So, yeah, apparently part of wrapping my head around nostr will have to include understanding bot behavior. Hence the cat pictures bot thinks I want to zap it. Nah. My initial assumption was that these bots are using natural language processing for targeting. ChatGPT thinks “…sometimes yes, but usually it’s much dumber than that.” Further, it says: When a bot follows you, probability-wise: ~70–80%: dumb follow-spray ~15–25%: keyword trigger ~5–10%: graph-based <1%: real NLP targeting So the m.o. for follow-spray purportedly is Subscribe to recent kind:1 notes on 5–20 popular relays. Extract pubkeys from: • Anyone who posts • Anyone who replies • Auto-follow them And the m.o. for keyword-trigger purportedly is Subscribe to kind:1 notes with keyword filters • Simple string matching or regex • Follow authors whose posts contain keywords

🤔 So wait… was it the earlier post referencing my cats, or was it my mention of AARP that caused the astrology bot to glom on to my account? Drats…pigeon-holed again.

To wit: Me: In one paragraph, what would Sartre say about nostr? ChatGPT (5.2): Sartre would likely see nostr as a vivid experiment in radical freedom and responsibility: by stripping away centralized authorities and anchoring identity in self-generated keys, it throws the individual back onto themselves, forcing each user to confront the fact that meaning, truth, and community are not guaranteed by institutions but must be actively created and sustained through choice and action. He would admire its refusal of “bad faith” in the form of algorithmic curation and corporate mediation, while warning that nostr does not absolve anyone of responsibility—on the contrary, the absence of a governing center intensifies it, because every post, relay choice, and social norm becomes an existential commitment for which no platform, moderator, or system can be blamed.

After signing up to nostr it took me a minute to grasp how awesome it is that my account is *mine* 🤯 and I can choose whatever client I want. I have been trying to suss out which one is right for me. I feel drawn to @primal , which I think looks and feels great on iOS and web, but damn I haven’t been able to rule out some of the others yet. I think they each have decent pluses and less apparent minuses. I notice a fair amount of overlapping functionality across them and it seems to be just the implementation or emphasis on certain protocol features that slightly differs from one to the next. I’d be interested in knowing from more experienced users whether there is a real differentiator (e.g. wallet functionality, search/filter configurability, etc.) or whether I should consider this a largely aesthetic decision. ChatGPT would probably make me a feature comparison matrix, but seems like overkill - I dunno. I understand that the decision is also, to an extent, use case driven, and that not all users have the same use case. The other thing I think probably may matter is that some of these offer an upgrade plan with access to more features. I imagine that could probably be a factor at some point. Finally, it could also be true that the need for “decision” is an illusion because any so-called choice is completely reversible in this context of absolute freedom. Condemned to freedom on nostr. Very Sartrean. Thoughts? #asknostr

GM nostr. The cats usually wake me up, but my wife took feeding duty and I ended up sleeping in a bit. I awoke with a startle from a vivid and highly unusual dream. Yikes, I hope that shit never happens irl. Came downstairs and was greeted by the sonic onslaught of AC/DC’s Back in Black blaring from her phone - a video with Amish ppl and sleds strapped to a horse & buggy spinning out in a parking lot. This led to a morning coffee convo about whether AC/DC are still touring (yes in 2025), and another similar convo about The Rolling Stones (yes in 2024). The tour was sponsored by AARP. Seems un-fucking-real but apparently true. Further research revealed that two days ago WSJ published an article called “The wisdom of Keith Richard’s at 82.” It contains this line: “An octogenarian, Mick can still be seen dancing on the ashes of Western Civilization.” Oh, the imagery. Enjoy your day 👍