It's at a point now where it's almost impossible for me to use the "regular" internet. I can't access half the sites. The reason? I care about my digital hygiene and thus use a VPN. Sometimes switching to a different VPN or switching the country of the VPN works; other times it does not. Oh well, I guess I'm not going to watch that video, or read that article, or look at that picture. Whatever.

In addition to that, if I'm not blocked completely, I have to prove that I'm human every step of the way. Captchas, re-captchas, Cloudflare checkboxes, the whole shebang. I am human. I promise. And I am very annoyed. Outright angry, even. I doubt that any robot will ever be as annoyed as I am right now about the current state of the internet.

What annoys me most, actually, is that all these measures don't really work. There's bots everywhere. Robots get access to the stuff anyway, using farms of humans, just like in the good old days of WoW gold farming. The centralized "safety" nets of Cloudflare et al brought down large swaths of the internet multiple times in the last couple of weeks alone, and as things centralize more and more these outages will happen more and more.

I'm very close to breaking up with the legacy internet. I'm human, I can cryptographically prove that I'm human, and I have sats to spend. But the legacy internet doesn't care about that. It cares about farming me and my data, while annoying me to no end. I've been nostr only for a while now, but that was only on the "social media" side. 2026 might be the year where I go nostr-only for everything, or to phrase it slightly differently: permissionless for everything.

No more "are you human?"

No more "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

No more cookie banners, paywalls, and AI slop.

No more being treated like a child.

Even if it means that I'll have to self-host everything.

Even if it means that I'll have to build & maintain stuff myself.

Even if it means that it's a lot of work and pain.

Nothing worth having ever comes easy.

But the easy stuff is not worth having in the first place.

Here's to the year to come, and the new corner of the internet, build on cryptography and webs-of-trust. Real value. Real connections. Real humans.

Here's to nostr.

GM Nostriches 🌅

The year is drawing to an end, so it’s time for a little round up!

Over the next week or two I’m going to flood this feed with some of my favourite pictures from 2025. A bit like a retrospective.

Some of them will be “work” pictures, some will be ones that are available in my print store and some will be family truck life from our travels.

All of them have a story.

In today’s five:

1. This is home. A couple of days before we nearly rolled the truck down a hill, we were enjoying the Assay Plateau near a former Soviet Observatory in Kazakhstan.

Great light, great scenery, friendly locals.

2. Lenin Peak, Kyrgyzstan. One of the best star fields I’ve seen anywhere, and that includes sailing across the Atlantic.

3. Dalmatian Pelican, Lake Kerkini. These enigmatic birds are huge and menacing in look. They were under threat of extinction, but thanks to great conservation efforts, especially around Lake Kerkini, they’re making a strong comeback.

4. The Tien Shan Mountains on the Kumtor Goldmine Route in Kyrgyzstan. A spectacular route, a slightly nervy bridge crossing, glorious scenery and the joy of bumping in to other overlanders.

5. Otis. Posing remarkably motionless in a waterfall in Georgia. Overlanding takes us to these kind out of the way places. Places where few others get to. And we get to explore them from the comfort of our home.

Which is your favourite?

#photography #overland #fineart #travel

Happy to announce that Holesail is now live on both Play store and the App store.

In the last 10 months, #Bitcoin has crashed all the way from 50k down to 103k.

Total rip off.

Is that even possible with a LLC

Hier mal eine Idee die mir kürzlich gekommen ist weil ich gerne in eine Immobilie in Argentinien investieren wollte.

Nakamoto Häuser in der ganzen Welt.

Es könnten sich vielleicht einige finden die eine Immobilie in Argentinien zusammen kaufen und dann als Bitcoin Haus betreiben. Mann könnte das ganze auch ausbauen und in verschiedenen Ländern so etwas starten.

Idee ist wie ihr sehen könnt nicht ausgereift :-)

"What do you do for a living?"

At the moment that's muting bots on nostr but it's an unpaid position 😆

Our note zaps build was approved by the AppStore.

Zaps are back!

Speakers at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Las Vegas 🇺🇸

- JD Vance

- Ross Ulbricht

- Eric Trump

- Donald Trump Jr.

- Michael Saylor

- Cynthia Lummis

BULLISH!

What are your main reasons for opening an AI app today?