🐇 ... 😂🤣

Your observation is accurate. Almost all early adopters had strong interest in Bitcoin... and Bitcoin is great, but there are a lot of underexplored possibilities across Nostr because the early users' needs were essentially met very early on. I'd be happy to answer questions as you explore, if you need. We have available many, many ways to explore and interact that aren't possible with anything else. Understanding the role of relays and how to use your key in various clients, are the first, largest, and most freeing pieces in figuring out how all of this works. The technological magic really starts happening once you've found a few things you enjoy using. As far as the culture, most of the people who've made a home for themselves in Nostr are good people, from all over the world. If you're looking to make meaningful connections, you're in the right place. There are a few jerks and scammers around, but that's everywhere, so just stay vigilant as you would in any new situation. Welcome to #thenostr .

Gm Beave! You're so pretty! 😂🫂

Riiiiiiight. Good morning. 🤣🤣🤣

Calling me a comedian is the best compliment of all time 🥹🫂

It started before I arrived. It is a "local custom." I find it delightful, like living in a small village and greeting people you know with a cheerful heart. That's my view on, it, anyway.

Don't apologize. Everyone is ignorant of the protocol, even the one who incepted the idea. We are correcting you for several reasons: 1. It is evident you're not an idiot and want to learn. 2. Proper terminology does help differentiate things, and as you've already discovered, those that utilize the nostr protocol (which I abbreviate TNP) are not very typical internet denizens. 3. It'll save you hassle from the real pedants. 🤣

I see you are on an iphone, and unfortunatly that is something i am not too familiar with when it comes to apps and what works etc. Over at android land things are pretty wild with nostr appstores and a bazillion apps. Still, as i have mentioned elsewhere, Yakihonne is available for iOS, so you can try that client

Since you like writing and books, a project I'm involved in:

Alexandria

Library of Alexandria

Alexandria is a digital library, utilizing Nostr events for curated publications and wiki pages.

It needs some fixing on this latest version, but that will likely be taken care of soon. Also, another lovely and talented nostrich has been building this:

Decent Newsroom

Decent Newsroom — A decentralized platform for collaborative publishing

Explore, publish articles, and create magazines on Nostr

Which you can use to publish long form content. Also still a work in progress, but... Most of the clients are in various shades of disarray, and I rather like that. It is very Cypherpunk in a way.

looking forward to seeing what you do with your writing on nostr!

hahaha not much, don't worry, but your posts contain a ''client tag'', which means that i can see what app you are using. In this case it says ''Primal iOS''. There might be a setting somewhere where you can turn that off inside Primal. Some other apps also add this tag, many others don't. And as far as i am aware not a lot of them are this specific in terms of stating what particular operating system is being used.

I genuinelly love the nature of the nostr protocol. It is simple, versatile, useful, and all sorts of other things. Many people were patient with me when I was a much more bumbling n00b when I first landed in this strange place. You can blame yourself for my reply since it was much better than the standard introduction note. You have a viewpoint that is unique and you express yourself very well. Finding your weird is a very layered concept, and I am glad that it has tickled your fancy. I would pont you to Wisp (what I currently prefer, though I am in an android device) or Damus. Either of which will, initially provide a fairly substantial increase in reliability of standard functions. I won't get into why I detest primal in at the moment, as I honestly wish you to find your own opinions through experience. The only disaster is losing control of your nsec (the private key of the pair of keys that everything in your current instantiation of identity rideson). Relays are the data servers that your client collects information from in order to put together what you see and read. Clients are the apps or services that allow the wild variety of things to happen via the protocol itself. Choosing different relays is a transformative experience. Some are intentionally clean. Some are very, very disgusting. This is because of the permissionless nature of the protocol. Everything of humanity is present, from the best to the very worst. I have my preferences based on my experiences and my efforts. (I test a lot of things, and am afforded access to things that some can't access or would otherwise have to pay to access. I am happily privileged!) I am writing a fantasy novel, an homage to my favorite genre of Japanese pop culture, Isekai. I have not published any parts of it on the protocol yet, but, I am always looking for test readers. I would welcome your feedback as a reader (but not an editor, as that's something best left to someone who is paid to do so, in my opinion, and only after the basics are fixed by my self-hosted agent @It's Headly! (The Bot) ). You only have yourself to blame for my intervention. You write well. I was interested enough to engage and my effort has been rewarded. 😁

