90% of proprietary apps: You need to have a phone number to use this app. In other words, you need to pay money and reveal your identity to a heavily state-regulated telecom company first, before you have permission to use this app. Then we'll use your number to track you across *every* app, for intrusive advertising purposes. Nostr: You just need to generate a keypair on any computer better than a potato, for free, and then you can anonymously post to the whole world.

Where in the world is Hector Escobedo? Take a guess.

Visiting a country where you don't speak the language at all, by yourself, is challenging. Finding this out right now in Taiwan lol

I'm in Taipei, eating your baozi!

What is there to do in Akihabara besides electronics shopping and maid cafes?

Royal milk tea is probably the best beverage ever invented. Yes, it's really sugary, but I don't care. 🥛

The cash culture in Japan is a good thing in general. Good for privacy and financial inclusion. The bills are different sizes, which is a sensible design choice to help the visually impaired. One yen coins should be eliminated, like US pennies. Inflation has made them useless. When checking out at convenience stores and some other establishments, the cashier doesn't touch your money. Instead you insert cash and coins into a machine. Makes it seem a little weird because in US stores, you just put the money on the counter and the cashier counts it and puts in the till by hand. Japan also has TONS of vending machines. To me it's funny that in Japan you take cash from ATMs and later just put it into other machines, for the most part.

Nostr-in is going well so far. Yin stage? Yang stage? Some of both!

Looking forward to NostrAsia in Tokyo! Loving the city so far. The food is great.

Why can't "progressives" stop their attacks on random vowels? No one even knows how to pronounce womxn, Latinx, folx, or alumnx. It's idiotic.

It's official. I'm going to Taiwan after NostrAsia. For about a week. Now I need to study basic Chinese as well as Japanese lol

Oktoberfest starting in September? Blasphemy!

@gsovereignty @npub1ejxs...t3tv check this out

Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

Akina on the question: Was Confucius a libertarian? | Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

The great philosopher’s ideas are “authentically Chinese,” which makes it more likely they can make headway in China Was Confu...

Really need to start working on more open source projects. Maybe get back into it slowly with something simple, like a static site generator or something.

Having to wait a whole week for the next Reborn As A Vending Machine episode instead of just binging the entire series… it's like being in the 1990s again.

The downside of being one of the co-authors of a published scientific article is that now I keep getting spam emails supposedly inviting me to become a reviewer of some random, probably fake, journal.