What's the difference between civilization-destroying software and a former vice president playing guitar at a talent show? One's an algorithm and one's an Al Gore rhythm https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4344366-al-gore-calls-social-media-algorithms-digital-ar-15s/

In a fiat system, complaining and manipulation can get you resources. It's like being able to get fruit from a tree just by telling it you're hungry. As the money dries up and the free stuff goes away, I'm seeing the complaining and manipulation ramp up. Is anyone else noticing this trend? I hope people are able to course correct and figure out that we're headed for a world where you must provide value to receive value.

Did you know that, near the fall of the Roman Empire, Rome had debased its silver Denarius so heavily that it actually stopped accepting it as a payment for taxes? The government stopped accepting its own currency! Instead they demanded payment in commodities such as grain, oil, and gold. Imagine if the US government required that taxes be paid in commodities. Bitcoin and gold would likely be the most commonly used, rather than food. At the surface it sounds like a Bitcoiner's dream to be able to pay your taxes in Bitcoin! But in Rome, it wasn't a move to a free and open monetary system. It was an admission of defeat which coincided with increased economic control, restrictions on movement, increased social and occupational rigidity, and military & bureaucratic expansion.

Asked ChatGPT to "Make a meme about Bitcoin mempools being full and transaction fees being high, and Bitcoiners pretending to be fine with it but secretly being concerned"

Is there an implementation for gRPC over NIP04? And if not, would anyone else be interested in this? Using Nostr DMs as a transport layer for sending and receiving Protocol Buffer messages would allow for computers to find each other based on their nPub rather than a static IP address. #asknostr

Does anyone know if a Protobuf-over-NIP04 implementation exists yet? Using relays for serverless communication would be super cool!

The Federal Reserve threatened to sue Bitcoin Magazine over its FedNow merch. Their response is priceless:

Bitcoin Magazine

Federal Reserve Threatens To Sue Bitcoin Magazine

The U.S. Federal Reserve is threatening to sue Bitcoin Magazine, alleging apparel that parodies its FedNow system is not protected speech, but copy...

Will this lead to a Streisand effect? 👀

Bitcoin Magazine

FEDNOW Series

Bitcoin Magazine shop for magazines, books, apparel, and gear.

With EU privacy regulation about to decimate ad revenue, Facebook might start charging for their services. Would you pay $17 per month to use Facebook? Would you even pay $4 to WP to read this article? I certainly wouldn't. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/31/facebook-subscription-no-ads/

Happy (financial) reformation day!

BP projects global oil consumption to flatten by 2025. What happens to the petrodollar after that?

Referring to the limited-liability nature of corporations: "Governments always need scapegoats for their own inevitable failures, and they love to point at the wealthy to strip-mine the resentments of the less successful. They want to take money from the rich and give it to the poor, but the problem then is that the rich don't want to make much money, or want to leave for another country, so they give rich people the legal protection of the corporation so they will still want to make money and stick around. And the media constantly repeats that corporations are a "feature of the free market" when they were never chosen by customers, but rather are imposed by governments. In fact, corporations would be specifically rejected by customers if they had any choice." - Stefan Molyneux, The Future Live free, subvert the state.

I just finished reading The Mandibles. Amazing book! But was anyone else completely dumbfound by the final chapter? I felt like all the characters completely changed.

If you have an iPhone and would like to kindly opt out of allowing your government to further disturb you