FeynStructure

Electrician. Eternal student. Bitcoiner. If I Liked your post, it was an accident; Zaps only.

Public Key

npub10sfqr5vucrdnkkgullhu7j9vmesxjtps2arull53q4nrxmwhh8dsemtu2g

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs8cysp6xwvpkemtyw0lm70fzkducrf9sc9w370l6gs2e3ndhtmnkcpr9mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuam9d3kx7unyv4ezumn9wsq3camnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wd46hg6tw09mkzmrvv46zucm0d5k03x3q

Publishing to

relay.wellorder.net

nostr.mutinywallet.com

relay.damus.io

wot.nostr.party

Author Public Key

npub10sfqr5vucrdnkkgullhu7j9vmesxjtps2arull53q4nrxmwhh8dsemtu2g

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Last Notes

2026-05-22 20:59:52 UTC

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Nice. Bitcoin is great, but barter is even better when you can manage it; there's just not as many opportunities due to the coincidence of wants problem.

2026-05-22 15:01:02 UTC

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Fair point.
Where can I order the leatherbound and pay with bitcoin?

2026-05-18 18:41:04 UTC

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Flock Flag Operation.

2026-05-16 20:04:25 UTC

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I like this. The world can be made better through quiet, invisible actions. No one will recognize your contribution, and that's fine.

2026-05-11 01:46:30 UTC

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Citation?

2026-05-07 19:02:05 UTC

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Where do you suppose construction foremen sit in all this? Asking for myself, electrical foreman. It's middle management, of a sort, but inherently anchored to the physical.

2026-05-04 22:06:49 UTC

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After the success of Steak n Shake, I'm waiting for Beyond Meat to start a Bitcoin ETF treasury.

2026-05-03 13:09:11 UTC

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Amen to that.
Bears are for building skills. stacking cheap sats, and hardening conviction.
Bulls give you external validation that you were right all along.
Both feel good, but one is definitely more productive.

2026-04-30 11:41:50 UTC

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One of the greats, a very fine man you might say.

2026-04-29 04:16:10 UTC

I bet you my cat is longer than yours.
#Catstr #WeirdFlex
https://blossom.primal.net/f2f3c7f422074e44ac26ae9894b3972543168b5df6f2133e3aca0d2cfcecbe7c.jpg

2026-04-22 02:17:06 UTC

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Indeed. Let's make it interesting:
Your remaining life is on a slider. How far to the right do you adjust it before that 1 Bitcoin is worth it to you?

2026-04-21 14:04:11 UTC

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Swimming naked can be quite the thrill.

2026-04-19 13:07:16 UTC

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I think it breaks down at some point though.
I'd argue I was in trouble that time two grown adults handcuffed me and threw me in a cell. I was not free to go about my life for some time.

2026-04-17 20:36:59 UTC

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I come at this from the fundamental physics perspective so no, I don't believe we have free will. I behave as if I do, but I didn't really have any choice in that ;)
That raises uncomfortable questions about personal accountability, crime, and punishment however, since a person without free will can't justifiably be punished for taking actions they had no say in (likewise, credit and reward for valuable or good deeds are also moot).
This leads me to one of The Necessary Lies of Civilization*
NLC #1: For a society to function, its members must believe in human free will .
*Credit to CGP Grey for the concept of Necessary Lies of Civilization. See Hello Internet Podcast episode #99 for discussion and examples.

2026-04-17 09:31:14 UTC

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Ties into the free will debate too, IMO. Most of the time it doesn't feel like you're choosing the next word from a selection of options. They kinda just... come out.
One level higher, even if you are choosing from a list of options, where did the list come from? Who selected the options for you to become consciously aware of?
If you're convinced you have free will, who's to say the LLM doesn't? If you're convinced the LLM doesn't, who's to say you do?

2026-04-16 18:00:20 UTC

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I think I'm primed from my days on Reddit where I found it just absolutely cringe when people would go out of their way to thank people for their worthless upvote karma, so on the one hand I lean towards not acknowledging.
On the other hand, zaps are money; they have real value, so it feels a bit different.
Ultimately, I'm with the people who say "expect nothing in return for your generosity." It's a pretty good stance for life generally.
If you need some sort of pat on the back for your zap, just don't zap.

