What makes something propaganda isn't that there is no truth to it. What makes it propaganda is that your attention is pointed at it incessantly. Every headline, every broadcast, every person you see everywhere all the time. Regardless of how relevant it is to your own situation.
The most effective propaganda campaigns are rooted in truth. In fact, the only difference between education and manipulation is in how people are encouraged to react. Does it give people confidence & practical, helpful tips? Or does it promote fear and dependence on authorities?
Nov 20, 2020 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
To anyone who has lost a loved one to complications from this virus, my sincere condolences. If there's a way I can help ease your pain, I'm all for it.
First the obvious. Good sanitation and good hygiene are good idea. And sometimes more extreme measures such as quarantine/isolation may be merited
But let's be honest. People die from complications of infectious disease all the time.
1/11
Oct 8, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The reason for existence of states is a matter of security and basic geometry.
A short thread 👇
1/4
Land area increases quadratically in terms of its perimeter. Collective defense is an optimization problem. I will demonstrate with a simple model.
2/4
Sep 28, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Rather than insisting that the president pay his taxes, what about insisting that nobody pay their taxes? Seems much better at this point.
Seriously. I am sick of being taxed without representation. I remember something about this from the late 1700s, if I remember my history right.
Sep 27, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Even if everyone around you is totally brainwashed and wrong about the effectiveness of some practice, sometimes trying to convince them otherwise is futile and you can be more effective doing what you want by blending in anyhow.
In other words, pick your battles wisely. Don't argue and fight over stupid shit just to prove you are right to people whose opinion is irrelevant to you achieving your objectives.
Sep 19, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
FWIW I have also been threatened and harassed by other Bitcoiners. Yes, it is stupid to be ideologically inflexible and tribal about this shit. But accept that people are going to behave this way. Too much at stake. So we all just need to work around it. Complaining won't help.
It is just the way people are. Blaming anyone in particular is just scapegoating.
Sep 6, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Trying to build a business atop a broken monetary system is like trying to build a building atop a foundation that uses broken weights and measures.
No, it's even worse! At least the building will collapse in a fairly obvious manner, even as engineers try to fix it.
With a broken monetary system, everyone lives in a bubble where they fancy themselves genuises for figuring out how to magically make a meter stretch longer.
Aug 11, 2020 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Amidst all the Ethereum shitposting, I feel obliged to repost my sincere opinion.
I do not think originally it was intended to be a scam. There were people involved who probably really did have good intentions at first, including Vitalik. But they went in way over their heads when big money showed up...and lost the plot.
Aug 8, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
To all men who had to endure the humiliation as young kids of schools led by stupid old bitches who would tell them what to do, when to stand up and sit, when it was OK to speak, etc...
Civilization will try to destroy your masculinity. Fuck them all. Be king. Claim your throne.
If you are offended by this, they obviously succeeded with you. Damn shame.
Jul 2, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In the past I may have sounded a bit dismissive towards covid19. It's not that I don't care.
Far from it.
It's that there are a fuckton other problems in the world, some of which may pose a *far* greater threat to our species as a whole.
And we're in the middle of an info war.
By dwelling so heavily on this one issue while we are encouraged to fight about other nonsense, we are essentially being played for fools. I may not speak for everyone, but I would gladly risk death to avoid getting played like this.
Jun 1, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Flashback to 1933...
People are capable of horrendous things. Ordinary human beings with legitimate grievances, confused, in fear, put under the spell of demagogues.
May 22, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1/n Bitcoin consensus changes have three distinct categories of risks.
A thread.
2/n The three categories are:
1) Technical Risks (bugs, vulnerabilities introduced into codebase or protocol)
2) Consensus Failure (forks, balkanization)
3) Process & Precedent (opening the door for exploitation of the process in the future)
Jun 27, 2018 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Monetization (in the sense of creating a widely accepted monetary standard) is a very different process than taking a company to profitability.
The State has enjoyed a monopoly over monetization throughout our lives. Therefore, most entrepreneurs have no experience here.
When faced with novel challenges, people tend to fall back on familiar habits. Starving for adequate analogies, superficial resemblances are taken as fundamental. For instance, equity markets are far more familiar to investors and entrepreneurs.
Mar 26, 2018 • 21 tweets • 3 min read
Thread.
1) The Lightning Network (and multilayered protocols more generally) are a more complex to design and implement than a flood network, like the Bitcoin base layer.
2) But it is the only technically viable approach to cheap, secure, and instant micropayments yet presented on Bitcoin I'm aware of that does not severely compromise Bitcoin's value proposition.
Dec 28, 2017 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Until the advent of long-range electric power distribution via the use of high voltage transformers and efficient power lines, electric lighting was the privilege of the rich and dense urban areas.
Settling many smaller transactions over a single larger one is exactly analogous to using high voltage transformers to supply many small devices with electric power over long distances.
Dec 24, 2017 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Happy Holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy Hannukah.
I am in a giving spirit, so I will give 100 mBTC each to ten random people who retweet this on December 25th.
To make this provably fair, let h be the block height of the first block with a timestamp on or after Dec. 25th. I will XOR the hashes of the blocks at heights h and h+5.
