“I want to live in a civilized society that excludes violent savages who can’t control themselves. No pity passes, no exceptions.” Not racist. “Those people from x country are a bunch of violent savages, they can’t control themselves.” Racist. What’s the difference? The difference is the former is drawing healthy, normal boundaries any sane person would require. The latter is seeking to exclude innocent individuals on the basis of conduct by others who share the same race, culture, country of origin. Racism has come to mean “bad” so no one wanted to be a “racist”. But then the word got overused, people got sick of it, and not some are like, fine, I’ll be a racist. But racism isn’t saying the wrong word or getting cancelled for some faux pas. It’s literally evaluating individuals on the basis of race rather than individual behavior/conduct. It’s a form of collectivism. My point is you can want to live free of criminals and violent thugs without making it a race or country of origin thing. You don’t need to resort to collectivism to acknowledge the need for high standards and firm boundaries. I see a lot of people resorting to the race/COR heuristic rather than just saying the truth which is that boundaries and standards are not optional, and the derangements of the last ~10 in the west need to be fixed. IOW, I’m seeing an overcorrection, and I’m saying something not because “racism = bad” but because it’s lazy and incorrect. View quoted note →

People want simple, clear unambiguous solutions to life’s uncertainty. But the uncertainty is the only clarity.

You can reject suicidal empathy/tolerating the intolerant without falling into xenophobia/racism.

Tried out @primal premium, worked well, good customer service, but $69/mo is a lot. Just got 1 YEAR of @nostr.build (25GB tier) for about the same cost. Figured I’d spend ~$70 again to try it out. Slower for uploads (probably should have compressed the file more), but giving it a shot.

Podcast seems slow to load in my clients. Try this one:

New Podcast: Paranormal

nostr.build media hosting

CLP112b.mp4 by Chris Liss

nostr.build media player

Grow some plants out on my small balconies. One was an avocado pit I put in a wet paper towel, it sprouted and I planted it in a pot. A small tree had grown up, maybe two feet tall, over the last year or two. Over the summer, we travelled, and it got hot, so when we got home all the leaves on that and the persimmon tree were dead. I watered them, the persimmon came back to life, but the avocado just had old dead leaves in it. Was bummed out because (a) plants are almost family to me and (b) I was planning to transplant it into the ground on a property we have as soon as the construction is done, let it grow into a full tree. Still, I watered it anyway, sent it good vibes, had it in my thoughts. Suddenly just today, noticed new small leaves growing out of the sides of the stalk. It’s come back to life.

long overdue View quoted note →

explains a lot of the conversations I’ve had with people over the last few years. View quoted note →

13-YO daughter doesn’t have a phone, but she has an old laptop. No social media except WhatsApp which isn’t really social media. She’s started getting into a couple video games. Obviously, I’d rather her do more things IRL, but given we live in an urban apartment, it’s summer, she’s an only child and school is 13 days away, I’m thinking video games aren’t that bad for an hour or two a day when she’s at home until school starts, especially for a girl (less likely to get way into them.) I played a ton of Atari and Collecovision and eventually Sega growing up, but haven’t played video games really since I was in college.

I am a lot happier when I don’t even try to imagine what other people are thinking. Not imagine it and not care, but not even imagine it at all.

Don't want to get cocky. Anything could go wrong at any time, we’re all going to die one day, etc. But mostly I just do what I enjoy, while making time for my basic responsibilities.

The dip is like the covid measures: fake.

Broke my one-day fast today by cleaning out the fridge. Boiled some eggs that had been there a couple weeks, chopped up some plums that had been there a week along with watermelon and a peach, put the baked potato from two nights ago into the bone broth my wife had made yesterday. Few slices of chorizo from the fancy cheese shop that had hidden itself in the back of the fridge. Wound up with a gourmet meal for free while assuaging the dread of having food I needed to eat before it spoiled. Even convinced my 13-YO to eat a hard-boiled egg. (She’s working out now to get in shape, and I told her you get 2x your mileage from that if you eat steak and eggs.) If you want to be rich, learn how to transform raw materials into resources. Using all the food in your fridge is a version of that.

Waiting on a friend outside the metro stop. Dude is a conspiracy theorist just like me.

Only reason to sell right now is to prevent your family’s *imminent* starvation. Lesser excuses will not age well on your conscience.

Hooked on these hard sudukos. You have to find the weakness and beat on it until it cracks, yields a clue. Then the clue becomes another weakness to exploit until it yields another clue. Eventually the entire thing breaks open. It’s like cracking a code. Would offer sats to anyone who can do this one, but too easy to use AI to cheat these days, so no reward. Usually they take me a a few hours (cumulatively) coming back to them over 1-3 days. Sometimes I spend the time, don’t realize I made an error until it’s too late.

The dip is fake.

Something going on with @primal support? They used to be really responsive to emails and now crickets for two days.

MSTR obviously has all the counterparty risk of publicly traded stocks, but ridiculous to call it a Ponzi as I’m seeing of late. A ponzi requires new money to pay off existing holders, and it seems similar because he’s taking the new proceeds in part to pay his dividends. But he COULD easily, trivially pay all his dividends if he sold a tiny portion of his assets. He would just VASTLY prefer not to deplete his balance sheet and incur capital gains, so he will always use new funds if he has a choice. I don’t know how it ends, there are all kinds of unknowns from custody questions, to regulatory to 6102 scenarios, but per Warren Buffett, in the short term the market is a voting machine, and in the long term it’s a weighing machine. And he’s stockpiling the heaviest asset in human history in unparalleled amounts.