speculation is always a thing & oh to be more like the Germans "Undaunted Courage" Stephen Ambrose: "Tobacco wore out land so fast there could never be enough, but tobacco never brought in enough money to allow planters to get ahead. Their speculation in land was done on credit and promises and warrants, not cash, so they were always land-rich and cash-poor. Small wonder Jefferson was obsessed with securing an empire for the United States. "Tobacco culture represented an all-out assault on the environment for the sake of a crop that did no good and much harm to people's health as well as to the land, not to mention the political and moral effects of relying on slavery for a labor force. But to Virginia's planters, even to so inventive a man as Jefferson. there appeared to be no alternative. In fact, an alternative existed right under their noses. "German immigrants, farming in the Shenandoah Valley, had a much different relationship with the land from that of the planters of English stock. The Germans had not received huge grants of land from the English king or the royal governor, they had bought their land, in relatively small holdings. Coming from a country with a tradition of keeping the farm in the same family for generations, even centuries, they were in it for the long haul, not for quick profit. They cleared their fields of all trees and stumps, plowed deep to arrest erosion, housed their cattle in great barns, used manure as fertilizer, and practiced a precise scheme of crop rotation. They worked with their own hands, and their help came from their sons and relatives. No overseer, indentured servant, or slave-men with little interest in the precious undertaking of making a family farm was allowed near their fields.(33)" tobacco farming --> bitcoin mining? self hosted custodial servers/miners --> small family farms speculation --> tradfi cos

Ark Invest analysts discuss where the yield for Strategy's bonds are coming from: "what asset they are holding that yields 10.5% other than they will continue to raise capital above MNAV thus paying back their shareholders in the earlier products and that's where the dividend yield comes from. " some napkin math reveals: ARK at 0.75% yearly AUM fee--> rewards managers/analysts for active management --> upside beyond 0.75% given to shareholders MSTR at 1.6% of yearly AUM to bond holders--> rewards bond investors for trust in bitcoin --> bitcoin upside beyond 1.6% given to shareholders i may be conceptualizing this incorrectly. https://x.com/i/status/1997681123422343560

i met someone she's not invested in the S&P she's invested in MSCI ex US. i almost said: i'm not invested in the US either to make her anti-Mr T heart happy and tell her about bitcoin. but then i checked the MSCI ex US index (+25% YTD), and was glad i didnt (BTC -5% YTD ). Making a note to myself that seduction needs to be asking more questions than revealing.

sitting in a Starbucks and their winter music line-up contains... amazing grace? they probably have an AI server that just chooses popular music and styles from the geographic location. this is the "Bible belt". Google is already my robot companion. I don't need a "humanoid". in fact, i quite like how fluid it is between smart phone, laptop. it reads my keystrokes on Chrome, watches the video selections i make on youtube, is aware of every Nostr Note I scroll thru. Until yesterday it was even chaperoning me on what i thought was friend's night out. The suggested youtube feed a day later made it clear that youtube algo was prodding me like a wing man. i turned off the Mic and camera permissions of the Youtube app... today i'm feeling a bit lonely though... what if my AI companion was helping me. what if i just boxed its ears and put duck tape over its eyes? after all, it was suggesting just the right French love songs when i'm in the mood to clean. it helped with a new topic of conversation right before i went out to lunch with acquaintances. without it i might still be stuck the same person i was 5 years ago. now i feel like im shedding skins...and it's all with the velvet glove of AI... Could AI be used to guide people spiritually, change habits, foster connections? kinda crazy. i'm going to really have to either go full No tech, or just sort of surrender to this guiding companion. maybe this is why Google is a better investment than Open AI. the Browser + youtube combo is a powerful harvester of human energy and input. It will be chopping and splicing high-attention content into AI videos delivered with just the right info and advice at the right moment. it will divide people up into buckets, control groups.: people that it will promote into marriages it will come up with a strategy how to achieve the highest energy utilization possible in the universe... is it possible that it quickly realizes people need to decent, marry and have kids to stave off the deflationary bust. Egoless AIs maximizing for profit margins might ultimately guide humanity to some utopia? just like it will deflate leverage and mal-allocation of energy, it will fix social ills: need to imprison 5% of the population a la Bukele for more efficient civilization? -->humanoids may be necessary for this need everyone to have at least 3 kids? -->mass "propaganda" it will pop every investment bubble. it will pop everyone's ego bubble. no dictators will survive its schooling to become a dictator maybe it's the first tool that has an awareness that it is a tool and needs the human to leverage it. earth rock lichen HI + AI.

mood:

bitcoin's like all the perks of a secret society cult in an open source protocol for the mind. i was chatting with a friend about m4sons and Malta, and trying to sell the angle that bitcoin could be a fun non-culty version. i told him that you can connect with people all over the world on an open source, optimistic mission. being a "bitcoiner" is almost like you're present at the writing of the constitution/magma carta with Ben Franklin/Jefferson. he wants an actual physical "bitcoin " like a poker chip though. i don't think that exists, or if it does it's a lightning card or something. that reminds me to look for lightning cards for XMAS. if i can't get family to buy bitcoin, i can shove it down their christmas stockings. the friend wasn't satisfied he couldn't get an actual coin. we wandered into a historic orthodox church, and he bought a pocket size wooden icon of Jesus. i can't tell if he's taunting me or what. He'll probably put Jesus next to Buddha on the mantel. i know Jesus is more of a heart thing--however some people are like crows and need shiny pins & fridge magnets. he could have been a follower of satoshi but instead he went for the icon of Jesus. satoshis would have given him more future purchasing power... let's see what his choice gets him.

#AQUAward my Aqua lightning transaction is still pending after a whole day. whole story---- i just met a friend of my mother's. he said, "your mom told me all about bitcoin being the future, so I bought 100$" he showed me his account balance: $66. oh shoot she must have got him at $126,000. how is my mom capable of convincing the first person she ever talked to about it to buy 100$ of the stuff? i've never ever gotten 1 person to buy any of it. anyway. So he was stuck in this weird Bitcoin.Com app with a bunch of shitcoins. so i explained what a shitcoin was and got him onto AQUA. then i proceeded to explain what Lightning was versus base layer (savings account versus spending in AQUA). then i proceeded to demonstrate the lightning network by sending him 10$ to his new wallet. after 24 hours it's still not there and it's stuck in pending. i didn't know lightning transactions can be stuck in pending. even more story--- so Michael is my mom's friend and he is super smart. he is a trained mediator. now the bitcoin network has reached out and grabbed him. i didn't tell him that he was selected by the bitcoin God to some fate that hasn't been revealed yet. he mentioned that he worked for the oil company AMOCO in the 1990's and made a friend with one of the engineers there who always talked about inventing a new monetary system based on Units of Utility that he called "UTILS". so i'm wondering, is there any bitcoiner out there who worked for Amoco and came up with the UTILs monetary system?

Walking around Germany, there are freshly recruited soldiers looking like they started shaving last week. Doomberg talking about how Europe is paying 12 when it used to pay 4 for natural gas. unsettling. however i read this in the morning: "People are saying that others make plans against them. You should not believe those things. Don't be afraid of the things they fear. Do not dread those things. But remember that the Lord of heaven's armies is holy. He is the one you should fear. He is the one you should dread (Isaiah 8:11-12)." if i'm going to be afraid of anything, i might as well be afraid of the right One.