LynAlden
Lyn Alden

What made Arcane good ultimately was that so many characters in the conflict made good decisions and tried to do smart things.
A lot of lazy writing relies on people making irrational decisions or having lots of miscommunications. This show highlighted the difficulty of the context rather than individual dumb decisions or miscommunication or one-note characters: it was about the economic and ethical backdrop of the situation, and how characters responded to it.
The visuals, music, voice acting, and all of that was great, but it was the writing that tied it together. Some of the most interesting heroes and villains.
And it's shockingly a video game adaption, which is why I didn't bother to see it until three years after it came out, now that season 2 is about to come out.

2024-09-15 14:44:29

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Well I don’t know if it’ll be good enough to publish, but this story is near-term sci fi. Cyberpunk would be closest but not quite.

2024-09-15 14:32:09

Gm.
I spent my evenings writing 30,000 words of science fiction over the past week.
Definitely fun, and the most fiction I’ve ever written. Prior to this I would write like a sample chapter, whereas this was like 8 chapters.

2024-09-15 02:01:38

Today I learned that the new Surat Diamond Bourse in India is the biggest office building in the world in terms of square meters of floor space.
Until this was built in 2023, the Pentagon was the world’s biggest office building. More floor space than any skyscraper. Now this one is bigger.
But my first thought is, “why the hell does a diamond exchange have to be so big!?” Like, I can’t imagine what they need so much space for.
https://m.primal.net/KqKZ.jpg

2024-09-13 22:33:04

Back when ETH did the change to its money supply algorithm to be deflationary, a lot of people correctly pointed out that they can just change it again.
And they did, so now it's back to having a similar supply distribution rate as bitcoin, but with fewer reasons for anyone to want to hold it long term relative to bitcoin, and with more competition nipping at its heels than bitcoin.
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2024-09-11 20:24:59

Just said “nothing stops this train” on Fox Business live. ;)

2024-09-11 16:32:26

When you read fiction of any genre, do you tend to gravitate toward authors and/or main characters of your own gender, or not really and it’s fine either way?
In my reading, it seems about 50/50. Plenty of male and female authors I like, and usually there are a lot of major characters of both genders.
Statistically, women read novels more than men, but it varies by genre, eg romance vs military fiction. I guess part of why my reading is somewhere in the middle is I don’t read pure romance books or pure military books and the like, but rather read adventure/fantasy/sci-fi books that often have one or more romantic arcs, one or more action scenes including sometimes military scenes, heists, crimes, etc.
I listened to this podcast on how to write novels that men would like out of curiosity, and it was interesting. Basically, their thesis is that too much current writing advice is geared to writing for women, so male readers kind of get left out, but then authors pick up on that and write for men, and they do a lot of volume. I think that’s largely correct. However, I also found the advice a bit black and white, like that most women want character development and details of feelings while most men want achievement and details of things.
My assumption is that the majority of men and women readers want both of those things.
So what are your thoughts? Do you tend to gravitate toward authors and characters of your gender or not really?
https://youtu.be/da3NiVM3IcQ

2024-09-11 16:05:01

Who knows how real either number is, but notably I crossed 70k followers here on Nostr a couple days before I touched 700k on Twitter.
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2024-09-11 03:19:37

Surprisingly, Chester Bennington's (RIP) replacement by Emily Armstrong fulfills the same vibe in the lineup. Her screaming vocals capture a lot of the same sound and essence of Bennington. That was a surprisingly good pick.
With Mike Shinoda still doing major vocals and most other members still onboard, Linkin Park 2.0 is surprisingly continuous with Linkin Park 1.0, in my view.
Solid revival of a major band after a six-year semi-hiatus.

2024-09-11 02:52:59

Wake up babe, new Linkin Park dropped.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRXH9AbT280&ab_channel=LinkinPark

2024-09-10 23:08:21

The Social Security Administration expects their reserves to run out in 2035.
That’s a different pile of money than most other government functions, and so without either tax increases or legislation that transfers other money to it, payments going out to retirees could actually be cut after that due to not enough income flowing in.
I’m not sure what they’ll do at that point since we don’t even know what things will look like then, but basically 2035 is the next station to see if the train keeps going or not.
This drawdown will represent “intergovernmental” public debt turning into public debt held by either the private sector, foreign sector, or central bank.
https://m.primal.net/KmPL.jpg

2024-09-09 01:53:42

Good evening.
My September newsletter is out. It's an update on the fiscal dominance view:
https://m.primal.net/KkKP.png
https://www.lynalden.com/september-2024-newsletter/

2024-09-08 16:18:06

Okay I’m going to write it, over time, for my own enjoyment. The question is whether I’ll publish it.
Because I’m not an experienced fiction writer and would only publish it if it’s decent.
#note1e5r…fhg0

2024-09-08 07:29:47

Ya’ll want Nostr Lyn to write a sci fi novel in whatever spare time she has, or get back to finance?

2024-09-08 07:16:20

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I mean, I try. Probably not great yet. But not bad.

2024-09-08 06:42:33

The professional side of me is fully focused on finance. It’s tiring, but I’m there every day.
The Nostr Lyn side of me keeps broadening her timeframe and keeps getting pulled to write a science fiction or fantasy novel, at this point, with all sorts of character arcs and cultural symbolism tied in. Which is almost too long of a time preference.
I wonder if a side hobby is what is needed to keep me focused on my main work. I used to have hobbies years ago, but the extreme environment of 2020-2022 kind of killed them as things went crazy and I did nothing but work. During 2023 and 2024 I explored if I should have hobbies again, but I kept focused on work, and here now I’ve determined that I should explore more.
I boosted my exercise, traveled the world, and re-explored video games. But the video games didn’t stick. Re-exploring my older writing is sticking.
Lately I’ve been trying to explore hobbies, to replicate a normal human. And writing weird sci fi or fantasy is what keeps me engaged.
https://m.primal.net/KjDO.jpg

2024-09-04 17:55:38

I've been doing consistent long walks in the sun around my neighborhood while the weather's nice. Doing some business calls while walking, or listening to a podcast while walking.
I mostly blame @npub1dvu…0pwx for getting me into this trend.
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2024-09-03 15:45:50

The Nostr devs continue to astound me with how fast they move.
Driven by passion.
#note1ulv…cgnw

2024-09-03 06:38:04

For everyone who says they don’t work out because it’s hard to get to the gym, this is your final boss:
#note1v0z…plw5

2024-09-03 05:31:14

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I watched Requiem for a Dream at Jordan's place too. Not a crackhouse but a messed-up trailer with a lot of pot.
Hit hard.