2026-04-12 17:03:59 UTC

Bitcoin payments for cargo tolls may be uncensorable, but the movement of said cargo remains very much censorable with violence.
We may live in a digital age, but we still exist in the physical world. Bitcoin doesn't solve people with guns being dicks or tyrants.

2026-04-06 15:52:37 UTC

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"Don't pay attention to the fiat price, it literally does not matter. The price of Bitcoin measured in worthless toilet paper is meaningless."
Uhh, no. That toilet paper is currently the best proxy for bitcoin's purchasing power. Bitcoin is money. I care how much my money can buy. I also care what my sat-denominated salary is. It cuts both ways. We're not all monks, it's fine to pay attention to such things.

2026-04-05 20:37:24 UTC

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Can relate. Aiming for right-curve but will settle for left-curve.

2026-04-01 20:39:30 UTC

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A lot of Bitcoiners voted for that immoral retard, somehow thinking that "this politician will be different."

2026-03-26 14:00:58 UTC

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This is where I think Lyn Alden might be onto something.
Big prints have been conspicuous due to their spikiness. If they just do it at a constant rate without letting up, it becomes the new norm, not some anomaly.
Of course, the system will still break at some point, but I suspect they will get away with it longer using this strategy.

2026-03-25 18:36:53 UTC

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Probably a good idea to cover up so you don't get any Vegas on you.

2026-03-23 21:51:01 UTC

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Peter Schiff reportedly checked into psychiatric hospital, mumbling "Ponzi scheme" and "intrinsic value" to himself over and over.

2026-03-23 19:15:05 UTC

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Suck it, Schiff!

2026-03-22 18:06:56 UTC

"You don't get it. There is no head to cut off; it's a conglomerate.
If one of them betrays the principles of the accrual of money and power, the others betray him.
What it is, is human weakness. You can't kill that with a gun."
https://blossom.primal.net/0833127b0f5873635a4a1da1303aa6a86bc5c1e10b861c3d4b5efa4476bd4caa.jpg

2026-03-22 16:01:33 UTC

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It's not as bad yet, but it's definitely got its tentacles into Nostr too. Not surprising given the strong crossover interest with AI in the Bitcoin community.
On the one end of the spectrum, one might use AI to merely pull quotes of things they've previously said and automate posting them. On the other end of the spectrum there's pure slop; shiny generated pictures, em dashes and all. Somewhere in between might be taking things you've said previously and expanding on them in "your" voice.
Where would you draw the line?

2026-03-21 13:48:36 UTC

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Don't worry, our dear leaders will save us.
https://blossom.primal.net/706e1c458ea658448dc80597be1c39f2f5d12833d26e4cf562e83532ad2d9ddd.jpg

2026-03-19 17:45:39 UTC

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Yes, this is essentially a modern day Alaska purchase, where resource rich land was sold for two cents an acre, and everybody looks back now like "boy wasn't that a monumental fuck up to sell it that cheap."

2026-03-19 13:18:29 UTC

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So much to do, so much to see, so what's wrong with taking the back streets?

