Most people who I know that think the CIA invented bitcoin, are not very familiar with the pre-history of Bitcoin including work by Back, Szabo, Finney, etc.

I'm not saying that certainly no intelligence agency created Bitcoin, but rather, I'm very skeptical of the certainty that many people have around that topic.

Because, when you are somewhat familiar with that pre-history and look at it from an engineering perspective, you can clearly see the pieces gradually falling into place. In the1980s there was work by Chaum about how to build a database run by mutually suspicious entities. In the 1990s there was work by Back for proof-of-work. As things moved into the 2000s, there was Szabo's Bit Gold, which is very similar to what Bitcoin ended up being, and Finney's Reusable Proof of Work "RPOW" tokens. Finney hadn't solved the centralization issue, and Szabo hadn't solved the issue of better computation causing supply inflation over time, but they were collectively within shooting range of the solution. Others as well. Meanwhile global bandwidth was getting better, encryption in general was getting better (and there we've got an actual intelligence agency contribution), etc.

And then Satoshi added to that work, including the difficulty adjustment in particular and many other details, with a full implementation.

Basically, if someone thinks that Bitcoin just kind of magically came out of nowhere, then it's pretty easy to see how they'd be inclined toward a conspiratorial assumption.

However, if one sees that, just like any other industry, there was a series of engineers building on each others' work until someone finally got it over the line, then it looks a lot more organic.

Mother of God

I think tabletop roleplaying games (e.g. D&D, Pathfinder, etc) are great, and it has been nice to see them gain some popularity over the past decade.

I've been emphasizing them as a hobby over the past couple years for a few reasons.

-All of my work is quantitative, so for hobbies I like totally different things. Fantasy, basically. Spreadsheets during the day, slaying evil clerics at night.

-I sit at a computer much of the day. I've been minimizing computer gaming over the past five years because I don't want my hobbies to also be at a computer. Outside hobbies are ideal, but for inside hobbies at least I don't want to be close to a screen or to have constant pressure on my wrist/shoulder from using a mouse.

-They are mathematically-involved strategy games in combat, combined with character decision-making outside of combat. Rather than read a fantasy novel, a player can participate in one. Active participation rather than passive consumption.

Active, strategic, whimsical, and social.

Besides going dropping in on BP, where’s one place you should go if you had an hour in Nashville?

Please do not post invoices they are very illegal do not post

LETS GO NUGGETS

I don't know about y'all, but I woke up this morning and randomly decided to short Hindenburg and long #[0]

How I envision non-devs reading all this dev stuff on Nostr

Is this the actual Rusty? Using an iPhone?

I disabled all notifications on my phone years ago and never looked back