epsql

Ivan Illich saw the problems with modern education decades ago, always good to keep his analysis in mind:
"School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is"
"School has become the planned process which tools man for a planned world, the principal tool to trap man in man's trap. It is supposed to shape each man to an adequate level for playing a part in this world game. Inexorably we cultivate, treat, produce, and school the world out of existence."

2026-05-07 19:42:49 CEST

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Please feel free, I don't personally care at least or should anyone for that matter

2026-05-07 19:28:50 CEST

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I fully agree, yet I cannot dismiss frictions that arise from technical complexity. Don't you think that a much easier to use Bitcoin would also have an effect on adoption?

2026-05-07 18:55:01 CEST

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Where did you get this value from? Curious

2026-05-07 18:47:54 CEST

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True enough, but what was the alternative to the computer back then? There are instead today's hundreds of apps that are going to transfer dollars for you with no friction. If normies adapted Bitcoin because the FED is evil they wouldn't be normies, right?

2026-05-07 18:41:30 CEST

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What are your thoughts on a solution like FediMint?

2026-05-07 18:38:22 CEST

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I think you're misunderstanding the point: normies need this precisely so that adoption is not prevented by technical hurdles.

2026-05-07 14:11:54 CEST

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>That's why there are target inflation rates of like 1 or 2%. Decreasing prices encourage people to defer spending until later and that leads to a recession and downward spiral and then it's not predictable anymore and the economy will tank in no time
Sorry but this is not logical, you really think that if your purchasing power slowly increased over time you would stop all kind of consumption, and so would everybody else and therefore there would be economic collapse? Please.
The 2% inflation target set by central banks exists because governments have a lot of debt and debtors like it when money loses value over time. There's no need whatsoever to stimulate consumption by artificially lowering purchasing power.

2026-05-06 13:24:35 CEST

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I hope Strategy sells almost all of its stash to be honest

2026-05-06 13:22:58 CEST

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Not sure I got your point

2026-05-04 11:40:34 CEST

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Technology cannot be rejected entirely since it's a defining human activaty, but I think individuals can use their intelligence to make conscious use of it. How systems develop is another matter entirely though, yet I see hope for the conscious individual

2026-05-01 22:23:44 CEST

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Which is why we like it, right?

2026-04-30 18:39:01 CEST

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You'd surely agree that quantum computing is not the kind of discipline where everyone can have their opinion while also demanding to be taken seriously, right? Of course I agree with you that everyone should be able to speak freely though

2026-04-28 11:33:44 CEST

Maybe we need open source everything at this point, see https://www.opensourceecology.org/about-overview/
#nevent1q…jvay

2026-04-24 10:15:13 CEST

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Which means you don't think quantum is a threat, otherwise there would only be one quantum scare (and one soft fork)?

2026-04-23 11:09:34 CEST

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I guess it's just one of those weird things such as the fact that all numbers of shape ABABAB are divisible by 37

2026-04-23 00:31:37 CEST

Let's keep the world humane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojScF_gf85Q&

2026-04-22 20:49:26 CEST

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And absence of experience is not experience of absence

2026-04-22 13:51:52 CEST

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How does it work from a backend perspective? Is everything somehow hosted on relays, or is Nostr (correctly I might add) used for identity, communication, and payments?

2026-04-22 13:34:31 CEST

"... the distinction between toiling for sustenance and working for purpose. These are not the same thing, and the conflation of them is the deepest error in the technocratic imagination. Toiling for sustenance is what the serf did, labour extracted by necessity, directed by another's will, producing no accumulation of capital, no development of personal mastery, no expression of individual judgment. The serf plowed because he had no alternative; he received subsistence in return; he built nothing of his own. The UHI recipient is the digital serf ... "
Very well said 👏
#naddr1qq…u3ua

2026-04-21 12:24:59 CEST

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https://video.nostr.build/623f675c2ddc12c9b06e2c97d487ad8837c3ddd49d8aec6963d1475ca5ff2047.mp4

2026-04-20 16:20:44 CEST

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I'd like to see that as well, but, given that nobody sets the Bitcoin roadmap, there's no way to enforce which soft fork does or does not happen before others

2026-04-20 11:46:45 CEST

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@npub18zs…lyv6 might have something to say on the matter of morality as it relates to economics. I don't think we should abandon the idea that strong moral values are possible.