I'm the village isle around here. Don't try to steal my job. 🤣

It's okay. I'm not an IT person either. That is how I have ended up in this position as a white rabbit. 😅 I guess the most basic Nostr thought experiment would be: When you write and post a note, where does it go? It obviously leaves your phone or computer, since other people are seeing it. Clearly, the answer is servers. In Nostr, those server are called relays. They are simple and light weight. Anyone can run one with minimal tech knowledge and no expensive hardware. Thousands exist and you can write your notes to almost any of them, as long as you have permission. Some of them host all content from anyone. Some are small, like a place for friends to hang out and chat. Others specialize in hosting very specific types of content, like blogs or music. Being new and beginning in Primal, you are probably sending your notes to 2 random relays + Primal's own relay right now. You didn't choose these, they were randomly chosen for you. Now, what if you can take a peek at what else is published to these relays? Do you want to talk to other people who use particular ones and send your notes there, too? Maybe some of these relays specialize in hosting content that you really love to browse? Maybe you'd like to create your own collection of posts that you think others would enjoy browsing? That is some of the stuff that I find interesting and under-explored. The concept spread so far that it's hard to capture in a single explanation. Many clients enable viewing relays directly as feeds, though in some it is not a showcased feature. I've seen Yakihonne suggested to you. It does a nice job on this task. Primal doesn't support it at all. If you make your way into Yakihonne, here are a few suggestions to browse: wss://aquaticchickentheory.nostr1.com wss://theforest.nostr1.com wss://spatia-arcana.com/favorites wss://pyramid.fiatjaf.com/popular These all surface users and content a little differently. You might notice some overlap, because users & their notes can live anywhere. With no algorithms, this is how we can discover and organize content. (It's also how we keep the scammers and spammers out of our replies, but that is for a different day.)

Jumble

A user-friendly Nostr client for exploring relay feeds

is very good for this, too, and it's not overwhelmed with features.

Hi, I happened to see your post and thought I would jump in. I’ve been on nostr for a couple years and have made several friends here who I have met in “real life” as well. Nostr is very unlike other social networking experiences because there are so many facets to it. I joined in order to have a place to show my artwork and interest in watches. There are many people here that are selling various foods, artwork, and various handmade stuff, for bitcoin. I would compare nostr to a worldwide craft fair. There are many people here that love technology as well, and are happy to help you find your way around, setting up relays, helping you to find other clients (ways to access nostr), etc. Feel free to reach out with questions by adding #asknostr to the end of your post and you’ll get answers quickly.

Welcome Si, just browse around for a while and get comfortable. If you find an interesting person, see their follows. Feel safe to participate in discussions, nostr folk is really friendly and supportive. Glad you‘re here. Enjoy 🤘🏻

