“It is very important to go out alone, to sit under a tree—not with a book, not with a companion, but by yourself—and observe the falling of a leaf, hear the lapping of the water, the fishermen’s song, watch the flight of a bird, and of your own thoughts as they chase each other across the space of your mind. If you are able to be alone and watch these things, then you will discover extraordinary riches which no government can tax, no human agency can corrupt, and which can never be destroyed.”

“The hidden attunement is better than the open.”

few

“How many slave dollars does it require to buy one unit of freedom?”

“Milhon understood that money is inseparable from power. Monetary systems determine who can save without confiscation, who can transact without surveillance, who can leave abusive situations, who can fund dissent, and who can plan beyond the immediate present. Traditional financial systems routinely fail these tests—sometimes through deliberate design, sometimes through indifference, inertia, or bureaucracy. The result is the same: economic life mediated by discretion rather than by rules. … Privacy was a foundational issue for Milhon and the cypherpunks (past and present). They understood privacy not as secrecy or criminal evasion, but as the precondition for free association, dissent, experimentation, and personal autonomy. Without privacy, other rights become fragile or performative. A society that treats privacy as suspicious, or that selectively criminalizes privacy-preserving tools, is one that steadily narrows the space for freedom.” https://progressivebitcoiner.org/what-would-st-jude-think-about-bitcoin/

yell it from the mountain tops

“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’.”

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

My slow dopamine stack for 2025. What should I read in 2026?