Ukraine sadly appears to be getting punished for the color revolution(s) that were fomented within it by the British and American Deep State. Remember Victoria Nuland's "fuck the EU" leaked phone call? Even the Guardian, as left as it is, calling Yanukovych's election free and fair. They had to resort to force to install a regime that would accept IMF terms for access to its resources, rather than the frankly much more fair terms on which Russia had offered a loan. And would being left alone to self govern be better? Sure -- but nobody gets that luxury in the world; everyone deals with the consequences of having resources that are desired by others. Some do it by expending vast resources on building up militaries, and others do it by making concessions to those nations that have done so. The sort of sovereignty some profess to wish for for Ukraine isn't something that exists for anyone except those who don't have anything left to take. With wealth comes a need to defend that wealth.

As for making deals, well...the outcome of the war will perhaps be the best indicator of which one was the wiser option. It seems there was a lot of resentment left over from the Soviet days, particularly from the crowd that uh, sided with Stalin's greatest adversary (and I don't mean Churchill). Russia always had more of a will to defend its position than the Americans and English had to take it, and the rest of Europe is barely a footnote for how diminished they've become anyway. But I'm not sure this is a surprise to those in the halls of western power. Perhaps it was well enough to make Russia commit to an expensive, destabilizing war. Britain has been trying to take down Russia for the last 500 years, and the idea that they'd blink over the deaths of a few million slavs is wishful thinking. To both destabilize Ukraine AND get the other European powers to step up their military spending to form a buffer, and to give up the ambitions Merkel had with trading much more with Russia? Seems like they've largely gotten what they wanted. And America was there to pay for it, as usual.

In Go, if you can make your opponent spend a lot of stones in a small space, while you are able to build up more strong shape in a spread out fashion, that's considered a good trade, as your opponent ends up boxed in, and you end up with a strong position to project power from.That seems to be what has happened in this particular region of the world. Though, geopolitics is a lot more multidimensional and with more players than the relatively simple game of Go. What will be interesting to see is what the longer term ramifications will be to the fact that the sanctions appear to have been an overstep, particularly with regard to the Treasuries and the SWIFT system. Perhaps that's all part of the plan, but if it is, that seems a bit less obvious to me at this point. Looks a lot more like an own goal.

Anyway, I'm grateful that nobody wants me to really weigh in on the overall governance of the world. And I'm grateful that my own country's current administration seems to be finally growing a backbone and refusing to finance Britain's ambitions, at least in this particular matter. Now, if they'd do the same in occupied Palestine, we might be getting somewhere, but I'm not holding my breath on that front. Thankfully, the resolve of the resistance seems to be at least as strong as the Vietnamese had, with better armaments, and likely a more sound ideology and resolve to back it up. It'd be nice to see the bloodshed stop, but given that they're fighting for the hereafter against an army of conscripts fighting for lies they've been sold and promises of stolen land, it does seem evident that at least eventually, they'll emerge victorious. What remains to be seen is how many more resources, and how much worse a position the US ends up getting itself in, to prove it. I'm sure it'll work out for the parasites getting rich off of the war effort though, with their subsidized costs and privatized gains. The only way they stand to lose is to have the money printer torn from them -- and for that, we are here.

Err, I mean, GM.

How's YOUR time preference?

#GM. Ramadan Kareem. #FreePalestine

Never obsolete, nice.

I bet Slackware would run fine on that thing.

Maybe a lightweight browser. Gopher ought to be enough for anyone.

And...it's even easier than that. In the search bar, "=SPX/BTCUSD" will pull it up; you can set digits to 8 in the chart settings on the "Symbol" tab.

Didn't realize how versatile this tool is. No wonder everyone seems to have adopted it.

I knew they were good for SOMEthing...

Did someone order #brisket? Not bad for my first time making it, in an instant pot no less. Homemade chipotle BBQ sauce. #foodstr

Okay I may be a little touched in the head. Turns out there's a denominator dropdown and you can just select BTC, at least on the desktop TradingView. That said...pinescript lets you put more indicators all in one chart, which may help with getting around the limits of a free account otherwise...

Thanks to nostr:npub1k7vkcxp7qdkly7qzj3dcpw7u3v9lt9cmvcs6s6ln26wrxggh7p7su3c04l for bringing it to my attention that this was possible in TradingView and saving me from reinventing the wheel.

Now, if only it would run correctly on mobile...

With a few modifications, we get it with Ichimoku clouds, measured out to the satoshi.