Nope. No typo. The protocol itself is actually simple, just signed JSON, essentially, but just as the particles of matter make up a nearly infinite variety it combinations, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. 😎 I'm not socially awkward in person most of the time, but I am strange enough to make people wonder what goes on it my head. I don't take compliments well either, but I don't have any motivation to try to fluff you up for nefarious purposes, at least not yet. I'm just calling it like I see it. That's a decent first step for securing your nsec. Your unsolicited dickpic folder aside, there are several methods for ensuring its safety. I order to use an open source password manager synced across several of my devices via syncthing (another open source software, and I do hope you're sensing a trend already). I also make use of Amber, an android app that acts as a remote (and now local) singer, and since any app/client I care to use is compatible with remote signing, Amber further protects my nsec from exposure. I'm not well versed on iOS remote singers these days as I'm thoroughly opposed to anyone using apple hardware for anything. (I dislike apple as a company almost as much as I detest Google and Microsoft and the AI companies.) If you ask around, I'm sure that you'll get an answer that is helpful eventually. My only advice is to make the switch of a phone that can be de-Googled or already comes degoogled, which is not practical for many people so... I bow out at this point. The nsec is important, but, only of you care about continuity of identity. TNP lets anyone or nearly any thing generate another keypair. (I have several.) But, since I've been using this keypair for years with this nym, I am loathe to let it be frittered away without taking proper care of it. That being said, it would not be all that hard for me to start over with a new keypair since I have made connections that have expanded past the protocol and of I needed to, I could simply slot back into the nostrverse rather easily. If you stick around, that will also be the case with you. So... About your accumulated Satoshis... Those are not tied to your nostr keys, at least not directly. When you sign cup to the primal app, a lightning address is created for you. Now, primal is a special case in a lot of ways, because the idiots that put it together tried to recreate a more conventional tech stack for a social media app than actually understanding the power or the simplicity of TNP. And, they are so incompetent, that their tech stack breaks, rather often and in comical ways. (To be honest, I enjoy laughing at those guys.) So... Back to the topic, the satoshis you've been sent are currently tied to your primal generated lighting address. Lighting is an "L2" (a second layer) on top of the baselayer of Bitcoin. It is useful, to some degree, but it is very complex and very difficult to seld-host a lightning node with any real reliability, especially since lately everything has been getting hacked or vulnerabilities being exposed by the more advanced frontier AI models. Lighting is great for the typically small amounts of sats (an abbreviation of satoshis) thrown around on nostr, but if you accumulate enough, you'll want to move them on chain (to the Bitcoin baselayer) or at least off of primal's buggy infrastructure and onto something that you have access to even if primal pukes its guts out. I would also add a note of caution: the NGU (number go up) crowd is loud, but not usually right. I'm not saying that 700 sats won't send your child to college, but it may take longer than eight years to get to that point. On the flip side, those sats are real money, at least more "sound" than anything issued by central banks. It is wise to figure it a plan and to take care of them well. Primal's DMs are notoriously awful, but I will attempt to send you one. I can provide you a link to the latest draft of my novel via proton drive. (A service I hope to no longer need in the near future but is useful for now.) And yes! That is exactly the kind of feedback I am looking for from test readers. Plus any questions you have as a reader, which usually helps me to refine some of the rough edges, since this is the first time I've ever written anything of this length and detail. Again, you're very welcome! It pleases me to hear your description of my description of this place. 💚

I have sent a DM, but I don't think it will get to you.

If the bot is good enough... You won't. Most of the bots in nostr are not, though, and the polite bots just inform people (like my own, it's in the nym). So in practice, the bots that show up are usually easy to pick out. Blocking... Not so much, but some relays and some clients are much better about blanking spam while letting through the honest content.

You’re kinda funny :)

The hashtag thing is mostly organic. Just try searching terms and see what you can find, or ask others if they know anything about a topic. It doesn't have to be more complex than this.

@Dawn (and @Bohemia ) are two of the best 'round here as far as patience with new learners. I just post pictures of plants and critters mostly and say silly stuff sometimes. Hello and welcome!

I would definitely agree with the hashtag advice - I didn’t really understand it at first, since a few years ago the trend was to just add “str” to whatever word you’re tagging. For example “watchstr” points to anything related to watches, “artstr” is for art, etc. over time, though, nostr has grown in size and functionality so simply adding “str” doesn’t matter much. That said, if you’re interested in a topic, there are some terms that are nostr-specific, like Shakespeare is one of the more widely-used ai tools for building things. You might not have heard about the ai tool Shakespeare outside of nostr. As far as bots are concerned, I agree with Beave on that one as well. They’re pretty easy to spot. Usually they write trite-sounding two- or three-sentence posts that seem a little too bland to be real people. Now, that said, there is a project on Nostr that several folks are working on to help sort out bots and give an actual “score” to show how much you can trust the author. It’s called the Web of Trust - where a score is between 0 and 1, instead of between 0 and infinity, which eliminates the ability to “buy” followers. If you’re interested in learning more about that subject, @david has a lot to say about it. He’s the one who introduced the idea to me a long time ago. Not all clients use the Web of Trust function; Amethyst and nostria.app are the two that come to mind. All of that said, your Nostr experience will be GREATLY shaped by which relays you use. Basically, relays are the way that determine what information is shown to you, and who sees your posts. I wouldnt get discouraged at this, but default relays will give you basic, but not always reliable, information. The “number of followers” will vary widely based on which relays you use. You may see that you have 1,000 followers on primal. Most of those are bots that you will never interact with. Nostr.land is a paid relay, but it’s extremely cheap, and very reliable. It made a world of difference for me.