2024-09-03 05:29:37

Not everybody likes the slow-burn longform stuff, but for those that do, that's why I write all that stuff.
It hits fewer, but for those that it hits, it hits deeper.
https://m.primal.net/KbcY.jpg
#note19x4…68j6

2024-09-03 05:18:20

When I was growing up in middle school and high school, I had a next door neighbor trailer park friend named Jordan, who is quite a character and has showed up in detail in some of my long-form Nostr posts from a while ago. He ran a series of sand-pit fights in his backyard that I participated in.
Sadly, he had the most broken and crazy home, like him and his younger sister were often alone and figuring out life for themselves, with their mom coming back like every other day barely, but Jordan was so charismatic and funny and smart that I hung out with him and his sister a lot at home and at the bus stop. Their trailer was an absolute mess, but it had a chaotic warmth to it from the people there. Jordan basically ran the place. When his absentee single mother came home from time to time after work and whatever else she was up to, she'd be like, "Oh Lyn, hi! I've been out today due to motorcycle lessons. (???) Do you want a bagel? I've got bagels. Jordan, you should be more like Lyn, she's polite. She always says thank you. Stay as long as you want Lyn, sorry for the mess." And I'd be like, "uhmm, thanks!"
Jordan, who was two years older than me, taught me to play Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, and got me into anime via Trigun and Cowboy Beebop; all sorts of nerd stuff at a time when I was kind of otherwise aimless. I was living alone with my 60+ year old single father at the time.
We then became a funny duo as teenagers; him as the charismatic outlandish guy who usually got into trouble, taught me all sorts of nerd stuff, got his girlfriend pregnant at age18 and started a family with her, barely got out of high school, and me as the total opposite introverted bookish polite one next door that would play Magic the Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons with his friends group, and that he'd trick his friends into fighting in his sand pit as a joke since they didn't know what they were getting into, but that was like clean as a whistle in terms of schoolwork and relationships.
Anyway, the point of this rambling post is that I first watched Fight Club in the best possible setting. I went over to Jordan's house one evening, and we started watching it. But then his mother called him and said to come to help with some shit she was dealing with, so he was like, "hey I got to go Lyn, but you can keep watching it, no problem." So I was there at night, in his messy trailer alone (???), watching Fight Club. The place was a mess, I felt weird that I was the only one in their home despite not living there, and Jordan was basically a more benign equivalent of Tyler Durden. So actually the movie hit a bit harder because I was both enjoying it but also constantly on edge because I was in a weird environment that didn't quite feel right, and yet felt oddly on-brand for the movie.
Can't really replicate that. And it's burned into my memory better than most movies.
#note1h5x…9jrw

2024-09-03 04:46:06

Of the four Pierce Brosnan Bond movies, the first one was great (Goldeneye, so good), the second one was decent (Tomorrow Never Dies actually has a lot of relevance today, as it's about the control of corporate media with misinformation, which is rather prescient for 1997), and the final two were bad.
Of the five Daniel Craig Bond movies, I differ a bit from the consensus. The consensus is that the first (Casino Royale) and third (Skyfall) were great, but that the second, Quantum of Solace, was the worst and the others were okay.
However, while I do think the first Craig movie (Casino Royale) was great, and Skyfall was the second best, I think Quantum of Solace as the second movie was underwhelming but not bad. It was kind of that middle-of-trilogy vibe. I rate it above the consensus. The true catastrophe of this series, which I rate below the consensus, was actually the fourth movie Spectre. Utterly awful in terms of plot, especially given Bond's greatest villain Blofeld played by Waltz, which is such a strong casting. They fucked the whole story up and it made no sense. Bond literally walked into the evil headquarters with no plan, and got captured. And then when the villain is drilling into his head to erase his memories, it just randomly didn't work, and he broke free via bad narrative. Made absolutely no sense. People were too accepting of it because they liked Waltz on screen and he distracts them from how weak his character was and how bad the plot was. And Blofeld was way too obsessive with Bond. Cool villains aren't as obsessive as that. And then the fifth one was solid and partially salvaged the catastrophe that was Spectre. Kind of mediocre like Quantum of Solace, but with a solid and surprising climax to the series, which elevated and completed it.

2024-09-03 03:50:37

I’m reading my first fiction book in four years, since Rhythm of War.
It’s called The Lost Metal and it came out a couple years ago but I’m behind on my fiction, since my financial work engulfed me ever since the pandemic.
Both of these are like deep sequels into stories I’ve been reading for a decade from Brandon Sanderson.
If anyone is interested in his universe, imo the best place to start is Mistborn.

2024-09-03 03:08:11

For those that want to buy Broken Money with bitcoin, the best place is Saif House.
https://thesaifhouse.com/
In addition to the ebook and audio versions, they uniquely have the cloth hardcover dusk jacket version, which is the most premium form of the physical book. It’s available in fiat there as well.
And for 10+ copy wholesale orders, like for bookstores or events, whether in fiat or bitcoin, Saif House is the best option. They beat Amazon on both cost and delivery speed for wholesale.
Like when I gave my Broken Money talk at Princeton University earlier this year and they handed out books, they bought those through Saif House.
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2024-09-02 21:46:01

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Yeah that blows my mind too. It’s part of the broader music confusion I have. Like when Hans Zimmer starts a new soundtrack for a movie, I don’t even know where he begins.