//@version=5

indicator("SPX/BTC Ratio with Ichimoku", overlay=false, precision=8)

// Get BTC and SPX data

btc = request.security("BTCUSD", timeframe.period, close)

spx = request.security("SPX", timeframe.period, close)

// Calculate the ratio

ratio = spx / btc

// Ichimoku settings

conversionPeriods = input(9, "Conversion Line Length")

basePeriods = input(26, "Base Line Length")

laggingSpan2Periods = input(52, "Leading Span B Length")

displacement = input(26, "Displacement")

// Function to calculate average of highest and lowest

donchian(len) => (ta.highest(ratio, len) + ta.lowest(ratio, len)) / 2

// Ichimoku components applied to the ratio

conversionLine = donchian(conversionPeriods)

baseLine = donchian(basePeriods)

leadLine1 = (conversionLine + baseLine) / 2

leadLine2 = donchian(laggingSpan2Periods)

// Plot the ratio and Ichimoku components

plot(ratio, title="BTC/SPX Ratio", color=color.blue, linewidth=2)

plot(conversionLine, title="Conversion Line", color=color.blue)

plot(baseLine, title="Base Line", color=color.red)

p1 = plot(leadLine1, title="Leading Span A", color=color.green, offset=displacement)

p2 = plot(leadLine2, title="Leading Span B", color=color.red, offset=displacement)

fill(p1, p2, color=leadLine1 > leadLine2 ? color.green : color.red, transp=80, title="Cloud")

plot(ratio, title="Lagging Span", color=color.purple, offset=-displacement)

And yes, if you read Ichimoku clouds, the price being below a red cloud does mean that on this 5 day chart, the SPX is generally expected to underperform the BTC price in the near term. Just in case the $5,000 upswing today left you needing confirmation.

To folks that use TradingView, or who would otherwise like the ability to chart other securities/assets in terms of #Bitcoin (ie, to use Bitcoin as their unit of account for measuring financial assets), I just got this output from Claude that gave me a handle little indicator to throw up. I'm sure Pinescript gurus can do quite a bit more (and I'd love to see your snips!) but this is a lot better than my previous attempts at doing this sort of thing in Excel had been going. Of course, feel free to change "SPX" to whatever ticker you'd want to see priced in BTC.

//@version=5

indicator("BTC/SPX Ratio", overlay=false)

// Get BTC and SPX data

btc = request.security("BTCUSD", timeframe.period, close)

spx = request.security("SPX", timeframe.period, close)

// Calculate the ratio

ratio = spx / btc

// Plot the ratio

plot(ratio, title="BTC/SPX Ratio", color=color.blue, linewidth=2)

Output:

Here, if i used too many words in my other replies... https://youtu.be/dZPQdZLyHYE

Might be worth checking out the latest episode of nostr:npub1cj8znuztfqkvq89pl8hceph0svvvqk0qay6nydgk9uyq7fhpfsgsqwrz4u's podcast with Morgen Rochard, who's a financial planner with some very good perspective on weathering some volatility. We always get a bit on these runs up, and every run up is a little bit different. In some ways these shake outs are almost more disconcerting than the bear markets, which you learn to take in stride a little more, because when it comes in the middle of a run up, there's always the "what if the bull market is cancelled?" pit in your stomach.

Link to the episode here: https://www.fountain.fm/episode/NBTTvEp4qrTFUb0vLx09

Yea, it's a sale price. Still up well over 30% from a year ago. Try not to let the day to day swings give you motion sickness. This year may be a rocky one especially with some of the macroeconomic backdrop, as the administration is working to bring down interest rates (and slash government spending), which means there'll likely be a bit of a dollar liquidity pinch (and possibly a bit of recessionary conditions, as evidenced by the big layoffs that have been announced). At the end of the day though they'll do what they always do -- run the money printer to fill in the holes. Enjoy the discounted buying opportunities when they come, because on the other side is likely going to be a dizzying ramp up if the impact of prior rounds of quantitative easing on asset prices is anything to go by.

It's a nice reminder though that going all in isn't necessarily all its cracked up to be, at least for most people yet. More important to maintain liquidity for your near term expenses to avoid selling more than you'd want to in these dips. Especially for those with a family and a home to consider.

Just saw that the crescent moon's been sighted. Wishing everyone out there #Ramadan Mubarak.

#رمضان

Flare.pub would be the Nostr native youtube replacement, though you'd need hosting for it (I think blossom works there?). Otherwise, Rumble tends to be a friendlier centralized platform, for now.

#GM folks. Happy continuing sale.

And to those who are learning that their tolerance for volatility may not be what they thought it was, consider a strategy used by many in the tradfi space: build in a strategic cash allocation as a percentage of your total portfolio (ie, 5% of your total portfolio, or whatever makes sense for you, is held in fiat). When the price goes down, you buy more, because your cash allocation will have grown. Theoretically you could trim it as BTC goes up too, though I prefer to let it grow from other inflows instead. Been seeing some folks who are all in suddenly wishing they had hedges, and while I think the enthusiasm for Bitcoin is great, it's important to be realistic about what works for you so you're not stuck selling at the least opportune times. See the latest episode of nostr:npub1cj8znuztfqkvq89pl8hceph0svvvqk0qay6nydgk9uyq7fhpfsgsqwrz4u's podcast to get more on this topic from someone far more qualified than me to talk about it.

Also, see the lefties are talking about an Economic Blackout today. The idea that people need to pick a single day on a calendar to not buy anything that isn't essential is fucking weird.

GM. That's a beautiful picture. I need to get back out on a sailboat...

Interesting details about history. Also very curious timing -- they finished repaying the Lend-Lease debts a single year before the great monetary crisis in the Eurodollar system (that they created, arguably to facilitate weaseling their way out from under the debt) began. That seems too convenient to be totally coincidental. Might have given me a bone to chew on here.