So what I am learning about MLS, does ‘Trust in Signal’ ultimately boil down to ‘Trust in Meredith’? #asknostr

Your perspective is biased because of your selfish genes.

Remember, the world we live in believes that doing nothing is the hardest work of all.

For those of you who think Canada is a communist country, think again. It’s still very much a pioneer country, full of self-reliant settlers. I know - I grew up in a community that was only one or two generations away from the original settlers. Along our concession there were signs of failed settlers - stone foundations of abandoned structures. Our house was built from glacial errata, stones picked off the field, not by choice, but by necessity, if you wanted to grow things. That was my most hated activity as a kid, riding the stone boat behind the tractor, picking stones off the field. That’s what I like about nostr, it feels very much like a pioneer endeavour. Lots of abandoned stone foundations (nostr clients) but lots of hope to build something greater and lasting. A country is greater than its government of the day. Canada is about devolved and post-national as you can get, but still be recognized as a country. As a kid, the bulk of our media came across the Great Lakes in the form of AM radio stations from Detroit, Cincinnati, and Chicago. To this day, even though Canadian, I have more in common with my fellow midwesterners in the US than I do in other parts of Canada. But we were not borne out of a revolution, but we had to come together to survive a much harsher northern climate. In the end, I’m excited for nostr - not for what it stands against - but what is stands for - the return to self-reliance, self-sovereignty and the acceptance into a network of your own choosing - not mandated by a government or a border. #nostr

This was my remote work-vibe yesterday in Ottawa. Grateful to have these public spaces with coffee and wifi.

I totally appreciate the civility on Nostr. We are on a new frontier so we can advance the art together. Eventually, everyone will find their niche, but now it’s most important that we help each. View quoted note →

The age of Internet Chivalry is dead. Nobody respects robots.txt anymore.

War is ultimately about price. “Whatever weapon system or munition you shoot at another adversary’s capability, it should be cheaper than what you’re shooting down,” Army Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. land forces in Europe and Africa, recently told a gathering in Germany.

I am actively monitoring #satsbanana every time we grocery shop View quoted note →

This is just nuts… White House Targets Smithsonian Museums BY MERIDITH MCGRAW The Wall Street Journal Aug 13, 2025 Exhibits, materials will have to align with Trump’s views of U.S. exceptionalism The White House plans to conduct a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of America’s 250th anniversary to ensure the museums align with President Trump’s interpretation of American history. In a letter sent to Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, three top White House officials said they want to ensure the museums present the “unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story” and reflect the president’s executive order calling for “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Areas under scrutiny range from public-facing exhibition text and online content to internal curatorial processes, exhibition planning, the use of collections and artist grants. “This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” the letter states. The letter, dated Aug. 12 and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, was signed by White House senior associate Lindsey Halligan, the director of the domestic policy council, Vince Haley, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought. “This is about preserving trust in one of our most cherished institutions,” Halligan said. “The Smithsonian museums and exhibits should be accurate, patriotic and enlightening.” “The Smithsonian’s work is grounded in a deep commitment to scholarly excellence, rigorous research and the accurate, factual presentation of history,” a Smithsonian spokesperson said. “We are reviewing the letter with this commitment in mind and will continue to collaborate constructively with the White House, Congress and our governing Board of Regents.” The White House review of the Smithsonian’s massive collection of art and historical artifacts comes as the president has sought to reorient the country’s cultural institutions, including top universities, and demonstrates Trump’s efforts to recast parts of American history in a more positive light. The Smithsonian’s Board of Regents agreed to conduct a thorough review of all its museum and zoo content to eliminate political influence and bias, the Journal previously reported. Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association, said the White House’s effort was an affront to the historians and curators trained to ensure historical accuracy. “If those things are taken out of the hands of historians, the public stands to lose a great deal in having reliable and engaging content that tells a whole and complex story of the American past,” she said. The president singled out the Smithsonian Institution in his executive order and said the Smithsonian had recently “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” that promotes “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” He directed Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, and senior officials to work with Congress to block the Smithsonian from receiving appropriations for exhibitions and programs that don’t align with his opposition to initiatives that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Tiya Miles, a professor of history at Harvard University, said she was concerned that the Smithsonian would be asked to interpret history based on “one man’s view” as opposed to scholarship and research. “The Smithsonian museums have never reflected one person’s view, or even one administration’s view,” Miles said. “They have reflected the composite research, analysis, discussion, findings of many different people, scholars and researchers.” The White House review will pay attention to exhibits planned for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Following the review, the White House letter states that museums should make corrections that replace “divisive or ideologically driven” language with “unifying, historically accurate” public-facing materials. The details requested by the White House go beyond museum exhibitions and extend to organization charts, responses to visitor surveys, artists featured in galleries who have received a Smithsonian grant, a list of outside partners and internal communications related to exhibit and artwork selection and approval. The White House letter stated the review is expected to wrap at the beginning of 2026. Shared via PressReader connecting people through news

