Patrick

Just finished watching Barry Lyndon. Absolutely loved it. I had no idea Kubrick was so hot on the trail. Would he have been a bitcoiner? - Kubrick believed the private creation of the Fed handed the U.S. money supply to the same European banking dynasties (Warburg, Rothschild, Rockefeller-Morgan interests) that had already captured the Bank of England generations earlier. - He underlined in his copy of G. Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island the passage claiming the Act was drafted in secret on Jekyll Island by seven men who controlled one-fourth of the world’s wealth. - Quote he repeated to Herr: “Once you let private bankers issue the nation’s currency and charge interest on it forever, the politicians become employees and the voters become extras.”

When engaged with what is (right in front of us), we are engaged with all that is.

Trust more, micromanage less Observe more, react less

I just watched the Big Short for the first time. I absolutely fucking loved it. Also, what the fuck?

Some thoughts on the below Lyn Alden passage on price as information compression. Growing up in Massachusetts, I was taught to be suspicious of anything that sounded like “free markets.” The phrase carried a whiff of greed and exploitation. But what Alden points to here is simple: ten million people making everyday choices process far more real-time truth than a handful of planners ever could. From a Buddhist perspective, this is akin to dependent origination. Reality itself is a web of conditions — no central controller could ever grasp it all. The ego that tries to run the show limited, rigid, and eventually corrupt. When you let go, the interdependence of things takes care of itself. It’s scary to trust that — just as it was scary for me to leave an aikido teacher who had turned a bit cultish, or to question the state’s role in money. But the lesson keeps repeating: liberation isn’t in handing power to a central authority, it’s in seeing that no authority is needed. The ten million small decisions — or the ten thousand things (Lao Tzu) — are wiser than any ruler or guru could ever be. The passage from Broken Money p. 230: "Suppose that ten million people in a country make economic decisions, and they each buy five things per day. That’s 50 million transactions per day, or 18.25 billion transactions per year, nationwide. Can a central committee of elders allocate prices better than those ten million decentralized people can? Most evidence suggests no; ten million people can incorporate real-time information, and allocate prices better than a detached central committee of a handful of individuals. That is why politburos are not the most efficient form of economic planning; regardless of how wise and intelligent those individuals may be, they are incapable of processing and organizing the amount of information that ten million everyday people can with their various specific expertise."

Last night I was at a book bar in the east village and reading “broken money” by Lyn Alden. Some Indian dude and I started talking and we ended up talking about bitcoin for 3 hours… I then dreamt about an infinite money glitch where all I had to do was go into a zoom and it would print $… Bitcoin is worming its way deeper into my psyche 🤷‍♂️

Time is so fleeting. Try too hard to take advantage of it and it slips away even faster.

“Never Attained Anything” mini-rendition. Fully fleshed version on Spotify and nostr:nprofile1qqszy58kj62v9fpe98nhuh0q76np4e0r0g0wd44rhth3wphdnyqjfzcpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsz9rhwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjmcz9wly6 https://blossom.primal.net/688eb3e2167e6bd8d0ca402edd9399210834d3f35e95d82095c243ba8409e45c.mov

Another glorious 1-2 punch about how abstract money gives government overnight access to citizen’s savings from page 102 of Broken Money: Inness (1914): “What is a monetary unit? What is a dollar? We do not know. All we do know for certain — and I wish to reiterate and emphasize the fact that on this point the evidence which in these articles I have only been able briefly to indicate, is clear and conclusive — all, I say, that we do know is that the dollar is a measure of the value of all commodities, but is not itself a commodity, nor can it be embodied in any commodity. It is intangible, immaterial, abstract. It is a measure in terms of credit and debt.” Lyn Alden, Broken Money: “Some economists such as Saifedean Ammous have argued that from a monetary perspective, World War I never really ended once it began in 1914. In prior wars throughout history, wars had to be funded with savings of taxes or very slow debasement of coinage. Physical coinage held by citizens could usually only be debased by their government gradually rather than diluted instantaneously, because a government couldn’t just magically change the properties of the coins that were held by households; it could only debase them over time by taxing purer coins, issuing various decrees to try to pull some of those purer coins in, and spending debased coins back out into the economy (and convincing initial recipients to accept them at the same prior value, despite the lesser precious metal content, which would only work for a time and might not even be noticed at first). However, with the widespread holding of centrally issued banknotes and bank deposits that were redeemable for specific amounts of gold, governments could change the redemptive value with the stroke of a pen or eliminate redemption all together. This gave governments the power to instantaneously devalue a substantial part of their citizens’ savings, literally overnight, and funnel that purchasing power toward war or other government expenditures whenever they determine that the situation calls for it.”

Another beauty from Lyn: In 1970, Congress passed the Bank Secrecy Act, which made banks file reports to the government whenever their customers do more than $10,000 in transactions within a day. Back then, this dollar amount was worth more than the median annual income, and reporting therefore happened rather infrequently. However, the Bank Secrecy Act was not adjusted for inflation, and so over the course of five decades the government has automatically reduced the threshold for necessary reporting and has therefore continually expanded their surveillance mandate each year without further legislation. The combination of restricting the number of physical banknotes in circulation, making it undesirable to hold physical banknotes for long periods of time due to inflation without interest, and surveilling bank deposits, has been an effective surveillance and control combination.