2024-09-02 21:28:06

What are some skills that you don’t understand at all?
For me music is at the top of the list. My husband can hear a tune and then with a few tries he can play the tune on the piano.
He barely had any music lessons but can somehow do that. I had guitar lessons, and my teacher tried to get me to do that, but I was terrible. So not only can’t I do it, I don’t really even know where I’d begin. The inability to even see the next step.
Like if I see a pro athlete do something, I know I can’t do it, but I get the basic idea of what they did to get to that stage on kind of a step by step basis. But when someone can hear music and then just play the melody, my mind is blown.

2024-09-02 20:28:16

100 squats a day til 100k.
The 58k gang is going to get us in shape.

2024-09-02 19:34:40

The electronic project that I am most proud of from my engineering days, was also the most useless thing I ever built. I was reminded of it amid all the censorship in Brazil, because it’s about Embraer avionics, which are Brazilian.
A short story.
The background context was that I never considered myself to be a great engineer. I was more interested in finance but had gone into engineering instead, and basically what makes someone great in a field is whether they have the passion to do it in their spare time or not. The best engineers, after school or after work, go home and do more hobbyist engineering stuff. Like, they just live in it. I spent my spare time on financial research instead. I liked my engineering work, but was only a design engineer when I had to be, basically. My passion was elsewhere. So I knew I'd likely eventually go into engineering finance/management in that kind of hybrid role.
I went to work in an aviation simulation facility after college. Rather than being used for training new pilots as most airplane simulators are, this facility was used by corporate, academic, and government researchers to test new technologies and procedures with experienced pilots. So the simulators were more customizable than training simulators, but were less polished. They were always these cool work-in-progress machines.
We had Airbus, Boeing, and Cessna models in the early days. And we had a half-finished Embraer, simply because the manager of the simulation facility just wanted an Embraer due how cool and different they are. His higher-ups in the broader parent organization told him there wasn’t enough market demand for testing in Embraers and wouldn’t give him a budget for it, but he kept finding ways to gradually accumulate the parts anyway. Eventually he had the simulator shell, and genuine avionics, but still had to put it all together. The Embraer avionics and flight controls were just so much more interesting and sleek than the other types.
In our Boeing and Airbus simulators, we had genuine avionics, but interfaced them into industrial automation control logic and PCs, rather than what they normally connect to in the field. And it wasn’t hard because they used some standard communication protocols like RS-422 or RS-485. All the buttons and dials were easy to connect to automation control systems, and the serial communications were things you could buy a PC card for.
But the Embraer sat unfinished for years partially because there was no budget for it, and partially because it didn’t use those standard serial protocols. The serial communications coming from their flight panel and throttle were some custom method that none of our equipment could read. You could just rip it open and re-do the insides to talk to a PC more easily, but the manager forbade that; he wanted the Embraer avionics to remain pristine. We had incomplete documentation, and virtually no budget or labor to put into it beyond the pieces we already had. It was this hacky project. We didn’t even really have electronic design software other than a lapsed PSpice license, since we rarely did any sort of custom circuits and instead would interface various devices into automation systems.
So, getting the Embraer up and running was always on the manager’s pet project to-do list but not making much progress. He would occasionally put an entry level or intermediate level engineer on it for a few months and they’d eventually give up, leave the organization, or go back to something more economically relevant. It went on like that for years; it became the Kobayashi Maru for electronic engineers in this facility.
After my first couple years working there on the Boeing, Airbus, and Cessna, the manager was eventually like, “alright, I want you to see if you can get that Embraer flight panel connected.” Little budget, just me in the lab with an oscillator and multimeter. I knew this would happen one day- the Embraer avionics were always kind of looming in the lab, next to half-finished failed creations of my predecessors that tried to interface with it, knowing that eventually I’d be put to work on this thing. And I still had other duties to do, so this was like a budget-less side project I had to spend part of each week on, with insufficient equipment and documentation and with the knowledge that the Embraer simulator might not even be used if I somehow succeeded.
So I dove into it. The Embraer flight panel had a series of buttons, but unlike our other flight panels, they all went through a parallel-in serial-out (PISO) shift register. So they came out of the device in a fast custom serial communication stream. An external device had to give the flight panel a clock signal, and give another CLR signal that would be low for 24 milliseconds and high for 1 millisecond, and during that 1 millisecond there would be 256 clock signals, and the flight panel would output all of its current states of button and knobs within those 256 clock signals within the millisecond, every 25 milliseconds. And the CLR signal had to be shifted some microseconds away from the clock signal so that the signal edges of their square waves don’t occur simultaneously, which would cause reliability issues. The incomplete documentation we had only roughly outlined this; I had to iterate a bunch of oscillator tests to see what successfully worked as an input, and then more fully document where every button and dial showed up on the output data stream once I got it flowing.
And then once I figured out how it worked, I had to figure out how to connect it to a PC and/or our standard industrial automation interface.
At first I tried one of our 2 year old microcontrollers that we had on hand, which as of this writing are now nearly 15 years old so not the current generation stuff. I looked to see if I could program it to send in these signals and then read the signals coming from it, but it wasn’t nearly fast and precise enough. This project needed lower-level design than something software-based.
I wasn’t sure if FPGAs of the day would be fast enough, I hadn't worked on them before, and and we didn’t have any anyway. So I went the raw logic route instead which would be annoying but cheap and guaranteed to work. I researched crystal oscillators, logic gates, counters, flip-flops, and serial-in parallel-out (SIPO) shift registers. I then used them to build this whole digital clockwork circuit from scratch to basically reverse everything that the flight panel was doing. It would use a crystal oscillator as the initial frequency, and from that would generate the clock signal and the CLR signal to send to the flight panel, and would run the timing for a bunch of SIPO shift registers so that this stream of serial data coming out of the flight panel would load into the shift registers, then get frozen in place for 24 milliseconds which was fast enough for our slower industrial automation interface to read the data which was now in parallel form.
Then I bought all the cheap logic pieces, soldered together test circuits, troubleshooted it, and got the thing working. I came in alone on the weekends to do it since I had little time in the week; I was just caught in the flow of making this work. Rather than viewing it as annoying as I did early on, I now viewed it as something I had to beat.
And then the Embraer throttles were the second difficult piece. Rather than a normal position output as our other simulator throttles did, the Embraer throttles basically outputted sign waves, and as you moved the throttle, which was really well-crafted and smooth, the two sign waves would overlap to varying degrees. So I had to map that all out, build a circuit to read these sign waves and send that position data to the slower industrial automation interface in a way that it could read it. I then soldered together the circuits, and got that working too.
I then wired up all the more standard electronics in the Embraer which were not that different than the other simulators. And so, I was finally able to go the manager and say, “the Embraer’s flight controls and avionics are all connected now! ^_^”.
I remember being so proud, like, “oh shit, maybe I could actually be decent at this.” And the custom circuit interfaces indeed worked for the next decade and counting without maintenance, perfectly reliable. We then got the rest of the simulator fully set up.
But… the Embraer simulator was only used like one time, barely. No research teams wanted to test new technologies and procedures on Embraers; they would always test things on the Airbus and Boeing simulators. So this awesome simulator, with so much work poured into it, was a complete waste of time, which is what the managers’ higher-ups had told him from the beginning.
I went on to do a bunch of other projects including a business jet simulator and a helicopter simulator and an upgraded redesign of our Cessna before I went into management and out of design engineering, but nothing was quite as hacky as that Embraer simulator, so it was always the one I would look at fondly and be like, “I can’t believe this useless thing is still running.”
Rather than feeling sad that the work was wasted, I instead always kind of had a “journey before destination” mindset to it, like it was the most frustrating project that I had brute-force succeeded at, from research to design to physically putting it all together to troubleshooting, and gave me a bigger sense of achievement and got me into a higher state of flow than other engineering projects I had done. To this day, I always think of Embraer planes warmly.

