I've somewhat landed on the idea that maybe the single biggest mistake of satoshi was to have a first party implementation of bitcoin. Maybe if he never passed on the control of core and abandoned the repo when he left, it would be better off. You'd have all the contributors at the time disperse into a few different projects that fork from core, but forced to maintain consensus with each other. I realized this with nostr. It's genuinely the main thing separating it from all other "decentralized" networks. If fiatjaf had a nostr client, it would define what nostr is. Every normie looks for a "default app" for bitcoin, as with nostr. The absence of one is what makes it decentralized. They are immediately faced with the choice and realize that there isn't a easy default thing they can stay on. No app is more valid than another, the network is the rules they abide by to interoperate with each other. Everyone instinctively saw btc core as the point of centralization that it was, no one ever made that argument for bitcoin wallets, or nostr clients. There has long been this propaganda that it's good that there aren't alternatives to core, and it's not a massive point of centralization to have a single repo define the whole network and this op_return debacle has just broken that propaganda. It took a massively unpopular update to wake people up to it, but theres finally popular demand for alternative implementations that follow consensus. Luke Jr is not someone who should inherit the throne of bitcoin stewardship. He's not someone who can do what core did, managing a project and collaborating with others to maintain a whole network. But he can absolutely find a place offering one of many implementations for bitcoin, that people who like his software can run, as long as he doesn't do something that pisses them off. He should never develop for a majority of the network, but 5-10% of the plebs using his software poses no risks. I'm fully on the filter side of this debate and even I'd admit that I'd rather have the current core team, than to have Luke lead core, or for knots to take the place of core today. But that's not happening. The most important thing right now is for there to emerge serious, responsibly led alternatives to core. And for that reason I am excited by this announcement.

"The upper hand is better than the lower hand, and the upper hand is the one that gives and the lower hand is the one that receives" Sahih Muslim 1034 Giving Sadaqa is very much encouraged. At no point is receiving Sadaqa encouraged. As for tipping culture, I'm gonna tell you exactly what I told my customer yesterday when she asked why I don't accept tips. Anything normalized becomes expected. No matter how much you think you don't get affected, it will affect you subconsciously, if not consciously. If your used to getting tips, you will treat non-tippers worse without even noticing. If I accept zaps, and eventually I get to a point where I get some amount on every post, it will affect my output. Even standard tips, you get used to. You will end up chasing the highest tips. If you tip a standard 20% in america you will get worse service than in Turkiye without tipping. This is ignoring the fact that you tip at the end, but even the desire to get your tip doesn't get you better service than in Turkiye where they expect nothing from you. If anything, notice how disrespectful every employee with a tipped job is. They reek of entitlement and actively disrespect those who tip, if it's below average.

I'm genuinely lost. What's the connection?

Being able to hand someone cash is a feature. Standing on a corner asking for cash is begging and should be discouraged. Zaps are great as a feature, but they should not be a general tip jar for anything you ever said online. You wanna get paid for something? Send an invoice. Hell, there's now bolt 12 stuff coming out that allows sending LN TXs with a token like its cashu. No address necessary. Tipping culture where your ideas are financially rewarded by silent masses just leads to dumbing down the discourse and catering to those signals, like an even more severe version of the people writing for Twitter likes, or YouTube views. Just look at all the twitch streamers watching basic bitch YouTube videos and making centrist populist remarks about it so the viewers throw a few bucks at the (somewhat) famous guy who agrees with them. We are seeing this here too. There's so many micro celebrities on here typing the slightly different worded version of "bitcoin rocks" "government sucks" "look at this $1 quadrillion transaction settled instantly over the lightning network" "I sold my funko pops for bitcoin and now I'm free" etc. Its obvious zapbait and maybe the authors don't even realize that's what they are doing. Zaps are the new likes and its the same dopamine trigger that you will optimize for if you don't self reflect seriously. I can see cases where it makes sense. A non profit raising funds obviously should have it. But if your goal is to spread your ideas and further important discussions, or even just run a personal blog, having a tip jar under every post cheapens your intentions. If you were to set up your lnurl to a wallet that automatically sends to your stack, and you never saw the money coming in, and you didn't have any UI showing you zaps you received, so that you are unaware of any donations, I can see it being harmless, but no one is doing that. If you can see a reward signal, you will almost certainly subconsciously, if not consciously optimize for it.

It should be regarded as shameful to have an lnurl on your profile if you don't need the handout

Does it check for the other consensus rules along the way though? And is the double spend check really bottlenecking people beyond their internet speed?

Can't wait for the open source version running on Temu hardware

Isn't TX fees defined by the difference between input and output amount? Why was it ever restricted to whole numbers?

Great video, especially the first half

Seems like they felt remorse for the Sana'a bombings and did the al-jawf bombings to compensate

But what's it got to do with abortion?

Calling that tweet "mouthing off" is a stretch. He's literally parroting Israeli propaganda saying all the Muslim countries need to take the Palestinians in, just applying it to Europe instead of israel.

As long as you have influence, you can be killed. A lot of the journalists killed by CIA or Israel were unknown, but they were fighting against them and intelligence services notice opposition before the normie masses.

2 decades is about the limit of what you can predict because if something massive happens today, it'll still take that long before you see visible changes in the geopolitical state.

The trump gold card is essentially a shittier version of an E2 visa but instead of spending money on a profitable business, you give it to the government outright. I'm for a more middle class version of this where you can rent a greencard for 5-10k a year and it will give you residency but not count towards your 5 years for citizenship. Your kids would also not become citizens, even if they were born here, but would be able to gain citizenship at 18 if you kept up on your payments every year. Of course this would require repealing the 14th amendment, but when has the constitution stopped anyone?

A local oce cream shop puts double that much, without the cone inside taking up space. Like straight up a quart of ice cream on a cone. These guys are frauds who give you a cone where there should be more ice cream.

It can be captured, only by consolidation of clients, and full stack ones at that. The most important thing is for there to not be a single dev or company both building a client, relay software, running a relay for its own users, and a blossom media hosting. The most important of those is client centralization and market share. Clients will never be fully equal. Some client will be better for most people. The natural way to limit this is to really discourage multiplatform apps. No matter how much amethyst gains market share, it can't surpass the percent that uses android. That's a great thing. Honestly the most important thing for decentralization was done in the beginning by by not having a first party client or node implementation. As long as there is an "official" app, it will gain too much market share from normies to leave room for any decentralization. When it exacts policies and decisions that any client and relay need to, it will be the de facto rules of the protocol.