Adding the follow packs as a section in the Primal app menu would be ideal (so you don't need to login with nsec on a separate website)

Happy Juneteenth, the most libertarian holiday of the year!

Can anyone think of something better that the US government could have spent $7 billion of taxpayer money on instead of bombing one of the world’s poorest countries?

Not sure if this is the way…

Most folks don't love security theater & everyone has had a bad time at a screening checkpoint.

So, let's think for a second about hypothetical private-#TSA companies.

I'd expect them to gravitate towards AI-assigned individual risk ratings to minimize the cost of hiring & training people to interact with travelers.

To create ratings, I'd expect them to demand & consolidate invasive pools of our biometrics, web browsing, commenting, purchasing, movements & private lives.

Just don't call it a "social credit score"

You can bet they'll pivot to trying to monetize their data.

2026: We're a terminal security company

2029: We're a person rating company

Would these ratings make their way into other parts of our lives & things we want to visit?

And who exactly would stand up for us when the ratings are wrong? Or our data is shipped to foreign buyers.

Who holds #PrivateTSA companies accountable? The US doesn't have strong #privacy protections...

I'm also not optimistic about private sector security companies' ability to stop breaches. History backs me up here.

But I do expect that private-TSA companies could use lobbying to limit oversight & accountability.

That's been the history of other privacy-invasive tech companies.

So, as an airline security privatization conversation kicks off, remember that it can't just be "current thing is bad" but needs to consider what kind of future we're inviting in.

“Nation-state adoption of Bitcoin in its current form should not be mistakenly interpreted as the state nobly surrendering the money printer to advance individual freedoms.

The most likely scenario, in my view, is that most governments will continue to issue fiat currency against their Bitcoin reserves, engaging in the same inflationary practices that debased gold-backed systems. The problem is not the asset backing the currency but the moral hazard of government control over money. History has shown us time and again that even the soundest monetary systems falter when subject to the whims of centralized authority.

The only way to achieve true fiscal discipline is to abolish legal tender laws and allow competing currencies, including Bitcoin, to flourish in the free market. As long as legal tender laws compel the use of fiat currency, governments will continue to inflate their money supply at the expense of the public, regardless of how much Bitcoin they hold.

An SBR would not change this dynamic. Bitcoin, locked in their reserves, will become a tool to prop up the very system it was designed to destroy.” nostr:npub123sfqjpgf54p28yd7cjlgrpcn4pra5zhlnheyldc39td9r3zhgpshcwk9x

The Federal Open Market Committee is neither Federal nor an open market. In fact, the Federal Reserve banks used to conduct more open market activity BEFORE the creation of the FOMC.

That is to say, different Federal Reserve banks would bid against each other in the open market. But after a while they decided that they'd rather not do that, so they formed the FOMC.

The FOMC is a cartel.

Pet peeve that I can't comprehend how it happens: sinks with faucets that barely extend out over the bowl, resulting in you knocking your hands against the edges of the bowl while trying to get them under the stream of water.

I encounter this in houses, public restrooms, and even fancy hotels. Are bathroom designers really this lacking in foresight?

Stolen cryptocurrency increased by 21% to $2.2 billion in 2024 and the number of hacking incidents increased 9% to 303. In 2024, North Korean hackers stole more from crypto platforms and with greater frequency.

Oddly enough, the crypto industry may be benefiting from the Ukraine war. DPRK exploitation activity cratered after July 1, likely explained by North Korean participation in the war changing their cybercrime strategy.

In 2020 it was considered insane to call out ESG + DEI policies for their overt Communist undertones, rejection of economic first principles and a move away from meritocracy.

I was constantly derided.

"Marty, shut up! We need to fit bitcoin in the framework."

Very happy to see that sanity is prevailing and we are returning to merit and common sense.

Lessons learned:

Never bend the knee.

Own the frame.

Time is on your side.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

decentralized = trustless. why would you lend to someone you don’t trust?

Yes. Similar to a bank. There is going to be a huge market for lending and the ability measure risk and insure both sides is data driven and possible to achieve via decentralized technical means rather than statist institutions.

collect interest in bitcoin on bitcoin holdings? so that you can accumulate bitcoin for doing nothing?

And by all means, keep the fdic and any other statist institutions completely out of the equation.