Whenever someone emails the Lyn Alden support email, this is who they are dealing with. He’s judging you for your bad technical decisions.* *And then afterward will tell me my choice of backend software is retarded.

I agree with this take. I would add that connections matter. I see many people on Nostr say that blue-checks still use Twitter mainly for audience reach. They’re addicted to the reach, and so forth. While I do love the dunking on blue-checks overall (as a blue-check myself, it amuses me and you should keep it coming), I’d point out that it’s more than that. When I was temporarily locked out of my 700k+ follower permissioned account on Twitter, I didn’t lose sleep over not being able to broadcast to people. I have email lists and other mechanisms for that, where it economically matters. What I lost sleep over is that I couldn’t see my friends’ posts or DMs. The *receiver* side of it all. Similarly, when people ask me why I don’t just leave Twitter and be Nostr exclusive, that’s the reason. My friends aren’t just bitcoiners; they’re also tradfi people. Twitter is where they are. Leaving that network would mean leaving friends. Would mean not seeing their content. -Twitter is the fastest news source. I literally monitor it as part of my research process. -Twitter is where my friends are. The tradfi community isn’t on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook. It’s on Twitter. Bitcoiners too. I’ve been open here on Nostr about dealing with isolation when my husband has had to be in Egypt longer than normal due to a construction process, and my social media life, both here and on Twitter, has been helpful for me at dealing with that. The sheer amount of people I know on Twitter, and the rapidity of responses, is really powerful. That network effect is so strong. It’s generally not optimal to try to attack it directly. Instead, you need to build and popularize things that *can’t* be done by Twitter. Zaps are the go-to example. But also using the social graph for non-social media things (ie reviews). Be a compliment to Twitter that a user *also* needs, rather than trying to convince a user to leave Twitter and join Nostr. That’s how you win. How we win. View quoted note →

I get a ton of questions about my husband. As a somewhat public figure I suck at privacy, while he is a privacy maxi. He’s my main editor, oversees support on my website, and yet quietly is like “nah, don’t want any attention.” In 2021 when I went to a dinner/meeting at Saylor’s house, my husband dropped me off and then picked me up as my personal ride. To Saylor’s credit, he came out personally at night to make sure I was safe while I waited on the curb for a ride, as his only female guest that night and Miami at night can be challenging. The next day my husband dropped me off at some VC event and my friend Elizabeth Stark was aware enough to be like “you got out of the front seat of that uber. It wasn’t an uber, was it?” And I was like “No, that was my husband, lol.” He dropped me off at every similar event event that year (Ubers were hard to hire in 2021, amid pandemic constraints, so he rented a Camaro, since normal utility cars were sold out, and he drove me around in it to my various events and then wouldn’t enter them even though he could. For years since then he does stuff like this. Touches events but purposely won’t attend. We have a ton of pictures, but he doesn’t like them to be public, and allowed a 2022 vacation post, which I still use. Adding a second one here as a Nostr exclusive. The second ever public pic of him. His first name is Mohamed, the most popular first name in the world, and yet hardly anyone knows his last name. Which is how he wants it. He had dinner with Peter McCormack in Manhattan once, and then the only side event I ever got him to show up at was in Bedford at Peter’s CheatCode event. So Mohamed met Natalie Brunell, Preston Pysh, and a few other people there. And then went dark again. In 2022 amid the bitcoin bear market capitulation depths while I was buying, he was like “So, how many do we have? Okay thanks for the breakdown, add way more here.” It’s up 500% since then. When family members ask me about. Bitcoin, I’m like “well it’s this open source people can…” and then Mohamed intervenes and is like “She’s being polite. And also kind of her robotic retard self. You should buy a lot of it, here’s why.” Then proceeds to orange pill the entire extended family. He watches some of my podcasts and knows a ton of people in both the bitcoin space and macro space, and then quietly is like “I’ll literally drive you there but then I’ll stay away, privately.” He’s the GOAT at not drawing attention. He also lies Nostr but doesn’t post here; or anywhere. He likes hearing updates though. He unintentionally made himself as a meme by not posting publicly and being private. And yet if he saw it, embed be like “it’s ephemeral. Building a fitness facility is her gets direct sun. Need your input on whether it will meet our goals, since you optimize all these details.” My favorite bitcoiner, who isn’t a bitcoiner.

One of the things I find most challenging in fiction lately is over-editing. Like, I managed to write my thing, but no I’m not stephen king; so I’m always looking for areas to improve. Under-editing would risk plot holes or other major issues. I would only publish something I put a ton of thought into. Over-editing risks detracting from author voice. I send drafts to my husband, since we’re currently apart due to a construction project, and he’s one of the few people that amuses me because he’ll literally comment on my manuscript with brutal inside jokes like “I know you were raised poor and you don’t know better, but this change would be retarded, you should revert” or “I get what you’re doing here, but ultimately you should respect the reader. This edit would be incorrect. Go out and touch grass instead of propose bad changes like this.”

Look at the zaps on the image. I’m currently working through an email backlog and a Twitter/X DM backlog. Like, whatever it is, I love what you’re working on but I’m too busy. Meanwhile: Blockstream intern: “if I zap her 250 sats or 21 cents, she broadcasts about us. She finds it funny and also relevant for Nostr.” Blockstream exec: “1) What” Blockstream intern: “Literally, Lyn is meming about this exchange right now. She said good stuff about the Jade Plus. I tried to send her one on Twitter and she ignored it, and yet I just had to zap about it, look, she keeps posting about it.”

