FeynStructure

Electrician. Eternal student. Proud denizen of the Pacific Northwest, uninterested in nations and governments.

Public Key

npub10sfqr5vucrdnkkgullhu7j9vmesxjtps2arull53q4nrxmwhh8dsemtu2g

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs8cysp6xwvpkemtyw0lm70fzkducrf9sc9w370l6gs2e3ndhtmnkcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq3jamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwwajkcmr0wfjx2u3wdejhg57r6dt

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

relay.wellorder.net

nos.lol

nostr.mutinywallet.com

relay.primal.net

wot.nostr.party

Author Public Key

npub10sfqr5vucrdnkkgullhu7j9vmesxjtps2arull53q4nrxmwhh8dsemtu2g

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Last Notes

2026-07-15 20:55:09 UTC

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This is cool. Steak n Shake has been a shining example of how businesses can integrate Bitcoin in a meaningful way; looking forward to seeing more of that from this project, I hope.

2026-07-15 04:10:58 UTC

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Truly, a wordsmith of impeccable talent🍷

2026-07-15 00:26:21 UTC

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It does seem to bring out the worst in people. Utter savagery, both in the parking lot and inside the store.

2026-07-14 20:19:39 UTC

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As a side benefit, it helps keep cashiers familiar with basic arithmetic (which is clearly an issue these days).
All else being equal, anything that works to increase the intelligence of the populace, however infinitesimally, is to the betterment of society.

2026-07-14 08:02:45 UTC

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I have not tried this, but I will look into it. Thanks!

2026-07-14 00:38:55 UTC

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Last time I listened to a Nickleback song I told myself
"NEVER AGAIN!🎶"

2026-07-13 21:46:30 UTC

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Did anyone tell him to come to Nostr?

2026-07-13 20:29:27 UTC

I don't know what's in this stuff but my grandma bought it in the 1960's and it still works wonders.
They just don't make household oil like they used to.
https://blossom.primal.net/ce6b506f0ba09fe9f094f3f7c8f5a794ac67bcfe6b32db7b492cba9101ca3300.jpg

2026-07-13 14:05:55 UTC

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I seem to have woken up to some kind of war O_o

2026-07-12 20:33:22 UTC

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Kinda looks like chard, which I enjoy. Good stuff :)

2026-07-12 20:28:00 UTC

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Some thoughts on exploring and curating Nostr.
#naddr1qq…254u

2026-07-12 19:56:56 UTC

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I work in the trades and can confirm that distrust of government and gripes with "the system" are strong, but few seem to be able to make the cognitive leap to bitcoin yet.

2026-07-12 19:09:44 UTC

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Nice, I'll have to try that sometime.

2026-07-12 16:29:59 UTC

Name an industry that doesn't need to exist:
Cat toys.
Amazon packaging material is all you will ever need. That is what they want.
#catstr
https://blossom.primal.net/f31c03aa6bdb86a109101e722d22025dc3e72f806f7752d023b9096bba973549.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/f9c50309efc81041677e4d87d0802d0b7f18e1f92ae975c704c2a5f5c190a7a0.jpg

2026-07-12 13:46:23 UTC

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I think that if he could have just been honenst about who he was, to himself and others, he might have had the mental peace be a better person.
The guy just needed a good man to love, and to love him back.
Forever denied that by his own self-loathing, he became bitter and vindictive. I don't particularly care if he ever had kids, and I don't care that he was gay, but a man who can't be honest about such a fundamental (and bleedingly obvious) aspect of his identity cannot be trusted, and the lie clearly ate away at his soul.

2026-07-12 04:14:01 UTC

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I remember thinking that if I put enough time into it, I could "get through" the whole internet.

2026-07-11 19:31:26 UTC

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I install these things for a living. Once all the wires are terminated, the last step is to select the local time zone via a series of dip switches, so the device can estimate what will be the maiximally annoying time to start beeping.

2026-07-11 14:20:21 UTC

Step L:
https://image.nostr.build/76b151d6199a0691e1f1145778df4d939398bae78de2251eb7050bbf1fa53aa3.png
#nevent1q…we3t

2026-07-11 13:47:39 UTC

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The picture says Indiana but the headline screams Florida.

2026-07-11 13:44:26 UTC

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Just need one more to chime in and we're all accounted for 😆

2026-07-10 14:13:18 UTC

Had a big breakfast this morning but stopped at 83 bites. That felt like enough.
https://image.nostr.build/7df50e2bedfd25cf297f4ee831b374a42c28917156bb4828cb4f06f0e3fe00e0.jpg

2026-07-08 01:16:23 UTC

Let it be known to all and sundry: szechuan pepper is an S-tier seasoning.
Its delicate, citrusy flavour is delightful, and the juicy, tingling sensation it produces in the mouth is one-of-a-kind.
Five stars.

2026-07-06 22:54:24 UTC

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And I treat her just right :)

2026-07-06 12:59:22 UTC

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😎

2026-07-06 01:01:43 UTC

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I suspect he agrees with us a lot more than he pretends to.
He's too smart not to get it at some level, and there's something overly theatrical about his naysaying that makes me doubt whether he really believes it. I suspect he may be playing a long game of some sort.
If nothing else, he already publicly holds at least 5 million sats which is more than 99% of the world.

2026-07-05 20:25:37 UTC

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Indeed.
I might believe that a strongly defended bitcoin network leads to the greatest good, but the validity of that belief is up for debate, as is the fundamental proposition that "the greatest good is what we should aim for."

