Life just kinda of gets progressively more difficult—dealing with death and hardship, difficult traumas and life events, and eventually an ailing body and your own demise. It’s not to say there are not wonderful events and experiences in there, but it generally is an uphill battle. The good news is that as we gain experience through life we generally become more equipped to deal with the onslaught of difficulties and more capable of skillful navigating them; but it really never gets easier, you just become more experienced in dealing with the difficulties.

I’m about 1/3 of the way through this, and I have to say that Karp makes an excellent and compelling argument that has me questioning my own stance and judgment of these issues more than I have in the past decade. Most substantially, I find he has made a compelling argument for the need for Americans to stand for something, and be willing to engage with the messy and convoluted process of trying to rediscover what being American would really mean. If we are to take the idea of a Technological Republic seriously and the need for classic liberal American values to be imbued within that, than we need to take this call very seriously and how we can contribute to it in the most meaningful way possible. View quoted note →

The idea of a ‘deep bear market’ with bitcoin in the $80k range is both laughable and ridiculous. Like zoom out and see what is being built. Never has there been a greater opportunity to build substantial and meaningful contributions on top of the most important economic and financial innovation created since double entry accounting itself. There are mountains of capital to be created for those that are willing to put in the hard work and take the risk on building on top of what they believe in.

WTF are we doing with storing huge amount of money on some crappy $150 piece of plastic? Is this really the best we can do?

GM. Let’s make it a great day.

I’ve been trying to actively seek out the arguments against bitcoin again lately, and sadly, I am just seeing all of the same BS rehashed over and over. It’s sad that these people won’t just bend the knee, eat the crow pie, and admit they were wrong and that bitcoin changes everything. This is the real existential angst of what Bitcoin does and is, and it demands that you go through the deepest levels of philosophy and first principals thinking to accomplish it, of which many are unwilling to do; which is why they are either no-coiners or shitcoiners.

The county fair is such a ripoff and subpar experience.

Anyone can say whatever retarded shit they want to now and nobody can stop them. Nature is healing.

It’s always fun at dinner parties when the political discussion comes up and I get to say I’m an anarchist and burn down the ideological inconsistencies that pretty much everyone has. Fuck the state and their hateful antihuman war machine financed through fiat politics.

The endless graft, prostitution, and sycophantry found in contemporary social media is so endlessly dark and nihilistic that you would really think it’s just a dark forest out there. A pointless dark world where lies, theft, and guile are the only form of real power. That there is no purpose, reason, or greater meaning to life itself—just a black nothingness. Truth is there is something much greater to this existence, and that is much more scary than nothing at all. It means we actually have a purpose and reason for existence, and that these projections of darkness are really just a means of manipulating all of us. The media apparatus projects the shadows on the walls and gives microphones to the most callow and anxious to make these shadows real. While they are little more than shadows on the walls, most people will believe it because they too are in bondage, chained before the wall, incapable of turning back to see how the sunlight is manipulated for such dark purposes. Most people are good and are deeply craving a world of honor, dignity, and reason; they are just incarcerated into a fiat bondage, and conditioned through fear and terror. We have all just been captured by a fiat world view for so long that to reason outside and beyond it without a means to fight it (i.e. bitcoin) is utterly impossible. That is why the understanding of what bitcoin offers in contrast to fiat is so important, as it becomes a way to see through the dark forest and understanding that it is not dark at all, but merely a projection of power, a means of control through presenting only one view. To turn and see how the light is projected to make this dark forest, the shadows on the wall creates a new and different means of power. A power of reason and meaning, where the possible of breaking the chains of bondage is a real possibility, but only with this knowledge.

Also the ‘plant-based’ scam I deeply hate too. Nothing is worse in grocery shopping than seeing small writing at the bottom indicating this lie. There is no such thing as plant based meat, milk, cheese, or eggs—calling it as such is a disingenuous lie that passes industry sludge off as something ‘healthy’ when it is anything but.

More than inflation, I have a deep and impassioned hatred for shitflation. I’m happy to pay 2x premium for a product if I know it’s really built to last a lifetime, but because we live in nihilistic fiat ripoff society it’s damn near impossible to find great products that are built to last. It suck to have to replace shit every 5 years that should last a lifetime.

Man, I just really love how bitcoin really connects people at this deeper level that is truly strange in the most spectacular of ways.

Just getting to low key vibe with other bitcoiners is such a gift. Very few other groups of people are willing to do the deep dives in conversation and willing to really contemplate and question creatively together which always produces the most interesting and amazing conversations.

Long travel day, any listening recommendations?