A beautifully put foundational insight by Lyn Alden at the end of chapter 6 in Broken Money: “Overall, it’s the combination of the banks and the government that have power over the ledger that most people use as money in any banking system. For a gold-backed banking system, the only part of the ledger that individual users have control of is the precious metal coins that they retain in their own custody, and for that they rely on the properties of nature to maintain the integrity of the ledger. Once they surrender coins over to the banking system, they have begun to rely on a hierarchy of other people to control their money.”

A mini rendition of a song from the album ‘Cranky’ I released last month. This one is called Ride My Steed. (You can find in Wavlake, bandcamp and lots of other places) https://blossom.primal.net/e8d7d7a947d8195addb393d5719b3e88e0fdf1a402b05694a15b98e8e09d4422.mov

Reading Broken Money by Lyn Alden for the first time. This passage that links inflation and war’s likelihood is so important and close to the heart of why I care about Bitcoin. “The ability to debase money contributes to the likelihood of war and several other forms of damaged productivity occurring in the first place. The temptation for a ruler to debase coinage is too great to overcome, because it’s usually the path of least resistance when faced with a problem. If the king knows that paying for a war by outright raising taxes would likely lead to revolution, but that paying for the war via gradual debasement of coinage will not, he can justify paying for his war by relying on that second method. If he and his potential war opponent were both stuck with the first method of paying for a war with extra taxes rather than debasement, the war might not happen because their subjects might revolt if it did. The costs of the war would be more transparent and unpopular right away. In contrast to this, the ability to debase coinage to pay for a war allows the war to happen first and the costs to be partially delayed, which increases the probability of war happening and increases the scale to which it may occur. If debasement can occur, it eventually will occur for any number of reasons. The possibility for debasement exists, always and everywhere and invitingly so, as something a government can turn to whenever it can’t spend transparently on what it wants to. Aside from examples of unusually corrupt or mentally ill rulers, a king does not generally wake up one day and whimsically decide to devalue his realm’s coinage with cheaper metal for no reason. War, plagues, and other destroyers of productivity are indeed at the root of why kings usually end up debasing their money. To remain in power, rulers seek to strengthen their political position, placate their subjects, and smooth over problems that inevitably arise throughout their reign. Currency devaluation is a method that a king can resort to so that he can make increased payments without having to increase taxes for those payments, and therefore the cost instead gets pushed, over time, onto those who accept the newly devalued coins at their old face value despite not having the same metal content or supply scarcity that they used to have.” It is a bit long and taken out of its full context. I seek ways to make this easier to understand. Currently it requires a fair bit of explaining to communicate it well enough. #philosophy

This is fantastic. I love it. I would be curious to flesh it out. I’ve wondered if there is some way to quantify the benefit of storing in bitcoin versus fiat?

GM! I don’t care what form the future takes, only what spirit imbues it.

https://wavlake.com/album/59ff22c4-f907-4259-aeff-5f2ec5df7759 Dear Ear Dreamers, I'm reading Lord of the Rings again... (fuck, its good). Apparently Hobbits give presents to other people on their own birthdays. Bilbo calls it "not a bad system." So today, on this bizarre national holiday that shares my birthday, I’m following suit—and giving you a gift: An album called Cranky. I conceived it in 2023 after a few years growing desert dough, though a handful of these songs go back a decade. A handful are 'city', some are more 'folk'. I don't know if this is a genre, but I keep thinking of these tunes as headphone music — one-on-one, emotional, raw, genre-jumping and far from perfect. In a day when AI is soon to top the charts, I don't expect this to be playing in any clubs. It veers towards solitude and a long stare at the ceiling. P.S. I have many people to thank for this coming to be. Andrew Stevens (drummer for more projects than I can find) for playing the drums on all the songs and engineering machinations out in the high desert. Joe Ulmer (Rann drummer) for mixing the city ones with proper super fund slime. Tim Walsh (Jimbo Norman / Stepkids drummer) for mixing the country ones with proper twang. Ivan Anderson (Cyberattack/Sweet Fix) for Peace and Quiet picking. Jeff Manian (MSU/Sweet Fix/Jimbo Norman) for B3 magicals on Tired Along. Dan Manian (MSU/Jimbo Norman, WWB) for laying down (too) many good bass takes on Lost my Way. Hannah Gentiles for making my photo likeness crisp. Happy listening! May you find some old memories and enjoy some new feelings. P.S.S. I'll call out the 3rd song. It's a quirky one that keeps creeping closer to my heart. It has to do with the Buddhist notion of 'attainment' After all these years, how good it feels to realize I'll never attain anything! P.S.S.S. The USA, a monastery I am quite fond of in the Catskills and I all 'began' today. It's always been a confusing day to me. The disparate forces of hot dogs, fireworks, long silences, peace, pain and my desire for ice cream cake all seem swirl together — especially the way America is going these days. And yet, there is hope, because in at least some sense, we are all free — even when we're Cranky. Happy 4th of July. P.S.S.S.S. This was originally sent via email to a listserv on July 4th #music

I’m pretty sure the response would be “a wizard is never late!” https://blossom.primal.net/9e1c41dfe9708f4a1e58f2e5d8b96142fafae676341cec161e2fcad8551090c1.mov

Decrepit bogs Forgotten logs Make for a hell of a night Were I a frog

Retirement home Bingo Enthralling To those in the know

"I slept, and dreamed that life was joy; I woke, and found that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy." The Dial (July 1840) — Poet Ellen Sturgis Hooper