I'd like to read more banned books. Let me know what books are banned in your country or anything in particular that you like

Reading some poetry from Malawi—many written during a period when the country was suppressed for decades under the dictatorship of Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Many lived in exile expressing what home is to them. The nature of politics and art can be deeply intertwined. This piece from an essay by Landeg White encapsulate it beautifully : “ It’s not that these were ‘political poets’ in the sense that they had an agenda. [It was] a situation in which everything was political, except the politics. Which church you went to, was political. How long your hair was, was political. Which region you came from, was political. How women dressed, was political. Not attending a political rally, when one was in your area, was political. Not getting out of your car to applaud when Dr Banda’s motorcade was passing, was political. My late brother-in-law Frank was detained for 18 months in 1976. His crime? He lived next door to Kirby Mwambetania, detained for being a northerner. So when Kirby was taken, Frank went to bath and feed his four young children until Kirby’s wife could return from Nairobi where she was on a course. That, too, was political! (Landeg White: 17th March 2013). Malawi gained independence from the British in 1964 (It was known as Nyasaland before its name changed to Malawi - nyasa is lake in Chichewa ) . Although Malawi gained independence, it was ruled by Banda who established a one-party state and ruled as a president-for-life. His regime was highly repressive - political persecution, censorship, and suppression of opposition. Anyone who dissent were harshly punished. In the early 90s, Malawi slowly transitioned to a multiparty democracy thanks to the rising internal and external pressures. While Malawi has undergone significant political reforms, it continues to face challenges in governance and development. With a population of 20 million, Malawi remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Only 11% of the country currently has access to electricity, and it ranks 171st out of 189 on the Human Development Index. Malawi is bordered by Zambia, Mozambique, and Tanzania with Lake Malawi as its centerpiece. The country is known for its friendliness, diverse cultures and languages, with Chichewa being the most widely spoken alongside English. Some pics of Malawi here are absolutely stunning.

Lake Malawi, Malawi

Malawi may be one of Africa’s smallest countries but when it comes to exploration and adventure, it has tremendous amounts to offer.

$2T wiped out in an hour is wild. Would be kinda scary if Japan stops buying US’s debt (given it owns abt 15% of US treasury securities?) - interest rates will shoot up, borrowing cost increases. financial market suffers. And if countries go to war right now, say Iran attacks Israel. US will struggle to fund the war as it can’t print money. And given China is the second largest debt owners and both China and Russia are pushing for Brics, the risk of demonetisation is high, risk of world war is high. But likely the above won't happen. In the short run there will be many stoppages. But in the long run it helps to understand why innovation is crucial for long-term economic productivity and resilience. It is not practical for a country to self sustain through military intervention to extract other country's resources (oil, opium). It backfires quite a bit in terms of debts and elite's control. Excessive capitalism - i.e decisions of several elites in the 80s - both in the UK and the US led to much innovation and productivity leaving the country. Those that benefited from globalization established expensive cities and capital within the country, whereas the rest of the country suffered - creating inequality and regional disparities. There has to be some balance of economic policies in the world. And if countries don't innovate, they will suffer and get left behind.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

If CPUs are men, then GPUs are probably women, TPUs are the therapists, DPUs would be your go to guy and QPUs your optimistic gurus

This is so good, with an amusing start as Snowden talks about Daddy Bitcoin . Who’s your daddy bitcoin ? I absolutely love how Snowden phrases his sentences. Some interesting lines captured : 1. We are winning ladies and gentlemen, but we haven’t won, so we have to make sure we don’t get cocky 2. they fight us, then they get us to love them (on political representation) 3. Cast a vote, but don’t join a cult. They are not your tribe 4. there's a passage from a book that I think for this crowd really resonates it says - For in every country of the world, I believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained in their coins. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations written in the year 1776 (https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/chapter-iv-of-the-origin-and-use-of-money) 5. you are made to pass through ‘gates of permission’ that are owned and controlled by others that do not answer frankly to anybody (on terms and conditions that you click yes) 6. whether we're talking about core governments or whether we're talking about corporations we're talking about the same thing. We're talking about the systemization of technologies that are designed to order our lives 7. Bitcoin transactions are permanent, they are public and they can be tracked and they can be linked. Enormous proportion of them are fully doxed but just not publicly doxed. 8. That metadata patterned out, is your pattern of life (dang!) 9. Metadata is like a private investigator following you all the time 10. Suddenly they can have every life of every person every day at every moment on a live feed being interpreted at machine speed and then you start feeding those inferences into a decision-making process (on advancement on machine learning and its interpolation to Bitcoin’s metadata) 11. larger and larger parts of this transaction mesh of this network gets identified - the space for everyone else to have any kind of private interaction diminishes 12. The United States is the only advanced democracy on the planet that I am aware of that does not have a basic privacy law. We have the Fourth Amendment that only binds the federal government that doesn't do diddly-squat to protect you against corporations and the government. 13. We have passed the inflection point and we are accelerating down the slope and we're reaching the point where all of us are about to have to make very serious decisions about how we spend the rest of our lives to try to make the world better for our children and for those who come after us 14. Elections do have consequences. They do matter, but sometimes it feels like they're less meaningful than they should be 15. Do you really believe that the two front runners are what you know the collective will of this country would choose as the two best Americans ? When you were a child and in school they're like oh president's the best person - does it feel like that ? I don't think so 16. right now we're doing it for the likes, we're trying to get approval, we're trying to get acceptance, we are being driven to compete for attention and for acceptance 17. we need to start, instead of competing, we need to start cooperating, working together to find our way out of this hole 18. The internet is broken because institutions are competing against the individual while the individual is competing against other individuals. We need to shatter that design 19. Competition is everywhere but it's only against the powerless 20. By all means, cast your vote. But don’t join a cult. There’s a lot of work to be done.