2024-09-01 03:04:02

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That’s mechanical stuff. And even related to war at times. That’s why money works. Proof of work. You’re talking about why Bitcoin as a network is successful, which is very separate from individual social signaling.
Individuals signal status to each other socially on numerous metrics, based on gender and skillset and other priorities.
But a common trend is that focusing on the short term stuff, like beauty, ego, possessions, and so forth is very ephemeral. It feels good in the moment but it doesn’t contribute much long-term. Much of that is instinctively geared toward mate acquisition but many people get locked into it too much. We can apply our self awareness to escape that loop.
In contrast, focusing on things like signaling your integrity to others through actions, your honesty, your generosity, your competence at your craft, your wisdom and helpfulness from experience- that’s what contributes a lot of deep satisfaction long-term.
That’s the point of the post.

2024-09-01 02:29:18

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Nah. Staying humble and stacking sats, not revealing the size of your stack, and being known for your reputation as a developer, as a financier, as a conference organizer, as a manager, are huge parts of the bitcoin ecosystem.
Bitcoin is hard money. And as a result, the ecosystem that builds around it is very low time preference and oriented toward reputation signaling rather than shallow stuff like beauty, lambos, or dominance.

2024-09-01 01:53:22

And somewhere in there I'd say there's a fourth decision: When you decide to change your status signaling from things like beauty, power, and material achievement, to things like integrity, competence, and helpfulness.
Almost everyone is geared toward signaling. As social creatures we're deeply wired to signal value to others.
But there's a lot of flexibility in how we signal that.
-We can signal it with shallower things like beauty, lambos, hierarchical dominance, etc. The details will vary between men and women but they have a similar short time preference that few old people on their deathbed wished they had focused more on.
-Or we can signal it with deeper things like integrity, honesty, helpfulness, friendliness, generosity, providing unique thoughts, or providing wisdom. The details will vary based on profession and skillset but they also have a similar long time preference that most old people on their deathbed wished they had focused more on.
#note1fjp…l820

2024-09-01 01:37:20

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I generally agree with that. And @npub1cn4…3vle highlighted it on the his episode of WBD by pointing out that the finitude of life is what gives it urgency to get shit done now rather than later or never.
To any extent that I have success now in my mid-career, I point a lot of it to my early constraints which were outside of my control. Was homeless as a kid, then grew up in a trailer park, then financed my education through student loans with no family bailout if things go sour. So I had a lot of good things qualitatively (love, support, good values, family and friend experiences, etc), but also a lot of financial uncertainty quantitatively. It was all numbers and constraints by the time I hit college.
So I had to be super serious about college performance, super serious about doing side jobs to pay for it and gain new skills in doing so, super serious about landing good internships and succeeding at them, super serious about my post-college full-time employment, and super-serious about building side hustles alongside my career, which eventually became all of the financial research that I do now.
What I do today in all likelihood would not exist if I were more comfortable and free when I was younger. Those initial constraints were a huge boost. Like an initial cold plunge into life.
It wasn't so extreme that I was like, doomed and without lifelines. Instead it was the right amount of constrained of being shot out of a cannon, but with with like a parachute and a map on where to land.
Can't replicate that. Just have to be thankful for it. Being given the right blend of freedom and responsibility goes a very long way. If tilted too far in either direction, it can become restrictive.
I think we just have to lean into our constraints and try to be thankful for them and learn from them, and also lean into our freedoms and try to be thankful for them and learn from them.

2024-08-31 19:34:40

Lol, Brazilians are heavily searching for "VPN" right now according to Google. One does love to see it:
https://m.primal.net/KXYI.png

2024-08-31 13:31:51

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But Brazil didn’t ban VPNs. They banned using VPNs to access Twttier/X.