2026-07-05 19:18:10 UTC

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I think step 2 is where the schism originates.
While you and I might agree that the defensibility of the network is paramount, many people, it would seem, do not value it. They are concerned with other things, like jpegs and convoluted taproot constructions.

2026-07-05 10:08:23 UTC

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Curious. The symbolism seems... confused.

2026-07-04 21:39:37 UTC

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Yeah to clarify, I think all ATMs are likely to be outlawed in my country pretty soon, or made heavily kyc-mandatory.
Meetups may be the way in the future, unless I can start earning in sats. That's difficult though, as my work (electrician) is regulated and requires permits, so payments are hard to obfuscate. Unless people are willing to have completely off the books work done, I suppose, but that puts them at risk if anything goes wrong.

2026-07-04 20:06:37 UTC

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Well I'm glad you brought that up, because I've looked into p2p platforms and there's still something that gives me pause.
Besides the rare case where there's someone in your local area who's willing to meet up in person and accept cash (I have yet to see an offer like this in my city), are there any other ways to pay anonymously?
If you do a bank transfer or something like that, the sender has your identification.
Now suppose the government (or some other nefarious organization) wanted to dox a bunch of anonymous bitcoin: they could just have undercover agents on these platforms selling bitcoin and then linking receive addresses with identities attached to payments. Those sats could then by tracked with chainalysis through time, potentially contaminating huge swaths of non-kyc bitcoin as UTXO's are consolidated.
Even the possibility of this happening makes me reticent to use these platforms.
What's the solution? Are there anonymous ways to pay besides cash? Do you just coinjoin after the fact and hope for the best?
I appreciate any knowledge on this matter, I'm woefully undereducated.

2026-07-04 18:40:46 UTC

Well fuck, nostr, it happened: I've become a statistic.
As much as I might like to consider myself vigilant, convenience, complacency, and residual trust in a fiat institution got me.
First, the good news: the overwhelming majority of my sats are in cold storage self custody. Thank goodness for that. Worst case scenario, my wife and I will be fine.
The bad news: I have a decently sized TFSA, RRSP, and a small but meaningful number of sats that are seemingly at risk. (Queue the litany of I-told-you-so's; I deserve it)
What happened: There are a couple of different places where I acquire bitcoin. The first place I ever bought bitcoin from, when I knew absolutely nothing about anything, was Wealthsimple. I now understand that it's a crap place to get bitcoin from, but it's also where I've "held" more traditional, tax-advantaged stuff, and they have a no-fee DCA program if you get your paychecks direct deposited there, so it was convenient.
That's why I continued to have a small recurring purchase from them, because of the zero fees. Periodically, I would move to cold storage when I had built up a decent size UTXO.
Today, I tried to do one of these regular transfers. However, right when I hit send, the app glitched and signed me out, and when I tried to sign back in I was told that my account had been locked due to "suspicious activity."
To regain access to my account, it says I have to verify my identity with their third-party verification partner, Persona.
You know, Persona: the digital panopticon that takes your data and shares it with 17 different subprocessors (that we know of), screens you for terrorism and espionage, and retains your data for three years (or so they say)? Nevermind the fact that everyone they share it with probably keeps it forever, even if they don't.
Yes, this is all KYC'd to shit anyways, but what if I don't want to give my data to this awful company, specifically? (Reports indicate that Wealthsimple partnered with Persona sometime around February 2026, just as all the terrible news about them was coming out. Bang up job WS, you really nailed this one).
What if I refuse? Does Wealthsimple just seize my assets and tell me to get fucked? We shall see, customer service isn't open on the weekends. Maybe my previous KYC information is already shared with them anyways and I'm just crashing out over a done deal (probably, now that I think about it), but I still don't like this.
I knew better. I knew my KYC stack was big enough and that I should just focus on acquiring clean bitcoin from now on. But I was lazy.
If you're in Canada, there is still a limited time window open where you can put on a covid mask, a hat, and a pair of sunglasses and walk up to a @@npub19mf…kfu2 ATM with a fat wad of cash and get clean, anonymous bitcoin sent straight to your custody for a mere 7% markup after all fees and spreads. Pretty reasonable, I'd say. This won't last long; the eye of Sauron (Mark Carney) is upon them.
I'm done with custodial exchanges and I'm done with KYC. This is so stupid.
https://image.nostr.build/72f480f917e0de8db5ed182d5d34cb652d11826f399b4942c46e9ca8e9d5041f.jpg https://image.nostr.build/51d77f22798142c5d8c53542568fc093d13f6a3cfaeff52cd428e5dd1ee22f07.jpg

2026-07-04 13:31:14 UTC

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*Data

2026-07-04 13:29:58 UTC

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Hard to argue with the date O_o
Things like this make a case for having a dashcam in your vehicle, although I am now starting to understand that they're also just one more self-adopted tracking device. I removed mine months ago.

2026-07-04 13:24:53 UTC

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✊
Independence from the British is just the beginning.

2026-07-03 01:48:45 UTC

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I haven't heard anything, is something happening?

2026-07-02 09:09:03 UTC

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At a more trivial level, I an sometimes at the checkout of a store and, right before I pay, the cashier will just casually ask me for my email or phone number.
My standard response is "is this information required in order for me to purchase this backpack?" or whatever it happens to be.
They usually seem a bit caught off guard by this, like they're not used to having this questioned, and thus far the answer has always been no. If the answer were ever to be yes, I would not do business with them.
I'm sure it's mostly just so that they can pester me with advertising, but it's the casual nature of the inappropriate request, and the seeming lack of push back from most people, that I find so repulsive.