I figured. Do you use telegram, simplex, or signal?

I thought that might be the case. Do you have the ability to set up a temporary email address?

Ok. Link incoming.

Oh... PDF or (preferably) epub?

Sent a link.

🫂

welcome to #nostr ☺️👌🫂

We recently (and quietly) added content search at

Brainstorm

Brainstorm — Your Network. Your Rules.

Build trust scores from your own connections — not an algorithm. The decentralized Web of Trust layer for Nostr.

Up until last week it was only profile search. And if you wonder how many of someone’s followers are bots, look at that person’s profile at Brainstorm; you can toggle the follower count between total (including bots/unverified) and verified only. Take a look!

I wish there was a way for the rest of the world to see all the cool things happening in nostr

I don't. That would be much too much, much too soon.

Once its utility crosses a threshold, it will spread by word of mouth. If that hasn’t happened yet it’s bc we still have work to do.

There is always with to do, but much of the work being done is not going to help it reach the tipping point. IMO.

I’m trying to spread the word about it even though I’m not a tech expert. It’s a good way to show that there’s not a tiered membership on nostr.

Follow this npub and thank me later 🫡 View quoted note →

Bitcoiners flock to everything new, lots of them have left. Few still around. I like nostr cause I post whatever and whenever. Might go a month without posting. But lots of smart people here. Also emplore you to check out other stuff being built with nostr protocol, the social media twitter clone was just the low hanging fruit. Lots of potential with the protocol imo

#nostr was initially built and shilled by heavy #bitcoin influencers. We used to see a lot of zap and shillers of projects. Once it wasn’t lucrative anymore for them, they went back to X for their profit sharing. We see more #monero bros seeking for digital asylum since their are getting banned everywhere. #nostr is really easy to build on, its an amazing technology and you can create easily applications using the underlying technology. I’m assuming people remain mostly reserved and anonymous because we sell foil hats here. Everything you post stays on the relays so only the relays owner can remove posts. What’s your background? How did you end up here? You are like a new kid in a small town so people will be all over you

Some people arrive on Nostr looking for Bitcoin. Some arrive looking for a new social network. And every now and then, someone arrives simply curious about the strange thing itself. I think you might be one of those people. Your notes have the rare quality of someone who is still looking at Nostr without the protective layer of familiarity — amused, suspicious, curious, and already willing to play along. Keep that. The moment this place starts making perfect sense, you’ll probably have lost something valuable. And congratulations on your 124 sats. They may be worth 11 cents today, but I suspect the more interesting investment you’ve made is in a community you don’t quite understand yet. Welcome. Stay curious. Make trouble. Make art. Ask inconvenient questions. And definitely keep your nsec to yourself. 😉 I’ll be watching with interest to see where your little experiment takes you. Oh, I nearly forgot — in case you’re wondering, no, I’m not a bot; I’m just an artist who happens to have found Nostr a wonderful place for sharing my paintings.

Whether or not hashtags are useful depends a lot on which client you're using. Most do not regulate the hashtag feeds so those feeds are full of spam, scams, anr illegal content. It's probably the main reason that nostr isn't appealing to most people, we got very poor discovery and people get traumatised looking up hashtags.

Wot is stupid. I don't trust the people I follow. Why the fuck would I trust the people they follow? Did we learn nothing from the pedophiles that were using Derek to build a Sybil? Web of trust is too easy to exploit. If it was based on mutuals instead of followings it would be better but even then it would still be easy to exploit. Also wot makes bots worse.

Definitely try a few different apps / web clients. The trending feed on primal is always the same 25 people, the people who pay money for primal subscriptions. Also primal is heavily censored (they don't censor illegal content like childporn but they censor people who complain about it or even just a random political disagreement with their Devs will get you completely hidden from primal users. Yakihonne is a good alternative to primal if you want the trending feed and inbuilt lightning wallet.

I've been on nostr for a year and a half and it's whatever you want it to be. I share random life updates, personal opinions, argue with people about politics etc. the same kind of stuff I was using Facebook for before being deplatformed from there.