2026-03-18 21:53:02 UTC

The Physical Record of a Man On the World
I recently went back to my old neighborhood to look at the home I grew up in until the age of 13. Located on a rural street, half an hour from the nearest (small) town, far from the city which I now inhabit, it was the first time I had returned in over twenty years.
A tin can of a double-wide trailer, it's not much to look at, and I'm surprised it's still standing at all. It was in questionable shape when we lived there, and it's been through much since then, I'm sure.
From the respectful distance of the street (I'm not the type to go knocking on some stranger's door for a stronger hit of nostalgia), it wasn't the house that most drew my attention, however. Two other features interested me more.
One, the workshop in the back yard. My father built that shop when I was a child, mostly by himself although a friend would come by and help occasionally when the strength of two men was called for. Somewhere within those walls there even exist nails clumsily pounded in by my sister and I, as we learned firsthand the skill required in even the simple act of wielding a hammer. It takes many hundreds of such clumsily pounded nails before they glide in with ease, as if on command. The designs of the mind do not flow freely through into the world; they must submit to the limitations of the body, and of the tool. To become a master of one's tools, one must first be their disciple.
A humble man, my father owned and ran a small business installing sheet metal gutters when I was born; simple, unglamorous work, largely devoid of craftsmanship (although one can still find opportunities for craftsmanship, however small, in any job). He soon exited that business, however, and returned to being an employee, now in local woodworking shops, building cabinets and millwork. Low quality stuff, but it paid the bills (barely).
The shop in the back yard was where he could work on personal projects, art pieces, and some of his greatest works: grandfather clocks (very much pieces of art in their own right). Over the years, through uncountable evenings and weekends, whenever he could find time between raising his kids and maintaining his home, he honed his craft. In recent years he has become recognized as a master in the highest echelon of his craft: those building fine works of wood in the Pacific Northwest.
That upward trajectory, imperceptible at first, started in that shop and compounded over decades. I don't know what that building is used for today; it could very well be a play space for kids away from the house, or merely used for storage, but there it stands, a silent testament to one man's pursuit of excellence.
Something else began in that shop; something that was never completed, at least not by my father.
Geodesic domes have long appealed to various hippies, libertarians, and science-lovers seeking to improve their land with strong, cheap structures built of simple, repeated elements. My father was somewhat of a blend of those three archetypes, and I think the mathematical elegance of the structure appealed to him. Being a clock-maker, mathematics (and in particular, geometry) was as much a tool of his trade as any saw or chisel.
In the early 90's he set about cutting and shaping the edges and faces for two small wooden domes that were to be constructed on our property (I say "our" but in reality we just leased it from the local First Nations band). Everything was made of scrap 2x4 and plywood from local construction sites, collected for free, and the pieces of the frame were designed to interlock, no fasteners needed.
He never ended up building those domes. All the pieces were stowed away in the crawlspace below his shop but he and my mother ended up separating before construction could begin. He left, moving to the city, and left the pieces of his project behind. My sister and I would soon follow him, and when my mother finally moved away from that place, those pieces still remained, forgotten and collecting dust over the years.
It must have been a curious find for the new inhabitants: piles of identical struts and triangular boards, meticulously stacked and organized, with no (as far as I'm aware) explanation or instructions. For a certain type of mind, finds like this can be quite captivating, as they represent an opportunity for modern day anthropological research. Who fashioned these artifacts? What is their purpose? What do they say about the values and proclivities of those who lived on this land before us?
When I visited my childhood home again, it was evident that someone had found those pieces, deduced their purpose, and put them to use. The plywood faces were not used, but they had built the two frames out in the spacious yard and covered them in clear sheet plastic, creating greenhouses or perhaps just freestanding sunrooms, I couldn't tell from the distance. From across time and space, my father had given them an idea and the materials to create something beautiful and functional that allowed them to connect with nature in a different way.
My father's legacy encompasses more than just the physical structures outlined here, but it is a humble one nonetheless. His name is known by few, his stature in his craft appreciated only by those with the commensurate knowledge to make such fine distinctions. He has acquired no significant wealth. But he has left his mark on the world in ways big and small, visible and anonymous.
I hope to do the same.
https://blossom.primal.net/002896970a77f7ea9472cf84344c0cc5343ee210df610099a6bd3ba15b557560.jpg

2026-03-15 14:55:56 UTC

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I'd argue that 95k is still pretty cheap but yeah, these sellers doing us a solid right now; their sacrifice will not be forgotten.

2026-03-15 13:43:46 UTC

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It's a complicated story but it basically comes down to efficiency; if DC were the standard, electrical power would probably cost at least 10x what it does now, and that would filter into every product that uses electricity as an input.
Basically, we can't afford it, and the entire electrical system would have to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. This would be a century long project at this point.

2026-03-15 13:37:17 UTC

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...
Here's the actual article. The RF is what would come from your wifi, ELF-MF is what would come from the AC current in your walls.
Good-ish news on the RF side of things is that it seems that it's just the tablets (with or without internet connectivity) that are shown to be dangerous devices (by this study, at least); cell phones showed no increased risks.
I'm also a bit curious about why ELF-MF is so much higher in Mexico City (where the study was conducted) than global average.
Interestingly, wifi and Bluetooth headphones are never mentioned.