2026-07-02 03:26:23 UTC

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Best wishes brother, keep up the good work.

2026-07-01 02:30:51 UTC

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Oversimplified answer: his name was Ebeneezer, and it occurred in London. Tea was no doubt involved.

2026-07-01 02:25:05 UTC

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Always fascinating when one man slightly brushes his leg against another man's leg, resulting in an apparent head injury.

2026-07-01 01:27:55 UTC

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I was inspired and I did the same thing!
Characteristics: "Electrical Engineering", "Technology Geek", "Sharp Humor", "Broad Cultural Knowledge"
Reason: Electrical engineering, technology geek, broad cultural involvement —— hardcore technology and open-minded.
Seems a bit generous tbh but I'll take it. Love the double em dash for maximum AI-ness.
#nevent1q…c6us

2026-06-29 22:38:12 UTC

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Pipepipe has been working well enough for me recently 👍

2026-06-28 12:11:49 UTC

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And it doesn't seem to have linked. Still figuring out YakiHonne...
#naddr1qq…e0lp

2026-06-28 12:05:04 UTC

New article dropped, exploring risk and taking responsibility for one's own life, from my own unique vantage point.
"Though many lack the words to describe it, the modern consumer existence, free of danger, stripped of its highest highs and lowest lows, is abhorent to the free spirit and intrepidness that characterizes this marvellous species that we are so priveleged to be members of."

2026-06-28 08:13:48 UTC

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Good lord, that's beautiful.

2026-06-26 03:25:35 UTC

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Perhaps beside the point, but that Adam Back robot in the background is a bit creepy.

2026-06-24 05:46:56 UTC

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Oh I'm so glad you asked, allow me to nerd out about electrical gear.
What you see is two of the three main components that form a unit substation, which takes electrical power from the utility lines at distribution voltage (~2.5 kilovolts to 27.5kV) and turns it into equivalent power at utilization voltage (600V or less), where power = voltage x current.
Thus, at distribution voltage, the current is very low, but at utilization voltage it is much higher. The product is the same in both cases, minus some trivial losses in the transformer.
At 25kV, all the power for this entire 100 unit apartment building flows through three copper wires with a cross sectional area about the size of my pinky.
After the voltage is stepped down, the amount of current flowing requires solid bars (of aluminum in this case, although silver flashed copper is also common) to conduct through, seen on the right side of the three transformer cores.
Note the two sets of bars: four smaller ones in the foreground and four larger ones in the background. The smaller ones deliver power at 600V line-to-line (347V line-to-neutral), and the larger ones deliver power at 208V line-to-line (120V line-to-neutral). Lower voltage, more current, bigger conductors.
If 347 and 208 seem like oddly specific numbers, the secret is the square root of 3, which emerges from the trigonometry of three-phase electrical power.
In each set, there are three "hot" conductors, angled down, and a straight neutral on top.
The grey cabinet on the left side of the image is the high voltage switch, which incorporates an isolation switch and a circuit breaker.
The transformer will have an enclosure built around it soon. To the right of that there will be three switchgear sections that distribute power out to the building at the lower voltages.
The transformer alone weighs 3700kg, and the entire assembly is probably in the range of a couple hundred thousand Canadian cuck bucks. It will take roughly two months to build.

2026-06-23 23:19:59 UTC

It was a stressful day but we got it in there. In a couple months this baby will be slurping 25kV and spitting out 600/347 & 208/120 (dual voltage secondary, very cool).
I love this shit.
https://blossom.primal.net/89a6f31b0d65e77396ac60b35e303e5498c9b8bcc1d1aed0201f6bc764204325.jpg

2026-06-23 03:42:25 UTC

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Stretch at the airport, just don't STRC. That would be unadvisable.

2026-06-23 03:35:11 UTC

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Jfc OK wow, that's not what I was expecting O_o

2026-06-22 21:24:32 UTC

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Ngl, 1999 was pretty lit.

2026-06-20 14:05:46 UTC

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If you work in a corporate structure, your asshole manager is just as much an unhappy slave as you are, as is his manager, and his manager...
There is only one master, and it's usually not even the CEO. It is profit.

2026-06-19 17:32:59 UTC

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So true. Being a resident of the Pacific Northwest (including Washington, Idaho, and Oregon) carries a lot more meaning to me than being "Canadian," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.

2026-06-18 01:29:47 UTC

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Oof, I hope not. Clown vibes are high while the walls of the digital panopticon close in.
Fingers crossed this gets looked back on as a rough period, before things got better.

2026-06-16 22:12:05 UTC

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Oh good, I was worried for a second there that I was going to have to think for myself.

2026-06-16 20:25:05 UTC

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Try YakiHonne client.

2026-06-16 18:13:38 UTC

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Yes.

2026-06-14 15:57:25 UTC

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Haha I'm glad someone appreciates it.
My wife does not care for "Mr Literal." 😆

2026-06-14 15:07:44 UTC

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Is it though? Negative feedback loops are generally beneficial, as they promote stability and equilibrium.
I would argue that politics, at least in its modern form, is more of a positive feedback loop, leading to increasing levels of chaos.

2026-06-13 20:21:43 UTC

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I scream this at the clouds every morning.
They'll see soon enough.

2026-06-13 18:25:14 UTC

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Nice. I wasn't familiar with ICF; now I have this in my back pocket if I ever build my own custom home. Thanks.

