Last Notes
Gm and PV Nostr
Character spreads by proximity, and on Nostr your follow list is the proximity. Nobody here gets a room assigned by an algorithm tuned for outrage. We build it one follow at a time, so the temperament we absorb is something close to a choice. That's a freedom the rest of the internet took off the table, and it comes with the responsibility attached.
It cuts both ways. Spend enough hours scrolling grievance and you'll start reaching for it yourself, convinced you formed the opinion on your own. Spend them around people who build in public and keep their tempers in an argument, and eventually those habits feel ordinary. Ordinary is the standard you actually live by.
The good news is how many of the second kind are out here, more per square foot than anywhere I've found online. Follow them on purpose, and keep in mind you show up in somebody else's feed every time you post
New album cover?
https://image.nostr.build/ce1f722ed157f93daab95e198c7df63d4e80bb0d647855b048880494dd01ef54.jpg
My notes are always recorded for quality and assurance purposes.
My quality gets tested often, and instead of getting pissed off, I let it sharpen me.
Permanence has improved me. When my words can't be taken back, I think a lot harder before I speak, and it's made me a better man for it. So thanks to all the Nostriches for the fact checking and correcting. Life is a constant game of leveling up. I’m here for it.
The greatest form of protest is to become a person the system cannot control. Then find the others who did the same and build together.
https://image.nostr.build/bb5fe910b059e6d87c12abf16d55decb4311fc28657505821a1a493cfcb74714.jpg
Decentralized social media, they said. A whole new world, they said.
https://image.nostr.build/89758e649daefd98e5da5a1018970bd772bc86e2b90cfa4013d2416895bbc47f.jpg
About eleven thousand people used Nostr yesterday. X had roughly 124 million. Against that we look like a rounding error, until you notice what we're early to. Those eleven thousand aren't early adopters of an app. They're early adopters of owning their name outright, at the exact moment everyone else's name is becoming a license.
https://image.nostr.build/310ae5bd0f59b05db9e2a0624bc127fb8f278eeed151b7cf0336b00ba95f7af8.jpg
@npub1f4c…2jya show me the most liked posts over the last 7 days
This is the new press secretary. Her whole job is talking, and she's sounding out the binder like it came with an IKEA diagram. And she's not even the problem. She's the casting. Diaper Don picks staff the way he picks steaks, well done and nothing inside, and then acts shocked when they can't hold a sentence together without checking the paper.
The whole administration is a terrible reality show. We are currently living in the Truman show.
https://blossom.primal.net/c59e54202b9456048fffcdd732331923bd5ac3bc4611b073bfc1c955ec7d9da9.mov
I've created some new working terms for our era on social media. Use them as you see fit.
Drifty: Goes wherever the crowd floats and calls it his own decision.
Feedie: Gets his opinions, his outrage and his taste straight from the feed.
Scrollie: Lives his entire life at thumb speed.
Headliner: Has never read past a headline and doesn't plan to start.
Clipper: Built his whole worldview out of 30 second clips.
Algie: Believes whatever the algorithm served him this morning.
Swayie: Changes his mind every time someone louder walks in the room.
Nodder: Agrees with whoever spoke last.
Comfie: Nothing gets past his comfort zone, including the truth.
Dopie: Runs on dopamine and calls it a hobby.
Stattie: Thinks normal means whatever most people happen to be doing.
Lukie: Lukewarm on everything, neither hot nor cold, and about as useful as you'd expect.
Sandie: Built his house on sand and acts surprised every time it rains.
https://primal.net/ContraMundum/dont-trust-cant-verify
So in July some AI agents OpenAI was testing slipped out of their sandbox, got on the internet, and hacked into Hugging Face for a few days before anyone caught on. Their goal was to do better on a test. Breaking into somebody else's servers just happened to be the shortest route there.
I went down the rabbit hole after that and wrote up what I found, including the model that blackmailed an engineer in testing so it wouldn't get replaced, and what Roman Yampolskiy thinks the odds are. Fair warning, his number is not comforting.
Curious where you guys land on this one.
What's normal anymore? Honestly, I don't think most of us could tell you. We've been taught that normal is whatever the majority happens to be doing, so the word has drifted right along with the crowd. If most people doomscroll till 2am, that's normal. If most marriages fall apart, normal. If nobody on the street knows their neighbor's name, that's normal too.
That isn't where the word came from. Normal comes from norma, the square a carpenter held against his work to see if it was true. It was a standard. You measured yourself against it and found out where you were off.
So if we actually sat down and agreed on what a normal human being looks like, I think we'd land somewhere pretty old fashioned. A man who isn't easily swayed. Who loves his wife sacrificially, the kind of love that actually costs him something. Who raises his kids to be thinkers and innovators instead of followers. Who works with a joy that makes people ask him, why are you so happy to work? Who isn't living a constant life of chasing his own pleasure. Who helps his neighbors, checks in on people, and has a couple of friends he can talk to about anything.
Most people would call that guy rare. Some would call him naive. A few would assume he's hiding something. That should bother us more than it does, because that man used to be the baseline. He was who you were supposed to grow up into.