2026-03-15 00:20:39 UTC

Does anyone remember Nexopia?
Probably not, unless you were a millennial in western Canada in the mid-2000's. Nexopia was a curious example of a social media platform that, despite being online and globally accessible, nevertheless had tight geographic localization. About 50% of the user base was located in Alberta and British Columbia, with another 30-40% in Canada broadly. I suppose this is because it was founded in Edmonton, and mostly spread by word of mouth back then.
Launched in early 2003, it predated MySpace by six months, and Facebook by one year. Despite its head start, it never achieved the same success of those two giants and remained a distinctly Canadian phenomenon. For a handful of years, it was the place to be online for an angsty emo high schooler in Canada's southwest quadrant.
Some context here: no one really knew what kind of place this was yet, or how these platforms would come to shape culture. Almost all interaction with the platform occurred at home, on a (probably shared) desktop computer. Internet connections were often still dial-up, and even the broadband of the time wasn't great by modern standards (we thought it was amazing though).
Uploading photos was a technical challenge. Phones (at least the cheap ones our parents gave us) didn't typically have cameras yet, mobile internet was little more than a proof of concept, and there was no widely available cloud services, so getting your picture online usually consisted of:
1. Get a dedicated digital camera (not cheap at the time).
2. Figure out how to physically bridge it to the brick on your desktop. Maybe the camera used SD cards, but did your family's computer have a way of reading them? Perhaps there was a cord that came with the camera, but was there a port for it on your computer? Things weren't well standardized back then. Can I find an adapter at RadioShack? What software do I need? What the hell is a driver? Better look it up on Yahoo, hope I don't get any viruses when I download this...
3. If you made it through step 2 and the pictures actually existed in digital form on your computer's hard drive, congratulations. You didn't really understand what you did or how any of the shit you just downloaded to make it happen worked, but you won. Now just upload them to the platform. This will take at least a few minutes per low-resolution photo.
4. Now wait for an actual human employee to manually review your picture for ToS violations and voila! The world can now see a blurry picture of your sick skateboarding skillz.
Nexopia was the first social media platform I ever used, and it would be the last for two decades until I reemerged on Primal recently. There was something special and unique about it that could never be replicated by the corporate giants that would soon come to dominate the space. Nexopia in the mid-2000's was a time and place that felt like it largely belonged to one generation of young Canadians who were, together, leaving the innocence of their analog youth behind and leaping into a brave new digital future. We didn't know what we were doing, or where we were going, or that we would someday miss where we came from.
We can never return to the innocence of our analog past. The world has changed, as we have changed. I suspect that much of millenial 90's nostalgia is probably just misplaced sadness for the lost innocence of our childhood.
But it is, perhaps, a childhood innocence that can no longer truly exist, one that died with our generation. We lived through the final days of a world where a kid could just be a kid: believe in Santa without the ability to ruthlessly fact-check him on Google, say and do stupid things without fear of them being forever immortalized online, experience love and sexuality as a progressively revealed mystery, not a grotesque spectacle of voyeuristic debauchery. We didn't know what we had until it was gone, and now we live in a world where it is difficult for any child to have this experience of youth.
We can't return to the innocence of our childhood, nor should we seek to. Once our eyes have been opened to the harsh truths of the world, they cannot be shut. But everyone deserves a period of innocence before these harsh truths are revealed, and to have them revealed incrementally.
We can't go back to the world as it was, but we can create homes and families and ways of living that allow kids to just be kids again, in a world that pushes them relentlessly towards jadedness.
https://blossom.primal.net/b2145f1d8475904ae0bff2b1fe691572bcb9d9b9de2fbad5428bbdd413771436.jpg

2026-03-14 11:14:22 UTC

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It's the straddling of the pre- and post-internet eras that is so unique, I think. My childhood occurred in a world that had not yet undergone that great paradigm shift.
We can never go back to that world, and that's fine. There's a lot that's better about this new world too. But I'll always be grateful for my analog youth. It was a more innocent time.

2026-03-14 00:25:43 UTC

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The bombings will continue until debt-to-GDP improves.

2026-03-13 15:57:01 UTC

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Looks like step 4 to me, although step 3 stuff continues to occur through step 4.

2026-03-13 15:08:18 UTC

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Haha, it's called recency bias, and I have to check mine frequently. Our brains are not as rational as we might hope.

2026-03-13 13:13:16 UTC

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Sounds good to me 👍

2026-03-13 10:02:09 UTC

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Hi Jor. I'm a fellow Canadian, an electrician, and a Bitcoiner. I've been lurking on Nostr for awhile and just started posting recently, just random stuff that I'm thinking about. Check me out if you're interested.

