lots of steganography in the desert because we are all looking for an oasis
there is a nice meditation point at the top of Anderson Overlook outside Los Alamos.
Petroglyphs from the heroes of the manhattan project, or even earlier relics from the ranch school boys that preceded them
defending our attention is defending our capacity for self-determination. if we can’t focus, we can’t think clearly, and if we can’t think clearly, we can’t govern ourselves or pursue meaningful goals.
a miracle is an ingression of a higher level agency. maybe on occasion to persuade. such a synchronicity makes it impossible to look away and implies you should move in that direction
This morning I tried to move money from one account I own to another in order to have enough funds to clear a check I'd just written.
First problem: a limit on how much I could move at one time. Ok, call the bank, increase the limit. Check.
Problem number two: I move the funds and the transaction is pending. Well, I need this check to clear now, so let me call the banks because I can't wait until Monday for this. One bank says their ACH is sent and with the Fed. The other says the ACH is with the Fed and not going to clear until they release it.
What is the Fed doing with my money right now, and why is it going to take them 2-3 business days to release it from one bank to another via ACH?
Imagine every single ACH transaction that this is happening with right now. Then imagine the interest that the Fed collects just by bottlenecking that transfer for 2-3 days on each of those transactions.
If we'd been sending value over Bitcoin, it would have cleared in 10 minutes with no intermediaries with broken incentives in between.
Every time I need to deal with money in the fiat system, I am reminded that the money I have in that system is not mine, and that I am participating in a game of Monopoly. The bank could run out of its fake bills any time, and the only thing it can do then is make more.
Every time they do this, it steals buying power from every hard-working individual who saves money earned for their work in USD.
In his most famous book written in 1970, Albert Hirschman proposes that when dealing within a broken system, you have three options: use your voice and speak up, be loyal and trust in the system, or exit.
In the case of the monetary system of the United States, I have no voice. I have no reason to be loyal, and so I choose to exit.
That is why I buy Bitcoin. Every. Single. Day.
Back to back I bounce from things that feel like they are the start of momentum and I get distracted, but by what? Something else that I should be doing, now. Something else that I need to do, tomorrow. Something I did wrong, yesterday.
the only questions that matter from a risk perspective are:
1) how much can i outcompete interest in value per unit time and
2) how much more expensive is inflation going to make what i want over the time period i am acting in?
subtract answer 2 from 1 to adjust risk assessment accordingly
non profits used to be a vehicle for accepting money so that people with money and no time who want good done and people who want to see more of this good in the world can immediately support each other but then they get so big that people start paying themselves a salary to be full time raising money to do more good and then it all gets bloated and grifty as more people are getting by as the laptop and meeting glass and less people are spending time building community gardens