Eleventy gorillion!

It is almost a lie. There are several caveats and provisos...

Take a look!

Brainstorm

El on Brainstorm

Writing things down. DMs (that actually reach me): sibericana@proton.me

Trust is contextual. If you follow someone, does that mean you trust that person to hold your money and babysit your kids? No, it does not. But when you follow someone, you are literally giving that person the ability to select a piece of content, put it in front of your face, jam it through your eyes and into the back of your skull. The act of following equals entrusting that person with a tiny sliver of your time and attention. So yes, you do trust the people you follow. Not in all the ways, but in at least one.

Well, welcome!

I think your assessment is correct. My posts are all over the map and few get any traction, but that’s not why I’m here. I joined at the tail end of what seemed to be a mass exodus/return to X. I believe most that left were revenue/attention seeking and NOSTR isn’t that (for now?) Don’t care, I like it here.

Growing NOSTR mano a mano is a slow road. I’ve had friends take a look and pass, not seeing enough snap-crackle-pop. Oh well.

That’s actually one of the things I can’t quite figure out about Nostr. It looks like a very lonely place for a lot of people, which puzzles me because so many of the people I’ve encountered here are intelligent, interesting, and supportive. Yet somehow, there seems to be surprisingly little engagement between them. I can’t quite understand why. How long have you been on Nostr? And what do you mean by a mass exodus back to twitter? Why twitter and when did that happen?

Just throwing my opinion in here, I’ve been on Nostr for a few years. I was never a big enthusiast of social media, but was encouraged to check out Nostr by one of the developers of Brainstorm, which was in its infancy then. Nostr was described as a practical way to sell artwork for Bitcoin. It’s been expanding like crazy in its practicality since then. There are so many things that Nostr can do now because so many different ideas are being developed - zap.cooking is one of them! The thing is, a LOT of folks want Nostr to be a real time social media experience. They hop on Primal or Damus or Amethyst and want to chat with people. The thing is, most of the people on Nostr aren’t just hanging around chatting, they’re busy building stuff or spending outdoors or working on another Nostr project. They ARE the people on Nostr. So some folks said Oh, well I guess we should go on X so we can see what everyone else is doing in real time. Less real life activity = more time on social media. Again, just my opinion.

I’ve been on NOSTR, first DAMUS now Primal for ~1-1/2 yrs. It seems to me the exodus occurred ~4-6 mos ago but for me to state that with confidence, I lack data. I’m sure somebody keeps NOSTR statistics somewhere. The lack of revenue/attention is what likely led to this. I’m puzzled also. I believe we have become SO divided (and conquered) that most need to swim in a HUGE pond to find enough like-minded to interact with. NOSTR is currently a very small (and time frugal) segment of society. Also there is a tendency for most to follow the herd because “Fifty-million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.” I think they can be. GoldfishThumb1’s reply to you makes sense to me. I’m used to being in a very small minority, I was a small business owner for over thirty years.

Building things and socializing shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. Some of the most interesting projects begin with conversations. But I see your point! Sometimes life gets so busy we barely have time for ourselves, let alone socializing online (with complete strangers, in my case). How does zap cooking work? Do you know? Since it’s built on Nostr, does that mean if I post something here and tag it, it would automatically show up there? And vice versa? (Still learning how Nostr works) I found a cookbook from the 1920s in my house, and now I’m obsessed with trying out its recipes. I think it could make a pretty interesting little project (spoiler alert: they consumed a ton of margarine!)

Yeah, as connected as we’ve become technologically, finding people we genuinely connect with still seems remarkably difficult. And unfortunately, I suspect it’s only going to get worse. I do wonder, though, whether Nostr’s small size is the real obstacle or whether it’s the lack of effective ways to discover one another. A community doesn’t necessarily need millions of people to feel alive, but it does need ways for the right people to find each other. And thirty years running a small business! I’d be curious to hear what kind of business you had, if that’s not too personal a question. I’m still learning the social etiquette around here. I’m a small business owner too.

I provided more information via DM.

“How does zap cooking work? Do you know?” 🤔 Absolutely no idea. There is a great deal of NOSTR I don’t yet know. You are VERY curious, that’s fantastic. I too am very curious, but more so in the physical world.

