“I saw the best minds of my generation nuked by incendiary Iran-backed propaganda on the Internet, overcome, emotionally conquered, brainwashed, scrolling through the twitter streets at all hours, looking for an angry fix. Empty-headed ‘freedom-fighters’ burning for the dark culmination of machinations they could never hope to understand, swayed, cowed by tiktok videos, inspired and levitated by verifiably false information, their minds a borderless morass of moral inversion.” -Allen Ginsberg 2024

This is exactly why when Kamala/Walz say stuff like the Nobel prize winners agree with our economic plan, it doesn’t mean anything. Because Nobel prize winners say stuff like this, which is so breathtakingly reductive and vapid as to invalidate any appeal to Nobel authority.

This is exactly why when Kamala/Walz say stuff like the Nobel prize winners agree with our economic plan, it doesn’t mean anything. Because Nobel prize winners say stuff like this, which is so breathtakingly reductive and vapid as to invalidate any appeal to Nobel authority.

New digs, new shelves #bookstr

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the American Left:

#nostr has done such a good job of breaking my addiction to X and social media algorithms that not only have j not been on Twitter for a month, I accidentally haven’t even checked Nostr for a week and a half. It’s crazy how much space exists in a day when you just reduce the deluge of inputs you’re accustomed to, when you don’t check your phone every time you have a free second or couple of minutes. When you consciously say I want fewer inputs, and I don’t want the firehose of other people’s thoughts. Your brain starts wandering around, stretching out, breathing again. Highly recommend.

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“Men just don’t have the skills to be sick.” -my wife, patiently explaining the concept of the “man-flu” to me

Hear me out. A Taschen coffee table art book that is a collection of $58k #bitcoin memes.

Wake up babe, new Max Richter dropped

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is the most widely misread poem in all of poetry. Most people think the point of the poem is that you should take the road less travelled, march to beat of your own drummer, etc. This is a misreading. First of all, we are repeatedly told that the two roads looked basically the same. Some lines: “Then took the other, as just as fair" "Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same," "And both that morning equally lay" 20 line poem, about 25% of them devoted to sameness of the paths. It matters that he took one and not the other only because choices beget choices (and, importantly, foreclose others) and this is life. We then tend to ascribe meaning and narrative retrospectively to those choices. The traveler laments that he can’t take both paths, have all the experiences, NOT foreclose certain choices by making others: “And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler” “I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence,” the traveler tells us. And when he does, he will ascribe meaning to his choices. He will say he took the one less travelled (even though they were the same) and it really DID make all the difference, as he says, because by making that choice he definitionally could not make the other.

Gm #nostr

#tunestr

I recently changed my political party affiliation to “unaffiliated.” If, like me, you are tired of the corrupt, rotting two-party system and its stranglehold on our politics, BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD. Let’s starve that beast. People usually react with “well then you can’t vote in the primaries.” I think this is a psy op. Even if there’s no independent candidate in a given race, if enough people become independent/unaffiliated, primary candidates will have to take the independent bloc seriously if they want to win a general election. If the independent bloc is tiny and immaterial, primary candidates can focus solely on throwing increasingly extreme red meat to the most vocal, engaged members of their respective partisan tribes. This doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t still financially support candidates from either party who are furthering values/policies you support. It also doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t ultimately vote for one of them. I just think making being independent your home base is important. There are sooo many people who, in private and in public, wish there was a viable third party (or multiple viable alternative parties). But we’ve all been told formally stepping outside of the two-party system is playing spoiler, a waste of time, a waste of a vote, etc. And so nothing changes. But the sheer number of folks who want another way should translate to actual political power. Elections shouldn’t be decided by a handful of voters in 3 states. Rather, independent voters/thinkers should wield the influence that their numbers warrant. Both #bitcoin and #nostr are third way technologies, which bring together heterodox groups and new coalitions of folks who may differ on some issues but who agree on the fundamental importance of things like sound money and free speech. We have more points of agreement than disagreement. And I think we can all agree that the two-party system is a downward spiral.

Still-life with Knausgaard. Early morning reading is my church.

#coffeechain

Gm #nostr