joe

@matthew_pines DoD Announces Psychedelic Readiness Initiative, Replaces Fluoride with LSD in Tap Water. SecDef Pines: “Maybe now people will understand me when I talk about physics.”

You know the genre of post, “send this headline back ten years and watch brains explode”, well what’s the version of that you expect to send back to today ten years from now?

@balajis The US needs areas like this but where the Constitution applies. “Bill of Rights Zone” has a nice ring to it.

Turkey has 18 free zones: special sites within the country where the normal rules do not apply. trade.gov.tr/free-zones/gen…

@amicusadastra unanticipated consequences are less of a risk than staying where we are

It’s wild to me that we agree that the true costs and consequences of technology are mostly unanticipated, and yet that doesn’t give us any pause when it comes to releasing and adopting them. We are insane.

@matthew_pines America’s institutions gathered ‘round the dying embers of relevance

The girls came across some Bitcoiners waiting for the SEC to approve a spot ETF tonight. Tragic.

@balajis Every day it’s a roll of the dice. What do bureaucrats do during an identity crisis?

The West has forked into DC and the Internet. DC is now against free speech and free markets, and advocates centralization and ultra-nationalism. The Internet is for free speech and free markets, and values decentralization and internationalism.

@nic_carter @CaitlinLong_ Any encroachment on the role of our highly centralized storytellers is seen as a threat since power is wielded by narrative, ideation, imagination. What are interest rates? Whatever they program. Valid news? NYT, etc. Truth is whatever they say. Not what your senses tell you.

Basically - AI is the forcing function which pulls us out of our local maxima in terms of the credibility of digital content People concerned about the proliferation of inauthentic content should be celebrating

Cheap AI based image generation will make the world _more_ legible and credible, because it will catalyse us to create cryptographic attestations for real original content, rather than lazily relying on the medium-high cost to create false/misleading content

@Sorenthek We’re moving from the abstracted world of print (out of which the west was born) to one of the immediate, all-at-once environment of the digital. Westen values survive “on chain” as DC and the administrative state succumb to tribalism and crises of identity. Long hard assets.

Having read some good chats on here about the gold/bonds/ east-west problems. Reminded me of some stuff.. Multipolarity and east/west Global Rebalancing. (This is about gold and silver.. it’s about abstract money vs real money.. it’s about a deep split that exists globally. It’s about mindsets looking at a fault line that has become unstable and having different opinions on how to fix it) The pendulum is swinging back towards moderation between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Heterodoxy. The geographic dividing line is eastern Europe where countries like Poland have a foot in both camps now. The irony lies in Japan. Mao (as messed up as he was in implementation.. was right about one thing) I.E.-The current global problem is based on eastern materialism vs. western metaphysics. And that implies real needs (roots/collateral) vs. idealistic pursuits (flowers/advancements) Some in the west believe if intentions are good, that absolves you from the wrong you do to others; that Being sorry is enough. If we all screw up and are just sorry and say “I didn’t mean for that to happen” Well.. that has gone too far; just as the death penalty for chewing gum in Singapore went (exaggeration but you get it) too far in the Orthodox side. Examples of our post-modernist relativist fantasy run amok: -Dr. you disfigured a young girl - “I’m sorry” -Janet, you impoverished a nation- “that wasn’t my intention” -You killed a cashier over fries- “I can’t help it, he made me.. I have a condition” Heterodoxy and the blurring of “what is real?” absolves us of personal responsibility. But despite that absolution, logical consequences don’t just disappear. Our disfigured children bear witness to this. People like @Aoc are the heterodox persons (tom cruise) that benefit from the orthodox people (Jack Nicholson) upon which the foundation for modern abstractions can be built. Recently, that foundation in the east, and in a portion of the west (“conservatives”) is tired of being taken for granted. This is not about conservatism vs progressivism anymore, except to the extent that the two are now grossly out of balance and a rebalancing is coming. Only when the west sees the limitations of metaphysics and abstractions will it realize that eastern materialism (albeit wrapped in capitalism) is breathing down our necks and telling us… “This is what reality is, you need us as much as we need you” Think about it.. when a communist country that was atheist all of a sudden brings back Confucianism (the eastern equivalent of the Protestant work ethic) .. that tells you something. Also: as the west embraces some perversion of a weird “Richard Gere Buddhism” culture ( “what is reality anyway, man”) the east moves away from it (“this is this”) towards orthodox religions again. Either we make room for both styles in the world or there will be an ideological confrontation like we’ve never seen. Putting it in a a more real way: 5% of the globes (ideological) population cannot command 50% of its wealth forever. What’s absolutely frightening about that statement is the extremely unqualified bureaucratic people in charge of the west’s future are interested only in winning, and if they can’t win by doing the same things that always worked and they’ve always done, they will still do them, at least to delay the east long enough until they have stocked up their own lifeboats. In the end, even the most abstract metaphysical, postmodernist relativist people become very realistic when it comes to their own stuff.. If you think there won’t be a compromise down the road, sell gold. Because if there isn’t one, you’ll be dead. If however you believe there will be an ideological compromise Buy gold. It will be a bridge to stop world war. We all have it.. we all value it.. and it’s the last thing the world agrees on. You buy gold because you do not think the world will end. We’re not doomers.. they are dogmatists suffering corn sclerosis of the brain.