2026-04-20 11:30:12 CEST

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Life quality in Europe is generally speaking better also because the European Union is not an empire: nobody in Europe is worried that Taiwan might sooner or later be invaded, and to they are relatively free to focus on quality of life improvements. Or at least they might be worried, but certainly nobody is going to die for it. Maintaining a global empire necessarily leads to tradeoffs.
I would say that European nations are to the US what "clientes" were to the Roman Empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client_kingdoms_in_ancient_Rome)

2026-04-20 10:46:56 CEST

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Makes sense! But then how would you define capitalism? I would image a system inherently requires sound money for it to be called capitalism, although I can see how a car can still be called a car even if the fuel tank is losing ~10% of its gasoline before it can even reach the engine

2026-04-20 10:29:00 CEST

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Bitcoinism == capitalism + sound money? Or does it even make sense to speak of capitalism without sound money? I think the term "capitalism" itself means almost nothing nowadays unfortunately

2026-04-19 22:22:59 CEST

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Art, religion, sports, psychedelics, philosophy, travel, mysticism, love, community life. Did I forget anything?

2026-04-19 15:03:13 CEST

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Sure, but then is not grown adults you're dealing with, but murderers.

2026-04-18 11:31:58 CEST

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Sure, but *what is going on*?
https://youtu.be/-8VE04-by9Q

2026-04-17 13:40:34 CEST

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Sure, lett's keep the wealth extraction machine going in the hope that technological productivity is going to offset the stealing. What could go wrong?

2026-04-16 10:15:47 CEST

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This is part of the attack of labeling Bitcoin as an asset. We need 99% of so-called Bitcoiners to abandon this idea.

2026-04-15 11:09:38 CEST

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Are you hinting at Fedimint?

2026-04-14 23:33:04 CEST

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These bots are getting ridiculous!

2026-04-14 12:37:00 CEST

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How old is the guy?

2026-04-12 12:22:17 CEST

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The brave among us will create a new future.

2026-04-10 13:37:16 CEST

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"Confirm is a retired major league soccer referee" (probably Alexa's answer)

2026-04-03 11:01:11 CEST

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I hope this is a sick joke. Quasi-consensual?

2026-04-02 22:24:23 CEST

We're endlessly optimizing our lives, but for what?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VhsQeWpseU

2026-04-02 09:08:21 CEST

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Defining a rise in prices as inflation is a central banking trick. There can easily be inflation without any noticeable price changes simply due to increased productivity.
It is very true that prices are going up now due to oil and gas, but that's because oil and gas are inputs to almost all production processes. That's nothing to do with inflation, meaning an increase in the supply of money.
It's very important to define terms because prices staying flat can very well still mean we're being debased due to an increased in money supply which would otherwise allowed lower prices.
Inflation = incrase in the money supply.

2026-04-02 00:49:30 CEST

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Inflation should only be defined as an increase in money supply IMO

2026-04-02 00:48:03 CEST

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Unfortunately nothing

2026-04-01 13:33:52 CEST

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@npub1uwj…axfl would be proud of this

2026-03-31 14:58:48 CEST

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I guess fetch is way too hard for people

2026-03-31 09:44:07 CEST

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I was watching this video yesterday, lots of good points on why society feels the way it does today
https://youtu.be/6VhsQeWpseU

2026-03-29 20:29:53 CEST

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Without cultural awareness and critical thinking, availability of tools does not translate into action.
We see this in many other fields, for example a lot of people could choose to eat healthier foods without necessarily spending much, yet they default to McDonald's or Mac & Cheese type of meals.
A lot of people could choose to exercise in moderate amounts to improve their health as well, but they don't.
And so on and so forth, you get the point and you know this yourself already so I'm not pretending I'm teaching anything new here, I just happen not to share the pessimism.

