If the bear market has you down, watch this. So good.

Thoughts on Gary Gensler’s testimony today:

Kids these days have no idea how magical Dookie-era Green Day was.

Because Eustace Mullins was a Nazi whose other works include “Adolf Hitler: An Appreciation” and “The Biological Jew,” the latter of which features passages about how, according to Mullins, Jews kidnap Christian children and drink their blood. Mullins was an absolutely raging, unhinged anti-Semite like his friend and mentor Ezra Pound who, lest we not forget, broadcast propaganda for Mussolini and the fascists during WW2. Even a cursory skim through some of his work reveals how out of his fucking mind he was. View quoted note →

Shill me your Halloween essential films. In my house, we usually watch a selection from the following: Night of the living dead Halloween 1 Sometimes Halloween 2 Suspiria (argento version) Conjuring Exorcist Rosemarys baby The descent Hellraiser Nightmare on elm street (first one) I’m more of the campy cult horror guy. My wife likes more modern, less campy horror. My daughter hasn’t been indoctrinated one way or the other yet.

Rich men north of Richmond… https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4217945-menendez-wife-indicted-on-federal-bribery-charges/

My 18-month old was up at the crack of dawn this morning, which means I was up too, if course. Did some early morning reading. Will be chewing on this the rest of the day: “I don’t know that we owe God or nature a death, but nature will collect anyway, and we certainly owe mediocrity nothing, whatever collectivity it purports to advance or at least represent.” -Harold Bloom

One of my fondest memories from growing up in the 90s was how comparatively difficult it was to find, capture, and play on-demand the music you liked. Of course you could always go buy a cd, but I remember listening to the radio for hours and taping my favorite songs when they came on. And then of course you’d get pissed when the DJ cut it off early and stole the last chorus from your recording. Reading magazines to discover new bands. Experimenting with radio stations. Catching the always amazing college stations when you were driving near schools. Your taste was almost like a reflection of the effort you put in. The explorations were earned and worked for. And you cherished every single unearthed banger.

Facts View quoted note →

Trying to get up to speed on nostr so that I never have to use X again. But at the risk of sounding like a moron, can somebody please explain the zap sitch to me like I’m a moron. I don’t normally use wallet or satoshi, but I have an address linked to my nostr account. It’s the generic wallet of satoshi address since I haven’t done enough transactions yet yo customize. I’m getting zapped, but I don’t know where those days are going. And I’d like to do some zapping. But nothing is showing up when I click wallet, despite me having some sats in my wallet of satoshi address that is purportedly linked to my nostr profile. What am I missing?

So many people casting rich men north of Richmond as right wing. I’m a punk rocker at heart and the first thing I thought when I heard it was wow, that’s pretty punk rock. And his statements since have borne that out. But you don’t have to look very far to find lyrics in songs many would consider left-wing in ethos that are totally analogous to parts or all of rich men north of Richmond. But that being said, it reminds me most of springsteen. And people forget how misunderstood “born in the USA” repeatedly is. The recurring line is not patriotism, it’s deeply felt angst of being treated unjustly and of having your life taken from you in a number of different ways, a lot of which is perpetrated by rich men, either north of Richmond or elsewhere. The protagonist is “born down in a dead man’s town” where the first kick he took is when he “hits the ground.” He describes ending up like “a dog that’s been beat too much” and spending half his life just to cover that feeling up. Sound familiar? He gets sent to Vietnam to get out of sole trouble. He’s told to kill for his country. He comes home to look for a job and is told nothing is available. He notes he had a brother over there with him who’s long gone, despite the enemy he was there to fight still remaining. The futility of the war. The song ends with one of Bruce’s most powerful closers: “Down in the shadow of the penitentiary Out by the gas fires of the refinery 10 years burning down the road Nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go… Born in the USA.” I also thought of Bruce’s “the River,” which also works a similar vein of disenchantment, resignation, and angst, particularly with the state of the inflationary economy of 1980: “I got a job working construction for the Johnstown Company But lately there ain't been much work on account of the economy Now all them things that seemed so important, well mister they vanished right into the air Now I just act like I don't remember, Mary acts like she don't care..” It’s interesting to me how much things have changed that the left can now reflexively refer to rich men north of Richmond as right wing. But it’s also interesting how incorrect it is for GOP candidates to cosplay as springsteenian protagonists, too.

After a whirlwind last handful of years in bitcoin, doing lots of writing, going on the podcasts, meeting so many incredible bitcoin folks, I decided to do something sort of weird - sort of like an experiment I thought would be useful and informative. I decided I wanted to step away for about six months, unplug almost entirely from the space, cut out as many bitcoin-specific inputs as possible (no articles, no podcasts, no new books, no checking nostr, radically reduced twitter activity, etc), and just kinda give myself some space from it all. I was beginning to feel like some of my thoughts were being prompted, midwifed, or actually scripted by the deluge of inputs I’d been receiving for so long. And I wanted to see how I felt and thought when I removed them. I wanted to see where my mind would migrate and what I’d feel drawn to explore. It felt like an interesting way to gut check some of my very strong feelings about bitcoin. Internally I sort of viewed it like the Amish rumspringa experience. The results were interesting. Maybe I’ll write about it at length one of these days, but, suffice to say for now, I found myself naturally returning to thinking about bitcoin, even with zero inputs for an extended period. Did I uncover some more nuance in my views? Yes. Are there some common opinions on ancillary issues I’ve come to disagree with? Yes. Do I agree with my bitcoin family on everything? Absolutely not. But the core idea of bitcoin, it’s transformative power and potential…my mind kept coming back to it. And so I think it’s time for me to come back to the community. Hoping to do it here more than Twitter, because Twitter sucks. Might even start writing again. So hello out there again everybody.