Wait, what? Authoritarianism is bad. Distributed consensus is baseline society.

Both sides of the Aisle need to be called out for this.

https://open.substack.com/pub/unchartedterritories/p/mountains

#southpark Last night was low-key brilliant -- jabs at Brendan Carr, Bibi, and I like how we're seeing some echoes of their short-lived sitcom "that's my Bush!" in the Trump/Satan affair

I don't think that being "hair trigger" with angry emotions is a good thing. Even if you go into "protector" mode outside the home, it probably means you're living with that constant state of "near crisis" inside the home. This is why people whose job it is to react violently -- cops, soldiers, etc -- tend to have domestic problems.

I mean maybe I'm out of the loop on what the current moment is calling "distributed authoritarianism" but my understanding is that means supporting authoritarian regimes not through direct command and control, but more disorganized means... think the brownshirts vs the SS. "Don't shit on the sidewalk" to me is more a reflection of community norms, pro-social vs anti-social behavior.

I see the fact that Nostr is so Bitcoin-centric as just being a function of the fact that there are only ~15k daily users here. Once this gets (at least) to the size of something like Mastodon (~500k+), then you'll start to see more organic content that isn't just Bitcoin. I really don't see Zaps as holding that back... If anything, the fact that there is a readily available monetization method here, which is practically unique among other forms of "decentralized" social media. Agree with some of the stuff upthread about Primal sidebars, "follow packs" (which I've never really gotten), etc... My personal thoughts would be that onboarding should involve (open-source) algorithms to try to recommend follows based on pre-existing interests. But I think it's crucial not to define Nostr "culture" based on what it is now at ~15k users. We don't know what this will look like once real crowds start showing up.

shoulda bought Fartcoin...

Do you think that social media monetization is bad, as a whole? If so, what other mechanism do you think is better than direct interactions like this? A company? A committee? an AI? Yes, value is subjective. But, at the risk of getting into Austrian economic theory, money and prices are crucial signalling mechanisms for whether "thing X", whether that's bushels of banana or based memes, is needed in society. Take out that signalling mechanism, and what "signal" would you propose to replace it?

Well that on top of the existence an Omnipotent Cosmic Overlord that nonetheless has strong opinions about whether your touch your weewee or eat lobster

"Rules not rulers" Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's only one person with commit authority on Knots and that's ... seems like a "ruler" to me?

I've come to believe "the algorithm" is a big cause of a lot of this. The algorithm sorts people into camps that get them riled up to fear and hate the other side. Some of it is self-selection too on the part of individuals, but centralized social media isn't helping.

Yes, #ICE

Ehhh IDK... There's a big difference between an opaque monetization based on the formulas and whims of a large centralized (legacy) social media company, and the direct interaction between content producers and consumers. I'm not saying that the latter might have some of the problems of the former... Even given the tiny size of Nostr there are already "influencer"-types here that I can't stand... But I'd rather have a system that's disintermediated.

IDK how actually "popular" a guy like that is... In our age of black-box algorithms pushing rage-bait, I think that our society is fooled into believing that people like Fuentes are more popular than he actually is. Of course, I would "mute on sight" if he came to Nostr.

These platforms have all become "State-like", and as such are falling to various forms of State failure; the "warlord Anarchy" of X, vs the crumbling bureaucracy of YouTube.

#lightning payments for #pinball is such a good idea tho... Scan QR code invoice, bam, good to go. There's no other way to make a bunch of granular ~0.50 -- 1.00 payments over time, this is why venues either (a) make you buy tokens, (b) make you buy some plastic game card (ugh), or (c) just use quarters. LN payments would eliminate all these headaches for the vendors, and plus people are probably going to play more, because it's an equal effort to put ~$0.50 on the machine as it is to put $2.00 (no slugging tokens/quarters into the machine).

Have to say, agree with him on most takes... Especially David Cronenburg bookcase at the end 😱

Well, Bigfoot of course!!

For deportations = for a vast system of incarceration, processing and transportation of prisoners. On *top* of our existing carceral system. This is what "for deportations" at any reasonable scale looks like.

This week eh? Well Monday was a doozy, soooo.... bring it on

Without a Turing-complete language Bitcoin will never be Ethereum.