2026-06-13 17:50:13 UTC

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Yes, more of this.
As an electrician, I'm tired of pulling loomex through drywall encrusted shitboxes. Let's have more stone, more brick, more large timber, with steel conduit for the electrical (makes modifications and upgrades super easy too). Hell, even concrete can be aesthetically pleasing when done right.
It's a bit discouraging to know that most of what I install will be demolished in a few decades. Lights and devices will evolve and be replaced over the years, but copper circuitry can last more than a century with minimal maintenance. Let's make buildings that can match this.

2026-06-13 00:43:11 UTC

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The Matrix (1999) was a standalone movie, and a masterpiece of science fiction. There were no sequels.
This is the reality that I choose to exist in.

2026-06-12 17:26:07 UTC

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Like taking sound money from a baby.

2026-06-12 14:16:25 UTC

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A wet towel laid on the floor for them to lie on can help keep them cool, which reduces panting, which reduces dehydration.
Not every pet will be interested in doing this, but one of my cats, in particular, has really taken to it.

2026-06-12 12:44:57 UTC

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Thank you, your kind words mean a lot.
I think that's ultimately what this nostr project is becoming for me: a previously unavailable opportunity to practice my writing in a semi-public fashion, with the unfakable metric of zaps to tell me what really resonates with people. My previous article "The Fiatization of My Job" seems to have really struck a chord within the miniscule reach of my modest footprint here. There's something there that many people recognized as broken in their own working lives.
I have a nebulous idea for a book I'd like to write someday, something in the vein of philosophy for the common man, anchored to a personal perspective. I will continue to explore ideas here in the meantime, both related to that framework and not, until such time as I am ready.
As they say, you write your first book for free, and the proceeds from that just pay you to write the second one.

2026-06-12 11:19:49 UTC

On Patience, Humility, and Gratitude.
It is a little after 4 AM in my corner of the world. In a couple of hours, I will be on the one hour commute to the jobsite where I hone and apply my craft and mine fiat. As the foreman, I will work 9-10 hours today; first in, last out. 8 hours with the crew, with a bit of time on either end to get some work done on my computer, mercifully free of any distractions or fires to put out (figuratively). Then another hour to get home.
When I get home, I will be greeted by the love of my life. Her commute isn't as long as mine, but as a nurse on a cardiac unit in a major metropolitan hospital, she will have had an even more stressful day than me. We will both be exhausted.
She will tell me about her day in great detail. She may be tired and resigned when she does so, or she may be animated and emotional. She will tell me about the many arrogant doctors with their god complexes, and the tone deaf management who try to orchestrate the life and death reality of the unit from behind the shield of a computer screen. She will tell me about the patients, good and bad; the warm and friendly grandmother, surrounded by her loving family, and the creepy old man making sexual remarks at her while wearing a diaper and a hospital gown.
I will tell her little about my day. The actual details of what I do at work are but abstractions to her, much as hers are for me. I have tried being more explicit in the past but I didn't find it helpful for me, personally, and I don't think she finds the finer points of electrical work very interesting either. When there has been interpersonal conflict at work I talk more about that since it is something we can find common ground on, and I value her perspective in these matters.
Once home, we might cook dinner if we have the energy for it, or we might eat some leftovers, or we might just order some takeout. We are trying to lead healthier, more financially responsible lives than we have in the past, but we're not perfect.
I want to be the man who can retire his wife from paid employment, so that she might be free to manage our shared life together and pursue her personal interests while I provide for us financially. She wants this too but living, as we do, in an expensive city, in an inflationary world, with a simple investment thesis that just didn't perform as well as I'd naively hoped, it is not possible yet.
We are still in our quiet phase of building and accumulating for the future. It is unglamorous and often boring. In the movies, these are the years that get condensed down to a 90 second montage set to some inspirational music, with clearly visible progress from shot to shot. But the reality is much different. These years cannot be speedrun, they must be lived one day at a time.
Only the strong hold the course long enough to see the rewards. They must accept the day to day banality and see the brighter future in their minds, when no one else cares. People love an underdog success story, but usually only once the ascent has been achieved. The grind itself is uninteresting; that's why it's a grind.
But even in the trenches of the mundane there can be moments of fun, of satisfaction, of peace, if one simply makes the effort to seek them out.
We are up at 4 AM to get in some exercise before we go to work. It wasn't working for us in the afternoon, so now we go first thing in the morning. For much of the year, this consists of going to the only gym near our house that is open early enough for us but right now, for a few glorious months, the weather is nice enough thay we can go run around a nearby lake as the sun rises.
The lake is in the middle of a city. A hundred metres from any point on the shoreline are residential neighborhoods and, beyond that, major arterial roads. During the day the roar of not-too-distant traffic is always audible, and the perimeter trail is jam packed with people, all seeking whatever meagre respite they can get from the manic pace of the city. It isn't much, but it's something.
Right now, however, the city is relatively quiet. The birds in the trees are singing joyously, and ducks and geese are swimming lazily across the lake, fuzzy youglings in tow. For a moment that lasts no more than a few minutes, the sky is afire with the orange and purple heraldry of the coming daylight. We are all alone.
As I walk the final lap of the lake to cool down, I can smell the lush vegetation that surrounds me, and the crunch of the gravel beneath my feet evokes warm memories of camping trips and walks down unpaved rural roads from my younger years. A lone heron stands vigil on a rock just beneath the water's glassy surface. He, too, must be quietly patient, for the trout is not owed to him, it is earned.
Some day, hopefully not too much longer from now, we will leave behind this city and our little apartment, and for all their flaws there will be many fond memories here that we look back on and cherish. Life isn't amazing right now, but it's not bad, and with the way things are going in this world that alone is worth being grateful for.
May you all find peace, wherever you are.
https://blossom.primal.net/044057f6241b23181a4954ee15d6ad624bb0c1de04b4616672cefcba585ba387.jpg

2026-06-10 22:56:29 UTC

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You built something really beautiful.

