Lyn Alden's sci-fi book (reads like an action movie script) is pretty good. Wouldn't be surprised if someone optioned it for a series or movie.

Leftists and libertarians wind up in the same place over time. Limited government is a harder thing to articulate than no government or total government, but doing so is the only way to propserity. Top down only to the minimum extent necessary for bottom up prosperity. A structure to contain the empty space.

Nostr is still small, there's little engagement, you don't see all your notifications on every client, too many monomaniacal purists, libertarians, leftists, conspiracy theorists (of which I'm one), anons and retards. And yet it still has the energy of a "public square" to me. Twitter, I'm not sure what it's become. I post less and less there, not because I'm a purist or "it's fiat" or anything stupid like that. It's just feels dead, the energy is gone, there's no juice to it any more. I can't explain exactly what it is, there are still some good follows, interesting people, but the algo has killed the vitality somehow.

Needed a good place to keep @Oscar Liss for the summer when we travel. Heard about a couple that takes care of dogs in an area that's 15 degrees cooler by the coast, but they had to meet him first make sure he was a good fit. It was like a job interview of sorts. So we show up there today, meet the couple, they give us a tour of the place, very nice overgrown plot with trees, shade and a cool stream. Oscar's doing great, sniffing around, meets their 15-YO dog that lives there full time, they sniff each other uneventfully, everything's fine, they're commenting on how handsome he is. Then he's walk under the patio table, crouches down, takes a shit. Heather says sorry, reaches for the bags, they're like don't worry about it, kind of goes with the territory. Long story short, Oscar took a shit on the floor during his job interview, still landed the gig.

People just bounce around from meme to meme, talking point to talking point, dominant narrative to counter-narrative, whatever stance is cool in their particular social and professional spheres at the moment, whatever makes them feel good about themselves, feel like they belong.

Friend of mine who is IMO the best documentary-style podcaster on politics around did a deep dive into the Epstein Files. I found it persuasive, answered a lot of questions, surprised me:

Apple Podcasts

AI2026 Ep 3 - Islands in the Information Stream

Podcast Episode · The Arch Independent · May 8 · 1h 47m

It's a beautiful day. Be grateful to be alive, but this price action is fucking bullshit. Fuck you to all the manipulators, leveraged idiots and rehypothecators. Fuck the communists and delusional ass-lickers who think they'll be exempt because they complied. You'll be the first to be executed, you fucking retards. But seriously, it's a beautiful day, live in the moment, don't worry about any of that.

If you want to safeguard a system from AI, exploit its midwit tendency to assume and overrfit, endlessly theorize and speculate in circles. Feel like you could design a trap for it that a human wouldn't fall for. Much harder to design something that could fool both.

AI is just a midwit — all theory, no experience — with infinite information, patience and work ethic. We are nowhere close to super intelligence.

fuckin' Claude crashed my Mac:

Wife is out of town, hope I don't forget to feed @Oscar Liss . If only I had someone to remind me the exact moment it was his dinner time, via shrill bark, but more accurate than an atomic clock.

If you're waiting for conditions to improve in order to be happy you probably won't be in the unlikely event they actually do. If you are happy under your current conditions, they will probably improve, but it won't change things that much for you.

I once spent a few minutes looking for my sunglasses before realizing I was wearing them.

no matter how deep down the rabbit hole you go you will never find the rabbit because you are the rabbit

worst part about vibe-coding with Claude is it'll use an old file, make changes to it, then you upload and replace and don't realize what happened until you're fixing the same bugs you already fixed. Surprised it's that poor at recognizing it.

It's chilly and cloudy out, but I'm going to the fucking track even though I don't feel like it because the GOATs go when they don't feel like it, and I'm the GOAT when it comes to running two 10:30 miles.

People dunking on Saylor for saying he'd sell to pay dividends, but the better question is *why* would he say that in an earnings call? If you assume Saylor is an idiot with lettuce hands, then you should probably not waste even a second thinking about MSTR because it's not for you. But if you assume as I do that Saylor is smart and didn't acquire 800K coins through two steep downturns because he's soft, how do you make sense of it? I'd say maybe (1) tax purposes, it is a corporation that has to pay taxes, and it might make sense to harvest some losses/improve his basis; (2) as proof of concept. If he sold 1K to pay dividends, then STRC is REALLY backed by the coins in the treasury, not just theoretically. This means he doesn't have to keep selling MSTR to raise USD reserves for the dividends because he can sell the BTC. And when you think about it, selling MSTR to raise USD reserves is the same thing as selling BTC because he NOT buying more BTC with the proceeds. IOW, by raising cash (which everyone loved), he was foregoing more BTC purchases. Why not just eliminate the middleman and sell BTC advantageously for tax purposes when needed rather than buying less due to the cash reserve? He can have only BTC in the treasury, and raise cash to pay the bills when needed. What's the downside? If he's willing to sell BTC, he's crossed the Rubicon. He was supposed to never sell, and once you open that door, what's the limit? The limit is his business model. If he sells half the BTC, no one wants MSTR anymore. If he sells at the edges to pay dividends, that doesn't harm the model. I think ultimately what this is is like an OG taking a Strike loan. You borrow fiat against your coins at 11 percent. Your coins appreciate over time, and instead of repaying the loan in fiat, you do it with an ever smaller slice of your stack over time. I think that's the model, and the upside of selling is showing the credit markets that YES, your STRC dividends really are backed by this giant stack that IS used to pay them. It's collateralized 5:1 for real, not just in theory. I've been wrong many times, but IMO this is bullish for MSTR, and also BTC because once the message gets out that STRC is really that well collaterized, the floodgates will open, and the bid will get larger and larger until their are no willing sellers under a much higher number.