Despite much opinion to the contrary, the government money we use is crappy.
I'm at bitfest in Manchester to find out if Bitcoin could be a better money.
It could hardly be worse.
The mood is still good, people are joking about recent devaluation rather than crying. Those who aren't all in are trying to buy more at the discount.
After an introduction by Mad Bitcoins, Joe Bryan explains the problem with government money.
He imagines an island on which two types of money are tried, with a dividing wall between them.
When economic problems hit, government can just print more money on the fiat side. Everyone now using money which is worth less. Distorting prices, inflating asset prices, making the rich (who hold assets) richer and the poor (who have to pay inflated prices) poorer. Driving wealth inequality.
On the hard money side, government must tax properly. Take in more from the rich rather than inflating to take it from the poor. Reducing wealth inequality.
On the government money side, the wealthy monitize houses, stocks, resources. Saving in money is impossible, its inflated away. So they save in assets and hording resources. Capital is misallocated. The youth can't afford houses. Poverty traps are caused. The only way out is printing more for benefits. Making it all worse. More economic crises, more printing. More government debt.
Eventually, the wall is broken. Government money people can save in the hard money instead. It reduces the value of government money further. More printing. More inflation.
Eventually, war. Funded by printed money.
The dollar is the best of a bad bunch all other government money is falling in value even faster.
I wonder, is bitcoin really this better money though? It's limited, hard, and can't be printed without energy investment.
I'm still unsure that fixing money fixes the world.
--
Note: "crypto" is mostly more like government money than bitcoin. It can be printed indefinitely by it's makers, does not cost it's makers to print. Crypto is usually just a scam people to get more bitcoin. Bitcoin is not crypto.
#bitfest #bitcoin
After #Trump finally crashes and burns (I'm still saying I don't think he makes it to the mid terms, and I think it's more than possible he won't make it to the end of the year) we'll hear a lot of people say, "the system worked!" Today people are already talking about "saving democracy" by fighting back. This will become a big rally cry to vote (for Democrats, specifically), and the complete failure of the system will be held up as the best evidence for even greater investment in it.
I just want to point out that American democracy gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile, who, before being elected was already a well known sexual predator, and who made the campaign promise to commit genocide. He then preceded to commit genocide. And like, I don't care that he's "only" kidnaped and disappeared a few thousand brown people. That's still genocide. Even if you don't kill every member of a targeted group, any attempt to do so is still "committing genocide." Trump said he would commit genocide, then he hired all the "let's go do a race war" guys he could find and *paid* them to go do a race war. And, even now as this deranged monster is crashing out, he is still authorized to use the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
He committed genocide during his first term when his administration separated migrant parents and children, then adopted those children out to other parents. That's technically genocide. The point was to destroy the very people been sending right wing terror squads after.
There was a peaceful hand over of power to a known Russian asset *twice*, and the second time he'd already committed *at least one* act of genocide *and* destroyed cultural heritage sites (oh yeah, he also destroyed indigenous grave sites, in case you forgot, during his first term).
All of this was allowed because the system is set up to protect exactly these types of people, because *exactly* these types of people are *the entire power structure*.
Going back to that system means going back to exactly the system that gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile *TWICE*.
I'm already seeing the attempts to pull people back, the congratulations as we enter the final phase, the belief that getting Trump out will let us all get back to normal. Normal. The normal that lead here in the first place. I can already see the brunch reservations being made. When Trump is over, we will be told we won. We will be told that it's time to go back to sleep.
When they tell you everything worked, everything is better, that we can stop because we won, tell them "fuck you! Never again means never again." Destroy every system that ever gave these people power, that ever protected them from consequences, that ever let them hide what they were doing.
These democrats funded a genocide abroad and laid the groundwork for genocide at home. They protected these predators, for years. The whole power structure is guilty. As these files implicate so many powerful people, they're trying to shove everything back in the box. After all the suffering, after we've finally made it clear that we are the once with the power, only now they're willing to sacrifice Trump to calm us all down.
No, that's a good start but it can't be the end.
Winning can't be enough to quench that rage. Keep it burning. When this is over, let victory fan that anger until every institution that made this possible lies in ashes. Burn it all down and salt the earth. Taking down Trump is a great start, but it's not time to give up until this isn't possible again.
#USPol
To be clear: I have no realistic expectation any Senator would actually attempt to zero out the DHS budget. I just want to set a baseline for them, move the Overton Window, give them a taste of how angry the population is.
Yes yes yes, Reply Armada, “oh those terrible Democrats yada yada,” I know, I know. I am •not• waiting for politicians to save us.
I am also, however, quite ready to exercise political leverage and use politicians as our tools whenever I think that has a nonzero chance of being useful. Make that call — then back to the rest of the work.
For some reason trump thinks that Europe has no means to retaliate against US pressure over Greenland.
Suppose, for instance, that Denmark constricts the shipments of diabetes and popular weight loss drugs to the US?
Or, given that most US airlines have a lot of Airbus aircraft, suppose that France blocks the export of Airbus replacement parts to the US (just as the US blocks the shipment of Boeing replacement parts to Iran.) That would quickly shut down much of the US air-trave…
Oh joy. I feel so much safer. /s
Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with 'suspicious' travel patterns
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-border-patrol-surveillance-drivers-ice-trump…
Oh joy. I feel so much safer. /s
Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with 'suspicious' travel patterns
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-border-patrol-surveillance-drivers-ice-trump…
Report reveals 25% surge in global water use over two decades #environment
Panel asking what nostr doesnt fix?
Relay centralisation could enable censorship, and the UI asking users to manage private keys is tricky.
Could one app become a centralisation choke point? They say no. Agreed. Nostr has very good migration here, if one app goes bad it's easy to move.
Privacy is not solved here, since almost all content is public anyway, by design. But since so users have public keys, it's a step towards enabling privacy. Agreed, and at least clients won't generally spy on every mouse click and scroll pause.
No mention of the thing I think most important, that censorship resistance means poor moderation that means bullying, spam, and harassment. That's tricky to solve I think. The fediverse model seems more suitable for good moderation.
#nostr #nostrshire
Sources: Disney has been hesitant to license its IP to Roblox because it doesn't consider it a safe platform, bucking the trend followed by Netflix and others (Jennifer Maas/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/gaming/news/roblox-fortnite-hollywood-…
I would argue that until an ICE agent is arrested that the Federal Gov't has no standing to bring a lawsuit at either the Federal or State level.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/11/17/trump-sues-calif…