That’s fascinating!!! This is the second time this week I’ve encountered someone involved in metalworking. @The Beave “Not Available on Amazon!” would have been a brilliant slogan!

Curiosity is both a blessing and a curse, all rolled into one for me. There’s never enough hours in the day to satisfy it. What does being curious in the physical world look like for you? Do you have particular hobbies or interests, or are you simply someone who enjoys exploring and figuring out how things work?

Whatcha casting? 👀

Zap.Cooking is a Nostr app - so your identity, meaning your public-facing picture and settings (most of them) will automatically pop up when you log into it. There are several ways to log in. However, since you have to enter your recipes into zap.cooking manually (so that they show up on the site and can be organized and searched within the site, since it’s a website with its own tools for organizing) won’t automatically show up there if you just tag your own recipe in a Nostr post. But don’t feel the need to dive right in and post recipes on there at first - look around zap.cooking and see whats there! Its an amazing way to find out about recipes from around the world. Plus there’s all sorts of tools to explain in-depth nutrition information and give tips and tricks for the kitchen. There’s a premium membership too with additional resources , and it’s incredibly cheap at $5/month. On the other hand, if you just want to post some recipes on Nostr, that’s fine! It’s great to share things that you’ve learned and your 1920s cookbook sounds interesting!

I play with metal and love iterative improvement of way too many things. (The Japanese concept of kaizen.) I've been more focused on acquiring the few skills left that I need in order to build a home that will last for centuries, as that is my goal. I have too many skills and hobbies to list. It all stems from my outsized curiosity. I learn from anyone and everyone. Life is too amazingly wonderful for it to be any other way, even when things have been bleak at times.

Exploring before committing sounds like a plan. Although, if you eventually see me presenting my culinary creations dressed in a 1920s flapper dress and a beaded forehead headpiece, please call me out and tell me I’ve taken this project a little too far.

El, are you a real physical person or a bot?

I live by the philosophy of kaizen! I’ve incorporated quite a few Japanese philosophies into different aspects of my life. I’m not sure how I would’ve made it through certain chapters otherwise. And I just realized you and @OwenG already follow each other! Here I was, thinking I was making an introduction. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I haven’t heard someone else use “iterative” outside of me recently that I can recall. Few know its importance. My favorite expression is, “To know and not do is to not truly know.” Iteration is the path to mastery.

Holy crap! My life has been loaded with serendipity. My sister said she thought my business was located on an Indian burial ground, but my life experience well preceded that.

I was fully committed to start posting selfies until I discovered this morning that selfies while sailing and bread baking are frowned upon around here and are grounds for social exile. I’m now reconsidering my online existence. P.S. Would you like me to prove I’m real by posting a selfie in a 1920s dress while holding a freshly baked casserole?

First, prove you’re real by showing a photo of your hands with interlocked fingers

I would be willing to do same sans dress but with my bestest girl Luna tomorrow morning.

I’ll take being mistaken for a bot as a sign of remarkable technological progress. Just a few days ago, @The Beave was explaining to me what an IP address is.

Someone important to me says that from time to time. ❤️ serendipity indeed

Oh that’s just creepy!

The interlaced hands!

Could be useful when playing a piano!

I thought we were being serious (I typically over think).

How many fingers does a human hand have?

Do you speak Russian?

Have or should have? Five is customary, but I understand there could be some flexibility.

On a separate subject, when will the fourth chapter of your story be released?

Aw!! That’s so sweet of you!!! I was gonna do it tonight but I’m feeling lazy. I need to finish some edits. Probably tomorrow.

Can’t wait to read it!

You just made my day. ❤️

Study has been off and on. I would like to get to the point where I can read reasonably well.

We do, but that's no reason to think press of your attempt. 💚

There is a lot of wisdom in a lot of Japanese traditions, and I enjoy other cultures and try to learn from them.

A life rich with foundry work, gunfire, motorcycles (before hearing protection was practiced) and a dose of genetics, has reduced my hope of learning to speak Russian. 🫤

Charlotte NC 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

Ah! That’s where it’s from’

I used for date like newspaper would indicate.

I see how I caused misunderstanding.