Any thoughts on the fact that the Tates haven't yet commented on the Diddy arrest? (Per Grok)

I asked Grok about research on the link betweeen the learning hormone dopamine, lack of learning in schools and drug abuse. Have a look, this is interesting: https://x.com/i/grok/share/684W0iUC5KrdeBTseaGqZSMND

If I was an all-powerful psychopath, I would keep most of the world's people, group A, as illiterate and poor as possible, and extract their natural resources using their cheap labor. To the extent other people, group B, would benefit from this or from technologies they created, I would gradually tax them to death and steal their savings with inflation, while I in parallel would use their schools to dumb them down as much as possible. Keeping everyone dumb and docile would be necessary to avoid any counterplay against me. And if my income from group B started falling because of a collapse in productivity or some destructive event, I would bankrupt them, flood their country with people from group A, and extract group B's natural resources using everyone's cheap labor. While this went on, I would allow some of the people in group A to develop skills and increase their productivity, while I gradually taxed them to death and stole their savings with inflation. I would rinse and repeat until the NPCs realized that I was playing with them, and developed strategies to fight back against me. I would worry about this, because I would know that almost every strategy to fight against me would be a winning strategy for them. In fact, it would probably be more than enough enough that a small group of NPCs turned into active players. By f***ing around and trying they would soon find out what worked and not. And that would be the end of it for me.

Did you know that dopamine also is known as a learning hormone? When you learn something new, especially if it's challenging or you've been anticipating it, your brain can release dopamine. This acts as a reward signal, reinforcing the behavior that led to the learning. I heard this just recently, but it makes sense, in many ways. Some of the greatest joy I have felt, was when I understood new ideas. An even better I experience I've had a few times, was when I met someone who had a different idea than mine, and our two ideas melted into a new, third idea. This felt almost like magic. I'm pretty sure my brain was showered in dopamine when it happened. The reinforcement that dopamine creates can motivate you to continue learning or to repeat the behaviors that led to the learning experience. It's probably addictive. I suspect that one of the reasons why so many kids turn to drugs these days, is that they learn too little at school. They need dopamine to be happy, and when they can't get it naturally, they take drugs to get it. If you are aware of any research that investigates the relationship between lack of dopamine release naturally as a result of too little learning and drug abuse, let me know.

I miss the good old days, when my people crowned a dog name Saur as their new king.

Politics is the noise of destruction.

GM! Watching Night on Earth directed by Jim Jarmusch is highly recommended if you just want to escape from a slightly insane world for a while.

What do you miss the most that you had been taught in school, but weren't?

Must-reads

Did you ever ask yourself why the schools didn't teach economics or money to you, and why they don't teach economics or money to your kids?

Even the dumbest village idiot understands this is caused by the primitive forces of the free market.

Kult å bli kjent med Gyda og Martin før de blir allemannseie og høye på pæra 😁

Polticians are a large number of people with high time preference controlled by a small number of people with low time preference. Few.

While evil ideas are the root of evil actions, it's monetary monopoly that makes the most evil ideas actionable.

We can to a great extent blame this mess we're in on the corruption of the word "freedom."

Not copper. Red. I believe that Bitcoiners have a special relationship with the concept we refer to as "truth." I'm not saying that we are more honest than others. But we appreciate more than most others being able to verify the correctness of something. For instance, we like the fact that everyone can verify the software code as well as each and every transaction. Nothing is hidden. Everything is in the open. We value that we don't have to trust someone who says that "Everything is A-OK." It's possible for everyone to check things out, without having to ask anyone for permission. I have had the same fascination with the concept of truth as long as I can remember. Like my father, I have also always been curious about how things work. He had an amazing talent for understanding technologies. My grandmother once told me a wonderful story from when he was a kid. I think he was 12-13 years old. He sat by the kitchen table and picked apart a mechanical sleep alarm clock, while he carefully studied how the pieces functioned together. After he had taken it all apart, he patiently reassembled it. It must have been very satisfactory for him to wind it up and hear the ticking. The final test was the alarm bell. "Ring ring ring!" It worked perfectly. My father had verified the truth about how the alarm clock worked. In the 1980s he became a computer engineer. I remember him sitting for hours in front of his PC, and how he used to fill up all empty spaces in the basement and his home office with all kinds of computer hardware. He passed away much too early due to cancer in 2011. Although I didn't inherit my father's understanding of technology, I got the same passion for diving deep into things, into the very core, and for understanding how things worked. Social subjects and books have been two of my main interests, which is something I have from my mother. She has always questioned things, and I'm exactly the same. I discovered at a very young age how important it is to accept the truth. I went to kindergarten from I was about two or thee years old. When I was four, I was moved out of the unit with the small kids and to the unit with the big kids. Some of the older kids started bullying me. They shouted: “Rune has red hair, Rune has red hair.” The people who worked there were unable to help me. So, I found myself in a hopeless, prison-like situation. I complained to my mother, and told her that I wouldn’t go there anymore. She tried to comfort me, and said: “It isn’t true what those kids say. You don't have red hair, it's copper brown, and it's beautiful." The only problem was, this couldn't solve a damn thing with the bullying. And of course, it didn't. The day after, I went to the kindergarten as usual, and the bullies pushed on. It's quite possible that I tried to yell back at them: "It's not red, it's copper brown!" If I did, it probably just made things worse, because it would be a confirmation to them that their bullying had the intended effect on me. However, something must have clicked inside me that day. When I came home, I met my mother in the entrance. I ripped the beanie off my head, and shouted angrily to her: “No, mama, look at this! It’s true - my hair is red - just see for yourself!" When I came back to the kindergarten the next day, I had accepted my faith. They had blond, brown or black hair. My hair was red. These were facts, nothing more. They noticed that I suddenly was OK with it. And then they lost all interest in bullying me. Accepting the truth had made me impervious to their insults. My mother told me this story many times, when I was a child, and also after I became a grown-up man. She says she's convinced that it was a life-changing experience for me, and that it would shape my personality. Looking back, I think I realized that ignoring the truth comes at a significant cost. And just as important, I think the episode taught me that embracing the truth could set me free. Today, it makes me sad to think back on the fact that my father and I often disagreed on many things. We had very different ideas about the relationship between individuals and the state. What started as civil conversations, too often ended in quarrels. It felt like our opposing opinions on politics drove a wedge between us. If he had lived today, he probably would have developed a fascination for how Bitcoin works. He wouldn't have trusted Bitcoin, just because others said it's immutable. I'm confident he would have picked apart every little piece of the technology, in an attempt to verify Bitcoin's promise. Just like I try to do with the socio-economic aspects of it. If my father had been alive today, I suspect Bitcoin would have brought us closer together. He could have explained the technology for me, and I could have explained Bitcoin's socio-economic functions to him. Possibly, he would have realized that I had been right when I challenged many of the things that the powers at be want us to believe. It's just guessing, of course. But it makes sense, because it seems to me that Bitcoin attracts truthseekers like a magnet. And at the same time, Bitcoin forces us to search for the truth together, instead of quarrelling about the correctness of something that others have fed us with. *** If you liked this piece, it would be great if you gave it a boost 🧡

