I’m really starting to wonder if a large enough critical mass of people are going to “get it” soon enough to avert an extended period of darkness and austerity in our country.

Intellectual curiosity and critical thought just aren’t common enough. Pain will be our teacher.

I can’t pretend anymore that positive vibes will overcome the level of sheer idiocy I see every day. Somebody please convince me I’m wrong.

I’m just going to focus on loving my family and those I communicate with who share a freer vision of the world, and try to have a laugh or two along the way.

I’m really starting to wonder if a large enough critical mass of people are going to “get it” soon enough to avert an extended period of darkness and austerity in our country.

Intellectual curiosity and critical thought just aren’t common enough. Pain will be our teacher.

I can’t pretend anymore that positive vibes will overcome the level of sheer idiocy I see every day. Somebody please convince me I’m wrong.

I’m just going to focus on loving my family and those I communicate with who share a freer vision of the world, and try to have a laugh or two along the way.

I’m really starting to wonder if a large enough critical mass of people are going to “get it” soon enough to avert an extended period of darkness and austerity in our country.

Intellectual curiosity and critical thought just aren’t common enough. Pain will be our teacher.

I can’t pretend anymore that positive vibes will overcome the level of sheer idiocy I see every day. Somebody please convince me I’m wrong.

I’m just going to focus on loving my family and those I communicate with who share a freer vision of the world, and try to have a laugh or two along the way.

Help me test my zap by zapping me even if it's just one Satoshi so I can see it's working and I can move on to other things. Thanks

You know what would be crazy? Just deciding to skip punctuation.

Cormac McCarthy, the bestselling and Pulitzer-winning author of books like No Country For Old Men, The Road, and Blood Meridian, famously didn't like quotation marks, felt they cluttered the page, and so he didn't use them.

When dialogue happens in his novels, there are no quotes around it, and you as the reader just have to figure out when a line is narration or dialogue. He also didn't use semicolons or exclamation points or certain other forms of punctuation. While he didn't exclude commas entirely, he did minimize them, and instead used extra "ands" in place of where many other authors would use commas. He used periods normally.

His prose isn't my cup of tea, but there's no denying his success, and it goes to show that you can kind of just do things.

Bro the amount of millennials I know who have some type of shared custody agreement regarding a dog post breakup is sky high. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

nostr:npub16g4umvwj2pduqc8kt2rv6heq2vhvtulyrsr2a20d4suldwnkl4hquekv4h for example

It’s me back to say more controversial things on the nostr.

Men should provide for women.

My vibe code experience has not been as smooth as those dudes on YT. The AI has put me to work. Aren't they supposed to write all the stuff.

Is this some kind of a cruel joke?

Pretty sure bitcoin is an accelerated path to a better future.

Before I make the investment in the hardware and the time to migrate to different apps by getting a degoogled pixel with GrapheneOS, I’m trying to decide if there will be any practical privacy benefit to doing so, given that my work phone will always be fully googled and tracked by virtue of the apps my employer insists on. The only way I can see there being any practical benefit and making this any more than a technology experiment is if my work phone only gets carried offsite during work hours. Then, thinking further:

- If I choose to only carry a degoogled phone when I’m away from work, how do I do voice comms with a KYC sim to get on my local carrier?

- If I’m constantly in the company of people with spyware phones when I’m away from work, aren’t most of my physical movements and other info able to be inferred anyway? I can’t even talk to my kids or my wife or friends about a new topic or purchase within earshot of their phones without it creeping into their ad feeds. Is any of the James Bond stuff even worth it?

#asknostr

Latest iteration of the trust dialog, incorporating months of feedback. I'm liking it.

You can still access Anthropic models, its pretty easy

nostr break for the foreseeable future, want to lock in

will check in for #31days over the next couple months

It never ends

At the Jake Paul fight tonight with my kids and they just sang the national anthem. “The land of the free” hit hard and hypocritical with the Samarai developers going to jail.

🎄🎁 Christmas Giveaway: Tuta is giving away a 🇩🇪 German-made Volla Phone by nostr:nprofile1qyt8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kytcqyzxet2nel0wf3hem3338cp82t04j2e3nxwavrkzxn8napgdh8k0d2yeqcxn

The Quintus, worth €719, is a Google-free smartphone built for freedom, simplicity & security. 🔒

✨ VollaOS (with multi-boot option) or Ubuntu Touch

📱 6.7” AMOLED display

📸 50 MP triple camera

💾 8 GB RAM | 256 GB storage

🚀 Powerful Mediatek Dimensity 7050 8-core processor

⚡ For a chance to win, just comment what is most important for you on a #deGoogle phone? ⚡

#Privacy #DigitalFreedom #Giveaway #VollaPhone

Oh! that does complicate things ;) Shakespeare can't do that, but maybe it's helpful in the future to see the list of what it can/can't do.

