While we all like the sound of this, I think we may be overestimating the rationality of “everyone”. Neither #Bitcoin nor #nostr are just going to succeed

Don’t let it fool ya

Agree. I would argue Bitkey is a step in bringing decentralized tech to the mainstream.

But decentralized tech will always require the marginal user to rise to the challenge.

nostr:npub1pyp9fqq60689ppds9ec3vghsm7s6s4grfya0y342g2hs3a0y6t0segc0qq ?

Is someone tracking the average time miners are holding #bitcoin after mining over time?

#Chess and stoicism:

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the humbling benefits of chess. In addition to humility, chess is a great teacher in stoicism:

Compare the post match interviews of football players (and most other athletes) with those of chess players and you’ll notice a striking difference. Football players are usually still emotional about the game and frequently feeling hard done by, whether by luck, refereeing or other conditions.

When watching chess players analyse their game, on the other hand, it is not rare that it is almost impossible to parse whether they won or lost. In fact, rather than talking about themselves, they will say things like “black’s position” or “white was very slightly worse”.

This is a masterclass in stoicism. Because their game does not leave room for subjectivity, it is essential for chess players to avoid redundant posturing or emotional outbursts which become a waste of energy.

Interestingly other sports seem to exist on a spectrum between emotionality and stoicism depending on the objectivity of the game. Tennis post game press conferences, for example are somewhere between those of chess and football when it comes to objectivity. Arguably the reason is that tennis is not quite as objective a game as chess, but luck and external factors play a much smaller role than in football.

Challenge me to a game!

I love #nostr but I think the identity use case is overly ambitious. it's just too easy to irrevocably steal or lose a nostr nsec. As far as I understand once someone else has gained access to your nsec once, you can never recover your nostr identity for your exclusive use.

nostr:npub15vzuezfxscdamew8rwakl5u5hdxw5mh47huxgq4jf879e6cvugsqjck4um Not sure if it's intentional but just a heads up it looks like your most recent podcasts have not been added to Spotify yet.

So cool!

Mysticism trumps orthodoxy:

Most religions nowadays don’t call themselves orthodox but they are: they want you to take at least some element of scripture literally and make believe that by following certain rules, you can obtain salvation.

A lot of the time this leads to confusion and conflict.

Wisdom and awakening can never be the result of submission to some relative belief. They are the result of direct recognition of the absolute, achieved through openness and authentic engagement with what is real in this moment. In other words, they require a unitive experience, a certain level of mysticism.

In fact, one might argue that every prophet, including Jesus and the Buddha are likely to have been mystics, men who were deeply in touch with the absolute.

And the bible, while it is hopelessly inapplicable to our life today when read literally, becomes a book of wisdom, when it is reclaimed through a mystical lense of openness.

A particular refined version of this is the music of Sean Angus Watson. Check him out on Youtube or Spotify

During work yes

Great. Please report back!

“read Ludwig van Mises 6 lessons… motherfuckers!” 😂

Welcome! Please set up a lightning wallet to receive zaps! :)

Brita is probably the most respected brand globally

No time for things that have no soul:

If you haven’t read Charles Bukowski, there’s no time like today to start.

His work is like a gut punch from another dimension of meaningfulness: In his classic novels Ham on Rye and Post Office as much as poems like Let it enfold you.

What distinguishes Bukowski is encapsulated in one of the most famous quotes attributed to him:

“Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul”

If nothing else, his art reminds us to not settle for the empty, the shallow or the superficial and… just from time to time to have the courage to decline to spend time on “things that have no soul”.

The only reason the market does not react more to these terrifying economic numbers is because everyone is waiting for the Fed to jump in.

That’s the perversity of the situation we’re finding ourselves in..:

Can you elaborate?

The risk of taking our societal order for granted:

Our societal order is not guaranteed by any fundamental law of human existence. There is nothing in nature that says one human might not desire to harm another if they find themselves in an existential struggle.

Unfortunately, increasingly people not just in developing countries but also in the West are finding their very existence at threat, both economically and socially. Hence the accelerating radicalization of our society.

Beware the person who has nothing to lose.

Instead of patronizing people at the bottom of the social ladder, as is the habit of the Western establishment, we as a society would be well advised to understand that their peril will be our own.

If we care about our societal order we should stop taking it for granted.