@gladstein @LukeGromen Commodities > Paper > Murder reuters.com/legal/biden-ad…

@LukeGromen Khashoggi was a long-time US resident and only towards the end of his life did he become openly critical towards the regime in Riyadh. He was murdered for promoting reform inside KSA that MBS did not want... see here: thedissident.com

Let's get two things straight: 1) BRICS is led by the world's worst tyrants: the CCP, Putin, and now potentially MBS and Iran's Mullahs 2) If Iran and KSA join, BRICS controls 60% of oil exports... laughing at their ability to alter the global monetary system is imperial hubris

@LukeGromen I see a forest and some trees, a person wearing a Bitcoin orange colored hat, and someone making explosive predictions on where the puck is going to be.

A little rusty, it’s been awhile…but still just as fun

@jordanbush @milessuter youtube.com/watch?v=9LmLik…

This is one of the most profound things I’ve ever read in my life. “Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

@mtaibbi youtu.be/hgAF8Vu8G0w

If you agreed with Frank Zappa and Dee Snider that “voluntary” record labels attached by private companies inhibited speech, do you also believe digital censorship is okay because Twitter and YouTube are private? racket.news/p/where-have-a…

@amicusadastra twitter.com/quotessovereig…

a new sensibility is the gift and the curse of a new technology

An inevitable outcome of the post-71 structure of USD rsv status - US had to cease making things (like semiconductors & Navy ships) in favor of exporting USTs. Once China stopped buying USTs on net in 2014, structure of USD rsv status needed to chg (to one w/a neutral rsv asset)

@jack “Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left.”

Yes.

I’ll be honest. I haven’t read the 155-page opinion, but this WaPo subhead about a #FirstAmendment injunction is wild. Are we supposed to be outraged by this? (On the Fourth of July, no less?) 1/ washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

@jack @milessuter Now make a similar dashboard for nation states.

All your Threads are belong to us apps.apple.com/us/app/threads…

@jack @lorenzoreybtc @GrapheneOS Apple isn’t going to change. Running open source software and cutting ties to the administrative state are increasingly the same thing.

@lorenzoreybtc @GrapheneOS We are researching this.

A Bitcoin company should partner with @GrapheneOS and create a flagship smartphone that comes with Graphene OS preloaded. Maybe @jack can do it?

@cameron Get used to it. In the digital age the natural impulse of traditional western governments is to push right up to the guardrails of propriety.

A must watch. Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton describes the new and deeply un-American ethos of the @SECGov under @GaryGensler — if we're not losing cases, we aren't suing enough businesses. This is a total abuse of power.

@balajis They have all the public facing institutions that move at the speed of print. But these are failing in the digital age. The state hanging onto power in our new environment comes via expansion of institutions that move at the speed of light: NSA, DHS, CIA, etc.

I think it’s some combination of both. Having recaptured most of the legible, they’ve ceded the illegible. They have all the institutions, which is what they care most about. They don’t seem to care as much that the energy has gone to the internet.

Is it over because the establishment recaptured the institutions, and feels strong enough to let people talk? Or is it over because the establishment lost control over the internet, and is so weak that it can no longer prevent people from talking?

@walterkirn Also good a.co/d/e3YW0lI

Am reading Gore Vidal's novel Julian about the struggle between Christianity and the old Roman religion in the declining Empire. Highly recommend it. We seem to be in a time of theological-political warfare now and it offers quite a lens on this.