Contra ⚡️

You can measure the health of any system by how it reacts to truth. If truth demands punishment the system is already sick. If the truth is destroyed or buried the system has entered the final stage where narrative matters more than reality. That is when the rot becomes irreversible. The real lesson is simple. Institutions that cannot tolerate sunlight eventually lose the ability to see at all.

Your tax dollars fund millionaires’ groceries because bureaucrats can’t be bothered to close an obvious scam. A millionaire in Minnesota collected $6,000 in food stamps. Multiple lottery winners pocketed taxpayer funded benefits. People with six figure assets are getting SNAP and it’s all perfectly legal This is what institutional rot looks like. Fix the damn system.

The classical definition of sovereignty is straightforward…supreme authority within a territory, with monopolistic control over the legitimate use of force. No external power exercises authority within sovereign borders without explicit, revocable permission that the sovereign can withdraw at will. By this standard, foreign military operations on your soil represent either a compromise of sovereignty or evidence that your government prioritizes interests other than those of its citizens. Washington’s Farewell Address wasn’t merely advice but a warning born from experience: “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence… the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake.” Jefferson advocated “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” America itself has allowed foreign military forces and international alliances to operate on U.S. soil, which means either: 1. The U.S. is not truly sovereign, OR 2. The U.S. government is colluding with foreign powers against the interests of the American people

Suffering has a way of stripping everything else away. The career, the possessions, the carefully built life we think defines us. All of it fades when tragedy strikes or when we walk alongside someone in their deepest pain. If you haven’t faced suffering yet, now is the time to wrestle with why it exists. Not later, not in the middle of crisis when you’re gasping for answers. Build your foundation now. Understand the God who is sovereign over both joy and sorrow, who doesn’t flinch at our hardest questions. Don’t wait until you’re drowning to reach for Him. Come now, while there’s space to think and wrestle and know Him. Build your theology of suffering before you need it, so that when the inevitable comes, you’re not scrambling for meaning but resting in a God you already know and trust. Life is more fragile than we admit. The peace we need doesn’t come from avoiding suffering but from knowing the One who holds it all in His hands.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Gm ☕️ #Coffeechain #ChristAlone

Friendship is gold precisely because it resists commodification. It’s the last space where humans can be ends unto themselves rather than means to content, status, or extraction. In a world drowning in connections, loyalty is the scarcest resource.

The “Platform” influencer with ten million followers has no way to contact those people if the platform disappears or bans them. They have a number on a screen, not a relationship. This is why influencers live in constant fear of algorithm changes and platform policy shifts. They’ve built their livelihood on rented land, and the landlord is capricious. Nostr…because reliance on a platform introduces a single point of failure, and single point systems fail deterministically. Your turn…Nostr, because…?

New long form article here👇🏻. It’s long enough that your brain will try to convince you to quit three times. Don’t listen to it. If you finish it, we can probably build something together. If not, enjoy the feed. nostr:naddr1qqgxydesxqenjv3hvvmnqvf5x43ngq3q4hq5lgadtyy9dhvtszq46dnl0s0xwdddqr7e32rdqqhma8a4xhssxpqqqp65wu3ca5d

If you’re in Nostr or Bitcoin spaces just to broadcast your genius takes, you’re missing the point entirely. You’re bringing platform logic to a post platform world. The opportunity isn’t to recreate Twitter without censorship. It’s to build something genuinely different. A network where relationships are primary and protocol is supporting infrastructure. This means engaging deeply rather than broadly. It means consistent presence over viral moments. It means being useful to specific people rather than impressive to everyone. It means showing up when there’s no attention to be gained. It means understanding that the person you help troubleshoot their Lightning node today might be the relay operator who keeps your content available tomorrow. The person you have a thoughtful disagreement with might become a collaborator on a project next year. The small community you invest time in might become the trusted network that provides opportunity and support for decades. These aren’t transactions. They’re relationships. And relationships are what survive when everything else fails. The technology gets us out of the trap. The relationships are why we’ll never need to go back in.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”George Orwell, 1984 This chilling line reminds us how power operates. Not just through force, but by reshaping our very perception of truth. When authorities control information, rewrite history, and manipulate narratives, they’re not just lying to us. They’re reconstructing how we think, what we believe, and ultimately who we are. We see this pattern everywhere. Media that tells us what to think instead of how to think. Algorithms that feed us only what confirms our biases. Institutions that gaslight entire populations into doubting their own experiences. Awareness is the first line of defense. When you recognize the attempt to reshape your mind, you reclaim your sovereignty. When you question narratives, seek multiple sources, and think critically, you’re no longer raw material for someone else’s design. The goal…Build an unshakeable foundation of independent thought. Read widely. Question everything, including your own beliefs. Connect with people who challenge you. Own your mind before someone else does.

When traditional pathways close, the resourceful find new ones. Our society has erected substantial barriers to youth employment. Economic shifts, regulatory frameworks, and structural changes have made it increasingly difficult for teenagers to enter the workforce through conventional means. Rather than accepting defeat, my sons refused to wait for permission to participate in the economy. They took initiative. My son’s independently navigated the complexities of setting up a Square business infrastructure. No handholding. No asking for approval. Just action. Go get yourself some small batch coffee. #coffeechain https://codees-coffee-roasters.square.site

We are witnessing the predictable outcome…the erosion of personal responsibility, the hollowing out of civil society, and the quiet triumph of short term hedonism over long term civilization. What we reward, we become.