The Very Angry Achilles (a shamelessly Homeric riff on The Very Hungry Caterpillar) --- In the rage-soaked dawn of war there hatched a very angry Achilles. --- On Monday Achilles battled one raging river— the god Scamander tried to drown him, but he was still angry. On Tuesday Achilles skewered two bold Trojans, spear-points flashing like lightning, but he was still angry. On Wednesday Achilles dragged Hector three times around Ilium’s high walls, but he was still angry. On Thursday Achilles toppled four shining chariots and the horses that pulled them, but he was still angry. On Friday Achilles crushed five Amazon champions who rode in from the east, but he was still angry. On Saturday Achilles felled six spearmen of Ethiopia, including noble Memnon, but he was still angry. On Sunday Achilles stormed the gates and met seven sharp arrows— one, loosed by Paris and guided by Apollo, kissed his heel. At last… Achilles grew still. --- That evening, in a funeral-pyre glow, the warriors sang of wrath and glory, and the very angry Achilles became a very quiet legend.

I reactivated my tik tok account. Don't worry, there won't be any dancing. I just wanna join booktok

TikTok - Make Your Day

9gods will be separated into two, censored and uncensored. Censored is of course the Facebook group. Uncensored is the X account, the 9gods.org site and the telegram group

I met one of Libby's fans today at the Nostr booth in BTCPrague! @franny @Love is Bitcoin 💜⚡

Spam is such a big problem on the internet that most of us webmasters have had to shut down forums and close comments on our blogs. It's why I've been so excited for lightning used as a spam filter, even though I haven't seen an implementation yet outside of stacker news. Spam is wasting hundreds of manhours with moderators and resources. If I choose to filter ordinals and other spam transactions from my mining template, I have every right to do it. You can just go to another miner and send your transaction, they'll be happy to accept the sats. Permissionless does not mean anarchy. You have every right to spam the protocol, I have every right to filter it because you're wasting my time and resources. I won't run the ord disrespector only because the guys promoting it are deranged spooks and because it's untested code. But if the next bitcoin core version filters out a huge chunk of spam, I'll run it.

I want to work with bitcoin businesses but many are plebstores, meaning amateur ones. Which is fine but the level of Dunning-Kruger effect is starting to grate on me. Yes you need a fucking newsletter. Yes you need a fucking blog. Yes you need to do fucking sales. Sales are not fiat. FFS. I'm here if you need a marketing agency.

I believe at some point even unspendable utxos will be able to be offered as collateral. It's the same with gold. Let's say you have a small golden nugget. Getting it verified might cost half of its price. But if you show it to someone, thus proving that you own it, they might consider the risk acceptable and lend you the money. Bitcoin can be verified with a simple wallet signature and even if it can't move on-chain due to high fees, it's still there. I think microlending services will happily take them. Perhaps even with accepting the seed words themselves in case of liquidation. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't consolidate your utxos when the fees are low. I'm just saying it will become so valuable that people will find a way to use even the smallest bit.

I asked btcpayserver about an easy way to run it, basically you either run it on your own node, which is troublesome. And there's the option of running it on a hosted server, like voltage cloud or lunanode. They recommended lunanode.

I think I'm being reasonable and calm and then someone tells me bitcoin doesn't have enough throughput to handle as many transactions as BNB has and I go into rant mode.

Controversial opinion: Prepare to lose your bitcoin. I believe that almost everybody will eventually lose their entire stack. Hodlers will get rekt. FIRE and early retirement, travel the world guys will get rekt. Some bug in a popular wallet, some seed generation algorithm will be reverse engineered like milk sad, or any other random way that will compromise your seed words and make you lose your sats. Prepare for that. Have alternative storing options, preferably on metal plate with no multisig nonsense or anything else. Just drop 1 million sats on a wallet that you've generated with randomness and leave them there. Have cashflow to recover. Ideally from online businesses. Have a network of bitcoiners that will be willing to help you get hired again, to trade with you, to support you. I think we'll only start seeing more and more of this as price goes up and incentives to trick people are increasing. The point is to put yourself in a position to get some of it back immediately, not to hoard sats.