2024-08-31 12:42:35

Gm.
It seems that it will be very hard for Brazil to identify and enforce the fines on VPN usage for Twitter/X. But it’s a powerful scare tactic.
When the United States banned gold ownership in the1930s (which lasted for four decades all the way into the 1970s btw), they didn’t really enforce it at the household level. They just had large prison terms that were rarely ever applied, which effectively dried up liquidity in the gold market.
Some people have pointed out that Nostr relays could be blocked by Brazilian internet providers if Nostr was big enough to matter. However, more relays could spin up, so they’d have to keep adding to the list.
Brazil’s government could then say it’s illegal to use VPNs for any Nostr app around internet censoring. The defense against that is to make Nostr as ubiquitous as possible. The more apps that tie into Nostr in some way, the harder it is to ever ban it in practice. Some people might not even know their favorite app uses Nostr. Imagine if everyone’s favorite short form app, long form app, podcasting app, reviews app, wallet app, recipes app, picture app, music app, and tons of other stuff are tied into Nostr, and how hard that would be to ban.
If Nostr becomes big enough to really matter, it’s because it’ll be tied into so many different things. That’s super powerful. And the devs keep building rapidly.

2024-08-31 05:32:21

I like the rock covers of Kiss From A Rose. I think I like Johnson's the best between the ones that are out there.
They don't really compete with the original of course but they breathe new life into the song for rock fans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2_KiGjV65U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFOemr0BOQA&list=RDo-d3FzFOAGQ&index=14

2024-08-31 00:01:02

The fine for people using VPNs to access it is crazy.
And the judge really does look like a comic book villain.
#note1w0q…6vuu

2024-08-30 03:31:55

This is a good short story on how to not get engagement on Nostr.
#note1z36…qhj0

2024-08-30 03:29:16

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My husband and I got like a third of the way into Shogan since it was so well-rated, but we struggled with it a bit. There were a handful of frustrating things that seemed unrealistic. I keep meaning to get back into it.

2024-08-30 02:51:05

One of the big macro questions is when will the US banking system run into the liquidity floor, requiring the Fed to end quantitative tightening? Due to current regulations and the "ample reserve" regime, banks generally have liquidity requirements relative to their overall size, and their overall size keeps growing nominally.
-Big banks ran into the liquidity floor in September 2019 at $1.5 trillion with the repo spike, and the Fed had to end quantitative tightening and resume mild quantitative easing (which was then overshadowed by the giga-liquidity-bazooka in 2020/2021).
-Smaller banks ran into the liquidity floor in March 2023 at $3.0 trillion (the new floor) with the regional bank crisis. Both the Fed and the Treasury provided liquidity in response, although the Fed has maintained quantitative tightening. Liquidity has been maintained above that level without being greatly elevated, which is probably what would have happened post-2019 if not for the pandemic/lockdown stuff thereafter.
The New York Fed thinks the liquidity floor will be reached sometime in 2025, and that they'll go back to gradual balance sheet expansion then. Andy Constan, formerly of Bridgewater, thinks it'll be late 2025. I debate him a bit on this since both of us cover this closely, and I generally think it'll be mid 2025, although there are enough moving variables that neither early 2025 or late 2025 would surprise me, so conservatively I say "by the end of 2025."
I was talking to a large institutional investor today, and he said that his contact who is a major repo operator at an investment bank, thinks the current floor is now $3.3 trillion, which is roughly where it is currently. That basically means any further quantitative tightening has to be offset by reverse repo drainage, or they'll have a repo issue and the Fed will need to end QT. My estimate is somewhere in the $3.1-$3.2 trillion range for the liquidity floor, meaning I think there's a bit more room than that repo operator. But either way it's pretty tight.
This is all kind of rambling but generally when that liquidity floor is reached and is responded to, it tends to be good for a lot of liquidity-driven assets, including bitcoin. And it'll probably be with a whimper more than a bang, kind of like the September 2019 repo crisis that nobody other than macro nerds remember.
https://m.primal.net/KURs.png

2024-08-29 16:47:03

Broken Money was published a year ago this week
Thanks to everyone who read it, shared it, and reviewed it! 🙏
I resisted writing a book for years since it’s such a tedious process, until finally a book formed in my head that I felt needed to exist, and that was too distracting for me *not* to write. And then I poured everything I had into it.
https://m.primal.net/KTlY.jpg

2024-08-29 16:34:39

GM. Fixed the typo.
https://m.primal.net/KTkj.png

2024-08-29 16:30:25

https://m.primal.net/KTkR.png

2024-08-29 16:01:13

If you intentionally go out looking for problems and drama, you’ll surely find them.
If you instead focus on constructive stuff, then some problems and drama will still find you because life is life, but usually way less.

2024-08-28 23:15:29

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I wonder what caused that July slump.

2024-08-28 04:03:57

I have another round of severe impersonators here on Nostr reaching out to credible people with scam opportunities.
Please ignore them. Always check the NIP-05 if available.
On my website sidebar, I link to my only valid social media profiles for verification.
For Nostr, the only one is the npub associated with primal.net/lyn, which is:
npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a
https://m.primal.net/KQsk.png

2024-08-28 01:32:42

My current vibe:
#note1wct…tf2a

2024-08-28 01:31:56

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Small edit:
"And as a partner in a venture capital firm that puts seven or eight figures into a company depending on its stage"
We put low or high seven figures into a company. Not eight figures currently. Bad math while typing longform.

2024-08-28 01:24:23

Memes aside, these are some of my longer-form current thoughts about relay economics:
#note1lrl…j0nf