Acersaken, Høyesterett og det store strømsviket I disse dager behandler Høyesterett søksmålet mot staten i Acersaken. Nei til EU mener at avståelsen av norsk suverenitet til EUs energibyrå ACER er grunnlovsstridig. Derfor har de gått til sak mot staten. Saken startet den 5. september. De fleste er historieløse og vet ikke hvordan norske politikere og særinteressene kom i posisjon til å selge ut norsk vannkraft og å mangedoble strømprisene for nordmen. Her får du en kjapp gjennomgang av det viktigste. Det skjedde for litt over hundre år siden, det vil si lenge før både EU og EØS. Retten til å produsere kraft var opprinnelig en del av eiendomsretten til grunneierne. På starten av 1900-tallet begynte noen av dem å selge eller leie bort rettighetene sine, blant annet til utenlandske selskaper. Nyheten om disse avtalene ble et påskudd for politikerne om at de skulle verne om "norske" ressurser slik at de ikke ble "solgt ut av landet". Dette var imidlertid bare den formelle begrunnelsen. Den reelle begrunnelsen var at politikerne og de særinteressene som de representerte ønsket å frata norske grunneiere kontrollen over ressursene. De var grådige, og ønsket å overta ressursene gratis. Fra 1906 til 1917 innførte det norske Stortinget en serie konsesjonslover for vannkraft og andre naturressurser. Lovene ga staten vide fullmakter til å sette betingelser for utbygging og utnyttelse av norske vassdrag. De som ville produsere kraft måtte søke om konsesjon. Konsesjonsperioden var fra 1917 på 50 år. Lov av 18. september 1909 om ervervelse av vannfall, bergverk m.v. bestemte at myndighetene skulle ha rett til å overta et anlegg uten betaling når konsesjonstiden var ute. Grunneierne gikk til sak mot staten og mente lovene var i strid med grunnlovens vern av eiendomsretten. I et skammens kapittel i norske domstolers historie forkastet Høyesterett i 1918 søksmålet, og ga staten medhold. Dette er hovedårsaken til at den norske staten, fylkeskommunene, kommunene og offetlig eide bedrifter som eier vannkraftverk og overføringsnett i dag kan selge kraftproduksjonen ut av landet. Konsekvensen er samtidig at nordmenn importerer de europeiske prisene tilbake til Norge. Dermed er det norske borgere og bedrifter som må betale regningen, mens det offentlige eser og eser og eser ut. Merk deg at det ikke er noen ironi her. Det var hele tiden meningen å bruke politisk makt over kraftressursene. Og det har de da også klart - til gangs. Etter min oppfatning er Acersaken Høyesteretts siste sjanse til å vinne tilbake tilliten hos det norske folk når det gjelder energipolitikkens ødeleggelser. Det var Høyesterett som i 1918 satte norske politikere i den posisjonen som de utnytter på det groveste i dag. Nå har Høyesterett mulighet til å rette opp feilen. Jeg er imidlertid ikke optimist. Sett over et lengre tidsspenn har Høyesterett vært en tilrettelegger for at statens makt bare kan øke og øke, til skade for det norske folks frihet. Ved å godta lovene har de gitt politikernes inngrep legitimitet, mens Ola Nordmann har stått og sett på med lua i hånden. Hvis man skal lære noe av historien kommer flertallet av Høyesteretts dommere til å falle ned på at det enkle ofte er det beste også i Acersaken. *** Hvis du syns at du lærte noe er det fint om du trykker liker og følger meg.