Welcome to nostr, new friends.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, May 27, 1788

Who thought changing the UI for iris.to to default to "blind-you bright mode" was a good idea? Ouch. 😭😭😭 Bright mode belongs to the era of 40lb CRT monitors and scanlines.

I feel seen.

What's the easiest way to automate crossposting from birdsite to Nostr? Would be nice to make sure my tweets pop up over here, or at least that they're the option for it without copying and pasting. Twitter is pretty easy to scrape... (cf. snscrape)

I've been here for like a full day and have yet to encounter the phrase "seed oils" or "mercury in retrograde." Different vibe compared to that other place. Better. Happier.

“The way that breaches of classification works is too often: Strict liability for thee, impunity for me,” said the ACLU’s Ben Wizner. “‘Thee’ being anybody who works lower down in the system, and ‘me’ being anyone who has any power.”

The Intercept

The Secrets Presidents Keep in Their Garages and Luxury Resorts

The ceaseless political scandals over classified documents point to deeper systemic problems with Washington’s obsession with secrecy.

How is it possible that I have fewer classified documents in my house than the last few occupants of the White House? The Espionage Act is a "strict liability" crime: good intentions are no defense. Under the (dumb) law, these guys are all unindicted criminals. Felony penalty of something like ten years per document. Nobody expects a single one of them to see the inside of so much as a courtroom.

Fox News

Former Vice President Mike Pence discovered classified documents in Indiana home

Vice President Mike Pence informed Congress on Tuesday that he discovered classified documents in his Carmel, Indiana, home on Jan. 16.

I've been dealing with Bitcoin since pre-2013, and I've gotta say I've never seen it feel as powerful as it does on Nostr. The instant, effectively-free transactions that spring from having so many people on Lightning Addresses is like arriving on a different planet. Most people's experience with Bitcoin payments -- if they even have it -- is a 30-60 minute wait for mining + two-plus block confirmations, and a fee that made it feel dumb to send less than $20. Most people don't want that. They don't need that. They will never care about that. Some do -- I did -- but it's a permanent minority. This is what makes lightning-fast settlements a big deal. When normal people and businesses realize that global money transfers can be borderless, instant, free, and only take like two clicks, I think things are going to get very interesting. Still need to cover a lot of road on the privacy problem, but this already feels better than everything naked on-chain. The hardest problem has always been making it easy for people who don't care about Bitcoin to accept Bitcoin (tender resistance) -- without requiring them to start caring about Bitcoin. The way you do that is by making it "better than money." We're not there yet for everybody, but for the first time in many years, I caught a glimpse of how it might be possible.