2024-08-28 01:21:52

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I appreciate your perspective.
And Tor is indeed the adjacent network that I think about critically and economically here as a first glance when I put my critical hat on for Nostr. Which is why, in multiple of my recent posts, I purposely brought to attention critical Nostr relay economics from Peter Todd and then quote-posted Odell about how questioning the economics is rational behavior.
I do think that Nostr has stronger ethical incentive mechanisms than Tor, as a starting point. Open socials and open data combined, is a stronger selling point than open data alone. I think the ecosystem needs to improve key management and some details, but assuming we hit product market fit and decent UX for big scaling, I think there's a lot of broad support here. Or if we fail, from whatever emerges better from our ashes could do decently.
Imo, unlike Tor, the biggest relays will be run by businesses as a loss-leader for their other business activities. In other words, data availability is a cost of doing business. It's more economic, given the broader audience.
Power-users of a given social app would indeed pay $10/month or $100/month or in some cases way more as a sizable business. Advertisements aside, they do so in order to reach an audience with minimal frictions of impersonators or data availability. This covers many free users.
I admittedly partly kept my post incomplete for a humor punchline, and commented elsewhere on my full thoughts. I don't just think "psychopath hobbyists" will run the relays. They are the relay runners of last resort. To the extent that Nostr grows users in any significant way (still a big "if"), I think businesses in multiple jurisdictions will run the big relays, and then there will be many smaller hobbyist ones to fill the gaps, as far as I can see currently based on how early this tech is.
If Nostr has trouble with relay economics and there is no better option on the market, I'd be willing to donate five figures per year in support assuming my own income-generating businesses are running well enough. And there are others that might be willing to 10x or 100x that kind of number. That number only increases as freedom is impaired by more jurisdictions.
When I was in my early twenties, not rich, overworked, and put like a thousand hours of voluntary work into that forum in my post that you referenced, I was earning like $40-$50/hr. That was like $40-$50k cumulative labor hours that I provided for free to a forum I liked in my early twenties. Like a psychopath. I earn multiples of that now, and am still a psychopath. Any ecosystem that gets a few whales on its team, and a few people that are willing to work for free part-time or work for scraps part-time, can keep a network running.
And as a partner in a venture capital firm that puts seven or eight figures into a company depending on its stage, including various freedom-tech if it's economical, I'd say we're indeed looking at Nostr for any economic angle should it materialize to our criteria, and all of us as partners support it conceptually.
Bitcoin itself is a combo of 1) voluntary donations to Core devs and its associations and 2) companies building on Bitcoin for expectations of economic gain. I expect Nostr to be similar. It relies on economics for big scaling, but donations for the cypherpunk margins, for which there are legion.
And these things tend to be responsive to input. If a network is running fine and everyone is engaging happily and without big pushback, people contribute less. If the network starts to be impaired by internal or external forces and there is no better solution available, people wake up and contribute more, and influencers wake up and convince people to contribute more.

2024-08-28 00:50:08

For those of you who are still on Twitter, I had a long debate thread today with Parker Lewis about Nostr. I'm a big fan of Parker, so I figured I'd share it here for shared learning.
Here's the latest post. I'm not sure it'll be the last or not but it's the latest one as of this writing. You can scroll up to see the exchange from the start.
https://x.com/LynAldenContact/status/1828553130717442443
Linking to my own post in isolation is bad form and the thumbnail is awkward depending on what client you're using, so I'll also provide a pic of the start of the debate too, with two posts of his and one of mine.
I'd be open to any thoughts about this debate.
https://m.primal.net/KQga.png

2024-08-27 23:16:11

#note1epx…50p4
https://m.primal.net/KQao.jpg

2024-08-27 23:12:05

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There are big ones and small ones. The big ones are generally run by a business to better serve a client that they operate. I would happily pay them for premium performance. Not all would, but many frequent users would. Small ones are sometimes just run by people that like to host their own data and some other data. Because they like Nostr.

2024-08-27 23:10:08

Nearly a decade and a half ago, in my early twenties, I was an administrator for a small/medium online forum. This was before social media was super popular.
At first I just posted on the forum, and then the admins asked me to be a mod. And then as some admins left, they asked me to be one of the admins. So I did.
I did this for like five years, for free. I was working full time, going to grad school part time, running a dividend blog part time, and yet for some reason was also volunteering a lot of time to help run this forum. Because I liked it. After years eventually I left, and someone else stepped in to take my place. All the admins were just volunteering.
Anyway, that’s who runs the relays. The psychopaths.

2024-08-27 22:55:34

I think it’s important to analyze the questions. For an ecosystem to be successful, it has to be both technically sound and sufficiently incentivized, either economically or ethically.
In my opinion based on what I’ve seen and analyzed, Nostr relays will likely continue to be well-incentivized.
But I don’t fault people from exploring the questions as they seek to understand the protocol and potentially build a conviction about it. Instead I would only criticize those that start out with a negative conclusion before they explore the facts, and think in perpetually Malthusian ways about its prospects.
The fact that the protocol has bootstrapped to this significant degree for this significant duration, is already a rather positive sign. Too many people theorycraft rather than just observe what works, observe what fails, and keep iterating. Lean into what works. And so far, Nostr works.
#note1u9k…r478

2024-08-27 19:21:58

Literally a whole wall in the supermarket with nonfat yogurt and even nonfat plus non-sugar yogurt.
#note1k3w…kpll
https://m.primal.net/KQID.jpg

2024-08-27 19:14:03

Nonfat Greek yogurt is one of the saddest things.

2024-08-27 14:07:29

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I agree. On my website I just point to my human readable Nostr identity.
But everyone sharing an npub at once on Twitter is a pretty powerful visual. Viral marketing.

2024-08-27 14:04:59

This is my npub.
There are many like it, but this one is mine.

2024-08-27 13:08:03

The issue with this is that whenever Bitcoin does go up like 5x, a lot of sellers *do* materialize. So it takes a lot more DCAing that one might think.
Like when the ETFs were gobbling up a lot of bitcoin, much faster than it was being generated, and people assumed it must go to the moon soon. In reality, there was also a lot of sellers out of cold storage from people who bought years ago.
#note19wx…ukgs

2024-08-27 02:46:58

#note1jul…f2xl
https://m.primal.net/KOkg.jpg

2024-08-27 01:56:47

Someone made a Japanese version of my Broken Money video, complete with brand new animations for that audience.
Looks pretty sweet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IsA7hZ5icQ

2024-08-27 00:54:42

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Hello.

2024-08-26 18:38:48

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What’s outbox?
https://m.primal.net/KOHI.jpg

2024-08-26 18:19:16

Amplifying this for critical discussion.
Who will run relays in the future, and is there anything that Nostr as a protocol can tweak to improve future relay decentralization?
#note17jq…93l0

2024-08-25 05:02:16

What sparks your joy?

