Nerd sniped by so many new ideas in the last few days the day job is really gonna suffer.

GM ☕

🛬

✈️

One of the disappointments of being in my late 50s is watching young people having to learn the hard lessons of life all over again, instead of learning from history only a generation or two old. Especially now, where events before the Internet seemingly never happened, and events after the Internet get endlessly memed or propagandized into whatever currently fashionable ideology benefits the status quo. There has been a thin thread of rebellion against this that has survived in the form of cypherpunk activism of the 80s and 90s through the invention and proliferation of Bitcoin in the 2010s and now the advent of distributed, uncensorable communication networks such as Nostr. And yet, it's not clear to me whether this nascent drive towards individual freedom will survive. Too much of the public discourse is consumed by "strategic reserve" this, "legal tender" that, and in general the tying of Bitcoin to its relation to the State. Politicians seek political favor by making noises allying themselves to the Bitcoin community, and to great benefit. The vast majority of Bitcoin movement is between exchanges, not individuals. I won't even go into the absurdities on display at conferences ostensibly about Bitcoin but have turned into promotional grounds for grifters and influencers. We are at a unique point in history where we have both the technology and the motivation to establish direct, peer-to-peer, mutually beneficial, and most importantly, voluntary, non-coercive relationships among each other that bypass existing systems of surveillance and control. Let's do this.

I've been away, but still kicking. Sometimes a break from the craziness is needed to regain one's equilibrium 😎

Fighting corruption the way it is being done right now in the US government is like having a river of gasoline feeding a fire and the fireman are pointing their hoses at one burning agency at a time. Sure, you're gonna find stuff, and lots of it--but the problem will remain raging out of control. That river of gasoline is the Fed-printed dollars that allow unrestrained deficit spending. The normal feedback mechanism of literally running out of money forces normal organizations to prioritize and eliminate waste and fraud. Without this, it's just one big party on a runaway train that can only end in hyperinflation and tears. Fix the money, fix the world, as they say.

I'm old enough to remember a time when all you had to do was turn off the TV to quiet the screeching of politics and outrage. Now it has seeped into every little nook and cranny of daily life. That cabin in the woods has never looked more enticing.

Politicians, by their very nature, cannot create any value; they can only take what some have created and give it to others. And in this way they pit man against man, all hoping to pick the pocket of those who have more than them, forgetting the hordes of people who are trying to pick theirs. The only winning move is not to play.

GM ☕ Live long enough for your childhood memories to feel like they happened to someone else. Then realize, they did.

Touched grass. Feeling better. Recommended.

I'll say it again for anyone still listening: Bitcoin does not need politicians to succeed, it just needs them to get out of the fucking way. Carry on.

Looking to politicians for solutions is like shopping for perfume in a cesspool.

Pro tip: rooting for the political gang that promises you the most "number go up" is not a strategy for lessening their power over you, any more than voting for the prison warden will open the gates of freedom. Bitcoin, and now Nostr, are both technologies for recapturing your sovereignty and making politicians, whatever their craven power fantasies might be, irrelevant.

GM ☕ What if the "strategic bitcoin reserve" being fantasized about...is the one we had at home all along?