I go to NYC several times per year for one reason or another. For work, for friends, etc.

Part of me likes it, but part of me gets fucking frustrated multiple times per day every time I am here. (Sorry, this is a Nostr Lyn post).

There are plenty of neat things in NYC that I can’t do at the same scale/quality elsewhere in the world due to the network effects around the city (broadway shows, financial district, etc), and yet after a day or two all I want to do is leave. It feels claustrophobic on multiple fronts.

People all have different vibes but for me, major cities are fun to visit but smaller secondary cities or suburbs around cities are so much smoother to live in. I can’t imagine living all the time in a major city.

The same applies to Cairo, to which I have been in far more total days than NYC. I like Cairo’s satellite cities but not Cairo itself other than going briefly.

Every time I am in a major city I am immediately reminded of the luxury of space, nature, quiet, parking spaces, and chillness of not being in a city. Everything I take for granted normally is now a luxury to fight for in a city.

Even politics are largely correlated to urbanization. If you live in rural or suburban areas, you likely drive around in your own car, you might have some land, etc. Your interaction with the local government exists in a moderate sense. The potential weakness is that you are more likely to always be around those who are similar to you, which minimizes your worldliness.

In contrast to all that, in major cities, everything is so tightly packed, and people rely on public transportation, and even a momentary lapse of government services (eg trash collection) becomes an acute catastrophe. But on the beneficial side, people are around those who are different than them more often, which breeds worldliness.

That’s why I tend to like the zone between rural and major cities. I like secondary cities or suburbs of major cities, because I get a bit of both worlds. The density and interconnectedness of major cities briefly, and the space and self-autonomy outside of them most of the time.

And yet I was born and raised in that sort of inbetween state, and so maybe it is just my upbringing.

What about you? Can anyone sell me the idea of NYC or other major cities that I am missing, especially in the remote work era? I see glimpses of how it could be attractive if you are used to it and know every detail of your neighborhood, but it really does feel limiting to me.

If the cost of the book is in anyway prohibitive for someone due to personal circumstances or jurisdictional issues, I happily endorse them pirating Broken Money.

There are always ways to pirate stuff anyway, but like, I'm not taking any action against you to make it harder, and my spirit is with you. ☮️

The amount of midcurve tendency in tradfi is hard to understate. The vast majority of it is geared toward encouraging it.

Almost every investing mistake I made was due to midcurving the problem I'm analyzing, and almost every outlier investing success I've had is because I consciously tried to avoid midcurving the problem I'm analyzing.

Bitcoin vs global liquidity:

Nostr Lyn is Shit Posting Lyn. And we are here for it!!

For those that are new to Nostr, hello!

What’s cool about it is that Nostr it is an open source protocol. It is not a centralized company, but rather is a protocol that individuals and companies can build upon.

This means that you can use many different applications to access it, or even build your own. And it means that there is no central authority that can take down posts or delete accounts; there are different servers operated by different entities that are storing the data. And there is no central algorithm for determining what posts people see or don’t see.

You can hook up a bitcoin lightning wallet to send and receive tips (“zaps”) on posts. Nostr itself is not a blockchain or crypto and has no token, but the Bitcoin blockchain does complement it well via zaps.

Nostr is still relatively small, and a bit rough around the edges. But the community here is great, and familiarizing yourself with the technology and concept is useful in a world of centralized social media. It is a new method of decentralization that balances various trade-offs in a novel way, and the protocol can be used for a lot more than just social media.

Welcome!

No I'm here because I follow Nate Hagens on YouTube and his guest briefly mentioned Nostr. Lyn Alden

I had one of those false wake-up dreams.

I generally check a couple things on my phone when I wake up, including the bitcoin price when it is within a raging bull market or bear market, and so in the dream I checked it and it was $84,254. I was like, “oh, nice”.

But then of course I woke up and it was just $72k. And then I was like, “Geez even your dreams are lame. $84k and change? Not even $100k or some flashy number?” It was even plausibly correcting on the screen, like it was coming down from a spike to $86k with a perfectly plausible consolidating price chart. The most mid-curve normie dream imaginable.

But then after chilling with my husband in the morning sun and drinking some tea, I checked my phone again and saw Craig Wright get totally rekt at trial, which is way, way better than $84k bitcoin.

I like MSTR long term, but at the moment the price is very high vs its net asset value.

The company does a great job of raising capital to arbitrage that situation when it occurs, but outside investors need to be careful when those types of wider-than-normal gaps develop.

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.

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Lyn, let us know when your tabletop RPG campaign incorporates Dr. Jeff's bullcrab. Looks scarier than an owlbear to me.

Last lunch in Madeira

I really hate flying. Not the flying part per se, but just the logistics to the airport, time in the airport, time in the plane, logistics to the hotel, etc. I feel less healthy by the time I arrive.

Major props to people who fly to Madeira all the way from like Australia and New Zealand.

The past two years of bitcoin conferences I have been at have been bear market conferences.

And funnily, the energy was still really high at all of them. Pacific Bitcoin in 2022 occurred literally during the FTX dump to $16k and we were having an amazing time regardless.

Bitcoin Atlantis in Madeira has been the closest thing to a conference in a bull market for a while.

My single favorite thing at conferences is meeting people from so many countries. Within one example hour I met a woman from Saudi Arabia, a whole group from Bulgaria, someone from Bolivia, someone from Columbia, someone from Spain, and someone from South Africa. A woman from Malaysia really stuck out too and it was a great conversation.

There is no other asset that brings out so much hope and unity from people with such different backgrounds and experiences.

Open source global money. 🫂

It’s great meeting so many people on Nostr here in person at Bitcoin Atlantis!

Haven’t had time to post on social media much this week but wanted to give everyone a shoutout!

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