We need more of this in the world: brands openly mocking the government as part of their advertising. South Africa has been ahead of the curve on many things like power cuts, failing currency, corruption etc. The silver lining is that the people widely enjoy shared mockery of the state.

🤡🌎 Good for re-election if labour market slows 🙃

We live in a world where governments have access to most peoples' private communication and control their finances. Now they also have access to insanely powerful AI that can process all your communication and automatically punish you financially. This is why privacy and money that no one controls are the most important topics of our time.

If the government just printed money instead of collecting taxes, then it couldn't force you to use their money in order to pay taxes. It's a very practical matter for them. The humiliation ritual part is just the cherry on top.

Main criticism of MicroStrategy DID thing is that their use case should be easily replicable by enterprise email providers like Google and Microsoft. Strangely it doesn't seem to be a current feature of those providers, but it seems trivial for them to just add an icon with "this person is in your organisation" (or the inverse). It's also odd that they didn't use the Web 5 stack, but designed their own "inefficient" (thanks @Deleted Account for pointing this out) implementation. I honestly really want to see some kind of user-controlled alternative to today's current digital ID schemes, but I think best case scenario is that Orange becomes a helpful failure case study.

Robosats ➡️ new Tor Mutiny wallet ➡️ Phoenix KYC-free spending stack

"Inflation more than expected" = "Deflation more than expected" * -1 The errors are in one direction at the moment. That will change, but the error making will continue.

I've tried my best to listen to Joe Rogan the last couple of months. Every now and then there's an interesting guest who's not a podcaster/comedian, and I'm intrigued. But it just turns into a really tedious conversation where the guest seems to be trying to accommodate Rogan's interview style, which is actually just to interrupt their more profound insights with comments about exercise. He seems like a good enough guy, and it's great that he's popular and sometimes asks tough questions, but I can't do it - let alone for the typical 3 hours!

I thought "Four more years, pause." would make a great t-shirt, but the White House outdid themselves with the transcript: "Four more years (inaudible)."

Gonna buy some non-KYC Bitcoin so hard

This is why governments are attacking financial privacy and Bitcoin. It's all about taxes (aka mafia protection fee).

Wtf, I love Joe Biden now?

Big nostr growth is going to come from teens, probably. With all the age verification being applied to sites (not just porn), nostr will be the path of least resistance.

Also, the whole experience was a reminder of how fucked the fiat system is. I had to jump through so many hoops and figure out all the tax stuff. Then got blocked for AML stuff, then encountered payment limits, then discovered you can't buy fractions of shares, then realised you can only buy when the market is open etc etc. Still have my tax assessment to look forward to 😪

I've been a real fiat maxi the last few days. Because of the UK's convoluted tax system I've needed to put extra money into a pension. Sold some Bitcoin, transferred the cash into a pension (and the government tops it up by 25%), and bought MSTR. I don't feel good about buying MSTR because I don't fully understand Saylor's financial engineering, but it's literally the only way to get Bitcoin price exposure in a UK pension. We're not allowed to buy US ETFs, and even when we get our own in ~May it won't be accessible to retail like me for "investor protection". Instead I have to buy some levered stock run by a guy who thinks Bitcoin is real estate. Theoretically this is a very tax efficient thing to do, and it also gives me more cash flow (due to UK childcare funding) to buy more real Bitcoin. But it hurts adding all these extra trust layers. Right now I can't access the pension till I'm 57, but that can go up and the government can change all the tax advantages. All I can do is 🤞

It was only 2 days ago when one of my friends told me I was being a conspiracy theorist. Of course this is going to happen. And then next step will be using the smart meter two-way capability to turn your power off.

Took an Uber in a Tesla Model 3. Driver absolutely hates it. He's been forced to buy an electric car by Transport for London. His previous vehicle was > 8 yrs old (lol, buying new cars for the environment 🙃) Main issues: - Expensive car - Spends 1.5 hrs of his day travelling to and waiting at a Tesla super charger - Used to cost him 28p per KWh, now 64p per KWh - almost more per mile than a petrol car - Always worrying about his range. When he had a petrol car he could just ask a customer to wait 5 min while he refuelled, but no way he can ask them to wait 45 min while he recharges. - Battery deteriorates by almost 5% range every year

Went to a bachelor party and didn't talk about Bitcoin once. Bull market barely started.

Top story in UK papers today to ensure we buy more snacks: Intermittent fasting is a cult celebrity diet and some observational study says it increases your risk of a heart attack. Journalists still not bothering to learn basic statistics that might hinder their ability to sell newspapers and advertising.

Why am I reading this _now_? Two stories in this morning's UK papers 1. Supposedly UK defence minister targeted by Russia for a potential missile strike (in Odessa) 2. Latvian foreign minister urging NATO countries to consider conscription A two-pronged approach to make us more scared of Russia and then further cede the conversation about escalating the war.