2026-03-12 04:18:32 UTC

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Great perspective.
People often dismiss the centralization of the unit as unimportant, "it's just the nodes that matter." But somewhere between the 3.5% they own now and 100%, there is a line. A fuzzy line, perhaps, but a line nonetheless.
Let us hope they never cross it.

2026-03-11 15:35:34 UTC

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Agreed. I paid for YT Premium to avoid ads, I don't need that shite injected directly into the content.

2026-03-11 02:13:29 UTC

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That man knows how to please a woman, I guarantee it.

2026-03-10 19:47:27 UTC

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I dunno if that's the peak man, you didn't even buy CumRocket.

2026-03-10 02:40:20 UTC

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In the spirit of science, I have elected to conduct numerous experiments on my brain chemistry over the years.
Positive results generally came from naturally occurring substances.

2026-03-09 13:07:20 UTC

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"I had no idea this gif/meme is where that [movie] came from."
It was just that good of a meme.

2026-03-09 00:17:42 UTC

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Hell yeah.
I am, in fact, an electrician, and I can tell you that we (and the skilled trades in general) need all the smart people we can get.
A couple of decades of funnelling every smart kid into college (and telling them that the trades are just for the dummies who couldn't hack it in higher education), has left us sorely low on talent.
We are the people building your homes so they don't fall down (and wiring them such that they don't erupt in flames). You want competent people doing that.

2026-03-08 17:07:39 UTC

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https://strc.live/
Active during New York market hours, assuming STRC is trading above par.

2026-03-08 11:19:31 UTC

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The ironic thing is that the logical time to buy STRC was back in the summer when the bitcoin-fiat exchange rate was high, and yet they didn't sell much at the time.
Right now is like, the worst time to be buying STRC, when sats are stupidly cheap. And yet here we are: people piling into fiat instruments for 11.5% yield at the bottom of a bear market, or close to it.
He's exploiting a moment of deep value, right in front of their faces, with their own money. Wild.

2026-03-08 04:44:09 UTC

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I was careful to use the words "might have." For many people, I'm sure it was valuable regardless of recent developments. As you point out, learning begets more learning, and you never know where you might end up.
For others, they may have spent fortune (possibly borrowed) on a university degree, expecting a lucrative career on the other end that never panned out.
To your point, I'll never regret the three months I spent learning Fortran, even if it's likely I will never use it in any practical application. It opened my mind to the logic of programming, and that's been incredibly valuable in a difficult to quantify way.

2026-03-08 04:25:38 UTC

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Is it the "learn to code moment" 10 years ago, when they had to face up to their own technical inadequacies?
Or is it the one right now where it turns out to have been a significant opportunity cost that might have been better spent learning something else?
Both tough pills to swallow.

2026-03-07 21:02:39 UTC

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STRC pretty much taking care of that singlehandedly, if the numbers are to be believed.
Of course, without proof of reserves it's all just a trust me bro situation, so who knows.

2026-03-07 19:14:58 UTC

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We need to bring back "peevish" and "peevishly." Those are good words.

2026-03-07 18:51:01 UTC

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"It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay".

2026-03-07 14:37:39 UTC

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If you're gonna jump, do a flip.

2026-03-06 22:03:55 UTC

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Thanks for piping up, I didn't get it.

2026-03-06 16:42:19 UTC

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Absolutely; skills are the hardest asset.
"You can just do things" applies just as much to the physical realm as the digital. That plumber is exploiting a knowledge asymmetry, and quite profitably too.

2026-03-06 16:16:51 UTC

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Sounds a bit condescending to a guy who just charged you $2745 for something you could have learned to do yourself.
Maybe he should have been schooling you.

2026-03-06 02:29:08 UTC

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Nero.

2026-03-06 00:00:54 UTC

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That's very Zen, but as long as someone is willing to give me scarce sats for infinitely printable trash units, the dollar price has a meaningful impact on me and my ability to acquire true wealth. Ignoring that does make one wiser.

2026-03-04 15:23:15 UTC

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Every time, I buy that dip... And every goddamn time I look back and HODL's in my head telling me I didn't stack hard enough.
It's a tale as old as time(chain).

2026-03-04 02:53:08 UTC

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All we really know for certain is that he SAYS he is buying that much, and his custodian at Coinbase tells him he owns 700k+, because trust me bro.
Analysts can probably point out the suspected addresses where all that coin is held; what they can't tell us with any certainty is if he's the only one with a claim to it.

