Matt

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

2023-10-26 04:41:10

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For those who may not know, this quote is Neil Postman’s summary of Huxley’s idea in his preface to the book “Amusing ourselves to death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”.
Would definitely recommend reading it:

2023-07-06 15:46:50

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I prefer this reading of the Fitzgerald translation:
https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Iliad-Audiobook/B00HUWO1T2

2023-07-01 19:38:45

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They were actually forced to back when they initially lost their payment rails. I remember it was check in the mail or bitcoin back then. They’ve since got their fiat rails back, but still accept bitcoin.

2023-07-01 19:28:56

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Their fork of mastodon is no longer interoperable with the larger fediverse, but it never really was because all the major instances blocked gab’s as soon as they switched to mastodon in 2019 after mastodon called them bad names:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/07/statement-on-gabs-fork-of-mastodon/

2023-05-20 17:32:26

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How is MiamiCoin doing these days?
At least he said #Bitcoin instead of crypto. Maybe he learned his lesson—one can hope, but I remain skeptical.
Bitcoin magazine has a short memory with these opportunist pump-and-dump players.
https://twitter.com/francissuarez/status/1438504891526250498?s=46&t=9krlMyf-jEHcbRMndZxEvw https://nostr.build/i/addcaefc2489e07ff41a4deab2167ef9b89d56bc29d635253c66a77f9eefd7b1.jpg https://nostr.build/i/52d6a0094870ea59c3695577b82b766cd08d5c3c224348acac79b5fc3d893e8d.jpg

2023-05-18 17:18:51

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Damus if you have Apple silicon, Gossip if not

2023-05-16 06:18:07

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Try restarting Damus. And, if that doesn’t work, try disconnecting then reconnecting your wallet. Best of luck to you.

2023-05-16 06:11:47

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I’d stick to the well trod path here with Damus+alby. Make sure you create an alby account first.
I made the alby account. Funded it. Then linked it with Damus using the wallet connect flow.
You see this video yet?
#note1ewp…uudc

2023-05-16 06:07:31

Living the one-tap-zap dream tonight! #note1cwe…k06v

2023-04-21 02:53:45

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Agreed. Like the concept, but the zap I just sent with breeze took about 60 from tap to app switch to approval which is an eternity in social-media time. Maybe other wallets are faster but still… would love to see an integrated wallet that can be topped up or something for frictionless zaps.

2023-04-18 17:59:49

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😂

2023-04-18 17:32:37

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https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=408707
Best I can find on the subject… not sure where this headline came from?
Perhaps taken from the live stream?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A44LPXZ33_E

2023-04-18 16:48:02

#lapavonichain #coffeechain https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_905e7a887f45bf185cc4c31ba75ba334df907b6cf150efdd54ea8b2f734e55bd.jpeg

2023-04-12 03:59:01

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_3ede72e39306acea53dd4e51d90c67ef00c465a44e7dcfede04b31d8026d1623.jpeg
Weather back in the 70s, #btc back in the 30k’s
Hope you mid-coast Americans on here are enjoying this Easter weather as much as I am. Kicking off back-porch brew season tonight. Cheers.

2023-04-12 01:24:28

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I didn’t even know that existed, looks cool. I’m still using my six year-old pearl, but if it ever kicks the bucket I’m going for one of those tiny espresso scales.

2023-04-11 19:04:20

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Looking good! And is that an Acaia lunar I spy in the background?

2023-03-13 16:50:39

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😂

2023-03-13 15:26:30

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_443b2e359ae96647f9275bf7f2cc6aacd6fad655b4364eeaa570ec3e2b4ef342.jpeg

2023-03-08 05:16:15

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https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_6d93b6d91e8aac1473b5b1979dbbf3a3da104bb35f2681a7260bc20aab79f4ed.gif

2023-03-07 16:23:34

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Did they actual write ‘bitcoin’ specifically or did they just use crypto generally in the act?

2023-03-07 15:38:21

Gm again to my fellow coffee-appreciators on #coffeechain
https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_31ad0b3c29b59229037430aac870d0fa111d5d28f5ea2316d5259882336a1ca2.gif

2023-03-06 19:18:55

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRMPfEnltdM&t=1211s

2023-03-02 21:36:50

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cheers — appreciate the info and you sharing your first thoughts getting into it!

