Gm. Asked my mom if they had a beach umbrella I could use. I think this is an umbrella designed by Dr. Jack Kruse. If I sit in full lotus and position just right I get some coverage. Should be a fun day for reading on the beach. We got shrimp from the dock to throw on the grill tonight too. Gonna enjoy a day off from golf. Had a good convo about Bitcoin and cryptography with my mom this morning too. She finds it hard to believe all of the people who know a lot more about math, cryptography, and Bitcoin than I exist. Gonna finish up God Bless Bitcoin tonight and hopefully make it all make sense. Wish me luck...

Hanging out with my family for a few days. Just watched the first half of God Bless Bitcoin with my mom -- she's already asked how she can buy some. Definitely not quite as simple as I thought it'd be but nothing I can't solve by pausing to give some clarifying points on. Also survived my golf match today. Saw some more fun friends.

GM. Getting dragged out for more golf today. Thankfully it's at least a sunny day without much humidity. Had some wildlife out there yesterday.

Puff puff for 20... Guess its the day for it...

People love to say that miners being rewarded shouldn't factor into decisions. I'm not so sure. If mining honestly gets unprofitable enough across the board, do those who have miners and access to energy not start eyeballing the profitability of a double spend as those miners are otherwise turned into something for dust to gather on? Sure, the difficulty adjustment happens, but this seems a bit akin to raising up a lethal army for security and then telling them you don't want to pay them anymore and leaving them out to dry. Pretty sure the US tried that in Afghanistan...

@helen. your profile says you're seeking sci fi recommendations. Ever read anything by Daniel Suarez? Daemon and Freedom™ were two of my favorites; Kill Decision was way up there too. The first two are basically one book in two parts -- I consider it a must read for Bitcoiners. The second is big on drones and what happens when you take a human out of the loop. Rabbits by Terry Miles was one I recently read thanks to a recommendation from @DagzTagz. Bit more surreal but addictive. Also has a podcast and a sequel -- the pod was very good atmospherically. Haven't read the sequel yet.

GM. Think I'm going to try to finally wrap my head around what the heck the deal is with BitVM. I've sort of got the urge to just write it off as shitcoin tech given how many times I hear "EVM style" brought up in connection with it, but I also hear others point to it being something that enables scaling and privacy, and it's starting to seem like it basically can just do both. Which in itself seems fine -- as long as the utxo set isn't being bloated and the attack surface isn't being expanded by mission creep when it comes to op codes (either in consensus or in default mempool policy). Idk, always curious to hear people who know more than myself weighing in here. Is there some really cool killer improvement that I'm just not seeing through the abstractions into? Channel factories or other privacy wins that I actually should be excited about? Let me know.