2026-03-04 00:15:37 UTC

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Consider me wildly apathetic. I'm here for the separation of money and state, not rules and regulations on shitcoins.

2026-03-01 18:30:20 UTC

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You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself promote yield on Bitcoin.

2026-03-01 13:46:58 UTC

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We all remember Josh Mandell, right?

2026-02-28 05:39:25 UTC

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https://blossom.primal.net/8eaf3d88905db5319b5a531164c717500cac2739fdd9e8a476f11ed12a260d95.jpg

2026-02-27 13:43:56 UTC

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Retard having a nice resurgence though. Haven't heard anyone say "the R word" in quite awhile. That was super cringe.

2026-02-25 22:11:27 UTC

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For some reason people didn't find peer-to-peer electronic cash nearly as compelling, even though that's the real superpower.

2026-02-25 21:44:46 UTC

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More or less that entire field of discussion can be one-shotted with "just evaluate people on their individual merits."

2026-02-25 17:48:16 UTC

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Yeah it's a greasy move on their part, but the cheap sats were nice while they lasted.

2026-02-25 16:22:13 UTC

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I'm locked in and fully erect.

2026-02-25 15:00:12 UTC

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People who don't take self custody probably eat Impossible Burgers.

2026-02-25 12:19:49 UTC

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A tip of the hat to all the developers building software and hardware that, each year, makes it a little bit easier on the technical side.
And a raise of the glass to all the the educators and podcasters that, each year, shepherd a few more people across the valley of doubt.
It will be easy someday, and when that that day comes, everyone will be doing it.
Cheers brother.

2026-02-25 02:18:22 UTC

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Fun fact: 100% of any SOTU is political horseshit.

2026-02-24 13:59:18 UTC

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Early adopters selling some to fund well deserved life improvements is fair enough.
It's the lack of adoption by (to a rounding error) everyone else that concerns me.
It's like I'm standing in a room full of starving people, trying to point out an infinite buffet of healthy food while they fight over a half bag of stale Doritos.

2026-02-24 04:36:10 UTC

Relativity and quantum mechanics get so much of the attention in physics, but thermodynamics will always hold a special place in my heart.
You start out with some dudes in the 1800's just trying to increase the efficiency of their steam engines, and if you follow the math far enough down the rabbit hole eventually you end up revealing the reason why time only appears to flow in one direction.
https://blossom.primal.net/1eea03b20a16689b7bed7314bf072076316a485538f06cac6c61b6a61967ba38.jpg

2026-02-24 04:11:04 UTC

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Trevor, sats, let's go.

2026-02-23 20:56:31 UTC

Metal coins, if they must exist (questionable), should not be ferromagnetic.
Look, I love iron as much as the next guy. When alloyed with carbon and other elements, it allows for the greatest feats of engineering this world has ever seen.
Additionally, it helps ferry oxygen around my body. Very cool.
But declaring that a coin that weighs 0.015 lbs, when iron trades at well under a dollar per lb, is worth $2 is fucking ludicrous. The small quantities of other metals present do not impress me.
https://blossom.primal.net/8c960e262af042896f1676abc482d127bde68bcde1894fab1764325f7fcb0af8.jpg

2026-02-23 13:03:30 UTC

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"Our Great War is a spiritual war; our Great Depression is our lives."
-TD

2026-02-23 03:30:51 UTC

"There is a real freedom of speech on a job site, which reverberates outward and sustains a wider liberality. You can tell dirty jokes. Where there is real work being done, the order of things isn't quite so fragile."
-Matthew Crawford: "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work" (2009)
https://blossom.primal.net/9c919424a7b413838c5713b9fda73fcfecf6f6703e16a07b18d845ec60ff9dbe.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/f66cd3328288953beae84d9baa6f7eb99ae21186cc2625c72410012f0ab29bac.jpg

2026-02-23 03:06:29 UTC

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pit pat piffy wing wong wang.

2026-02-23 03:05:05 UTC

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Those who can't do, teach.