Trump Crypto Riches Tied To Little-Known Platform BY ANGUS BERWICK AND PATRICIA KOWSMANN The Wall Street Journal Aug 13, 2025 The Trump family’s crypto venture has generated more wealth since the election— some $4.5 billion—than any other part of the president’s business empire. A major reason for the success is a partnership with an under-the-radar trading platform quietly administered by Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, whose founder is seeking a pardon from President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. The online trading platform, PancakeSwap, serves as an incubator of sorts, drumming up interest among traders to use coins issued by the Trump family’s main crypto company, World Liberty Financial. The more World Liberty’s flagship coin, USD1, is used, the greater the demand to increase its circulation, and the greater the profit for World Liberty and its owners, including the Trump family. PancakeSwap is an online marketplace for cryptocurrencies. It connects users who trade USD1 with newly created currencies such as Torch of Liberty and Eagles Landing. These patriotic-sounding coins, according to their websites, were launched this year with the main purpose of helping increase the use of USD1. Traders, mostly writing in Chinese, gather in groups on the Telegram messaging app to talk about competing for rewards paid out to top users of USD1 and advertised by PancakeSwap. World Liberty and PancakeSwap announced their partnership to boost USD1’s adoption in June. Crypto trading platforms often offer rewards or prizes to drum up interest in new coins, similar to the way brokerages offer free trades or casinos give first-time customers free chips. What wasn’t disclosed at the time is that employees inside Binance created PancakeSwap, according to people familiar with the company. Binance’s majority owner and founder, Changpeng Zhao, spent four months in jail in the U.S. last year after Binance agreed to pay a $4.3 billion fine for becoming a global money-laundering hub for criminals, terrorists and sanctions evaders. His company has deepened its relationship with World Liberty at the same time Zhao has ramped up efforts to secure a pardon from Trump. Zhao, who is considered the richest person in the crypto industry and is worth over $70 billion, according to Forbes, recently hired Ches McDowell, a lobbyist and friend of Donald Trump Jr., to push for the pardon, a person familiar with the relationship said. A World Liberty spokesman declined to comment. A Binance spokesman and PancakeSwap didn’t respond to requests for comment. After a March article in The Wall Street Journal, Zhao wrote on social-media platform X that “no felon would mind a pardon,” while at the same time dismissing a connection between deals and a pardon. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the “media’s continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest are irresponsible” and that “neither the president nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.” Trump, a Republican, announced World Liberty’s launch during his campaign last year, writing on social media that the company planned to “help make America the crypto capital of the world.” World Liberty unveiled USD1 in March, saying the token would assist Trump’s mission to protect the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Binance played a key role from an early stage. USD1 got its first big break when Binance accepted a $2 billion investment from an outside investor paid in the World Liberty coin. The deal caused the amount of the cryptocurrency in circulation to erupt 15-fold and overnight become one of the world’s largest. USD1 is a stablecoin, a privately invented digital currency that is backed 1:1 with U.S. dollars. World Liberty invests the money backing the coins in government bonds and moneymarket funds, without paying interest to users of the coin. With more than $2 billion of USD1 in circulation, it can earn around $80 million a year based on current interest rates. Binance has been holding the $2 billion in USD1 on its platform, according to blockchain data and a person familiar with the matter. By not cashing in the stablecoin, this ensures that World Liberty continues to earn money from investing the dollars that back them. Trump and his family own 40% of World Liberty. While the company’s overall value isn’t disclosed, a large portion of it is derived from one of its cryptocurrencies. A stake the Trump family owns in that cryptocurrency is worth $4.5 billion, according to a disclosure published Monday. World Liberty’s relationship with PancakeSwap, whose website