Watching the livestream of the MIT Bitcoin Expo before getting ready to head out for the weekend. Super interesting! Happy to see Nostr represented!

American politics is the best reality TV show.

I’ve been revisiting Sade’s music this weekend. Love her music and her beauty.

Spotify

Like a Tattoo

Sade · Love Deluxe · Song · 1992

It looks like the opioid crisis has finally made it to West Africa courtesy of predatory pharmaceutical companies. The African countries affected by this will never recover from this. Mental health and substance use is heavily stigmatized, and the public health systems are not in place to handle a crisis like this.

BBC News

Exposing an Indian pharma firm fuelling West Africa's opioid crisis - BBC News

An Indian drug maker tells a BBC undercover team its addictive cocktail drug is “very harmful” but “this is business”.

An attack on privacy…

Bloomberg.com

Apple Removes Cloud Encryption Feature From UK After Backdoor Order

Apple Inc. is removing its most advanced encrypted security feature for cloud data in the UK, a stunning development that follows the government or...

Spotify actually has a decent audiobook collection. A ton of bestsellers are available for free. They even have the Bitcoin Standard for anyone who is interested but hasn’t read the book yet.

Spotify

The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

Saifedean Ammous · Audiobook

Looks MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD is closer to becoming a reality. Despite the current administration’s negative view of the mental health system, there is a lot of interesting, groundbreaking research that has been ongoing, but is at risk of being halted. Hopefully, things are rectified, so patients can get the care that they need. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02565-4

The recent events during the US political election continue to show that fear mongering, propaganda, and outright hatred are highly destructive and often end up destroying the perpetrators. No one benefits when politicians intentionally stir up discontent, confusion, and paranoia.

I hope Julian Assange’s release truly revives the conversation about how we can protect freedom of press and whistleblowers. Sometimes holding the government accountable requires exposing its secrets. Individuals deserve to know when their governments are violating human rights or not working in their best interests. Individuals also have the right to confront their governments about those issues and demand change. We have to work hard to ensure that the events surrounding Julian Assange (and Edward Snowden) do not just become a footnote history but actually lead to new policies/laws that protect individuals who speak out their governments. #freepress #freespeech #humanrights #JulianAssange #EdwardSnowden