2026-02-22 17:24:04 UTC

I have taken a non-standard path.
I have been home schooled. I have attended public schools, small town and big city, regular and french immersion. I have never graduated high school.
I moved out on my own and was financially independent at age 17. I have worked terrible jobs for insulting pay in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Labouring in the freezing cold for bitter old men who reeked of beer and cigarettes at 9 o'clock in the morning. Stinking dish pits; infernal, claustrophobic kitchens. I have stolen food from the restaurants I worked at because I was flat broke four days before payday and too proud to ask for help (but not so proud as to not compromise my ethics).
I took the bus for years as a grown adult. I have been threatened, assaulted, and thrown up on during those rides. I have swallowed my pride, kept my head down, and kept working, getting nowhere for years but still surviving.
I am not one of those "no regrets" guys. I regret a ton, but I don't dwell on it. I regret most of the coke, but none of the acid.
I have attended university and studied physics. Yes, you can just do that, no high school diploma required. Those years expanded my mind in a way that no drug ever could, but left me saddled with much student debt. I never completed my degree. It turns out you have to be pretty goddamn smart to make it in a program like that, and I am half-clever at best. I'd still like to learn tensor calculus and tackle general relativity someday though, when I have a bit more time.
I have started a new career as an electrician. First year apprentice at the age of 29. Back to being a nobody for a few years. The kitchen may have been awful, but I was at the top of my game there, and respected. Another reset. It felt like an eternity at the time but looking back it was a flash. First journeyman, then foreman. I feel pride in my work now, bringing electrical power to the people of my city. I am well paid.
I have lived an interesting life, and there's plenty more to go. It makes for a good story, and perhaps I am stronger and wiser because of it, but I wouldn't recommend this particular path to anyone. Each of us must become anti-fragile on our own terms.
https://blossom.primal.net/fc3f7113325347cc4871069679e2d5735860ac0b6003de34ded1c18f4d95f07a.jpg

2026-02-22 15:43:43 UTC

"Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government."
-Andrew Jackson, 1832
https://blossom.primal.net/a4c33ccffd08cee86027236f0290690f674ff4ac46d4241d0f6776f485a533e5.jpg

2026-02-22 14:34:32 UTC

Bitcoin is the only form of money that is Proper.
IYKYK
https://blossom.primal.net/b2f1309db82aa478fa31e9defc43bfd9d4e95db315f2a8cfe5ac8bbc20efe361.jpg

2026-02-22 13:59:03 UTC

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This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

2026-02-22 05:56:54 UTC

My second clear memory of money is of finding it on the ground. This was a more common experience back when physical cash was the default payment method for small to medium transactions, but it was still rare enough to be an exciting thrill whenever it occurred.
The amount in question that I found on this earliest occasion was $2. Not much, but $2 in the early 90's was worth at least double what it is now, and $2 always means more to a little kid than a grown adult.
Laying in the grass on the side of the road, I had passed it by on the way to the corner store. In my peripheral vision, the soft brown of the Canadian $2 note didn't attract much attention among the dried maple leaves that littered the ground. I managed to spot it on my way home though, and it made my day.
It is odd to consider now though, in the context of the ledger theory of money. In the dollar system, physical banknotes represent little pieces of the ledger that have broken off and started floating around in spacetime, opaque, untraceable until they pass through another surveillance checkpoint within the system.
With a commodity money like gold, more or less the entire ledger is opaque. Each person knows only their own balance. A full reserve bank* would know the respective balances of each of their clients. But no one knows the full state of the ledger, anonymously or otherwise. This will always be the case for commodities, and illustrates the farcical nature of the notion of a "market capitalization" of gold.
Physical banknotes are thus a curious anachronism, harkening back to commodity money systems of the past in their physicality and bearer nature. They still exist today in 2026 by virtue of our recent past, but I suspect that their days are numbered. If they didn't exist right now, they would never be allowed to be invented. Too opaque, too easy to transact with freely. If the fiat system was all we had, it would be a shame to see them go, but it's a moot point now. They served some kind of purpose within a rotten system, but we're ready to ditch that whole system now so it doesn't matter anyways.
* It would be nonsensical to say that a fractional reserve bank** knows the respective balances of each of their clients, since these balances are fraudulent. They are akin to a quantum wave function, in that how much money any one particular person owns is undefined until a measurement is performed: a bank run.
** It should be noted that even fractional reserve banking basically doesn't exist anymore, in the sense of currency partially backed by gold or other valuable commodities. Modern day fiat currencies operate on a system of fictional reserve banking, by which is meant that all "reserves," fractional or otherwise, represent nothing of value and are created at no cost.
It is with great irony that we note that, as of this writing, the only currency that claims to be partially backed by gold is the Zimbabwean ZiG, introduced in April of 2024 after the collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar, and which has already lost around 50% of it's purchasing power in less than two years.
https://blossom.primal.net/885ea9fb3f679cba10e4aa7261513adbf5fc4d566ada9366cddaafedcb176a40.jpg

