Beneath The Ink

I find that kind of realization comes when there's a calm in life. When I have sone time to truly think about the chaos, the small moment I've stepped outside of it. Nice piece 👌

Support this experiment of a Nostr Exclusive serial fiction. Episode 2 of season 1 is out now. Let me know what you think! nostr:naddr1qq2h5vfdwdzr2jj0vet5z7n58pnx5sjcdyunwq3qj9cmpzhlzeex6y85c2pnt45r5zhxhtx73a2twt77fyjwequ4l4jsxpqqqp65wa2yudf

February 26th 2025. This was the day Amazon officially revealed to the world that you don't own any of your digital shit. I haven't seen much being said about this on Nostr, which is crazy enough, but now you know. February 26th 2025 Amazon removed the ability to download the books you have purchased onto your desktop. All of their Kindle readers are now essentially airgapped and can only be reached if you have an Amazon account, at which point you're free to frolic about in their walled gardens all day. Have a favorite author, but said author decides they will no longer publish on Amazon, goodbye library of books you've purchased. Kinda wild.

Its pretty cool to see the merchants and other members of the Nostr community start to offer great value in exchange for bitcoin. Crazy thing is, I don't think most of us know just how much this is affecting the future of the economy just as AI is making its debut. nostr:naddr1qq2kuv2d8ycxgur9ferrv52kx3exsv6rtyu8gq3qcs7kmc77gcapuh2s3yn0rc868sckh0qam7p5p4t9ku88rfjcx95sxpqqqp65w9zyvch

Illiteracy. Contrary to what you may believe, it's about more than just knowing how to read. That is one of two definitions for Illiteracy. The second definition is more illustrative of the truth surrounding us today: lack of knowledge in a particular subject; ignorance. Literacy is a standard that moves with the times. If we are going to track literacy rates in society, we should track the body of knowledge pertinent to the era. This is what determines the layperson's ability to meaningfully interact with society.  Who then knows how money works? Who then knows what happens to data when it is created and stored? Who then knows how labor and markets interact?

I've been sucked into the rabbit hole of self hosting. I got a start9 because it pulled on my heart strings right when I was looking for a solution to store all my family pictures that were starting to build up. After installing it and seeing everything that I can do with self hosting I've finally pulled the wool from over my eyes and realized that, in this digital age, I own very little of what I've paid for. The big tech companies want you to spend money and own nothing. Everything lives in their "ecosystems". The masses are lured by convenience and stay because of the difficulty of changing their ways. The nature of data today is that it is ever growing. I buy a book on Amazon, it lives in Amazon Kindle, on amazon's server. I paid for the right to look at the words on the pages but I don't own the book. I buy a movie, its hosted by whichever company I just bought it from. I paid to watch the pictures on the screen but I don't own the movie. My own pictures and words and business intelligence, those start free until I have enough of a hoard of data that I'd PAY for someone to ensure it was secure. The dystopia is here, its already happening and no one is paying attention. It's crazy that it took me until just now to realize this.

Its crazy how big tech has geared society to fall into their cloud computing ecosystems.