With all the discussion around whether AI is self-conscious or not, the equally critical inquiry as to whether mannequins possess any semblance of awareness has been all but forgotten...

poem

The YouTube algo thinks I’m a women

Went for a coffee this morning and chatted with a store owner about his life in Egypt, and started to think about how one of the most pernicious aspects of the fiat system is how it causes the degeneration of culture. Every couple of years they've had major currency devaluations by their central bank (due to taking on big loans from the IMF). This makes life more and more expensive for the locals there. It has become very difficult to buy a home. Think about a family living in a home for hundreds of years, past down through the generations, how much life has been lived in that. How much wisdom has been absorbed into the walls. And then all the sudden they're forced to sell so they can buy groceries. Much more is lost in that transaction than just the physical home. It contributes to the slow death of the story of the people. Since there is a hollowing out of economic opportunity, the best and brightest decide to leave the country for greener pastures. While they bring aspects of their culture to wherever they emigrate to, parts of them inevitably fall away as their cultural identity slowly dissolves into the melting pots of the largely secular, developed world. So you have both an exodus and a thinning out of culture. I find that quite sad because a place like Egypt has been around for such a long period of human history. Culture evolves alongside the demands of history, tuned to the challenges of earthly patterns of change. It is a loss that cannot be quantified.

everything is within walking distance, if you have the time 🚶

who are Uber drivers talking to on the phone?

The development of enduring qualities and skills is a lot more useful than having cool or emotionally loud “experiences” with anything regarding cultivating the mind, moving toward meditation…

🌴🧡🌊 View quoted note →

Most of the stories of miracles and strange abilities and things of that nature from Jesus and Buddha and people of the like are literal. They’re not metaphors for psychology. They’re just descriptions of what they did and things that happened. The human mind / body system is capable of much much more than most conceive of

My life-long ferver for intellectual study has ended almost entirely over the last six months 🤷🏼‍♂️. Funny how a switch goes off and you’re just done with something that was once a large part of your identity.

Also LED bulbs. Incandescent maximalism is the way

I don’t know if there is anything more fiat than plastic plants

If you’re in San Jose this weekend, you can see a screening of our new film in a real theatre! Bitcoiner run. @paul keating and I will do a Q&A via zoom afterwards. ⚡️ View quoted note →

From a small meetup in Toronto to an epic Bitcoiner wedding in California what a journey it has been View quoted note →

are there any Bitcoiners out there that are butterfly keepers ?

Cheers to @Bitcoin Jungle for helping host a beautiful evening watching the first screening of the film @paul keating have been working on. What a great night! View quoted note →

It’s hilarious wearing a shirt that says Bitcoin out in public. Everyone stars at you, a lot seem triggered in some way

If you do something like qi gong or taiji or even the subtler aspects of yoga but have not gone through a specific process of opening the body, soaking the mind into the tissues and fascia, followed by consilidating the yin field around your lower abdomen to gather Qi, which is a multi-year process, you are pretty much just waving your arms around and it is more it less totally pointless aside from it being a light form of physical exercise. You don’t automatically have these things, it’s like someone going to the gym and trying to bench 300 pounds. There is a long process of conditioning and preporation to find the Qi and thicken it. Then when the channels in the hands open, the arm movements drag the Qi through the body, tonifying the organ systems