I think it broke already 🤣

where is your Lightning wallet?

10 zaps per minute

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Barzun wrote an interesting article on this subject called An Insoluble Problem: The Patronage of Art. As far as I know it’s only on JSTOR.

I think this explained it best from what I’ve read recently: https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/solzhenitsyn-explains-ldquobeauty-will-save-the-worldrdquo/

The way I imagine the world is as an encyclopedic museum where there are living artists instead of old or ancient masterworks. I am optimistic that living artists can be found and supported who can make new contributions to each department (and beyond), and that it is not healthy to have a scarcity mindset and think that the best works in the museum are from the past. I think the best works in museums will always be from the present and future, but only if you support the very best living artists who are capable of doing this.

“A tiny handful [of artworks] are real masterworks, pieces that cannot be equaled in quality anywhere else on earth, the super-gems. These are the ones that will last forever. They are unbelievably well wrought. The marks of uncommon genius. They are works that'll change your life when you see them the first time and will addict you for the rest of your life.”

— Thomas Hoving

All of the quotes I’ve collected on the subject are a big part of it too, which can be found on the website: https://chowartfund.wordpress.com

https://youtu.be/maq9YUM6VWc

I think twice as much? A bunch of it went to a few Nostr devs

I think it’s safe to say that zaps received have actually surpassed whatever I got during 2019 when we were fooling around with Lightning on Twitter 😆

Yeah it’s important to be sustainable, making sats the standard but also being patient with saving for 5-10 years. Then you can have an annual “burn rate” that hopefully gets you to hyperbitcoinization 😂

The ideas above come from Jordan Peterson, but I’m actually seeing it play out in real time with living artists as I study them or collaborate with them: https://youtu.be/KxGPe1jD-qY?t=882

And I believe Price’s Law applies here: the square root of the number of contributors make 50% of the contributions to the field. If this is true, then these extraordinary artists also need the lions share of the patronage! And figuring out who those artists are is impossible without connoisseurship, and a community of superfans who are hell bent on making sure these artists are the real deal. So my definition of a real renaissance in the arts is when you can find a small handful of these “overachieving” artists who are carrying half of the entire field on their backs.

RE: “Is a bitcoin-propelled Renaissance of art something we can expect ?”

I can touch on this at the moment: in my view this is 99.99% dependent on the quality of the artists that are chosen by patrons to collect work from or to commission or to sponsor or to celebrate. Yes Bitcoin can be saved by these artists themselves and perhaps they can afford to pave their own way, but I really do think there is something absolutely essential about the artist-patron relationship, and the feedback loop between the artist and the audience that is supporting them financially or as fans or otherwise. I agree with Fran Lebowitz when she said, “The audience is as important to the culture as the artist.” There is a desperate need for connoisseurship of living artists, and that means that the audience really needs to know what they’re talking about when it comes to high quality art. It’s not a casual thing. They really need to understand what makes one song superior to another, or one painting superior to another, and then put their money where their mouth is. Without that, the money dissipates, and I believe that without connoisseurship you could throw billions of dollars at “the arts” and not have the renaissance that you expect it to be. The art has to have the ambition to be the greatest of all time in order to have a chance.

On iPad for instance, I have plenty of space to see everything, but Show More is actually increasing friction here

I think the best thing I could recommend right now is to watch my 20-minute documentary: https://youtu.be/ocwGFLyaal4

Followed by my recent posts on Instagram, especially the pinned posts: https://www.instagram.com/chowcollection/

Ok I have one suggestion for Damus: I would like to be in control of the cut-off point for Show More, so that I can see everything if I wanted to, or just a few lines, or something in the middle.

At the moment I use three things for Nostr: Damus for the client, nostr.build for image/gif hosting, and nostr.band for universal search.