2026-06-10 17:36:29 UTC

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Nice!
A recent hack my wife just taught me is dipping the cut ends of raw rubarb chunks into granulated sugar and just eating it like that. Makes a nice little sweet snack.

2026-06-10 13:13:56 UTC

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Being Canadian, I think of the figurehead king in a faraway land that is technically our head of state. Not great.

2026-06-09 12:56:45 UTC

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No, he certainly is not. Whatever was there back when he was delivering eloquent lectures on Breedlove's podcast is long gone. Perhaps it was a mask the whole time.
I'd be happy if there were no single identifiable "torchbearer." When CNN needs a guy to deliver a soundbite on Bitcoin, I want them to be unsure who to call. Decentralized evangelism, you might say.

2026-06-07 20:30:43 UTC

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I've been so many places
I've seen so many faces
But nothing compares to
These orange and purple pills
🎶

2026-06-07 15:49:55 UTC

On Indian Reserves and Decentralized Power
---
*Note: I will use various different descriptors in this article, but will often default to "indigenous" as it seems to be the most broadly applicable. In Canada, the Constitution Act of 1982 uses three distinct categories (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) to describe what are ultimately more than 600 different legally recognized bands. Other terms are used in the US, and both countries use the historically confused "Indian" in legal contexts (The Bureau of Indian Affairs, etc).
The Youtuber CGP Grey has an excellent video on why the term "Indian" is often still used, even by indigenous people themselves, and why this isn't necessarily an issue, even if it does seem needlessly inaccurate.
Also note that the term "reservation" is used in the US, while in Canada the term "reserve" is standard. The terms "tribe" and "band" are used interchangeably in this article, although I default to "band."
---
Tension between the indigenous peoples of North America and the descendents of the European colonists has existed since the moment of first contact. As the foreign arrivals spread across the "new" world, the native population must have no doubt felt similar feelings to what many modern day North Americans and Europeans who are against liberal immigration policies feel today: we are being overrun by foreigners who do not share our cultural values, and who do not respect our land, or our laws, or us.
In Canada, perhaps much more than the United States, we are having a modern day reckoning with these old tensions (I am not familiar with the status of the debate in Mexico). Disagreements about so-called "land acknowledgements," proposed redistribution of private property, questions of governance, and sensationalized stories of mass grave sites are just a few of the touchpoints in this wider cultural debate that is underway.
I don't intend to litigate these issues individually, because for the most part I am unqualified to do so. The one example listed above that I feel sufficiently strongly about to make a statement on is that the redistribution of private property is immoral and misguided, and will not right the wrongs of the past, only create new ones.
Rather, I would like to explore, from the comfort of my philosopher's armchair, the idea of indigenous reservations and how they might dovetail with the concept of decentralized power. I say "might" because, in their current form, they do a very poor job at decentralizing power (I speak now about the Canadian system, specifically). I am motivated to pursue this line of inquiry because it is my belief that, all else being equal, it is better to have power decentralized rather than centralized (all else is, of course, never equal, but it's a starting point before delving into the nuance).
Legally, as a byproduct of Canada's Commonwealth status, the title to the land upon which First Nations Reserves (the Métis and Inuit were not granted reserves) sit belongs to the monarch of England, so we're already off to a bad start. It does not belong to the band (although individuals can hold certificates of possession of lots or homes), and it does not even belong to Canada, technically. The situation is marginally better in the United States, wherein bands do have the ability to purchase or negotiate treaties for the land, although in most cases it is held in trust by the federal government. But at least they don't have the additional layer of a figurehead king in a faraway land.
Thus, bands in Canada do not have sovereignty over the land they inhabit. They cannot simply use it as they see fit. Additionally, most bands are not financially independent from the federal government. These two facts, I believe, cannot be considered in isolation from one another. There is a perception (not unwarranted) that bands are the beneficiaries of much socialist support from the federal government, and that this is an unfair burden on the taxpayer. And perhaps it is. But to suggest that they should simply be cut off of their support, without addressing the issue of land ownership, is to only see one half of the problem. It is difficult to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps when someone else owns your boots.
To clarify two points:
1. The land titles in question pertain to the reserve lands only, not other titles that individuals or businesses may hold that are now in jeopardy of essentially being voided (see Cowichan Tribes vs Canada and šxʷq̓ʷal̕təl̕tən Rights Recognition Agreement [no, I don't know how to pronounce that because, to a rounding error, nobody does]). Let us also, for the moment, set aside the fact that individual land ownership in Canada doesn't really exist anyways, since property taxes ensure you can never truly escape renting. At best your landlord is the government and, if you fail to make the payments (yearly now instead of monthly), eventually you will be removed from your home by men with guns and threatened with imprisonment if you don't pay up.
2. I am not arguing in favor of government support for reserves. I am arguing against it, while simultaneously arguing for the land title of the reserve to be handed over to the band. If we're going to call them Nations, let's treat the concept seriously.
In short, I am proposing a state of true independence for those First Nations who would want it (this part is important; not all would want it, and I'm not suggesting that we kick whole tribes out of Canada against their will). Give them the full, unilateral rights to the land that was set aside for them by those who conquered this continent and divided it up into parcels. As distasteful as it may be to speak so bluntly of this, let us not mince words:
An invading force came in and changed the political landscape of this place. When I say "force" I don't mean it in the unified, organized sense of a military unit. This was a heterogeneous, disorganized, incremental force composed of many different nations, diasporas, and agendas, spanning multiple centuries. Atrocities were committed, lands were expropriated, and people were displaced. The invaders and the invaded are both long dead, except in the sense that the "invasion" continues to this day by people from all over the world, sanctioned by the federal government. The discomfort that I and many others feel with the scale and indiscriminate nature of modern immogration is in the same vein as the discomfort that the indigenous would have felt with the arrival of my ancestors. These two things can both be true and justified at the same time.
Some of those on the invading force saw fit to set aside parcels of land upon which to resettle the invaded, but were unwilling to give up full rights to these lands. I think it is worth reconsidering this now.
If we claim to care for the dignity and sovereignty of these once-conquered peoples, let us take action that actually reflects this. We would not be stripping current landowners of what they have lawfully bought and paid for, simply handing the title of ownership of the reserve lands over to those who already inhabit them, while simultaneously ending federal funding, so that they might freely determine their own destiny. In their current state, both owned and subsidized by others (although, notably, not the same others [English monarch vs Canadian taxpayers]), this is simply not possible.
In such a scenario, the map of Canada would then become dotted with a plethora of micronations, many landlocked, independent from both Canada and one another. Free to make use of the land as they saw fit, some would thrive while others would fall into decay as a function of the quality of leadership (controllable) and the quality of the land (chosen by those who first drew the borders of the reserves). It is worth noting that many reserves were set up on comparitively poor quality land, for precisely that reason.
In most cases, this would probably have to be an incremental transition over an extended period of time. Crippled by generations of enforced lack of agency and subsidization (to say nothing of corruption and mismanagement or embezzlement of federal funds), many of these reserves are already in a state of advanced decay and would collapse under their own weight if life support was removed suddenly.
I grew up on reserve land and I have seen it with my own eyes (I am not indigenous, but there was a single street of lots that were leased out to others to generate sorely needed income for the reserve. The lots were "owned" and leased out by the band, but the homes were owned by the individuals. If you've ever wondered how much a house is worth compared to the land it sits on, the answer is very little). The levels of poverty and squalor in some of these places is horrific, and unknown to many in the broader population due to the remote locations of many reserves, and the insular nature of many bands.
This is not a light switch that can just be flicked and then we're all off on our separate ways. This is where we come to a precipice of nuance that I am not qualified to opine on. But I think this path towards more decentralized political power in Canada is one worth assessing by those more educated on the subject than I.
Indeed, the reserves are but a microcosm for the problem faced by the provinces and territories more broadly, wherein different jurisdictions are subject to different levels of taxation, subsidization, and Crown land ownership.
In the fullness of time, I can imagine a future in which the nation of Canada has disappeared off the world map, as provinces and territories (perhaps as coalitions) exit the Commonwealth and seize their independence, while indigenous bands have those lands that they inhabit to the exclusion of others restored to them. Some (both bands and provinces) would thrive, some would scrape by, and some would fail, and over time, especially if similar dynamics played out in the United States, we might finally see a decentalized, meritocratic North America again, just as it was when only the indigenous tribes inhabited this land.
https://blossom.primal.net/8b612c2eb0d5584df4803515b60af87359c603d2f1aa724968ad4cd5012e0e31.jpg