Running a node is the only way to have a vote in the bitcoin system. For example, my node will never run drivechains, even if they manage to do get through. The right to vote in the bitcoin protocol is analogous to being a citizen in Ancient Athens. Not all were citizens, and (unfairly) all were male, contributing members of the Athenian society. There were slaves and people born elsewhere that didn't have citizen rights. And anyone going against the city-state was ostracized, but that's not possible in bitcoin. The analogy still stands, because the Athenian citizen had to stay informed on current events, matters of the state and had to vote on various issues. That's why democracy worked, not because everyone voted, but because the voters were mainly valuable citizens. Back to bitcoin, it seems we're creating the same sort of governance. Informed noderunners get a vote, people who leave the thinking to others do not get one. It's a sort of democracy of 17.000 noderunners and it's messy but it works so far. And it's the only way to sustain one.

@View quoted note → I was just teaching this yesterday to my students. Your wallet is not tied to the software or the device. You can just load bluewallet on your phone, import the seeds and gain access to your funds. Just know that they're now exposed to a hot wallet so it's best to send the coins to another cold storage wallet. While I don't recommend ledger, the issue this guy had can happen to any device and it will keep happening as years go by.

So now I have to pay for X subscriptions for my personal and my business accounts. I have to pay relays on nostr. And I have to run ads for visibility on Facebook and Instagram. Great. Lovely. Social media gone to shit.

Your mind will be under attack. Don't try and memorize your seed words. Put your keys in some sort of physical barrier even from yourself. Some sort of physical lock and key, a vault, anything that can put a real delay. The onslaught of psychological attacks that we're about to witness in the next decades will be insane. Imagine targeted psyops aided by AI and chatgpt. Entire social media accounts, entire websites created just to make you part from your coins. You think it won't happen? We can even do this right now. It's just not worth the time and effort. The cost is too much. But when bitcoin will be worth over 1 million dollars and cost per attack will be wittled down to pennies with AI, you will see it everywhere. They will use psychological manipulation in ways you've never imagined. Your ex-girlfriend's photos can be used to generate AI catfishes that subconsciously remind you of her, even her voice can be sampled. Your mentors, the same. Every like you've ever made, every comment, every video you've watched can be parsed into new specialized, deepfaked gurus and you'll be amazed at how each word they utter will speak to your soul. You think it won't happen? You're just not worth it. Yet.

I have an interesting dilemma. There's an AI generated piece I really like that would work great for an ebook cover art I'm writing. But I didn't make it. But AI art can't be copyrighted, that's the sentiment so far. So can I just use it? Or not?

Should you invest in that altcoin? I'm a bitcoin maxi, but let's forget about that for a moment. From a computer science point of view, let's say you invest in an altcoin because of its speed, anonymity, programmability or whatever. Fine. Ask yourself this: Are people running nodes for that blockchain? Are they running miners, if applicable, or validators? Do you personally know people running one? Can you yourself run one without a serious investment of time and capital? Because I can. I'm running a bitcoin node and a miner. If everything crashes, I will single handedly maintain the entire bitcoin protocol. Can your altcoin survive a total system crash or are you just dependent on someone else?

I predict a new wave of bitcoin hippies emerging pretty soon. A bunch of millionaires travelling around the world in places like Costa Rica, taking psychedelic drugs, working remotely, having a sort of decentralized memetic governance.

I decided instead of going to another bitcoin conference to finally upgrade my workstation.

Nostr is the bitcoin superapp. I have 12 lightning wallets. I don't really need another one. The existing ones need to add a bunch of functionality into them. Nobody gives a shit how cool your wallet is. Breez used to be the lightning wallet I would suggest to people because it has app integration built in, and it solves the problem of "what the heck do I do with the bitcoins you just sent to me?" Now the app I recommend is nostr..