain exactly that, RELAYS, who don't have anything to do with producing content, once again, a proposal to turn relays into editorial content curators, e.g., PLATFORMS. Instead of protecting relays from Quenn Ursula's Ministry of Truth, once again, a proposal to turn them into prime targets.

If Nostr is a protocol, why the hell do you want to turn it into a platform?

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Where I'm from, in the summer (but not so late as now, usually in July) we make "ratafia" using strong distilled spirits made from the crushed grape residue from wine production. To that, we add herbs and, most characteristically, green walnuts, and we leave it in a glass bin outside for 8 weeks. Some people even age it in wooden barrels after that.

We definitely water it down to be 30-40% maximum, though, unlike what you crazy people do with rakia!

Just don't ask her to show you her hands and feet.

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Have you never had it? Man... especially if you're around East Coast, or any of the the more "kampong" neighbourhoods. You can just try in Geylang, which is right there. Although I have to say sardine murtabak is some would eat mainly in Malaysia.

Dude, breakfast? Sardine murtabak FTW. But mostly Ya-Kun's kaya toast & kopi-C kosong.

Well these are some of Nostr's main devs, so I would think they know what relays can do, and want to make them do stuff like that.

As if that will help them when the EU comes after them.

Atlas is a horrible book. It's a political piece anyway, so you will accomplish more if you just read the Wikipedia articles about Rand and Objectivism, or even better watch the numerous interviews and discourses by Rand freely available on YouTube.

By reading it you're incurring huge opportunity costs. Like not reading Lyn's book, or reading real literature, or even learning about Randian objectivism in a time efficient manner that doesn't involve self-torture.

I think we had this discussion already a few weeks ago though didn't we?

So you haven't quit caffeine.

Exactly. Plus muting and blocking are curation tools anyway. They're optional, no one forces you to use them. It's absurd that people are crying for content "moderation" by relays and clients, but are against users curating their own feed.

I grew up eating organs, from brains to kidneys, liver, tripe, sweetbread, and even testicles. Lungs used to be common, but not anymore when I was a kid, so I don't think I've ever eaten them. Intestines don't seem to be something in the recent culinary repertoire of my elders, but I've eaten them in China many times.

I don't even consider blood sausages in the organ category, for me it's that much of a normal thing to eat.

Today I still eat all of the things in the first list, occasionally, except for brains and testicles, because I've developed a distaste for their too smooth, too soft texture (at least that's how I rationalize it).

In the case of brains and adjacent tissues, it's also because after the mad sheep and the mad cow debacles, I just don't think it's worth the risk.

It makes sense then that you believe the "China rising" narrative, since it would seem it benefited your family greatly. That doesn't change the macro facts though.

Just check the news last year and a couple of weeks ago again about their intention to reform the hukou system once more, aiming at creating an internal consumer economy.

That's pretty much what the US and EU have been doing for the last decades, a desperate attempt to keep up with the ponzi scheme through immigration.

China has skipped all the way through the development path, directly to the terminal decadence phase.

Of course the US and EU are also decadent fiat empires, so there is a lot of room for China to bully and be imperialistic on its neighbors and to exploit Africa. That doesn't mean that they're "rising" in the sense the US did in the 20th century. Not by a long mile.

I studied in Asia and worked there most of my adult life. Including Japan, China and Singapore. I have easy access to residence in a couple of countries still today. I've got it all covered ;)

But I also KNOW that "China rising" is a lot of smoke and mirrors.

So many US bitcoiners seem to be superworried about how the Democrats are destroying the USD supremacy with their anti-Putin sanctions and all these BRICS shenanigans that the Kremlin propaganda machine and its Western useful idiots keep magnifying.

Well, let's assume all this theater is real in the end, and the BRICS+gtbq are putting together a second-tier parallel international system that moves away from the USD as main reserve.

If you're in BTC, you are shorting the USD. So why the hell would you oppose that? If you can't stomach the decision you made to bet against the USD, sell your stack. But being so obsessed about voting Biden out, when he is working for your short USD position so intensely seems completely irrational.

They're talking mainly about girls in their teens getting their breasts amputated. Psychopaths.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/investigation-finds-dramatic-increase-in-transgender-surgeries-nearly-tripling-procedures-in-three-years