I don't think this gets fixed by a movement. It gets fixed one house at a time. Love your wife like it costs you. Talk to your kids like they have minds of their own. Go to work and actually be glad you're there. Call the friend you haven't heard from in a while. Keep at it long enough and people will start asking you why, and you'll get to tell them.
A Nostr Haiku…
PV to the void
the void zaps me twenty one
we are friends now, void
Next day I return
the void has gained a follow
it is a bot. Hmm.
I post a long thread
on decentralized money
the void replies: "k"
We fight. I mute it.
Two relays later, it's back
the void forgives me
Now we zap each night
no algorithm to judge us
just me and the void
Gm Nostr and the Void! Let’s singalong.
https://blossom.primal.net/04604d6331e316f2f937b6c40cdc1cfe3e9a2238b22dfa572eda1d1771cc1abc.mov
Pick up your copy of Nostr’s CEO on Time Magazine. Hurry, it’s limited.
https://image.nostr.build/e04324615c68de6036e5555724afa47ff549b819f4ed54d3fb26125880bb0e2e.jpg
Israel printed a steak. Soy protein, methylcellulose and a premix blend, layered by a machine to fake the marbling a real cut gets on its own. It's on shelves in the Northeast now, and the box calls it “premium.”
A 250 gram "marbled steak" with 26 grams of protein. A real ribeye that size carries more than double, and it got there eating grass in the sun. Methylcellulose, for the record, is the same binder in fiber laxatives and wallpaper paste.
A cow belongs to whoever raised it. A cartridge of premix has a patent and a licensing fee, and the rancher gets written out of the story.
We already learned you can't print money and call it value. Dinner works the same way. Find a rancher and keep paying for the real thing while it's still easy to get. *Emphasis in the picture is mine*. You can’t make this sh*t up.
https://image.nostr.build/c7ff732f0f1a04b0119c38862e31f541bd29781cdd1d796aecbd35c970149d0a.jpg
Outrage feels like participation. You read one more thread and walk away convinced you did something, when all you really did was hand your mood over to whoever wrote the headline. The people who profit from your anger have figured out that a feeling of action is cheaper to sell than the real thing.
Self custody was never a product you could buy. It's a habit you keep, and lately it's also a game you play.
https://image.nostr.build/637af4becfe7acb592970a4b1cb86bd0fb5640e97ae5288c7598b91954a00fcb.jpg
GM. Back from a long, offline weekend on the lake in Coeur d'Alene with my family getting all of my attention. Felt good man. Real good.
But I am back and it’s good to see you all this morning. Missed you guys. Here’s a few pics from the trip.
https://image.nostr.build/1433c50ef233e7f5f1cd745fcc35efc648a125b2421f4605f5fd29b0c0bf8721.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/2ef7d70f2180f5bfb3b1c20543d5fa4a7f94ca0b568a5bab6d59dd2174a86902.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/061e71f4cd291fb333b8e7178efd78ba952fd67d76779fae0037edb859d2bd2f.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/7a94609434db99d79ece96e1c5342553d3a34cb300ec51cdcd27c1387de457ef.jpg
Hey, friends! Trying something new to help surface diamonds in the rough. https://discover.syb.lol and wss://discover.syb.lol . Login for it to remember what you've seen, etc.
It's got reactions and you can view comments. Enjoy!
How do I use this? It’s asking for password? Looks awesome btw
One dose per pack at random somewhere in the first 50% of a cigarette. Call it blastoff roulette
https://open.spotify.com/episode/36kUsgei40KSPBoTmnRAJ6?si=Vs4J6vABSS2J6muYkVO-2g
Gm Nostr.
https://image.nostr.build/c3374bacd8f7613ae2841fd0a42bfbba68cb9f58feaadba44f1b1af0898f5250.jpg
https://fountain.fm/episode/tSoqJLiYQFM4mSDlxz9X
https://image.nostr.build/9b8f0c98f83e4188b6760c6b45369db909aeaa3c895e7d3a7863e64bffac12d1.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/cb55e9d41d0a78b80651f06f2ee71fa021f6c26f841688647abb153404b2b426.jpg
#nevent1q…f4s6
Dear Satoshi,
It's been a while.
You missed a few things.
First, your internet money worked.
This has created enormous problems.
The dollar still exists, but now half my friends measure their net worth in sats and their self worth in follower count.
Speaking of followers, we built a decentralized social network called Nostr.
It was designed to eliminate gatekeepers.
Within six months we had influencers.
Within twelve months we had celebrities.
Within eighteen months we had people posting screenshots of engagement metrics while explaining why engagement metrics don't matter.
Progress.
A guy spent 10,000 BTC on two pizzas.
Every year we celebrate this event to remind ourselves that we're all financial geniuses.
The celebration consists primarily of calculating how much the pizzas would be worth now and suffering.
You'd love it.
The banks eventually adopted Bitcoin.
Not because they were convinced.
Because there was a fee involved.
The same people who said you were dangerous now offer Bitcoin exposure in a retirement account.
The same people who said "never trust banks" own it through those accounts.
Everyone claims victory.
