If societies always develop oligarchs, this is the most transparent bunch the US has ever had.

Keep exploring

It’s hard to do consistently, but I try to think about major media outlets as the dial on a gas stove. If they turn the knobs on a story, the flame gets bigger, even to the point of being too volatile and out of control. Russiagate is a good example of this. If the outlets turn the gas down though, the flame can barely survive or even die for a given story. Examples here abound, even in the last couple years alone: Hunter Biden’s laptop, the Butler, PA Trump assassin, etc. All I know about the Luigi Mangione and NJ drone stories are that the gas is being left on for both stories.

Before listening to Jeff Booth: “I’m gonna sell 10% of my stack at X price, buy myself something nice.” After: “Every red cent I pull out of the current inflationary system and put into Bitcoin is a donation to the front lines of the Denominator Wars and a gift of my time-energy to humanity in its entirety that also purifies me.”

I think sometimes about how virtual reality, if or when it arrives, won’t be something we log into or turn off and on. It’ll be more like the a blended version of the Matrix, wherein a factual thing actually happens but then almost immediately narrativizes so that our experiences of it are mediated, shaped, guided, prescribed. Narrative planes taking off from the airstrip of reality, we’re all 10,000 feet up without really thinking about it

Wait so Satoshi came back, but he 3D printed 21 gajillion ounces of gold in El Salvador instead

One of the underrated things about Bitcoin is that you get to be on this underdog team that has brutal defeats and soaring victories. It’s like investing in Rocky Balboa or something.

That “zoom out” meme works for your everyday life outside of finance too. Low time preference wins across the board, regardless of the field.

Maybe art can fill that hole that religion has left in a lot of people, but not much else can

Take the fight you know you can win, dog

I gotta be honest: I don’t get really angry scrolling through my feed on X. I don’t find my blood pressure rising or feel I have to act even if I see something with which I strongly disagree. I’m sure the algos still frame my thinking, but I don’t find myself on the outrage hamster wheel all the time like it appears some people do. I still like Nostr better though.

Spotify

SOFTWAR EXPLAINED BY MAJOR JASON P. LOWERY

bittrio · Episode

Concise and valuable presentation!

The volatility means it’s alive

I was gonna make a Bitcoin price prediction, but I’d rather just watch. Nostr lowers your time preference; X does not.

As the US election nears and continues drawing everything in our culture into its bottomless vortex, one facet stands out to me: it’s become a proxy for the ongoing war between traditional and new media. The Trump universe seems to have embraced more unscripted, direct-to-reader media like podcasts, Substack and certainly X a long time ago. Hell, Trump even started his own social media platform. We can argue whether this communications revolution on the right exists for reasons of censorship or something else, but it’s definitely happening. On the other hand, the Democrats have spent much of 2016-2024 communicating with the public from a distance through traditional outlets like cable news and major newspapers. Only now, a month before the election, has Kamala begun to appear on podcasts. Whatever happens in November, I don’t think anyone believes legacy media is going to suddenly start regaining mindshare from newer platforms. The contest between new and old in the world of information is most definitely ending in a landslide, even if the election remains a tossup.

I’m looking forward to this election cycle being over, but maybe it’ll just never end

I do subscribe to a kind of long term progressivism when it comes to liberty. I think in the grandest of human timeframes—centuries and millennia—it’s hard for civilizations to persist backward away from human freedom over very long stretches of time. Americans worried about an imminent backslide of liberty in this country may have legitimate cases to articulate over the course of their own lifetimes. That’s obviously important. It’s something we should continue working to address together. However, I believe our grandchildren and their children are likely to be both the most free and the most self-realized human beings this planet has ever known. A large part of that is because the ideas on the which the United States was founded, which basically come down to valuing every person and trusting them, are already out there. They’ve reached escape velocity in history. America as an idea put into practice has been done, and while I don’t want to see a world in which it has to be done again, it can be.

The idea that one can “be on the right side of history” certainly is intoxicating. It takes failure and hardship and humility to get to the other side of it.

I think a lot of people would like to opt out of certain features of our economy or society, be it Social-Security-as-Ponzi-scheme or nonstop coverage of the presidential election, but they don’t feel like they can. You can opt out of inflation though, at least with your savings vehicle. It may not prevent you from having to pay more for groceries every month, but saving in scarce assets will prevent you from having to pay more for a house with each passing year.

Tuck and Zuck? Mark Zuckerberg’s based turn has been super well-documented. How long until he’s on the Tucker Carlson show?