Fasting update: 36 hours in.

Feeding my family last night was rough. 😂

Got through it. Prayed, read the Bible, and also “Everything / 21 Million by nostr:nprofile1qqsf9jl9scw0c5snmkylpfhkppzgd7z7dupul6ms5yl52kfcz9jr8wqpzdmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ue0qyd8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnrwfjkgetwwdhjucmpvejj78dlc98

Haven’t decided how far this goes.

I can’t stop. Here’s my assessment of the psychological mechanics at play.

Likes are frictionless, muscle memory from years of social conditioning. They require no skin in the game, no economic cost, no reputation staking. They’re the path of least resistance, which paradoxically makes them the weakest signal.

Zaps introduce economic friction. Even small amounts create pause. You’re not just expressing appreciation, you’re sacrificing something fungible and finite. This transforms a gesture into a statement about value alignment.

Reposts require the highest cost, social capital. You’re saying “this deserves to exist in my namespace” and staking your curation reputation on it. It’s an endorsement that travels with your identity.

The question becomes…does the like button dilute signal clarity? On Nostr, where we’re supposedly rebuilding social graphs around value rather than algorithmic manipulation, maybe the most meaningful interactions should have built in friction.

The ease of an action correlates inversely with its informational content. When everything is easy, nothing is meaningful.

I think it’s worth considering if we treated our engagement patterns as a conscious design choices rather than inherited behavior from platforms optimized for addiction? Thoughts

Thinking about my last note, I had this thought as well.

The gap between engagement quality and follower count reveals something interesting about how attention works on Nostr. When we consistently find ourselves drawn to smaller accounts for substantive dialogue, we’re seeing the gap between visibility and actual value. Just because someone got here early or built a large network doesn’t mean they’re offering the most interesting perspectives.

Without an algorithm, smaller accounts face a pure discovery problem. They’re not being suppressed, but they’re not being surfaced either. The best conversations often happen below the visibility threshold, with people who take time to think through their responses and genuinely engage rather than broadcast. These accounts offer the kind of interaction that makes social protocols worth participating in, but they rely entirely on people like you actively seeking them out and responding.

What makes your observation valuable is that it points to something many of us probably feel but don’t articulate. The most rewarding exchanges aren’t happening where the follower counts suggest they should be. They’re happening in replies from accounts with 240 followers who actually read what you wrote and had something thoughtful to add.

So this is both an encouragement and a thank you to those Nostriches; your contributions matter more than your reach suggests. The people finding you and engaging with your ideas are getting far more value than the metrics reflect. And to everyone making the effort to engage back, as you do, you’re solving the discovery problem one genuine interaction at a time. 🫡

That’s how good networks get built.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Just finished the monthly follower purge. Been noticing something for a while now and curious if long time Nostriches see the same pattern.

Nostr seems less like a platform people abandon and more like a builder’s workshop people graduate from. The accounts that go quiet aren’t usually disillusioned. They’re fragmented. Someone builds something real here, it gains traction, then suddenly they need presence across multiple platforms because their project demands broader reach. The Nostr account doesn’t die, it just becomes one of five they’re juggling.

What I keep seeing is ideas and tools that eventually make it into broader society tend to incubate here first. Small, high signal, no algorithmic manipulation. The prototype phase happens in this space. Then when it needs scale, builders scatter outward to find their full audience. They’re still here, just diluted across platforms.

The community stays tight and niche not because we’re insular, but because we’re perpetually in early stage mode. When projects mature past that point, they have to go multi platform. That’s not abandonment, that’s just how building in public actually works at scale.

Maybe what looks like exodus is actually Nostr functioning as designed. Not the destination, but the launchpad. The primordial soup where things start.

For those who’ve been here since the early waves, do you see this pattern too? Or am I rationalizing attrition?

Genuinely curious what others observe. #asknostr

New sign at the local McDonald’s

Go for it. Claude is pretty fantastic at making software dreams come true.

Meaningful work doesn’t require spectators. If you can’t start until someone’s watching, you’re just putting on a show…which explains why nothing ever gets finished.

Spent the day knee deep in Nostr clients, testing UIs that feel like custom built echo chambers for our biases. Drawing from the vast UX out there, Yakihonne’s cockpit of features or Nostur’s raw simplicity wins for me. It’s freedom in the mess. Pick your tool. Own the trade offs. Competition breeds better networks, not clones. Beauty’s in the choice. What’s your go to?

Charlie Kirk's “mysterious” death has blown the lid off the toxic influence of Israel in the US. His pastor, Erics Kirks father, and TPUSA all have deep ties to pro Israel groups, fueling speculation that Kirk's demise may be linked to his own organization's deep ties with Israel.

