Cycling like it’s 2006. My Wahoo cyclocomputer clock just rolled over due to a 10 bit size. A fix should be coming shortly.

Price is the one-way lossy compression function for morality and stupidity.

hyperlocal <-----nostr-----> hyperglobal

Wen zaps for bitchats? @jack @calle @jb55 View quoted note →

I created a bitchat room at my favourite beach. I’m not actually there, but I teleported to create it. It’s wild to think I could immediately communicate with someone local on the ground (though I don’t know who the other teleporters are). This has huge implications for gaining on-the-ground publicly-sourced intel.

Bitchat could be as profound as the hyperlink that liberated content from a local doc to the global web. Teleporting to a hyperlocal #geohash chat is mind blowing! Maybe bitchat should also be called hyperchat? View quoted note →

Global collapses into local for chat - and hopefully soon for payments. View quoted note →

Some interesting techniques to hide money on your person. I hope this will become obsolete with #nostr #safebox

The whole stablecoin craze feels like the 2017 ICO craze.

The genius of the #nostr protocol: - you generate your own key - you define your own kinds So together, you maintain your own agency and define your own meaning - just as you do now in your own head, but now there is a protocol to extend what you have in your head without fear of it being hijacked.

All digital rights boil down to the right to generate your own private key.

Relieved that Spouse and Son 3 are almost at their final destination after a cross-country road trek. Almost 3000 km as the AirTag flies!

Great episode with @calle I am as excited about #cashu as when I first learned about it three years ago. We can change the world by making payments completely anonymous and private. That’s what I want to do with #nostr #safebox https://fountain.fm/episode/yYFsWPU8MpUglR5tkbXY

Regular JSON versus Signed JSON. Using Nostr Makes All The Difference

GM from the npug

Walter Bagehot pinpointed the issues with central banks over 150 years ago. Here is a summary courtesy ChatGPT ———- Walter Bagehot, the 19th-century British economist and journalist, is best known for his book Lombard Street (1873), where he laid out both his admiration for and his worries about the emerging central banking role of the Bank of England. His concerns were not abstract; they came from observing repeated financial crises in London. Here are the key concerns he expressed about central banking: ⸻ 1. Moral Hazard and Discipline • Bagehot worried that if the Bank of England acted as a permanent backstop, commercial banks might take excessive risks, assuming the central bank would always save them. • To counteract this, he argued that central bank lending in a crisis should come at a penalty rate (above market rates) and only against good collateral. This would discourage reckless behavior while still providing necessary liquidity. ⸻ 2. Transparency and Public Confidence • He was concerned that the Bank’s policies were opaque and sometimes improvised. • He argued that a central bank needed clear, consistent rules of conduct in crises, since uncertainty could worsen panic. • His principle: “Lend freely, at a high rate, on good collateral.” ⸻ 3. Reluctance to Accept Its Role • Bagehot worried that the Bank of England often denied its central responsibility, treating itself like just another private bank. • In reality, because of its size and position at the center of the financial system, it was the lender of last resort. He cautioned that shirking this role could lead to devastating runs and bank failures. ⸻ 4. Fragility of Confidence • He noted that financial systems are built on confidence, and that once panic starts, only decisive central bank action can restore trust. • He worried that hesitation or half-measures by the Bank of England would worsen crises, as people would withdraw deposits faster if they sensed weakness. ⸻ 5. Concentration of Power • While he defended the necessity of a central bank, he recognized that concentrating so much financial power in one institution carried risks. • He believed the Bank of England should use its power responsibly, guided by principles that protected the broader system, not just its own shareholders. ⸻ ✅ In short: Bagehot’s central concern was how to balance stability with discipline. He wanted the central bank to act forcefully in crises to prevent systemic collapse, but also feared that careless or overly generous support would undermine market discipline and encourage recklessness.

