What kind of idiot thinks central banks have proven trustworthy at all? We can trust them to inflate currency, exploit people with usury and generally screw us all over.

Low inflammation diet. Almost any change that leads to more whole foods and less processed foods will be an improvement.

Studies that compare ‘meat diets’ vs ‘non meat diets’ are invariably terrible and are really comparing ‘eat anything’ (typically higher inflammation) to ‘eat non-meat whole foods’ (typically lower inflammation).

One disconcerting bit of consensus I've noticed amongst longevity experts is they seem to agree that a plant based diet is best for epigenetic health.

This is at odds with the diet recommendations of my personal trainer. Which sucks because I'm simultaneously running several epigenetic experiments alongside a bodybuilding program.

Wat do?

Yeah, fun show!

I think it’s a good example of how to create something appealing to a broad, modern audience without veering into the lazy, cynical token-based diversity casting and writing that is so prevalent these days.

During my recent burn-out phase, I ended up binging on all three current seasons of the television show The Boys to kind of refill my batteries. 24 episodes of superheroes being evil.

It was the first show I watched since finishing up Succession. I don't like The Boys comic but I actually liked the show a lot.

Anyone else watch it?

I spoke at a big bitcoin-adjacent company this week and one of the best questions was from someone who asked what the downsides of bitcoin adoption might be.

I always do appreciate these steelman questions, the skeptical questions, the ones where we challenge ourselves. Only when we can answer those types of questions do we understand the concept that we are promoting.

So the classic example is that in modern economic literature, "deflation is bad". This, however, is only the case in a highly indebted system. Normally, deflation is good. Money appreciates, technology improves, and goods and services get cheaper over time as they should. Price of Tomorrow covers this well. My book touches on this too, etc. The "deflation is bad" meme is still alive in modern economic discourse and thus is worth countering, but I think in the bitcoin spectrum of communities, people get that deflation is fine and good.

My answer to the question was in two parts.

The first part was technological determinism. In other words, if we were to re-run humanity multiple times, there are certain rare accidents that might not replicate, and other commonalities that probably would. Much like steam engines, internal combustion engines, electricity, and nuclear power, I think a decentralized network of money is something we would eventually come across. In our case, Bitcoin came into existence as soon as the bandwidth and encryption tech allowed it to. In other universes or simulations it might look a bit different (e.g. might not be 21 million or ten minute block times exactly), but I think decentralized real-time settlement would become apparent as readily as electricity does, for any civilization that reaches this point. So ethics aside, it just is what it is. It exists, and thus we must deal with it.

The second part was that in my view, transparency and individual empowerment is rarely a bad thing. Half of the world is autocratic. And half of the world (not quite the same half) deals with massive structural inflation. A decentralized spreadsheet that allows individuals to store and send value can't possibly be a bad thing, unless humanity itself is totally corrupted. I then went into more detail with examples about historical war financing, and all sorts of tangible stuff. In other words, a whole chapter full of stuff. I've addressed this in some articles to.

In your view, if you had to steelman the argument as best as you could, what are the scenarios where bitcoin is *BAD* for humanity rather than good for it, on net?

why doesn't gmail have a dark mode?

It is early. Fb was crap until it turned into a feed. Twitter had its tail whale period. Usenet was seeded by nerdy academics and a relatively narrow set of their interests and topics.

Nostr and its apps will have their own journey. Zapathons are harmless exercises in discovery.

Sorry, but your #Zapathon ritual is pathetic.

It reminds me a bit of the carneval of the Germans where otherwise miserable, bad-tempered people become funny and cheerful at the push of a button (or the arrival at a certain defined time period). It's a little forced and disingenuous.

People should be zapping more debate contributions that they see. And since we're all freedom-loving, somehow more conscious participants of this alternative network, we should honor and reward contributions, that don't necessarily affirm our viewpoint (cuz that's what the Tweeps over there do), but provide a valid argument and broaden our perspectives, right?

But wait, there are no widespread debates going on here! I see a lot of cult-like mantras, which are repeated until they are vomited up, hedonism and some dev stuff. Whereby the latter still represents the highest content level. This platform also needs some technical upgrading, only the fewest clients even have the possibility of quote resharing. And while we're at it, why not reintroduce a pingback feature that worked so well for weblogs? Hashtags are not really suited to keep track of a public discussion..

I really hope that these are the usual teething problems of a new platform, like the first awkward phases of Facebook (anybody remember the poke feature?) and that this currently dominating mindless conversation culture will soon be forgotten.

For #nostr to become a really serious alternative to what is currently being built up with millions of capital and a lot of brainwork, it must clear this hurdle and there must be other notes in the trends than those of the most zapped flesh merchants and a few smug sayings like "people aren't yet ready for nostr. and that's ok".

Because people are ready. Nostr and its prevailing discussion culture is not.

seems like its sketchy… will wait and see if it is reproduced. not giving my hopes up at this point. extraordinary claims yada yada

This is entirely the fault of the IWF and Microsoft, who create "exclusive" proprietary CSAM prevention software and then only license big tech companies to use it.

My personal trainer said I need to man up and consume even MORE protein. New daily target is 210 grams!

I want a practical way to interact with virtual work while having both hands free for physical work.