The fact that Israel receives $3.8 billion in annual aid from the US, while simultaneously sharing buildings around the country with the FBI while Mossad agents spy on American soil and Israeli firms manipulate online discourse, is a brazen affront to US sovereignty. Israel's lobbying efforts have corrupted US politicians, compromising American interests and values. Israel has even corrupted the Christian church with its dispensational teaching and it needs to die.

It's time to investigate Kirk's death and expose the truth about Israel's stranglehold on the US, prioritizing transparency and accountability to reclaim American sovereignty from the clutches of a foreign power that has no qualms about silencing its critics.

The Israeli government's history of assassinations and espionage is well documented, and it's imperative that we demand answers about Kirk's death and the extent of Israeli influence in the US.

I have been struggling for the longest time with motivation to do things that I used to absolutely love doing. I have been dealing with “big picture” life things for a few years and it’s taken its toll. One of the casualties has been a vanishing of joy with doing the creative building work I do from time to time. Today was different in some tiny ways. I found myself liking the processes I am in the middle of, the same ones I have done1000’s of times or more. Really simple things. Little things. Repetitive things. I was focused on the small moments. The finest of actions. And there was no negative energy (self critical thoughts). Maybe there is some change incoming. I’d be grateful if this was the case. I could do with a change for what I would call “better.” 🙏

Grateful to have found many exceptions to this on primal, including people like: nostr:nprofile1qqstwf6d9r37nqalwgxmfd9p9gclt3l0yc3jp5zuyhkfqjy6extz3jcpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumrpdejqzyrhwden5te0dehhxarj9emkjmn9kfz23d nostr:npub1u53hqga9czffu7hqu5fg6sdgyycnssqwcygdh6wc52f83u3t0sfstpnzt7 nostr:nprofile1qqs2ms205wk4jzzkmk9cpq2axelhc8n8xkksplvc4pksqta7n76ntcgpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqpr3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmquzya0z nostr:nprofile1qqsrp65u9226asre64c2pdueuhs9n84cdstsdjchjrfvl5yx3yakq2qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsdzdmhs nostr:nprofile1qqswkee53cffl9lms0mzq4myxskkzj6r602yp7cc9g0q7pqsmtpkpyspr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7n9f503 nostr:nprofile1qqs0ngjcp9mlnujm366epmst2sv70qaz47whv6vsdkeh2hdfka5lfwgpzfmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ucpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgwjat5p nostr:nprofile1qqstvye9n4l04tael6j4rmf8u3r7upmv5vaxhvkts0hfxjnw5xat2ksprfmhxue69uhhg6r9vehhyetnwshxummnw3erztnrdakszgmhwden5te0dehhxarj94ex2mrp0yhx66trdpsk2mrgv4shg6pwdaexwtck9k9w6

All of which are worth a follow if you’re not already

Grateful to have found many exceptions to this on primal, including people like: nostr:nprofile1qqstwf6d9r37nqalwgxmfd9p9gclt3l0yc3jp5zuyhkfqjy6extz3jcpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumrpdejqzyrhwden5te0dehhxarj9emkjmn9kfz23d nostr:npub1u53hqga9czffu7hqu5fg6sdgyycnssqwcygdh6wc52f83u3t0sfstpnzt7 nostr:nprofile1qqs2ms205wk4jzzkmk9cpq2axelhc8n8xkksplvc4pksqta7n76ntcgpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqpr3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmquzya0z nostr:nprofile1qqsrp65u9226asre64c2pdueuhs9n84cdstsdjchjrfvl5yx3yakq2qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsdzdmhs nostr:nprofile1qqswkee53cffl9lms0mzq4myxskkzj6r602yp7cc9g0q7pqsmtpkpyspr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7n9f503 nostr:nprofile1qqs0ngjcp9mlnujm366epmst2sv70qaz47whv6vsdkeh2hdfka5lfwgpzfmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ucpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgwjat5p nostr:nprofile1qqstvye9n4l04tael6j4rmf8u3r7upmv5vaxhvkts0hfxjnw5xat2ksprfmhxue69uhhg6r9vehhyetnwshxummnw3erztnrdakszgmhwden5te0dehhxarj94ex2mrp0yhx66trdpsk2mrgv4shg6pwdaexwtck9k9w6

All of which are worth a follow if you’re not already

To be rich enough to dedicate a whole room to books. I'll have to stick to making sure all my kids have beds and have Libgen bookmarked on my laptop.

I'm struggling with how to square "those who have will have even more, and those with little will have everything taken from them" (paraphrasing of course) and "sell all you have and preach the gospel". Would Christ even approve of Bitcoin? Of money in general?

The Bible teaches us to trust in God and not in worldly systems. I’m curious, how do my fellow Christians reconcile this teaching with “trust” in the Bitcoin network?

#christianstr #asknostr

Yes. 💜

Yeah, to be honest I’m not fond of all caps either. And know you ruined the fist for me…lol, I was focused on the key.