2026-06-05 15:47:13 UTC

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Is it though? Rough web search gives the following:
"The Cardano (ADA) ICO started in 2015 and raised $62,240,000 USD. The initial coin offering finished on January 01, 2017, and the Cardano ICO price was $0.0487."
Looks like they've still got another 70ish% to go, although at this point that feels like splitting hairs. Lord, let this be the last time I ever engage in Cardano analytics 😆

2026-06-04 14:45:33 UTC

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I was going to buy my first house this year but the seller doesn't accept the value of my denominator 😒

2026-06-04 12:27:42 UTC

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Oof, yeah I reckon you've got a bit of bullshit to deal with over the coming days/weeks. Is what it is, just gotta ride it out and accept you won't be as productive for a bit, but it's part of the process.

2026-06-04 00:37:00 UTC

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Let me tell you, all these zaps every day are a real pain in the ass to calculate 10 cents of tax on, but I do it because I'm a good little boy.

2026-06-03 12:12:02 UTC

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Feelin' snakeish, might slither a bit.

2026-06-02 19:10:26 UTC

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I appreciate the offer. Unfortunately, I'm on the other side of the continent and unlikely to make it out that way anytime soon.
I hope you can find a good electrician, maybe even one who accepts sats. Blue collar is not well represented in Bitcoin yet, unfortunately.

2026-06-02 01:44:24 UTC

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First M2, then Nasdaq, then software.
Not the decouplings we wanted, but perhaps the ones we deserved.

2026-06-01 17:56:43 UTC

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I resent the headline "Crooks, beware."

2026-06-01 14:06:08 UTC

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Nice, let the games begin.

