I find Bladerunner 2049 frustrating, because I *almost* love it.

The characters, themes, acting, and the overall plot structure are great, imo.

However, villains give melodramatic exposition monologues, villains leave heroes alive for no reason other than the plot needs them to, important things are left thinly guarded for no reason other than the plot needs the heroes or villains to easily get at them, etc. In other words, there are distracting writing/execution issues in what could otherwise be a masterpiece.

The first time I watched it, I didn't love it. It did stick with me though; I think about it sometimes, for years afterward. And watching it a second time I appreciated it more, but still was frustrated by the same things.

What does everyone else feel about it?

⚡️🤯 NEW - Someone just paid $105,000, or nearly 1 BTC, in fees for a single Bitcoin transaction.

Several possibilities:

➡️ Human error when setting up the fees.Sometimes, users reverse the fields between the amount to be sent and the transaction fees.

➡️ A bug in the software, the Bitcoin library used, or a poorly coded bot.

➡️ An error due to carelessness, fat finger, or no verification before sending the transaction.

We just got a pretty major grant from a thing called Octant and the Ethereum Foundation to produce a documentary about the DOJ‘s case against Roman Storm.

Probably gonna get lynched for this, but I think we need to talk.

While we are grateful for every donation, over the past ~1.5 years we received noticably less donations in Bitcoin than we received in ETH, Zcash and Monero over the course of just a few months - while our main audience *are* bitcoiners.

The only way I can explain this to myself is that there seems to be an issue with the general mentality of trying to keep your bitcoin to yourself, which results in a significant lack of support for others - and it makes me really sad.

The way the Ethereum community is supporting the tornado cash developers is nothing short of extraordinary. Compare that to our support of Samourai, who collected a mere few 100k, while Roman Storm raised millions to fund his case.

At the same time we end up wondering why most people in bitcoin are retarded orange tie maxis that treat BTC like just another stonk, and why its use as a tool for the people falls more and more behind in the global narrative.

Its time we start taking better care of each other in this space, and I hope that next time one of us is criminally indicted, we support them with all that we have.

You can patch software, but you can't patch people.

This is why social engineering will always work.

The human brain is loaded with forever-day vulnerabilities...and attackers are constantly probing.

Sometimes I think that they've developed a more applicable & empirically tested theory of human motivation and cognition than psychologists...

Sometimes tens of thousands of A/B tests a day...

That was painful. Here is my summary:

Lightning doesn’t work because it does not scale to 8 billion people in a fully private self custodial way thus the project is a complete failure and should be abandoned so we can invest our time in something else.

Vs

Lightning works as evidenced by the fact that people and companies use it every day and I just zapped someone right now from my self custody lightning wallet to theirs. It will form an integral part of how people in the future use bitcoin either through their direct participation in lightning or as a communication layer between emerging protocols such as ecash.

This chart is everywhere these days. My question is why is the 148 billion so much bigger than the 142B underneath it? And why doesn't the yellow 316B deficit take half of the left side, since it is about 50%? And why is the 316B yellow smaller than the 148B green? This is not how this chart is supposed to work.

After several years of FOMO, I finally attended HRF's #OsloFreedomForum. I took a friend who's political but not Bitcoiner, so I had the experience of seeing it through someone else's eyes, as well as my own. Obviously there's a lot to unpack: talking face-to-face with activists who are working in real danger is confronting in itself, and hearing their experiences fresh and recent is an emotional and impactful experience.

I was surprised, however, at the large number of Bitcoiners at the conference: it's not a Bitcoin conference, but the HRF (particularly nostr:npub1trr5r2nrpsk6xkjk5a7p6pfcryyt6yzsflwjmz6r7uj7lfkjxxtq78hdpu) has been courting bitcoiners for technical assistance (and, presumably, donations) for several years now and it has resulted in a fascinating intersection. Those present are builders, not (just?) talkers. My non-bitcoiner friend noted the remarkable humility of those present: an insightful comment.

Of all the discussions I had, the one which haunts me most is a conversation with Peter McCormack (ex- WBD, now rejuvinating his home town and trying to raise awareness of UK's pressing misgovernance issues). To paraphrase: "Where are the Bitcoiners improving the world? Wasn't that what this was about?". In a context of three days' exposure to people who are dedicating their lives to something much bigger than software, this question really affected me.

I was expecting to leave the conference with a list of software priorities, and I did. But I still feel it's inadaquate, and so I'm now pondering the question: "what else should I be doing?".

Everybody knows the British went after the spices, but it was the Portuguese that significantly changed the food of the world.

Brazil didn't have coffee before the Portuguese brought it from Africa.

Japan didn't have tempura, or any deep fried dish, and a bread culture before the Portuguese.

