If you would have the hard push to leave the EU… Where would you go to live?

What about the diameter of droplets of saliva leaving your mouth while speaking, that carry infectious loads of viruses?

Not sure that posted well, I’ll try again

but that's not even a little funny

guys i need help is it called rebase rebase or rerebase?

What if humanity could find some alien tech and thus greatly accelerate its own technological progress? But what if that tech was hoarded by a small group of people?

Anyway, here's a review of Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen. It's a 22nd century hard science space opera set in our solar system, written by a retired engineer. One of the more successful indie sci fi books in recent years. It's also one of the most successful books to have bitcoin in it; it's a small background role, but bitcoin is one of the leading types of money in the solar system.

Marcus, an indebted down-on-his-luck asteroid miner (and secretly, a bit of a space pirate as of late, given how bad things have gotten) finds his ship taken over by a wealthy genetically modified corporate heiress named Miranda. She has bought his defaulting debt contract that his ship collateralizes, and has gained admin access over his ship's computer. And she knows he is secretly a space pirate, which altogether gives her multiple types of leverage over him. She wants him to take her on a mission to the edge of the solar system to do something she won't say, involving unimaginable treasure, and he has little choice but to go along with it. Secretly, however, he plots how to regain control of his ship as they go, because he recognizes how much of a suicide mission it is because of who guards the space out there.

Pros:

-The hard scientific realism in the book is great. The type that basically takes an engineer to write. No wonder he has endorsements from like, the co-founder of Autocad and such. It's also a smooth read, all from Marcus's perspective.

-Although the story mostly takes place on one ship with a few characters, the worldbuilding is a solid start. I assume it'll be expanded later in the series. The technological situation and structure of society are very fleshed out relative to how little we actually see, given the tight setting. The world feels realistic and lived-in.

-High nostalgia factor. Fans of Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, and more recently the Expanse, and all sorts of classic sci fi literature over decades, will find a lot of references or similarities in a good way. The author is very well-read on the genre.

-The audiobook is pretty unique and great. Unlike most audiobooks, it has a full-cast production, meaning that each line of dialogue sounds like the person speaking it, rather than just one person reading a given chapter's narration and dialogue. I listened to this one rather than read it. You can only buy the audiobook on the author's website though, not Amazon/Audible. (Amazon/Audible have been kind of shitty to authors lately.) The other version of the book are available on Amazon.

-AI gets a really good treatment here, and the third main character, an AI, is my favorite character in the book.

-There's a lot of suspense throughout. Most of it is not really predictable how it's going to end since it doesn't follow a basic tropey structure. Even if you don't particularly like some of the characters (and indeed they're designed to be rather unlikable), you're likely to find yourself reading further to see what happens.

Cons:

-The book is about 500 pages, and I think 50+ could have been cut out of the middle to make it stronger. The dialogue between Marcus and Miranda gets rather repetitive after a while. And because of the limited setting (mostly on one ship), most of the worldbuilding is done via exposition by Marcus. So if readers hate "info dumps", they'll probably get annoyed at this. I personally don't really mind exposition as long as it's good, so this wasn't a dealbreaker for me (the "don't do exposition!" advice to authors is overdone in my view). I just think the middle could have used a trim. And although most of the book is not predictable, one aspect imo very much is, and that's where a lot of the repetition is.

-There are some unnerving aspects/scenes in it. I can't really say what they are without spoilers. Let's just say being in Marcus's head for 500 pages isn't, uh, my cup of tea. The book is self-aware about it, though. It's an intentional choice to have put these unnerving aspects in, so it's not a con per se but it's more something that will put off some readers. And it's a little more understandable by the end.

Overall, a unique story. And for the audiobook, I do think that over time more audiobooks will be made with this more complete type of cast. Audiobooks used to be very expensive and a small piece of the market, and only in recent years have they become very popular. As they become a bigger and bigger share of the fiction market up to some substantial percentage, I think more work will go into their quality and details.

Business is Booming 🍷🇺🇸

I am unfamiliar with the story

Want to share a link to where I can read more?

My Satoshi Probability Chart

I’d like to share a story about adoption with you.

Lately, I haven’t been able to find time for meetups because of family and work, so I decided to focus on lunches instead. In a regular local pub, I asked the owner if he’d be willing to accept Bitcoin. He politely declined.

I kept going there about once a week. After a few visits, I made an NFC card and loaded it with 1,000 sats as a tip. I also gave him a leaflet with instructions on how to access the Bitcoin. He’s an older gentleman, not very interested in technology, and doesn’t have much time for experiments while running the place. The following week, I tipped him another 1,000 sats. On the third week, he finally agreed to let me install a mobile wallet app for him.

Suddenly, he had a bit of Bitcoin in his Wallet of Satoshi. I asked him if I could start paying that way — with the promise that if it didn’t work out, I’d exchange it back into cash for him. He wasn’t too keen at first, but since I was a regular, he wanted to make me happy.

From that moment, I announced in the local Jednadvacet (our Czech version of Einundzwanzig) community that we’d meet for lunch every Thursday. A short meetup — a chance to exchange Bitcoin, learn something new, meet people, etc. The only condition: payment must be in Bitcoin.

Two months have passed since then. The group has been growing. At first, there were just three of us. Last time, there were already seventeen. For the owner, it’s become a significant part of that day’s revenue. He’s started treating us better too — now he greets us from afar and even reserves the biggest table for us every Thursday, not letting anyone else sit there.

Every time I ask him if everything’s okay, if he wants to cash out, or needs any help with it. And you know what he told me last time? That he doesn’t need to — it’s growing nicely in Bitcoin. He even recently bought a fridge with Bitcoin. He said he had to use Lightning because he ran into some issues with on-chain. I never even mentioned the word “Lightning” to him. He’s been learning on his own, and now he’s become quite the Bitcoiner.

It looks like the pub might soon turn into a nice little vexl point — a place where people can exchange Bitcoin for dirty fiat and vice versa.

I’m writing this because I think it’s a great blueprint. It’s short, takes me about an hour a week — time I’d spend on lunch anyway — I meet people, and it helps Bitcoin adoption in a very natural way. Hopefully, it’ll inspire more Bitcoiners to try something similar in their own area.

This accepts Spark on-chain only, no swaps. It’s still eventually just a bunch of api calls. Can you even run a Spark node?

Would be great to just forget about this silly debate and focus on actually important topics in bitcoin.

Future me: you want to run a node? Great! There are 2 main kinds: Core and Knots. The main difference between them is how they approach spam. Core takes a welcoming stance toward spam transactions, whereas Knots filters them out as much as possible. Which one do you want to run?

Acidity is the backbone structure in wine.

Warm days build sugar while cool nights preserve the acid, and the huge day-to-night temperature shifts you can only find at elevation are what lock in the uniqueness of Colorado wine.

They let grapes ripen fully without losing their edge.

Pretty cool seeing Lightning and Spark payments alongside each other at DCTRL’s Bepsi machine. So far, Lightning is the superior UX, as payments are faster. But what’s the technical reason for this?