2026-06-01 04:28:44 UTC

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That last part is a particularly difficult problem to address. Any one company is wary of investing too much time on an apprentice because they're free to pick up and leave whenever they want and go work somewhere else.
It's a prisoners dilemma of sorts. If we all did our best to give our apprentices a good education (cooperate), we would all benefit from the improved quality of the labour pool, even if individual apprentices moved around from company to company. This could even be a further benefit, as different companies specialize in different types of work, and so apprentices would become more well-rounded.
But if we all distrust each other to provide good education (defect), and we distrust our apprentices to stick around for any significant length of time, then we all collectively lose because the general quality of the labour pool is lower, and apprentices are less likely to stick around when they aren't getting the mentorship they need.
It's a collective action problem playing out predictably in a low-trust society. I don't have a solution that doesn't infringe on people's freedom (like being indentured to a particular company for a specified length of time), but it's worth pondering.

2026-05-31 13:25:18 UTC

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That's well put, and gives me hope. It doesn't have to be like this, I just need to do a little work to find like minded souls locally.

2026-05-31 12:56:53 UTC

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The way the world is going, I imagine there are parallels to this story in just about every line of work, and I'd like to hear more of them. Let's open a window and shine some light on this rot that is growing among us.
So many of us are suffering from the effects of this societal disease but it affects each of us differently, and it is often those who work hardest, who take their job the most seriously, who suffer the most.
When work needs to be done but you are surrounded by poorly trained, unmotivated, incompetent people, what do you, a serious person, do? You pick up the slack. You make up the difference. And you do it day after day, for years, until it drives you mad. You crack. You blow up, you drink, you quit. You move on to something new, thinking it will be better there, only to find the same familiar rot.
Before I was an electrician I was a line cook, and there were similar dynamics at play. I spent the best years of my life (physically: my late teens and twenties), slowly losing my mind in hot, claustrophobic, stainless steel crucibles. I was trying to keep the ship afloat on razor-thin labour margins, set by wealthy owners who couldn't be bothered to pay enough to keep quality cooks around long enough to establish a culture of quality. Those who left early were the smart ones; I was the fool.
My wife, a nurse, tells me similar stories about life at the hospital. You would think that when the stakes are literally life and death (she works on a cardiac unit), things might be different but no, it's the same familiar story, with a few twists.
In Canada, with our government funded healthcare system, ungodly amounts of money disappear into the black hole of a public hospital. But where does it all go? It's not to the staff, those actually providing patient care. They are getting run ragged. Nurse-to-patient ratios not met on a daily basis. Insufficient training. Burnout and staff turnover.
The money goes to the administrative class, which has become bloated and fat and completely untethered to the physical reality of the situation on the ground. Layer after layer of superfluous administators, drawing salaries far out of proportion to their actual contribution to the mission of patient health. Org charts that would make a Soviet bureaucrat blush. It is the same strain of the disease that has infected higher education, and government itself.
There is much work to be done in fighting this sickness. It starts with speaking honestly about the extent of the infection, and by a frank appraisal of which parts of the system are too far gone and need to be amputated.

