My @Stacker News March madness bracket is busted, cost me 10k sats, had Florida winning it, and ESPN keeps emailing me to sign up for a “second chance” bracket. But a man must learn how to take the L, FFS. One good thing about sports betting, unlike politics, is you can’t fool yourself — if you’re wrong, you’re wrong.

anyone else finding it impossible to access your notifications on Primal?

I also remember in the height of the vaccine mania. I posted that you should take any medicine, given informed consent, if you deemed its benefits to outweigh its harms. And you should not take any medicine whose harms you deemed to outweigh its benefits. It really didn't matter what someone labeled that medicine. I think it's the same with actions of the state: if you think the actions will benefit you, you ought to support them. If you think its actions will cause more harm than benefit you should oppose. If you don't know, then you should wait and see before taking a position. I know most decent people don't like war and most wars have caused more harm than good. So people are rightly wary when one country attacks another. But the word "war" is not very precise. Do we mean a trade war, an information/propaganda war, a proxy war, a military operation, a ground invasion and occupation, all of these can be categorized under "war". But all are very different things. The question shouldn't be, "am I against war?" but whether this action is going to benefit my interests or go against them. There's no anti-war, there is anti-invading Iraq and killing a million people for non-existent WMD, squandering $6T to the MIC and destabilizing a country. That was not in a regular person's interest. There is no anti-vax, there is anti covid mRNA shots that don't stop the spread and have disastrous side effect profiles. Don't make vaccines (pro or anti) your religion. Don't make supporting or opposing politicians your religion. Be for what works, what helps. what's in your interest. And against the opposite. The core problem is people have attached "goodness" to some views and "badness" to others, so they are stuck in concepts and slogans rather than seeing things clearly and evaluating them on the merits.

People don't like it when you dissent from their religious beliefs. On Twitter, those beliefs were in "The Science" and experts and vaccines and anti-racism, etc. On nostr, it's libertarianism, anti-state, anti-"war", anti-government. Two sides of the same coin really, that coin making politics one's religion and the state its center point. Ideally, one should allocate only a limited amount of real estate in one's mind to politics and the state. It should not be a religion such that when someone doesn't adhere to its edicts, you call them "statist" or "racist". Truth is those for whom the state occupies the largest mindshare are the biggest statists. Just as those for whom race occupies the largest mindshare are the biggest racists. A tell is when you disagree with them, they call you names rather than think through the disagreement. My views are judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. And judge government action by its harms and benefits to you and your broader interests, not whether it fits one label or another. You would think these were uncontroversial. And they mostly are. Until they come up against someone's religion. As someone who dissented from the bio-medical compliance, race-communist, trust-the-experts religion on Twitter and took some heat for it, the dynamic could not be more obvious. The main difference being the neolibs actually had power and they would use it to try and destroy your livelihood. The libertarian nostr people have much less and they'll just try to embarrass and insult you without consequence.

Went for a run Monday, was windy and chilly. Was stiff and sore from two Padel tournaments on Saturday. Two miles slow, maybe 11 minute pace. Seems like a small thing with all the other things going on in my life, but it's not. Showing up to the track IS what's going on in my life. That slow uncomfortable run is reality itself. The encounter with it is the point. It's not a matter of discipline or self-improvement or getting in shape. Just a basic connection that pervades everything. There is no other life but the slow progression into the wind on the track surrounded by sparse trees and ugly buildings. Going again today. Will stretch for five minutes against a tree afterwards as I always do.

14-YO overslept her alarm this morning (has a basketball game), luckily I realized and woke her up, and now she’s pissed at me for waking her up!

Idea to bookmark for later: real numbers are incompressible like reality itself. Pi and e are compressible reals, ambassadors from reality to the land of reason.

Try telling someone last summer it's hitting 72, and you're gonna be happy about it.

Much of the news is not created for your consumption but for geopolitical agendas. You can still react to it if you like, but your reaction is collateral damage of sorts. You were in many cases not the target.