‘The Central Bank Apprentice’ By Elizabeth Warren Ms. Warren, a Democrat, is a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. The Wall Street Journal Aug 21, 2025 President Trump’s attacks on the Federal Reserve include schoolyard name calling, intimidation or threats to fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and other board members, and a sudden interest in how much the Fed is spending on building renovations. This is the new season of “The Central Bank Apprentice.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is helping Mr. Trump in his search for a new chairman, is calling for a review of “the entire Federal Reserve.” One contender, former Fed Gov. Kevin Warsh, called for the central bank to be made “great again.” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, another contestant, said ending the Fed’s “absence of transparency” should be a priority for whoever gets the job. Mr. Trump is making clear that whoever wins the crown must be committed to hacking away at the Fed’s independence. I’m not auditioning to be the next chairwoman, but I agree that the central bank needs more transparency and accountability. The Fed has consistently favored Wall Street over Main Street. Fed officials have been at the center of numerous ethics scandals. And the central bank has generally rebuffed congressional oversight. The Fed’s ability to conduct monetary policy without fear that the chairman will be fired by an angry president is a bedrock of our economy. But independence doesn’t mean impunity. We need real reform, and if Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress are serious about accountability, they should get behind the following ideas: First, make the Fed’s inspector general an independent watchdog. Most big federal agencies have inspectors general who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The Fed’s is instead appointed by the Fed chairman—a clear conflict of interest. The inspector general can oversee and hold accountable the officials who have the authority to hire, fire and set pay for him. The Fed also needs stronger ethics rules and enforcement to prevent senior officials from abusing their positions to juice their personal wealth. At the onset of the pandemic, senior leaders at the Fed traded individual stocks and investments at the same time they were setting key monetary policies in response to the pandemic. Centralbank officials and the Fed inspector general have failed to hold them accountable, share critical information about the trading scandal with Congress, or institute meaningful reform. The Fed had a chance to change its ethics rules. It failed. It is now Congress’s responsibility to write ethics rules for them. We can further bring accountability to the Fed by rethinking the role of the 12 regional reserve banks. These banks, which play a critical role in supervising the financial system and whose presidents vote on monetary policy in the Federal Open Market Committee, have long used their “quasiprivate” status to insulate themselves from meaningful congressional oversight. These institutions serve governmental functions, and they should be subject to the same legal guardrails as other agencies. Executives of big banks serve on the reserve banks’ boards of directors, actively overseeing operations that directly affect their banks. Reserve bank presidents are selected by these boards behind closed doors without much transparency or public input. Ending these practices would improve the Fed’s public legitimacy. Sens. Rick Scott (R., Fla.), Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) and I have bipartisan bills that would implement all these improvements and more. Instead of grasping for a pretext to intimidate or fire Mr. Powell, or other members of the Fed, Mr. Trump should push Congress to pass meaningful reform this fall. We should ask more questions about the Fed’s role in our economy. It’s time to rein in the ways the central bank subsidizes Wall Street, from its quick reflex to bail out financial markets to its decision to change monetary policy by paying interest on bank reserves and making similar payments to shadow banks. Another question is whether the Fed is capable of doing its job to regulate our biggest financial institutions and keep our system safe. The evidence isn’t reassuring. The Fed helped create too-big-to-fail banks by rubber-stamping bank mergers while ignoring the subprime mortgage risks that crashed our economy in 2008. The Fed missed Silicon Valley Bank’s interest-rate vulnerability, a failure that led to the second-, third- and fourth-largest bank failures in U.S. history in 2023. If the Fed can’t or won’t keep our financial system safe, Congress needs to step up with stronger rules. The inflation surge following the pandemic exposed just how ineffective the Fed’s interest-rate hikes are in countering supply-induced price increases, while the persistent racial disparities in the unemployment rate underscore how the central bank has failed to promote a stronger economy for all. As the Fed undertakes a review of its monetary-policy framework, the central bankers need to show how they intend to strengthen and deploy their tools to better serve American families and our economy. The Fed is one of the most powerful institutions in our economy— and one of the least accountable. That won’t change no matter who Mr. Trump crowns as the new chairman. The only way forward is to pursue true reform. Shared via PressReader connecting people through news