2026-03-29 17:14:02 CEST

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Is it very noticeable?

2026-03-28 19:35:51 CET

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Is your DCA strategy that of buying 11.11 dollars every 60 minutes? Forever?

2026-03-28 14:02:32 CET

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All models are broken if it doesn't I guess, and if it does all other models are broken, so #yestr

2026-03-28 14:00:29 CET

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Turkish coffee?

2026-03-28 13:59:32 CET

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Media at its finest I guess

2026-03-26 14:32:57 CET

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Boostr!

2026-03-26 13:26:47 CET

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What's the term was Nostr though? "ReNote"?

2026-03-24 12:00:39 CET

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Makes sense

2026-03-24 09:49:34 CET

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I think this really is an unnecessary attack

2026-03-23 12:19:48 CET

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Just what happened? Gold up, stocks up, Bitcoin up, and oil down?

2026-03-23 09:02:22 CET

It's too crazy for sure! The average individual thinks that while several things are very wrong with our modern society, surely money is not one of them.
People are very willing to consider that politicians are using funds in inefficient ways, that the banking industry is somewhat shady, that international mega-corporations don't pay their fair share of taxes, but money itself is fine.
This is in my opinion the single biggest obstacle, because fiat money is so similar in appearance to sound money that one would never question the money itself. Fiat money is a simulacrum.
#nevent1q…p8ym

2026-03-21 17:32:03 CET

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I'm thinking mostly about small town vs large city to be honest, not really about countries. It might be the case that getting by with Bitcoin only is more feasible in Milan, for example, that in some small french town in Normandy.

2026-03-21 17:25:39 CET

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Where do you live then? And most importantly why can't you?

2026-03-21 16:54:58 CET

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How do you get paid assuming you have a job? Also, how do you pay rent or your mortgage assuming you have to?

2026-03-20 15:17:02 CET

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I anticipate explosions

2026-03-20 13:43:00 CET

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Any recommended sources on the labor standard thing? It seems similar in nature to what Richard Werner has been advocating for, that is a monetary setup where banks can only create money for productive investments (so for example one cannot borrow new money yo buy a house).

2026-03-20 11:35:22 CET

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I was randomly gonna be in Belgrade exactly that weekend, too bad!

2026-03-19 14:41:31 CET

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Seriously 80 billion? Holy shit

2026-03-18 21:22:43 CET

Interesting thoughts from an independent thinker
https://youtu.be/C58C8U_3WPM

2026-03-18 09:49:19 CET

Trustodial is a good name? #asknostr
#nevent1q…xnu9

2026-03-18 09:44:59 CET

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We need a new name for these kinds of situations: quasi-custodial? Almost custodial?

2026-03-18 09:25:26 CET

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Is it though?

2026-03-17 11:48:41 CET

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Holy shit this is quite depressing to be honest

2026-03-16 18:16:21 CET

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Sure, has anyone ever been unable to carry out this maintenance though? How many times have people that wanted to open/close/reshuffle channels bumped into the Impossibility of doing so?
All I'm saying is that we're talking about the potential scenario where everyone and their cousin is paying via lightning, when in fact most probably a large percentage of so called bitcoiners don't even run a lightning node.

2026-03-16 17:59:23 CET

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Is it a shitcoin 2.0 though? I personally think it's an interesting system which can have its place, but I see a lot of people declaring it to be yet another sophisticated shitcoin.

2026-03-16 17:56:00 CET

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Just zapped you from my lightning node. Why is lightning unfixable? Is it because the average person doesn't want to run a node? Can one be sovereign without infrastructure?

2026-03-16 12:05:08 CET

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Well the solution should be Bitcoin in self custody, am I right?

2026-03-16 00:40:32 CET

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#nevent1q…5ljz

2026-03-15 18:54:37 CET

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#nevent1q…m97g

2026-03-15 10:44:46 CET

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Saying no to both LND and CLN (blockstream) is a bit too much IMO - it leaves few alternatives when it comes to lightning

2026-03-13 15:18:32 CET

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Why does it feel bad?