was registered in Shanghai, and Binance is one of several in which entities and individuals with strong ties to China have supported the Trump family crypto business. One of World Liberty’s largest investors is Hong Kong-based billionaire Justin Sun. This comes even as the White House pushes a trade war against the country and seeks to curtail U.S. corporations’ ties to China over national-security fears. China is Binance’s largest market by trading volume, the Journal previously reported, and remained so as of the end of last year. It has been a main base for its software developers, with hundreds of coders, according to former employees, internal records and LinkedIn postings. Binance has long maintained that it isn’t a Chinese company, saying it left Shanghai shortly after its 2017 launch. Zhao has said he is no longer a Chinese citizen, and holds Canadian and United Arab Emirates citizenship. The company, which has employees around the world, doesn’t have an official headquarters. One of the president’s sons, Eric Trump, a World Liberty co-founder, plans to meet more potential partners in Hong Kong in August during a bitcoin conference, according to people familiar with his plans. World Liberty in recent months talked about taking an investment from the Hong Kong crypto service provider Hashkey, whose main shareholder is Chinese conglomerate Wanxiang Group, according to people familiar with the talks. Wanxiang’s chairman sits on China’s National People’s Congress. A Hashkey spokeswoman said discussions with World Liberty were exploratory and no commitments had been made. Crypto companies release thousands of new coins every year. Most never catch on. To attract a following among traders, new coins need to show big trading volume. That is where PancakeSwap stepped in. PancakeSwap doesn’t disclose its ownership and says online that it is run by a team of anonymous “chefs” with a “penchant for breakfast foods.” It compares trading cryptocurrencies to “flipping pancakes.” According to former employees, Binance staff created PancakeSwap inhouse in 2020 because the exchange wanted to establish a foothold in crypto’s “decentralized finance” craze. The platform has remained under Binance’s supervision, the former employees said. PancakeSwap’s trading platform is built on Binance’s blockchain network, a software ecosystem in which developers create new programs. Starting in late May, USD1 trading exploded on PancakeSwap, rocketing from a few tens of millions of dollars a day to regularly over $1 billion. Over 90% of USD1 trades have taken place on PancakeSwap, according to data from the platform and data tracker CoinMarketCap. Demand for USD1 wasn’t because customers were using it for payments or to stash their crypto holdings, which is what stablecoins are typically used for. It was because investors were chasing prizes worth up to $1 million for generating as much USD1 trading as possible as part of a “Liquidity Drive,” said people who took part in the campaign and researchers who track trading data. Shared via PressReader connecting people through news

“The legal right to express oneself is meaningless if there is no secure medium through which that expression may travel. By the same token, the right to hold unpopular opinions is forfeit unless one can discuss those opinions with others of like mind without the government listening in.” John Perry Barlow

“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.” The Declaration of Cyberspace Independence, 1996

So, the bottom line is that if your solution requires an authentication server (AS), you’re compromised. I reached a similar conclusion with OAuth2.0 The cynical side of me is that mainstream industry is perfectly happy with MLS because when an authority leans on them to comply with chat control, etc., they can do it. View quoted note →

Home cooking recipes could get you banned. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/home-cook-social-media-disabled-1.7605893

I’m excited for the day when I don’t actually have to build an app and my #nostr #safebox service is completely invisible running multiple instances in many places, listening to a pool of relays for npubs that are only known between the service and the user.

I like the concept of “insurance” versus “governance” because you are asking someone to put their name under you (underwriting) versus on top of you (indenture). Another thing I like about insurance is that you need to first qualify to be in a pool of like individuals versus governance where you are singled out as an individual.

Make sure your solutions don’t have SPA (Single Point of Authoritarianism)