2026-05-31 02:21:29 UTC

The Fiatization of My Job
I am an electrician, broadly speaking. Four years ago, I was an apprentice. Today, I am a foreman. For a few years in between, I was just a standard-issue journeyman. That I was promoted to foreman after just a few short years could optimistically be interpreted as proof of my superior intelligence, or just as well as a sign of the increasingly scant quality human resources in the skilled trades. There weren't many options to choose from when the 30 year vet they had lined up pulled out, and they had to take whatever they could get, even if it wasn't ideal. I sure didn't feel ready to run a crew of 20, wiring a 100-unit apartment building as my first project in charge (what experience I have has largely been in concrete commercial construction; wood frame residential is an entirely different ballgame).
Before my recent promotion into the dismal ranks of middle management, I had ideas about how I would run things when I got here. Notions of improved professionalism, quality-of-workmanship, efficiency, and education for apprentices. Like so many of the recently promoted (or elected, I would imagine), I have now had the full weight of my naivité impressed upon me by the human-logistical constraints of the job market, and a race to the bottom for competitive bids.
The tradition of apprenticeship in the trades, or craftsmanship generally, is one that goes back for centuries, even millenia. Divine origins notwithstanding, someone had to teach young Jesus the art of carpentry. And long before him, uncountable generations of of elder masters have been handing down the techniques of shaping and assembling the useful materials of our world; wood, bronze, iron, all the way back to the crude stone hand axes at the dawn of proto-humanity. Education in the material arts is inherently physical, and can be accomplished only by doing; poorly at first, then a bit better, and a bit better, and so on. There is only so much armchair philosophizing one can do about smithery; sooner or later you need to go hammer on a piece of steel and see how it reacts.
The role of the apprentice is, and has always been, two-fold. The apprentice is:
1. A student.
2. A source of cheap labour.
The two are inseparable. The cheap labour is how the apprentice pays for their education, and frees up the older, experienced master to do the more complex aspects of the job. Contrary to some journeymans' opinions, it's not about "earning the right to not do hard labour anymore." It is merely an economic calculus. The boy cannot yet be trusted to terminate the high voltage connections, but he can haul in the heavy cables, and perhaps faster than the older man by benefit of his youth. But if the boy is not there that day, the man will haul in the cables. No one is above the hard physical work. There are many on modern jobsites who seem to have forgotten this.
From my vantage point working for a particular company in a particular trade, it seems that these two aspects are very frequently out of balance. Namely, I feel that we (I speak now for my company, specifically, but it's a problem in the industry broadly) are failing to give our apprentices a proper education and leaning on them too much for their cheap labour. This ultimately leads to poorer quality journeymen in the future, who do poorer work and give the next generation of apprentices an even poorer education than they received. It is a recursive spiral of degradation, created by the delusion that competent journeymen can simply be produced by fiat, without proof-of-work.
This is a yet another example of enshittification brought on by high time preference. On any given day, an apprentice is more economically profitable to a company as cheap labour, with the absolute minimum amount of training being given to them to do the task at hand acceptably. An hour spent learning is an hour spent not pulling wire and installing lights. At their lower rate of pay, there is also an incentive to make the crew as "bottom heavy" (that is, more apprentices and less journeymen) as possible, with only the minimum number of journeymen necessary to do the really critical stuff (distribution, live work, etc).
What this amounts to is a few overworked journeymen doing all the complex work with little opportunity to pass on their knowledge, and an army of unruly youngsters hacking and slashing their way through the building, screwing things up as they go because they don't have the guidance and mentorship they need to consistently do it right the first time. The time spent redoing and repairing things, and how much of it could be avoided through better training, is difficult to quantify and thus gets too easily ignored.
There exist laws that aim to put a limit on this in regulated trades: journeyman-to-apprentice ratios. In my trade, in my jurisdiction, the limit is 2 apprentices to 1 journeyman. That is the bare minimum level of supervision allowed by law.
We consistently run 4:1 on my site.
My father tells me that when he was laying brick back in the '80's, his ratio was 2:1 but inversed: 2 journeymen to 1 apprentice.
The free market libertarian in me is conflicted on these laws. They're well intentioned, and they probably make work more pleasant (when they're followed), but they are nonetheless an infringement on a company's freedom to run itself poorly.
I have informed upper management (who determine the composition of my crew) that we are in violation of the law. I will do what I can with what I have available to me for the time being. I will not go tattle to the government. But I will not take any shit about the project being behind schedule.
Perhaps it is time to find a new job. There will come a day when it is time to strike out on my own, but that time is not yet. Electrical work is not something you learn in 4 years and then just apply for the rest of your life. The physics never change, but the technology is constantly in flux. The most recent edition of the Canadian Electrical Code (part 1 of 3) is about 1000 pages long. Provincial and municipal regulations on top of that. Building code and fire code to contend with as well. Running a business, liasing with engineers, building clientelle... A more free and noble career awaits, but there is so much to learn, so much to learn...
If you need to hire a contractor (electrical or otherwise), I would implore you not to just go with the lowest bid. High prices do not automatically mean high quality, but the inverse is almost always true; low prices usually mean low quality. You simply cannot do good work for bargain-bin prices for long without going out of business. Do some due diligence on the people you hire, and try to support quality workmanship.
Lord knows, we could use a bit more of that these days.
https://blossom.primal.net/5ee99c1e8ad376f033af2400c85ed38e9cc6fec3834fa4a52b990cf1aa251418.jpg

2026-05-31 01:24:44 UTC

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Jfc... This is amazing, in the stupidest way possible.

2026-05-30 14:37:10 UTC

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If a scam is being participated in by the majority of the world's population, you can use data about that scam to infer useful information about the world.
Because the US dollar is currently the the most widely recognized global unit of account, the bitcoin exchange rate in USD is still a reliable gauge of how much productive energy is being funneled into the bitcoin system.
Thus it is one (but far from the only) useful metric in determining how successful bitcoin is in it's mission to end fiat.

2026-05-29 13:46:31 UTC

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Oh cool, a political document inscribed on the separation-of-money-and-state protocol.

2026-05-29 02:48:33 UTC

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That's interesting. Plenty of people gripe about tax, inflation, and affordability, but never seem to make it past the complaining phase.
It's the "monetary history" part that gives me pause, and a glimmer of hope that they might eventually find the way.

2026-05-28 22:35:28 UTC

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OK cool, that's great to hear. Thanks!

2026-05-28 17:50:53 UTC

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Anywhere I can buy with Bitcoin?
I suppose I could just download the PDF for free and send a big zap, but it would be nice to have the professionally printed copy, and it would be nice to pay in my preferred currency.

2026-05-24 03:52:48 UTC

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Cryptic verbiage.
But meaning manifests through
Multiple readings.

2026-05-24 03:45:44 UTC

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I wouldn't trust pre-installed, personally. I'm not a particularly technical person and I was able to load it easily enough thanks to the fantastic @nprofile…268u tutorial.

2026-05-22 20:59:52 UTC

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Nice. Bitcoin is great, but barter is even better when you can manage it; there's just not as many opportunities due to the coincidence of wants problem.

2026-05-22 19:46:56 UTC

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Easy, just follow the series of tubes back to the source.

2026-05-22 13:03:24 UTC

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I'm normally a civil man but I will fucking die on this hill.
Yes pineapple.

2026-05-21 22:39:36 UTC

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The choice of language is telling: crypto. Have at it guys, dominate a pile of shit. I'll be stacking sats and freedom tech in the meantime.

2026-05-20 17:37:43 UTC

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Nostr only is here, it's just not evenly distributed. Proud to count myself as one of the lucky few.

2026-05-20 16:12:56 UTC

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There is a pretty well established convention here that doesn't seem to be getting respected.
If it's really important, you don't text, you call. If they don't pick up, you leave a voicemail, or you explain in a text message that it's very important that you speak to them.
The whole point of texting is that it's asynchronous.
This one sounds like trouble. This could be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of unreasonable expectations.

2026-05-19 22:45:53 UTC

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Can confirm. I shattered my heel doing parkour as a teenager, got it recrafted with four titanium screws. It is now noticeably stronger than the purely biological one.