Indian food wasnt spicy until the Portuguese brought chilli peppers, saffron, cinnamon, tomatos and potatoes from the Americas. Vindaloo comes from a portuguese technique of maninating pork in Vinho and Alho (garlic).

While the French were dominating cooking techniques for themselves, the Portuguese were spreading ingredients worldwide to anyone willing to trade with them.

Testing for this note… we made six attempts to⚡zap this note, at paidtruth752@minibits.cash, over a period of 34 minutes. All six attempts were successful. Please check on your end to be sure you received. Average zap time was 5373ms (5.4 seconds). We consider this zap time slow... generally, zaps should complete in under two seconds. (Other Nostr users might think your zaps are broken, might not zap you again.) We recommend you receive zaps with a well-connected, cloud-based Lightning node to reduce your latency.

Growing up is realizing that journalists constantly have to choose between making friends and producing critical work. No wonder all good writers are drug addicted lunatics – it's pretty exhausting to always have to focus on the bad stuff. Send hugs 🫂

Nostr would benefit from Sybil Resistance. It is easy and cheap to spin up a set anonymous accounts that act as sock-puppets for a given agenda. This works because anonymous accounts do not have "skin in the game". If nostr grows, this will be a no-brainer for certain groups to influence to platform. It might be happening already, but as nostr grows, the incentives grow for a Sybil attack.

One way to do this, but not the only way, is what is called Social Verification. An example is the blue checks on twitter, or facebook social verification.

A simple way to implement this, is similar to GPG key signing parties, but much easier.

What you do is identify someone on the network that is a real person. You then send some coins to that taproot address (npub == taproot) with an OP_RETURN saying "VERIFIED". In this way you build out a verified user base on nostr, in a decentralized way. No centralized blue checks, just users verifying other users in a web of trust. Its easy enough to do. Just make a taproot tx with an OP_RETURN = verified and broadcast it to the network.

An orange check 🤩

Like I said, I don’t believe in “normies”, I believe in lazy assholes who want to be spoon fed everything, but you would’ve known that if you put in the work. You’re not my target audience.

I find it interesting that people are always talking to the "normies" and saying we need to simplify things for the "normies" and we need to make things so they appeal to the "normies". What a egotistical and self righteous view!!!

By "normie" they mean that you're less intelligent than they are, and they need to dumb things down for you. It mean's they're more enlightened than you, and need to treat you like a child and 'simplify' things, as if you're a simpleton that needs to be spoon fed your bite sizes pieces of slop. Fuck that!

You know why I don't appeal to the "normie"? I don't believe in them. I believe there are people that are willing to learn and those that aren't. I want to empower people, not enable them. I don't want them reliant on me, I don't want to cut up their food and feed it to them, I want to teach them to hunt and skin and sow and reap and prepare their own food. I want to teach them that they are powerful people that don't need to rely on others to spoon feed them simplistic bullshit that keeps them enslaved to the cult of convenience. I don't build for the "normie" because you're better than that, and you deserve better than to be treated like an imbecile that needs their hand held every step of the way.

You don't need a podcast host, you don't need a video host, you don't need a music host. They've got you tricked into believing you're a dumbass that needs to pay them to do something as simple as dragging some files into a folder. And make no mistake, when you host your stuff on another platform, it doesn't matter what the hype is today, they don't give a fuck about you and will remove your content if it affects their bottom line. Any of this talk about freedom but you need to use their service is marketing and appealing to your desire to finally find a safe place for your content without the risk of it being removed.

What we do isn't hard, it's just new to you, and what one man can do, another man can do. Don't jump into the easy solutions for hosting your digital content, you're better than that, and you have a real opportunity to actually take control of your art and control the means of distribution, and you don't need to rely on another platform anymore. You are the platform, if you want to be. If this appeals to you, reach out. There's a whole crew of dedicated freedom fighters ready to cheer you on, help you build, and support your work, because we know that once you taste true freedom, you'll never go back.

It's hard to convey to a North American the scale.

Ah, still in the democracy phase, I see. True freedom is rooted in strong private property rights, best preserved in kingdoms with low time preferences, where long-term stability fosters traditions, family values, and timeless aesthetics. Monarchies prioritise legacy over fleeting majorities. Read some Hoppe; the monarchy stage awaits your enlightenment.

nostr:note18uqmvlwm4fw5u8hmrm3mgqyrux47nl7gd3cl4xpw2ctyen9gej7ssxryyc

9 principles of nature

1. Nature runs on sunlight.

2. Nature uses only the energy it needs.

3. Nature fits form to function.

4. Nature recycles everything.

5. Nature rewards cooperation.

6. Nature banks on diversity.

7. Nature demands local expertise.

8. Nature curbs excesses from within.

9. Nature taps the power of limits.