go on, fellow heroes

Trying that again lol Another day, another reason I find to inject into Forbes the need to join Nostr https://archive.is/xAYUi

Another day, another reason I find to inject into Forbes the need to join Nostr https://archive.is/xAYUi

Lord Byron, seen as one of the greatest British poets, was Ada Lovelace's father. He married Ada's mother and called her the “Princess of Parallelograms” - but later, turned on his wife, mocking her in poetry as a "walking calculation". After divorcing Ada's mother while carrying on an affair, he left England, never to see Ada or her mother again. On his deathbed, he called for Ada and wished to see her. Ada's mother, bitter about her abandonment by her cheating husband, set Ada to learning math and science rather than the poetry and arts that had scalded her with "walking poetry". As a result, Ada was one of, if not the first, to conceive of how a computing machine might calculate algorithms, but she also deeply resented her mother. Lord Byron would die at the age of 36 from a fever after participating in the Greek War of Independence against the then-Ottoman Empire. He is still regarded as a folk hero in Greece today. Ada Lovelace would die at the age of 36 from cancer. She never met her father in adulthood - yet she requested to be buried next to her father in the Byron family vault, where they both rest together to this day.

我的父母问我, 我的目标到底是什么- 我想过让我意识到我需要一个标语..."Make the Internet Great Again?" === My family asked me what my goal in life "really was", I realized I need a slogan or something..."Make the Internet Great Again?"

A few months ago, I built a free audio course about Bitcoin and Nostr that spanned a few hours of content. It was meant to validate the idea of audio courses about technical topics with AI narration. The problem I see is that with most audio, you get a fascinating insight into expert topics from multiple perspectives, but you miss curation - this is why podcasts, even those meant for beginners, might inevitably stray into being for those already orange-pilled. Anyways, here it is:

SoundCloud

Stateless_Learning: Bitcoin

Listen to Stateless_Learning: Bitcoin by Symphony #np on #SoundCloud

I'd love any feedback. The content outline is here:

code(love)

Introduction Course to Bitcoin and Nostr - code(love)

The following is an audio course on Bitcoin and Nostr: two technologies woven together that can give you custody over […]

My biggest fear for Bitcoin's future is that it becomes like email. The cypherpunks and much of the tech that helped build up Bitcoin were based on remailers - web servers that could anonymously forward email under the right settings. Governments didn't fight email as a protocol - rather they embraced the companies that provided easy onboarding for the vast majority of people (Google and Gmail, Microsoft and Outlook/Hotmail) and leaned on them for data. Private companies built the surveillance rails of the Internet while being separated "enough" from the state to be "cool". Might it be the same with Coinbase and Binance (which has developed perhaps one of the most sophisticated views of Lightning Network)? Now the reality is that you can use encrypted email, anonymous remailers and set up your own email server - yet very few people choose to do so - few enough that you taking these actions probably flags you on a list. Might it be the same with people who choose to set up their own nodes in the future (or perhaps already in the present?).

Typical Mandarin talk show: Host: "Hi, please give us tips on how you travel cheaply." Guest: "Hi, I want to start my story by talking about how I immigrated to Australia in 1978. I was basically coming over when Deng Xiaoping was announcing the reform period. See at the time, from my native Guangzhou, we had easy access to Australia [...]" Host: "But how do you travel?" Guest: "...I'm getting to that part. Anyways, you have to learn English really well and..."

current mood https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/01/20/on-trumps-inauguration-day-his-tokens-fill-the-swamp/

Trump Coin is American state corruption at the highest level, just made more obvious and more garish because of the issuer. The Bidens and Albrights of the world prefer to operate in the "legalized" form of trading their political access for family wealth and hedge funds (this by the way, is how CCP mandarins accumulate their wealth). More obvious and garish is rather a step in the wrong direction, though perhaps it'll help people focus on the real oppressive force in their lives, rather than wrangling over "Red vs. Blue" mindfuck games.

It was great meeting you in Africa, @jack . Hope "Would Mao Hold Bitcoin" helps you understand why many, even in China (or maybe especially in China), find hope in Bitcoin and Nostr.

who were the greatest scientist/poets? My votes go to Oppenheimer, who read the Bhagavad Gita in its original Sanskrit, and opened the Atomic Age with deep poetic symbolism (Trinity from John Dunne's Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for example.) and Omar Khayyam who defined the Persian calendar for a millennium and linked algebra and geometry together in fundamental ways, while writing enough quatrains to form the Rubáiyát. Very open if others have suggestions!

Gave the Chinese/HK users of Damus a shoutout on What Bitcoin Did with @Danny Knowles . Keep on rocking. CC: @Sherry @jb55

sobh bekheir (صبح بخير) everybody

“This is the history of governments, - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labour shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these. Hence, the less government we have, the better, - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

i will tip some unlucky soul 2100 sats if they can provide me the best, coherent reply as to why Hegel seems to matter so much

"There are years, centuries, in which nothing happens, and there are days, like yesterday, into which a whole lifetime is compressed." - Adriaan Schade van Westrum The seizure and freezing of bank accounts belonging to Jewish patrons after the invasion of Austria by Nazi Germany took a day. It took about 5 months in the 1911 Revolution for the Chinese people to shake off 5,000 years of dynastic rule. There have been hundreds of coups, many of them successful within a day in terms of major changes. Some of the most recent are in Thailand, Sudan, Niger, Myanmar, Honduras, Guinea, Gabon, Egypt. Lest we think this something that won't hit the G7, France and Germany have had major coup attempts as well. Wars can take a day to start.

List of coups and coup attempts by country - Wikipedia

When history knocks, are you going to be holding paper promises, hard-to-transport gold or hard, portable money such as Bitcoin? Photo - Klimt's Woman in Gold, seized during the Anschluss.

Still amazed that Hal Finney continued coding with his eyes as he battled ALS. An inspiration to this day. @Fran Finney

WIRED

Bitcoin's Earliest Adopter Is Cryonically Freezing His Body to See the Future

"He’s always been optimistic about the future," says Hal Finney's wife, Fran. "Every new advance, he embraced it, every new technology. Hal relis...

I was quoted in this article by South China Morning Post, one of Hong Kong's papers of record - trying to get across my key message that Bitcoin restrictions were a key mistake by China. Writers choose the quotes and story they want to run with - however, it marks another shot across the bow from a writer from SCMP either questioning the CBDC e-CNY or Bitcoin bans. I really don't know what the Party elite think about this topic. And perhaps this doesn't move the needle. But in a Hong Kong media ecosystem that in some ways was collapsed by the National Security Law and the arrests of prominent editors and publishers, it stands out to me that this is a discussion worth having.

South China Morning Post

Decentralised kingdom: bitcoin’s Trump bump and how China lost its crypto crown

As the world’s factory, China cornered the market on bitcoin mining, leading to a flurry of crypto business activity before a harsh crackdown in ...

Broke: "China banned Bitcoin" Woke: Let's look at China's ten-year debt yield curve Bespoke: Xi's China is unable to foster an indigenous intellectual tradition, because that would require speaking truth to power, so it has to resort to a weird mix of broken contradictory threads from the past, Spartan ethics, and strands of Strauss, Marx, and Schmitt - leading to a spiritual void and a China defined in negative space and more clear on what it is against than what it is for.

China Books Review

Socialism with Socratic Characteristics | China Books Review

In attempting to justify Communist Party rule, Chinese academics have turned to an unlikely intellectual ally — classical Greek philosophy.