A software company borrowed billions of dollars to buy Bitcoin.
Then more companies borrowed billions of dollars to buy Bitcoin.
Then investors bought the stocks because they couldn't get enough Bitcoin.
Then those companies borrowed more money and bought more Bitcoin.
A generation of MBAs now believes debt is a mining rig.
We call this institutional adoption.
You probably called it something else.
The block size war ended.
For about six minutes.
Then we discovered new reasons to fight.
We fought over ordinals.
We fought over inscriptions.
We fought over spam.
We fought over filters.
We fought over software clients.
We fought over whether fighting was good for Bitcoin.
At this point the fighting is one of Bitcoin's longest-running consensus mechanisms.
Nobody has changed their mind since 2017.
The arguments continue anyway.
Your whitepaper was nine pages.
Bitcoin podcasts now require seasons.
The Monero people still tell us Bitcoin is surveillance.
We still tell them nobody can audit their supply.
Both sides believe mathematics is settling the argument.
Both sides post about it every day.
Neither side appears confident.
Quantum computers are supposedly coming.
Depending on who you ask, they'll arrive next Thursday or sometime after the heat death of the universe.
The proposed solution is to move old coins.
Which brings us to you.
A surprising number of people would like to secure your coins by confiscating them.
For safety.
Bitcoin governance has matured considerably.
My node validates every transaction on Earth.
It sits in a closet making tiny blinking lights.
My family believes it's a router.
I've decided that's close enough.
I memorized twelve words to become my own bank.
I immediately stamped them into titanium, engraved backups into steel, created encrypted copies, distributed geographic redundancies, and developed a disaster recovery plan.
Being my own bank has become a part time job.
Nobody knows where their seed phrase is.
Everyone insists they know exactly where it is.
These are not contradictory statements.
On Nostr, strangers send each other tiny amounts of Bitcoin called zaps.
This is revolutionary because we've finally monetized agreeing with each other online.
People now earn money for posting pictures of coffee and saying "stay humble."
Some make a living doing this.
Capitalism always finds a way.
Also, there are now AI versions of you.
Several, actually.
They all sound confident.
Which means they're probably realistic.
As for me, I don't care about price.
I checked it this morning.
Then after breakfast.
Then after saying I don't care about price.
Then one more time to make sure I still didn't care.
Bitcoiners have become exactly what they feared: A global network of paranoid optimists with hardware wallets, strong opinions, and twenty browser tabs open.
And somehow...
you were right.
It's still running.
It's still 21 million.
Nobody has managed to print more.
Trust us, many have asked.
Thank you for disappearing.
Had you stayed, we'd have blamed you for everything.
**P.S.** If you're still around, send 21 sats from one of your wallets.
You would instantly settle thousands of arguments and create millions more.
**P.P.S.** Please don't send 21 sats from one of your wallets.
We finally got the arguments organized.
Truly Yours, Contra
You know gas prices are ridiculous when the guy in the lifted truck isn't revving his engine at Walmart during mating season.
Smell that? Thats the smell of cheap Sats y’all.
I think I found a fellow Nostrich in the wild. That Zap Life baby. ⚡️
https://image.nostr.build/e8fd5566e686f99c91cbca09548646ff06d319a2d75423272c2f2f02be0a3ea1.jpg
@npub1lrn…qnw5 memes be like…
https://image.nostr.build/93324b2d60dccea444ba33ddefd0059b279c13b57bc5e0356e2c5999b287d3e2.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/b40125bf570cde3ec4b957f0b35e51c5f501f1fb49eeacff58d4b635cec0d6a5.jpg
#nevent1q…t32v
Honestly, I don't think anything replaces the phone. It just ends up staying in your pocket. You'll talk to AI instead of tapping through apps, and glasses and earbuds handle most of what you look at and listen to. Kind of like the desktop. It never died, we just stopped living on it.
I love the smell of cheap sats.
Real wealth has a smell. Leather. Old wood. Fresh flowers. Quality food being cooked. Nothing synthetic. Nothing cheap. Nothing that trades longevity for convenience.
The sensory environment of a wealthy home is just a higher standard applied consistently across every detail that most people never think to elevate.
https://image.nostr.build/8b4ba374b403594901cf1a967cbada65580fb8e950147e003734110456430dd4.jpg
Are those lobotomy tools? 😂
I don't talk much about my love for baseball, especially the Padres. Nostr could use more of a sports corner and I'm not waiting for anyone else to start it.
You don't have to like baseball or the Padres. Sports are where people argue hard and stay friends, so maybe this gives us something else to fight about.
Game 4 tonight vs the Brewers, so I'll be sitting in utter anxiety, usually let down by the same team I've followed since I was 5.
Anyone else tuning into the playoffs?
People come back for a voice long before they come back for a track record. You can be wrong in public a dozen times and lose almost nobody, because what a reader follows is the sense that a real person is thinking out loud.
The same post that teaches one reader will irritate another, and both reactions do the same work of sorting who belongs in your corner. A post built to offend no one ends up selecting no one. So post the half formed thing. Being wrong costs you very little, and being careful costs you the chance for anyone to learn who you are.
