And by the way, I understood your use of "Fed" to mean The Federal Reserve. Do correct me if I'm misunderstanding. Still interested to hear more either way.

Brian, it's refreshing to see a doctor who can clearly see and articulate the pitfalls of the modern medical industry. I don't think anything is wrong with business per se; it's part of life. What I do think though is that too many of us are giving business and the pursuit of personal financial growth so much of our time and energy to the point that we are rapidly losing touch with our humanity, and thus our connection to life. Few places is this more evident than in the medical sphere. Thank you for staying aligned with the core principles of medicine.

I appreciate you taking the time to read it. 🙏 I can definitely see that interpretation making sense. While I was mostly inspired by personal interactions with a friend of mine, this sort of metaphor definitely goes far beyond that, as you described, and denial of the dignity of the individual is occurring on a much larger scale in an organized fashion through governmental entities, among others. Perhaps that would be a nice topic for a future essay. Thanks again.

Re-post after screwing up my old profile and finally getting lightning sorted out on this one... Hello. I go by The Archiver. I’ve been lurking on Nostr since the beginning, and finally decided it’s time to actually post. I’m mainly going to be sharing things I’ve written—micro-essays, thought fragments, and maybe the occasional short story. My work explores modernity, social dynamics, and the actualization of the individual, among other things. I welcome critique and counter-arguments, and I won’t hesitate to offer my own. I’m not here to be another Dopamine or Cortisol dealer. I write because I want to improve the situation for humanity (and the rest of life) on this planet. This is what I can do to further that. Human beings have tremendous power and potential. It’s time we learned to wield our power with wisdom and clarity, to create a world that serves us, not the other way around. I hope that my work can be part of that process. Posts may be infrequent. I won’t publish anything until it’s ready to be seen. I’ll publish a short, rather innocuous essay alongside this note so anyone interested can get a taste of what you’re in for. I’d expect more provocative subjects later on. A question for you, should you choose to answer: What do you think is the greatest problem that humanity faces right now? #Nostr #Introductions #Philosophy #Writing #Reading

Good read. I wrote a short essay recently (which I'm planning on posting soon) that talks about some of my thoughts similar to this subject, although I didn't use the term reification as I learned it for the first time after reading this. The subject of my essay was the concept of social identity. My argument was essentially that while it can be a useful conceptual tool, if we focus too much on our social identities we can easily lose sight of who we (and other people) really are underneath the social personas we've created. I can see some overlap with my own thinking in what you've written here.

I don't know what I did to fix it, but glad it's working now. Thanks again for your help and giving me my first zap!

The laser eyes thing is related to Bitcoin I believe. It's supposed to indicate someone who supports Bitcoin or is "laser" focused on Bitcoin adoption/development. As for long form notes, my understanding is that they are a way to format your notes, as a standard Nostr note does not support formatting (things like italics, bold, font sizes, etc.) They only work on clients that support NIP-23. If you view the note in a client that doesn't support it, the content is the same, it just won't have any formatting.

Looks like something got seriously screwed up somewhere along the line. Long story short, I didn't copy my seed phrase down correctly, there was a mismatch between my profile's npub and the one set in Alby somehow, so I had to make a whole new profile. Try zapping this one? I appreciate the help.

As someone with insider experience, has your view towards the Fed and it's role in America changed over time? You said you didn't view it as a stain, but that choice of wording leads me to believe that perhaps you harbor some mixed feelings about your experience. I'd love to hear more about your experience there, either through DMs or in this thread if you're comfortable with that.

That's quite nice. I like the colors. I don't have a tablet for drawing or else I'd give Krita a try. I've been doing a little art myself, although I went the other direction and took an AI generated character and touched it up in GIMP to remove the little bits of AI weirdness and add my own expressions. I know some people see AI as a threat to art and artists, but for someone like me who has always seen myself as incapable of doing art, it has helped me discover some joy I didn't know I was missing.