“Look, it only cost $154.27, to advertise on Nostr, but now Lyn Alden won’t stop memeing about us there. It’s our best ROI ever.” “1) What” “She’s literally advertising about our our advertisements. Months ago I DMed her on Twitter and offered to send her our new Jade unit, and she never got back to me, like didn’t even fucking respond, I think we got lost in the void there, but just zapping comments on Nostr amuses her and gets her to talk about it a ton now.” Whichever intern did this deserves a raise.

Stablecoins quietly the biggest attack ever on fractional reserve banking, and I’m here for it.

I look at my post comments and see Blockstream advertising again. Part of me wants to make their advertising campaign here so successful that their intern gets hired or gets a raise. Like in the boardroom, the Nostr idea guy does the numbers, lol.

There are so many reply-guy comments on Twitter/X that my mind quickly puts into a "your mom" joke framework, but then I never post it. As soon as I read, "You didn't even" or "Bitcoin is" or things along those lines, my mind is like "Your mom didn't" or "Your mom is". And if I wrote them out in those thread's context, they're kind of funny. Mainly I don't post them out of respect for moms, since moms are fucking awesome and I only want to send positive vibes. It's quietly my biggest restraint.

My mom texted that she's fed up with politics and is watching The Matrix for the first time. So, there's that.

It’s actually crazy that I can just randomly pay/tip Calle, without knowing his real name or business identity, and yet still know it’s actually him due to a self-organizing social graph. Ecash can make it even easier and more private. But the capability is already under-appreciated.

Zap marketing is cooler to see than platform marketing, imo. Commenters getting micro-paid, love to see it. From my recent lightning bounty thread:

The other day on Twitter/X, I paid out a 2,100,000 sat or $1,700 USD Lightning bounty. Over the past couple years, I’ve offered an occasional challenge on Twitter/X. When people tell me Lightning doesn’t work, I often ask them in random comments for their Lightning details so I can pay them in the next 5-10 minutes on the spot, permissionlessly, wherever they are, with this payment method that supposedly doesn’t work. Every single time, they can’t do it. Because they haven’t even tried it. They’re just talking. I’ve done this a ton of times and nobody ever takes the sizable sat offerings. In Dan Held’s anti-Nostr thread, Mark Jeffrey was critical of Lightning. Unlike most who I offer the challenge to as 99% sure they won’t take it, I offered it to Mark despite knowing he had a much higher probability of accepting it, since he’s tech savvy and active in the broad crypto space. But in my view, if he accepts, then that’s also evidence on the spot that it works. He declined my 21,000 sat offer and politely still talked anti-Lightning. So, I said since I like him, I’d up it to 210,000 sats. He still declined and talked more anti-Lightning. He spoke about how he *wanted* it to work, but the problem just isn’t solved yet. My inner Nostr Lyn couldn't help it, so I upped it to 2,100,000 sats, or $1,700+ USD, if he would just post a way to pay him on Lightning within the next ten minutes. Nobody had ever taken me up on my challenge, so I pressed to my highest offer ever just to see, out of sheer curiosity. He’s a multi-time published novelist, which with my recent fiction hobby, interests me. So, if there’s someone I want to claim the bounty, might as well be him. And then you know what? He did. Of course he had a Lightning address. He went from “want it to work but…” to digging through his past experiences and finding an old Lightning address, within a few minutes. The first person on Twitter/X to accept my challenge. I paid him 2,100,000 sats on the spot, or $1700+ USD. He provided a Stike address, so that’s a shout out to @jack mallers who made Lightning convenient enough for Mark, who doesn’t understand or particularly like Lightning, to finally call my challenge and make me have fun staying poor, lol. And it worked flawlessly despite being an above-average sized Lightning transaction. I then asked Mark if he could identify the sending wallet, but he said he couldn’t. He asked about block explorers to identify the payment, and while I pointed him toward Mempool Space, I highlighted that Lightning tends to make sending privacy pretty good even though I didn’t maximize privacy on this one. I'm not deep into the weeds on privacy tech, so I'm always genuinely curious just to ask "hey, can you identify any privacy leaks here?" I also asked him if he would have shared his bank details publicly like he shared his Lightning address. He said of course not. So even if people say “But Lyn, Mark used a custodial wallet”, I’d say that this tech stack reduced his friction and boosted sender privacy. I think there are still improvements to make of course, particularly Lightning combined with other scaling methods (ecash, Ark-style stuff, and so forth), but it’s a powerful glue that connects a lot of things together. In addition, when it comes to payments and small amounts of working capital, there is an important “choose your own adventure” aspect. For small amounts, in safe jurisdictions, custodial Lightning is not that big of a deal, like keeping cash in your wallet that is prone to theft or loss. It maximizes UX. But it’s important to keep pushing hard, keep developing, keep providing capital, to make as many tools as possible available for people that need to maximize privacy and/or self-custody. Not everyone needs or wants those capabilities for every single payment, but they do need the *option* to turn to them when it’s important. Mark Jeffrey then reached out to chat about fiction. Last year he asked me to go on his podcast to talk about Broken Money, but I fell behind on Twitter/X DMs due to bandwidth constraints and didn’t get back to him. So, after this I got back to him and said I’d be happy to talk about fiction with him to pick his brain, and talk Broken Money on his podcast, and we got one scheduled. 🤝