You can tell a lot about someone by how they react to a situation

Been down this week with high fever. I have not been this sick in a while and it’s been a battle between the body saying shut down and the mind saying no

Sometimes I hear stories of how people’s fathers were bad to them growing up and I feel really bad, i feel really sorry. My dad gave up so much so that I would have a better life. You know that story in the gospel of Mark where people contributed out of abundance but a poor lady gave everything she got which was barely 2 coins and that carried more value ? That was my dad. He was kind to all and would not ask for himself even when he was in need. He had a great sense of humour and knew how to make light of difficult situation to ease people around him. No matter what happened, you know he will be there. He had so much love. Sometimes it's the little things that are really the big things. I miss my dad a lot. Would do anything to have just one more day

Some Bitcoin / Nostr innovation ideas / use cases : 1. Zap Payment Service as “other stuff” or lightning payment services Create a payment service with zap, along with its api/posse (?) to be integrated with global services or a simpler way for nodes to be integrated by businesses and general users Use cases : gamers using ios and android can use zaps for micropayment instead of faux money alongside nostr community chat options. Primal/Damus has shown how zaps are possible on ios 2. Create a freedom oriented client specifically for oppressed countries who need easy adoption and private mode conversations. While Nostr is a protocol, this client can have all features dedicated towards people from these countries (requires studying what they need) 3. Explore B2B opportunity with Nostr There’s YouTube premier, TV, Red, Originals, free with ads etc. Maybe propose one to YT where people pay as they please using zaps, no ads and chat avenues ? Maybe various businesses like media could be clients of Nostr with similar chat and zap features (B2B) - with private relays if needed. 4. Tidal /Nostr Battle of the Bands Attendees buy their tickets as usual. And they will be redirected to install wallet where ticket price will be converted to sats. The goal is to zap sats and the highest zaps win. In this case this could also be a bitcoin minted token so that token owner can take back (rug pull) the money at the end of the evening (to encourage attendees to zap the winners at the concert). cc @jack 5. Establishing end to end encryption or de identifying of data for B2C businesses to protect customers data from forceful surrender to govt, leaks, spams etc. I love DID’s latest initiative to make their approach more commonly used. 6. Exploring EMF to cater to smaller movements (home based hydro or wind) to produce higher powered generators for home miners. I have been having a maxwell moment. 7. Collaborating with developers and solar installers to setup home base mining systems for new homes as an advantage to home buyers. Normalise home mining systems 8. Foreign workers globally : while remittance is an issue, an emerging problem is limited access to digital wallets within the country they are working in - as their identity doesn’t count. Expanding bitcoin wallets without kyc and liaising with businesses to accept them 9. More Bitcoin integrator to online commerce, to foster competition which will boost innovation. There is a huge miss opportunity to enable bitcoin as common denominator in global commerce 10. Might be easier to explore widespread bitcoin adoption in countries US imports and exports from to encourage its acceptance in U.S. for small business owners (import countries - Mexico, Vietnam etc). 11. Elevating small manufacturers by reducing banking hurdles and commerce and in hopes to minimise hegemony trade (my hope someday) 12. Some other things that might be relevant : - Anonymity on Nostr - more clients that can be connected to Tor or other ways to protect user visibility. Oppressive countries can be brutal. - to split private relays from general relays that uses gossip and provide uses the option for asynchronous / mutually exclusive selections between general and private I’m sure the feasibility of use cases requires a lot more through through process. But with every problem there is opportunity. I would love to see more Bitcoin and Nostr use cases globally. I’ll add on to the thread as more ideas pop up.

who are you building this for ? and where can you find them ? sometimes its the simple questions that gets overlooked

This is why Nostr is important as the world becomes more repressive. It provides a place to express freely and helps maintain privacy in digital footprints. Malaysia is a beautiful country with great people and awesome food, but it also has harsh sedition laws that can lead up to 20 years in prison for dissenters, and its often misused by the ruling governments.

South China Morning Post

Malaysia’s new cyber law stirs fears of ‘death knell’ for free speech

Critics say government has duty to protect space for dissent, amid concerns new law is pushed ‘with little consultation and in haste’.