2023-03-02 15:59:05

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What languages were you most familiar with before jumping into Rust? Just curious where you are coming from. Most of my backend codebases at work are in Go, and I’m feeling fomo with all the rust hype.… wondering how big of an adjustment going from Go to Rust is.

2023-02-28 16:09:49

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😂

2023-02-28 15:56:02

Gm #coffeechain
https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_d3e490c78c3e61544997202b21e4846f42e930f6eb383433183fe1f55e22000b.jpeg

2023-02-28 15:31:03

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It is scarcely necessary to point also to the great importance which the principle of remuneration according to the value of services rendered (the principle of equivalence) has in authentic economic analysis. It has that degree of importance because it is the controlling principle for the whole price-and-income-determination process, a principle which is at one and the same time an ethical and an economic one.
-From Heinrich Pesch’s Ethics and the National Economy (1918)

2023-02-28 15:30:25

When you need to explain ‘value for value’ to your fancy friends:
https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_70595d95eddc26f2ceae6941b6b9065a8a947cffe583a69da387e21d81d35e4a.jpeg

2023-02-15 19:52:12

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😂

2023-02-15 18:05:37

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I’ve onboarded 4 first-time bitcoiners straight to coldcard. Just takes a bit of handholding to get them set up initially. But after you show them how to create, delete, and restore a wallet, create, sign and broadcast a transaction, and then set up a watch only wallet on another device— maintaining is pretty easy after that even with little to no bitcoin know-how. This is mainly for people who just want to stack, store, and rarely if ever send.
Best mess-around signing device/wallet combo has been jade + green wallet imo… for people who aren’t stacking significant amounts and just want to experiment.

2023-02-06 21:30:21

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Nostrgram.co ‘s filter works really well. It uses only paid relays for global after you toggle it on. Have you considered simply limiting the global feed to paid relays?

2023-02-05 21:45:34

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Luv me blookchain
‘Ate them rock.jpgs
‘Ey pay more fees, ‘ey get in the blook
Simple as
https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_f516e9ace9e79e783c3d335a9e5822da0be5aa0e11f24b99249f871aab64e300.png

2023-02-01 23:03:29

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Is it a web project and are you committed to any particular framework/design library yet etc?

2023-01-31 01:48:02

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Desktop has been great, but it looks like mobile has a long way to go.

2023-01-25 18:28:55

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^link was paywalled for me. Here is the archive and the hacker news discussion for anyone else interested:
https://archive.is/20230125120906/https://www.ft.com/content/8d995a24-d77c-4208-a3a6-603d8788ebcd
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34517830

2023-01-24 19:49:46

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Breeze has been my go-to

2023-01-02 21:03:10

Nice looking palindrome block just passed by
https://nostr.build/i/1270.jpeg

2022-12-30 16:29:56

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Are you connected to brb. Every time I connect to brb I start getting random notifications. Should advertise it as a feature—notification roulette, the new social discovery tool. You feel popular and find new content.

2022-12-29 03:47:43

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😂

2022-12-29 03:37:07

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You were successful! Cheers! Love your handle btw

2022-12-29 03:30:36

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There are lots of great resources out there. Find something that is your speed. Some people like guard rails and small incremental steps (code academy is great for that) others just want to follow a text book or project idea and make mistakes.
I pivoted out of finance into dev work two years ago and couldn’t be happier. My recommendation is to start small with the basics in javascript. Solve little puzzles that require understanding of the different types and syntax you’ll encounter in most languages.

2022-12-29 03:17:30

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lnbc1u1p36e79rpp55lkdk9xtv70lsmtkk27ftu60e88xqra70dvss9sxj5enm8ykgcgqdqqcqzpgxqrrssrzjqvgptfurj3528snx6e3dtwepafxw5fpzdymw9pj20jj09sunnqmwpapyqqqqqqq5hcqqqqlgqqqqqqgq9qsp5ylxzv3syslkxkf6wwlzva8sayuzmjmm60mhc2qnpzhhjl24y4slq9qyyssqtzulh2jr7fscgqg0eapa2acz6p20wgdfee7s6avkswxvl0q6nakzax34dj8y8tgk7q3y4pkgzuz9quw2vwds2zclvp8ygkhrqut0yrcpmrk7tm

2022-12-28 22:01:16

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If you’re using damus, tap the hyperlinked hashtag string. Other clients I’m not familiar with, so can’t help you much there.

2022-12-26 20:22:54

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You update to 0.1.8 (4) already?