2026-02-22 01:09:35 UTC

My first clear memory of money stems from my days as a paperboy.
For those too young to remember, newspapers (literal, physical bundles of paper) were important conduits of information just a couple of decades ago. And to get one to the front door of the majority of houses in the nation posed a problem of logistics. Hiring adults, even at legal minimum wage, would have been prohibitively expensive and besides, they had more complex jobs to do.
Thus, an army of boys and girls took up the task through the generations. My sister and I were two such children.
The job consisted of delivering newspapers to each subscribers house twice a week, and then collecting payments once a month, in cash.
After that we'd calculate and set aside the amount owed to the newspaper company, and then split the remainder 50/50 (we split the houses on our one route). Sometimes we got tips, since "keep the change" was a semi-common practice in the days of cumbersome physical cash, and Christmas time was particularly generous in this regard.
The particular memory that sticks in my head is one time when we weren't able to split the cash evenly, so it was decided by our parents that my sister would get a $5 bill and give me $2.50 from her piggy bank.
I was very young at the time and couldn't get my head around this. No matter how much they went through it with me, all I could see was that she was getting $5 and I was getting $2.50. I felt cheated.
I'm a lot better at math now.
https://blossom.primal.net/48a6ddfbb984ce3a74a372ca24008f716b545e3c54393f6090fc55c51593aeb9.jpg

2026-02-21 21:30:17 UTC

"It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man."
-Richard Feynman
The fine structure constant (Greek letter α), which governs the strength of interactions in quantum electrodynamics (and whose precise value is one of the fundamental reasons you are able to exist at all), is a derived constant with a value of approximately 1/137.
In any system of units.
Being a ratio of other fundamental constants (namely: the elementary charge, Planck's constant, the speed of light, and either the permittivity or permeability of free space, depending on how you want to write it), the units on the top and bottom cancel out to resolve in a pure number.
It is as yet unclear why it has the value it does, but if it were significantly different in either direction complex matter (and, by extension, you and everything you've ever cared about) would not exist.
It is, in that sense, perhaps the most important number there is.
1/137
https://blossom.primal.net/d9f73bc9d32728adfe563f0e19cb7d2eed13ca97d961f9bf02cdf4fa77e7ccaf.jpg

2026-02-21 19:13:02 UTC

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Late stage, terminal, incurable fiat vibes.

2026-02-20 15:50:03 UTC

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Free... markets?
*clutches pearls*

2026-02-20 14:53:37 UTC

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He's not wrong. Any idiot can buy $20 worth on an exchange and leave it there.
It's the education that some, but not all (perhaps not most) choose to subject themselves to that develops the elite philosopher.

2026-02-20 13:36:00 UTC

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When I started saving in Bitcoin my hands were mere disorganized carbon.
They just needed some pressure.

2026-02-20 00:08:44 UTC

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Enough to make em spendable on the other end, I'd reckon.

2026-02-19 03:56:27 UTC

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Understanding the math is step 1. Accepting the implications of the math is step 2.
Even otherwise smart, analytical people can get stuck at step 2 because they lack the vision to imagine a better world, or even a different world. Either way, it's coming.

2026-02-18 16:19:52 UTC

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It's both.
It's the visionary few who strongly frontran the institutions, enjoying their deserved rewards (hopefully translated into land, livestock, whatever, and not just a pile of dollars), AND
It's also the weak, uneducated (in terms of Bitcoin), high time preference masses giving up their only chance to escape lifelong slavery.
The first part is inspiring, the second part is depressing.

2026-02-18 05:05:49 UTC

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I believe you once said that if you're going to part with your Bitcoin, "Make those fuckers pay."
Those fuckers are not paying nearly enough right now.

2026-02-16 01:46:04 UTC

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Humans can transmit AIDS, naked mole rats cannot.
The choice is obvious.

2026-02-16 00:00:02 UTC

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Radio silence in my neck of the woods. Nevertheless, something is brewing.

2026-02-14 08:05:27 UTC

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A profoundly analog future, it would seem.