During the holiday of Eid al-Adha, a ton of people in Cairo take trips to resorts along the coast. As a result, the streets of Cairo that are normally jam-packed with some of the worst traffic in the world become remarkably drivable. It’s like the difference between driving in the middle of the night vs rush hour, except this state of emptiness lasts for many days. So, we use the opportunity to stay in Cairo, and drive to all the further parts of the city that are normally a nightmare to get to.

“Liquidity providers, atomic bridges, and ecash mints. A novel financial network all sharing the same settlement layer. Nostr’s arrival provides the social abstraction that ties it all together. A social network based on similar principles as Bitcoin, it provides a simple set of rules engineered to maximize interoperability. By avoiding being prescriptive about the functions it enables, Nostr is unleashing a Cambrian explosion of open innovation.” via @Alex B.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Emerging Bitcoin Modular Ecosystem

Bitcoin's modular story is playing out differently than on other networks

My friend stepped on a nail today, so we went to the hospital to get him a tetanus shot, and we’re in a part of outer Cairo at the time. I usually think of things in “1990s movie” terms, so if you picture it, this hospital was basically where Antonio Banderas would go after he got shot in Desperado. Like we wandered up to the hospital in the desert, it looks barely occupied, various street dogs barking outside, and it’s unclear where the main entrance is since it kind of looks like a loading dock on all sides to begin with. There was a blind guy sitting at a desk under an umbrella out front so we asked him if that’s the right way, he said “aye”, so we wandered into some dark hallway that eventually emerged into the hospital proper. No air conditioning despite being 111 degrees outside, everyone is sweaty, the doors are all open for decent ventilation, and the manager has stacks of papers cartoonishly piled up to the ceiling in his office. A nurse comes out, looks at the wound, says he sees this all the time, gives him the tetanus shot, and says to come back in a month for a second shot. Friend plops a small wad of cash down on the counter. We’re out in five minutes.

It is 111 degrees in Cairo today. 🔥

Inbox zero.

Leo is the former mayor of Chacao and major opposition leader for Venezuela. Jailed for years as a political prisoner. Now he’s the general secretary of the World Liberty Congress, and big proponent of freedom worldwide. View quoted note →

“Far right” has been diluted to the point where it’s no longer a useful term in any practical sense. If I see it in a headline it means nothing now.

My Bitcoin and Nostr article from last year still reflects my views. Open money and open information. Definitely worth a read if you haven’t done so. I re-read it today on a flight from the Oslo Freedom Forum, where these concepts were a big theme. It organized a lot of things I’ve learned from many people. Open interoperable ecosystems, choice of algorithms, permissionless foundations for developers, etc. If I were to write it today, I would emphasize Nostr as a social graph and discovery mechanism for Bitcoin/ecash wallets. That’s really come a long way over the past year. https://www.lynalden.com/open-networks/

If you had asked me if there were sheep walking around in the arctic circle, I would have assumed no. But alas.

In the arctic circle this time of year, the sun never sets. I took this pic at like 2am. Sun was just bright in the sky all night. Feels like a glitch in the Matrix if you are not used to it.

My favorite current band is The Warning. What is yours?

<3 View quoted note →

Today I went to an award ceremony in Oslo’s City Hall. It is where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. The late Alexei Navalny won an award from the Oslo Freedom Forum on this day. He recently died in a Russian prison, after having been a major opposition leader and anti-corruption lawyer against Putin. He was poisoned, survived, and returned to Russia anyway, and was nonetheless jailed and died in harsh conditions. Prior to this, Thulani Maseko was shot dead last year. He was a human rights lawyer in Swaziland. His widow awarded the prize, named after Maseko, to Alexei Navalny’s widow. It was heartbreaking to watch. And then there was a live performance of this song:

Oslo really is beautiful this time of year.

I usually feel awful after flying long distances. Some people travel well, and that’s not really me. I usually can’t sleep much on a plane, even in business class, so I forcibly skip a whole night of sleep basically, and end up with a headache and full body aches. Over the years I’ve picked up some techniques to minimize it, but clearly not enough (travel for me used to be “hellish” and now it’s much improved to just “awful”). What do ya’ll do to minimize the negative impact when traveling?

On our multi-hour trip to the airport (heading to Oslo soon), my husband and I had a long debate about fiat and bitcoin. I love this sort of thing. He is super bullish on bitcoin, but has somewhat lower expectations than me for its total market size and importance in the long run. But more importantly, he is a really good debater and can steelman fiat arguments better than most of the actual fiat proponents can, so it’s very useful iterative process for me to keep sparring his arguments and refine how I describe things for maximum clarity and impact. He also edits all of my long-form articles and edited my book, so he serves as my first line of defense to make sure everything I write can pass a certain muster outside of my own echo chamber. It’s really important to do this sort of thing. Debate with people you like but where you see some things differently, and assess how it all checks out.

The amount of lost time and productivity due to dealing with income taxes nationwide is insanely high. The number of accountants, lawyers, and auditors that work full time on it, plus the percent of time that small business owners and individual taxpayers have to dedicate to it each year, costs an uncountable total number of lost hours per year. And just as bad, it requires a ubiquitous massive surveillance apparatus on all sorts of income to enforce itself. No taxes are enjoyable, but income taxes are really the most counter-productive and onerous ones. Taxes on properties, imports, and retail sales have so much of a lighter touch to track and collect than income taxes.

My husband likes the true crime genre, so last night we watched American Nightmare on Netflix. A three-episode miniseries about a particularly crazy case. Absolutely nuts. We ended up binge watching all three episodes because we had to know how it ended.

Every once in a while if I feel down about something, I practice gratitude by reminding myself that at least I'm not a bond investor.