2026-03-11 20:45:46 CET

Btw what about Ark? #asknostr
#nevent1q…5ljz

2026-03-11 20:30:58 CET

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I don't doubt there is a use case for this trust profile, but why claim that something is non custodial? Unless they're playing with words and they want to state that *self* custodial is different from *non* custodial

2026-03-11 19:39:33 CET

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Thanks for confirming my suspicion, seemed like that to me as well after skimming through the Spark docs. Not sure why Cake Wallet decided this was now good enough for them, especially on the privacy side of things ( https://blog.cakewallet.com/our-lightning-journey)

2026-03-11 19:26:26 CET

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Is Breez fucking with us when they claim that they offer a “nodeless integration that offers a self-custodial, end-to-end solution for integrating Lightning payments, utilizing Spark with on-chain interoperability and third-party fiat on-ramps“?
https://github.com/breez/breez-sdk-spark-go?tab=readme-ov-file#what-is-the-breez-sdk---nodeless-spark-implementation

2026-03-11 14:34:56 CET

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How does that work in practice in your opinion? Would strategy buy 1000 BTC and then Coinbase increase the number on their account with them, but no actual transactions happening? If so, how is strategy fine with it?

2026-03-11 10:42:20 CET

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How is price barely moving though?

2026-03-10 11:35:58 CET

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Which begs the question: what is to be done about it? I'm not sure the average human being likes the fact that we live in the most unstable of times, even if these are the most interesting of times! For example, how can anything be planned in this environment?

2026-03-10 11:31:26 CET

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I wonder why broken countries couldn't simply make the jump to Bitcoin, I guess they're not free after all? What a revelation!

2026-03-09 17:35:05 CET

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Was it? https://image.nostr.build/6cc85fb5758f71f738ebedf805b8867910a804a470ac2849f937ff781653f996.jpg

2026-03-09 13:21:29 CET

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Also have the same doubt: how are there buys actually happening without almost any visible price effect?

2026-03-05 19:04:11 CET

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I see what you mean. This has never sounded like a compelling argument to me: wouldn't the ideal block be full of actual transactions, with the associate utxo lookups and signature verifications cost? The opposite to me feels like saying that I prefer to use my car as a container for stuff because that's cheaper than actually going places.

2026-03-05 18:54:34 CET

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>Saying that spam kills bitcoin is like saying if bitcoin gets used, it dies.
What do you mean exactly?

2026-03-04 14:05:33 CET

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How is that the case?

2026-03-04 13:28:38 CET

I was just trying to understand how Spark works after seeing Cake Wallet implementing Lightning via Breez and Spark. Honestly I'm a bit confused when I read https://github.com/breez/breez-sdk-spark-go?tab=readme-ov-file#what-is-the-breez-sdk---nodeless-spark-implementation:
>It’s a nodeless integration that offers a self-custodial, end-to-end solution for integrating Lightning payments, utilizing Spark with on-chain interoperability and third-party fiat on-ramps.
Are these claims actually valid claims?
#nevent1q…pptn

2026-03-03 22:09:16 CET

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Pubky and home servers might be a solution for this, but that would be an alternative system that awaits bootstrapping and its challenges.

2026-03-03 16:43:14 CET

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Do we know more about it?

2026-02-27 15:48:36 CET

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I was half joking of course, but why should negative zaps exist? Imagine you walk down to the pub and you really don't like one of their burghers, the fact that you don't buy is a signal in and of itself.

2026-02-27 15:41:14 CET

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There you go, this is a downzap
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

2026-02-26 10:57:17 CET

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This is just a great definition!

2026-02-24 21:23:04 CET

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What privacy is he going to sacrifice and how?

2026-02-23 09:51:40 CET

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"The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep, he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain-tops. But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper“
- Henry David Thoreau

2026-02-22 18:13:54 CET

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You're onto something