2024-08-25 04:37:21

Based on the information at hand, this is very well-worded.
#note1fwn…95js

2024-08-25 04:19:50

-Treat the arrest of the Telegram CEO as an emergency.
-Advocate for his freedom and for all freedom tech providers.
-Support and build things that function without a CEO, like some aspects of Nostr. When authoritarian Europe or the US arrests you, be able to say, “I literally can’t control it, it’s already out there, and we are legion.”
-Tell me and others, as capital providers, how to accelerate this.

2024-08-25 04:07:22

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The ability to move your money and identity globally offers some protection due to escapism via Bitcoin and Nostr, in the really rough scenarios. Like Venezuela.
Locally, we should note that it’s not like Telegram users are arrested. That would be unworkable. Only the CEO was. The more individual a policy gets, the more expensive and unpopular it is to enforce. There is no CEO of Bitcoin or Nostr.
The1930s gold ban was brutal, but hardly ever enforced. Going after individuals was both expensive and unpopular. That applies today as well. And information travels faster now. We should use it.
Structural debasement requires obfuscation in order to secure unaware seigniorage from its public. The more that it’s brought to public awareness, the weaker it is.
What you can do: make money honest again.
Make them tell us our laws.
Make them tell us we can’t hold sound money.
Make them tell us we can’t transmit digital money to our friends like we would with cash. And then ask why.
Make them tell us they need to tax us, because they can’t quietly debase us.
Make it more transparent. Shine a light on it and ask people if it’s just.

2024-08-25 03:43:36

The best way to say that Lyn is too bearish, is to go and tell all your friends that the Telegram CEO was just fucking arrested for allowing free encrypted speech, and to forge your new decentralized identity right now.
Anyway, good evening.
#note1wlm…7er8

2024-08-25 03:39:40

Stay humble. Push forward. 💪
#note15dc…as9g

2024-08-24 23:38:14

This needs more reporting but so far, this is wild. Terrible precedent.
#note1v25…jnhk

2024-08-24 20:35:41

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That’s not how I would personally think about marketshare. I would measure market share more along the lines of “what portion of identity-based applications can I log in with via my nsec?”

2024-08-24 16:33:22

Great fireside between @npub1qny…95gx and @npub1sg6…f63m at Nostriga. I got a chance to listen to it now.
Regarding the question of whether Nostr will have more users than Twitter/X in five years (~500 million), my base case would be no, actually. And I say that as a huge Nostr fan and daily user.
In the long arc of time, Nostr's addressable market is nearly unlimited (basically everyone who uses the internet could be using Nostr in some form), but I expect somewhat of a slower burn. Infrastructure build-out type stuff. And breaching a network effect with a better solution is generally quite a long uphill climb.
To me, Nostr is successful once it starts serving tens of millions of people well. I expect it to be more of a quality over quantity thing for a while. Bitcoin is almost 16 years in and still isn't at 500 million users. But for many of those people, it was lifechanging.
I'd like to be surprised to the upside, but I also don't want people to think that if Nostr is "only" at tens of millions of people in five years, or 100+ million but still sub-Twitter, that it underachieved. It's tiny right now, and numbers anywhere approaching that would be a huge increase.
Nostr is a great improvement for everyone using it. But sometimes it takes people time to see why a given solution is better than what they have, or to realize they have a problem at all.
So in the meantime I monitor Nostr's success by the quality and quantity of developer activity, the capability of the protocol as a freedom tool or the shortcomings it still has for that use case, the quality of the conversations throughout the ecosystem, how many people consider it to be lifechanging tech compared to centralized social media, and in time, steady growth.

2024-08-24 06:35:07

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There’s kind of a bell curve. The smart move is to not pay. The mid curve (worst) move is to pay for the photo. That’s the trap option. An adult man pays to have an awkward photo with another man. The other smart move is to pay a comical amount for the dinner so you can inject the politician with a meme talking point. So that for example when Trump goes on stage and says verbatim “never sell your bitcoin” it’s not as though he thought of that line himself.

2024-08-24 05:26:03

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Wanted by the bitcoiner, paying money to the politician as a contribution.

2024-08-24 05:19:48

At the Bitcoin Conference, people could pay for photographs with politicians. Or pay more for a dinner with them.
So when you see an awkward pic with some bitcoiner next to a politician, there’s a good chance they paid for it.
I think most people know that, but for those that don’t, keep that in mind.
All else being equal, the more awkward the pic looks, the more likely they paid for it.

2024-08-24 04:29:36

I resolved the situation by just not screwing it down for now, until I get the right screw. The M.2 drive is just kind of floating in there, connected on one side.
Didn’t want to close the case without at least partially completing my mission. Happily playing Baldur’s Gate 3 now that I have the storage for it.
#note1xwl…td9u
https://m.primal.net/KKJS.jpg

2024-08-24 02:50:17

Based on the comments here, Nostr is absolutely lit when it comes to meditation.
#note1uvy…2hd3

2024-08-24 02:48:02

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Eh, this was a ten minute change that’ll extend the computer’s life another 2 years. 8 years ago it was a super powerful computer so today it’s still solid. Built it myself and kind of attached to it. Once it needs a bigger fix I’ll replace it.

2024-08-24 02:46:25

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Yeah I literally have to buy one of these now.

2024-08-24 02:17:30

I built my PC like 8 years ago or something, and kept all the boxes for the spare parts for like 7 years and never needed them, so eventually during spring cleaning I just chucked them out. I was like “this big box of boxes does not spark joy.”
And then… that’s when I finally need a spare part. Today I go to install a second M.2 drive and realize I have no spare motherboard screws on hand.
https://m.primal.net/KKCk.png

2024-08-23 20:03:07

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It gives a shock to your system. An acute stressor, kind of like exercise. It then boosts dopamine and other neurotransmitters for hours so you feel more energetic and positive, and some studies indicate it’s good for metabolism, sleep, inflammation, etc.

2024-08-23 05:45:25

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What's up?

2024-08-23 05:44:17

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Someone who's obsessed with cold plunges, I guess.

