Fascinating read about the impact of COVID policies (or lack thereof) on the election outcome. https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-covid-helped-trump-win

The richest man in the world is unsurprisingly asking people to work for no pay and expects to get those with IQ to do so. lol. Time is money in the USA, Elon. You will only get syncophants to apply for this one. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/14/elon-musk-trump?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I guess this explains why nostr:npub1e74l24mwyerhlf56a0rdw00ewqlenq07g75j6faxwhrdwg9d6j2scxg2cl showed up on Nostr this week. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/13/the-guardian-no-longer-post-on-x-twitter-elon-musk?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

lol. If someone can pull this off…

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Unfortunately, free speech = 4 Chan for most people. People don’t know they need free speech until they need it. Free speech means freedom for trolls and others to harass in most people’s minds.

Nostr will have more success focusing on the ability to control your feed, no algorithms deciding what you can and can’t see.

I think the challenge is that these screens are asking people to join a protocol instead of try an app.

None of them are bad per se, but most people are not looking for a protocol they are looking for a tool to solve a problem or entertain themselves.

I think Nostr is very appealing to developers for good reason. What users want is a set of apps where they have one identity but can post different types of content without needing to recreate their social graph over and over. The sell is the set of apps rather than the protocol.

When I talk about Nostr to people who know nothing about it they are excited that you can:

- own your social graph and take it with you

- your feed is only who you follow, not ads or other recommendations. The ability to curate is key

For people who take the plunge and join the biggest complaint is:

- lack of diverse content. Even people who own Bitcoin are sick of hearing about it all the time.

- - Paired with 2 above, new users bail almost instantly bc they don’t see content that is relevant to their interests.

- in market research and also from user research people see Twitter-like apps as a great way to get news. On Nostr they don’t see the news they are looking for. This is not always mainstream news it can be specific to a topic or region. On Nostr most of the news is RSS feeds that often overwhelm a timeline making it difficult to see other content.

- - to solve the above problem Nos created a news relay news.nos.social that only select journalists can post to. We have plans to update it in the next couple of weeks to add more news outlets and journalists. NOTE: anyone can read from this relay.

Allowing CFOs to make product decisions is always a recipe for failure. Pun intended!

The piece missing from the discussion of inflation is the 30+ years of depressed wages. The federal minimum wage is still $7.90 / hr. It was last changed in 2009 based on legislation passed in 2007.

Many of our geriatric Congressional reps and senators have failed to keep everyday worker wages on par with normal inflation. While many states have attempted to rectify the problem, not having a federal standard means larger companies can move to low-wage states. I saw this when living in Vermont, where the anchor company in a small town moved many of their middle-class jobs to Texas because it was cheaper for the company but much worse for the overall health of the town. With the missing employees, they then proceeded to argue that their real estate was worth less and should therefore, pay less in property taxes. This in turn forced the rest of the town to pay increased taxes including many who had seen their jobs move south.

Congress could address this by doing any of the following:

- taxing CEO salaries at 80% when they exceed low worker wages by more than a certain percentage

- pegging federal minimum wage increases to inflation

- eliminating loop holes in the tax code for the incredibly wealthy & simplifying it for everyone else

- staffing the IRS to go after the incredibly wealthy who dodge paying taxes

- preventing Wall Street penalties for saving money. (During the pandemic, companies that made huge profits could not save them without being penalized by Wall Street. So they spent money in ridiculous ways and then laid thousands off as the economy sorted itself.)

Reducing the size of the cake mix is a race to the bottom solution that will only depress sales of cake mix in the long run.

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I mainly understood this level of surveillance to exist in the UK and parts of Europe. Unfortunately it seems to be global including the US. https://www.404media.co/email/f9af7bc1-6e13-4719-82ee-4829e5760869/

This is one of those “boring” problems that still needs to solved across Nostr on mobile.

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I think this person’s experience is an opportunity for the Nostr community to reflect on how we welcome people to the protocol.

There is an assumption by many here that Nostr = Bitcoin and vice versa. But there are others here as well as people who want to be here who are not into Bitcoin. They don’t care if you are, but they are not.

There is very little room for folks who are not into Bitcoin or zaps or wallets to simply be here and talk about their interests.

Everyone in that thread was super nice and had no ill intent, however most assumed incorrectly that everyone who joins Nostr is into Bitcoin and zaps and sats.

This person could have been personally scammed by crypto or had family with a bad experience etc. We don’t know bc instead of taking the time to get to know them and recommend accounts to follow, we simply bombarded them about zaps and sats and wallets. It’s the equivalent of handing a stranger who has only eaten overcooked meat and potatoes some sashimi and expecting them to eat it and not run away.

If we want to grow Nostr we need to meet people where they are. Get curious. Ask questions about their work. Share some accounts to follow or topical relays or other cool apps.

Giving them the space to get curious on their own is much more likely to spark interest in zaps etc.

An important read this week.

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Love the idea of adding banner metadata. On the client side we’d likely implement some sort of progressive disclosure of info about the relay, prioritizing info that is relevant to everyday users front and center eg what is the focus of this relay, is it paid or free, does it have restrictions? The rest of the info would be available for those who want it with a click.

This man has clearly not traveled to British colonies. Otherwise he would be deeply embarrassed.

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One year of tread wear on my trail running shoes.

I don’t run but daily hikes have the same effect!

nostr:npub1a7mxreazql8ld0csdzk7wk6a5xjzcg7h632q78u3008lyr32lxks5t4ske is correct on this point of maintaining the status quo. Would love to hear his ideas for breaking free of this situation.

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This is great news! https://www.vox.com/technology/379394/fido-alliance-guidance-passkeys-death-of-the-password

The fall colors are spectacular this year!

It’s not the Anthropocene it’s the era of Grift. I suppose it could signal the end state of Capitalism- companies and governments allowing the grifters to run rampant…

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