2024-08-23 05:43:57

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Been doing it at home. Literally just ice in the tub.
My shower is retarded in that there's only one dial that controls both pressure and temperature, so in order to get reasonable pressure, the water is at least lukewarm. Literally cannot take a cold shower unless I change my shower.
Plus I think I like the short-duration super-cold impact of icy immersion.

2024-08-23 05:34:11

I'm basically a cold plunge maxi now.

2024-08-23 04:39:35

In Cairo, they built a ton of elevated roadways throughout the city over the past 5-6 years to relieve traffic congestion, which was (and still is) among the worst in the world.
And they often put shops under those bridges. Cafes, fast food joints, etc. I think in most countries this would not be allowed due to safety codes, but I dunno. I just don’t really see it elsewhere.
This one is a little carnival under a bridge. Rides for kids.
https://m.primal.net/KImo.jpg

2024-08-23 03:01:06

Anyone here do meditation?
What kind?

2024-08-22 16:35:23

On one hand, any given presidential term seems short to me. Only 4 years.
But then I realize that bitcoin is only four presidential terms old. Each president was in power for a full quarter of its life.

2024-08-22 16:25:58

This too shall pass.
#note1mcr…cs6n

2024-08-22 08:06:48

After nearly a year of not checking any of my website analytics, I might take a moment to actually reinstall some of them since they broke down a while ago.
What I learned was, I’m not locked in with my analytics. My analytics are locked in with me. I’m not even sure when they stopped functioning, since I didn’t care.
I literally don’t know how many people came to my website in the past six months other than “a lot”. I do know the number of paying members and my overall research revenue, but not the number of visitors to public pages as I used to.
So now that I don’t give a shit about my analytics anymore, I figure I might as well take the time to reinstall them and see what they are.
Feels like a line from Fight Club. Only once we lose something do we begin to care for it. In my randomness I randomly decided that it would be nice to know the number of readers per post again, after having spent a long time of not caring or measuring by accident and apathy.
#note1de6…t2fw

2024-08-22 07:55:16

One of my to-do lists is to fix Google Analytics on my website since it broke down a few months ago while I was traveling.
Normally this is a crisis but I was too apathetic to care. I posted the best articles I could write and didn’t care for analytics.
Naturally I should get this back and setup, but I found it interesting that 1) I didn’t check the numbers for 6+ months anyway and 2) it broke and I didn’t care for my website in 3+ months, before ultimately now I was like “okay let’s get analytics back, holy shit.”

2024-08-22 07:35:29

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@npub1cn4…3vle consider approaching Peter like he is a gold chad, fresh off the beach, who doesn’t give a fuck and who is just there for marketing, happy to win or lose the debate. He’s part of the joke, trying to benefit from the engagement happily. Probably the best argument is that Bitcoin is globally portable while gold is stale and domestic, and dunk on that. Peter is always worried about American collapse but be like, “if America collapses wouldn’t you want portable capital rather than domestic metal?”

2024-08-22 07:29:14

I’ve met Peter Schiff in person a few times.
He is super chill, friendly, usually sun-tanned on vacation with chad vibes, etc. He’s trolling us.
He might be our industry’s most prolific troll, but ultimately he is just that: consciously trolling us.
His only argument is that bitcoin has no “intrinsic value” while meanwhile I’m active in two continents and am thankful that my multi-signature money isn’t attached to either one of them like gold would be. He has no answer for this. Bitcoin is the best at what gold can’t do: be globally accessible.
He’s famous from two decades ago, is rich and happy, and wants to sell gold. He is closed to Bitcoin intellectually but is happy to engage with bitcoiners that give him marketing. He’s a Puerto Rico chad. That’s who bitcoiners debate against; someone who is going for marketing and is happy for the engagement.
https://m.primal.net/KHaF.jpg

2024-08-22 05:04:47

This is how I manage things now, tbh.
Vibes only.
#note1gr5…5ydr

2024-08-22 04:54:38

Always be truthful.
And for your podcasters, look for those that challenge themselves the most. The ones that engage in difficult conversations. The ones that ask the best skeptical questions.
#note1ul9…yk53

2024-08-22 04:48:05

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It's both people and the algorithm. The dark side can get you more views.
It depends on whether you optimize for 6-12 month numbers or want to build a high-integrity 3-5 year+ brand.
The light side can keep your more in contact with a high caliber group of people that want to interview with you regularly, and you are more respected for business in general. In other words, I interview with my friend Walker despite lower views as a newer podcast because... I fucking like Walker online and in person. I just want to hang out with a friend and chat and the numbers don't matter and I know his thumbnails will be legit. Vibes first.
As podcasts broaden out, there's a middle ground of integrity and good marketing, but it has trade-offs. And if you go the more aggressive route regularly, it's nice to have both options, like a full interview and a conservative clip, so that if an interviewee like me wants to share it, they have the less-aggressive version to share. Like the main interview is more plain and optimistic, while other clips go for the algo.
With my almost 700k followers, whether I share one of my many primary interviews on Twitter or not is frankly based on how it turned out and whether the title and picture are embarrassing or not. I share based on a combo of 1) how much I personally like the interviewer, and 2) title/content/image, etc. I don't share a lot of high-volume Youtube clips from hosts I semi-like, simply because I find their titles and thumbnail embarrassing. They aim for the YouTube clicks so I'm embarrassed to share their title on Twitter.
But the key thing from your end, always, is to be known as a high-integrity interviewer. That's what I come back to four years in a row now for my favorites like Jack Farley. And you're in that category now.
Jack Farley is currently a top macro interviewer. His images and titles are sometimes aggressive, but at the end of the day he's known for pushing hard and being a great interviewer. And yet he doesn't get bitcoin yet. David Lin formerly of Kitco is similar. Natalie Brunelle is an amazing bitcoin interviewer. She's among my top five given how much preparation she does like David Lin does.
McCormack is similar for the bitcoin space. He's charismatic, popular, but will aggressively question things. And if you come at him like Grayscale, he'll rekt you.
For longevity, the interviewer needs a brand, imo. Something they stand for. Not just YouTube image memes. But serious character, which Walker has.