JaakkoMultanen
Jaakko Multanen

https://www.sovereignlanding.com

Founder of Sovereign Landing - home finding service for location independent people!

Public Key

npub12r6qq0nsljcgaregqugue3knpa99v3ur6q2xvf7k7svvk767c2qq68sncq

NIP-05 Address

jaakko@nostr.sovereignlanding.com

NIP-57 Address

jaakko@getalby.com

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs9paqq8ec0evyw3u5qwywvcmfs7jjkg7paq9rxylt0gxxt0d0v9qqj3ka8r

Author Public Key

npub12r6qq0nsljcgaregqugue3knpa99v3ur6q2xvf7k7svvk767c2qq68sncq

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Last Notes

2025-01-23 07:55:31

Europe is taken over by a suicide cult
https://m.primal.net/NvyA.jpg
I know. It sounds crazy. A suicide cult huh? Isn't that a bit much?
I think it explains a lot though...
This "cult" isn't something that anyone asked for. It's not a traditional cult with a leader who "designed it".
Rather, it is an emergent phenomenon - just an inevitable end result of multiple different extremely harmful ideas.
These ideas are so disconnected from reality, that when you apply them in practice, the end result is slow death and destruction.
It is exactly what happened with the Soviet Union.
Before Gorbachev died, he said that the EU resembles Soviet Union more and more every day.
You need to have some kind of a connection with base reality - common sense!
When this alignment with reality gets out of whack, the more you act, the farther away you drift from anything you actually wish for.
It's the definition of crazy.
That's exactly what's going on in Europe.
A slow, unintended cultural and societal suicide that nobody really wants to happen, but which will keep happening until people understand how & why things went wrong.
If they don't get this, things will keep going downhill, no matter what the politicians try to do.
When I say "nobody wants this to happen", I mean that nobody wants the end result of what this all will lead to (the slow death).
The problem is that European people have such a deep belief in the basic tenets of the suicide cult that they WANT to act in ways that keeps that slow suicide going.
What are these suicidal ideas exactly? There are many, but I'll list the main ones.
-Because CO2 is bad, all energy use is bad
-All cultures and people are the same
-When you import foreign cultures, they will automatically assimilate
-The state is the source of all welfare
There is also a fifth problem, one that isn't an idea, but rather a lack of understanding: the money is deeply broken.
I'm not just talking about the Euro, but rather the fiat financial system in general.
When something can't go on forever, it will stop - sooner or later. The fiat financial system is so unsustainable and has gone on for so long, that we are in the "later" phase.
This is a global problem, but one that Europe is very ill-equipped to meet.
How has Europe gone this far downhill? Again, for many different reasons, but mainly because of the "democratic short-circuit".
For democracy to function well even in theory, it would need to rely on a well-educated populace and a state-independent media.
We have neither: the legacy media is effectively a state propaganda machine.
The population is forced through government schools where they are taught that the state is the source of all welfare, and that entrepreneurship is something complicated, foreign and scary.
Of course that's rarely, if ever, said out loud directly.
Instead, those beliefs are implicit in the education plan and the structure of the whole system.
It's just what you take for granted after you go through that machine - and basically everyone does.
All of the above harmful ideas are so deeply ingrained in the population of Europe that any kind of change is far from obvious.
While the rest of the world is moving forward to a better future, Europe is loudly demanding to go down with slow ideological and cultural suicide.
Not everyone in Europe thinks that way, but too many do.
I'm optimistic that there are solutions, but I'm quite pessimistic about the short / medium-term outlook.
How can we solve this? I have some ideas coming in a later post. What are your thoughts on this?

2025-01-06 11:24:24

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This is a good explanation for my experience in India during my month-long trip in 2016, and what I've experienced since then online.
When I arrived in Delhi, I was immediately taken for a scam ride. There were a lot of roadblocks (these seem to be a permanent feature for some reason?) and the riksha driver told me that road to my hostel is blocked.
Instead, he took me to his scammer buddies who tried to forcibly sell me a way overpriced holiday.
I was having none of it and exited the office they took me to. The driver, waiting outside, refused to take me anywhere until I bought into their scheme.
Fortunately there was a police car next to the office, and I explained to them that I was being scammed. Unfortunately, they were in on the scam and just laughed at me, telling me that maybe I should buy something.
Welcome to India!
Long story short, I was getting more and more resolute in not giving anyone there any money, and ultimately they figured out that they would only get trouble from me.
Eventually, after several hours, I managed to get the driver to just take me to my hostel. Fortunately the scam attempts I encountered after that were minor in comparison.
This was May and the hot season, so I decided to head to the mountains where I found things to be quite tolerable (even the tap water was drinkable!).
I think the fact that they have an actual winter there has a local civilizing effect. It forces you to think ahead, and weeds out those who don't.
If I ever visit India again, it will definitely be back to the Himalayas - with a private pre-arranged transport immediately from the airport with minimal stops in-between.

2024-12-11 13:25:49

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I know this is 100% besides the point but I'll say it anyway:
Just owning a US LLC does not make you personally liable for taxes in the US. You do need to file an "informational" tax return for the LLC, but that doesn't mean having to pay taxes (just on its own, there might be other reasons that may mean you need to pay).

2024-12-11 09:16:53

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MSTR is a public company and as such it is of course "state sanctioned". That doesn't mean there would be any shady backroom plans going on.
They've just actively played by the rules the whole time. Public companies have no other choice and are kept in check by the financial system every step of the way. That's the nature of being public.
I'm not saying this to defend MSTR (don't own any, and I don't like that much BTC concentrating in any one entity), just an observation.
I see MSTR as a test of the US justice system. If it holds, the BTC indirectly owned by those who own MSTR get to keep their price exposure to BTC. If it fails, it has to fail in a lot of different, major ways for MSTR to implode. Extremely unlikely, but not impossible.
The only exception to the above would be if the BTC gets technically pilfered somehow. That's probably the biggest risk, and difficult to quantify as we don't know how the BTC is secured.

2024-12-04 11:13:34

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Can you open that BitVM part a little bit, is it "live" and usable?

2024-11-25 10:57:37

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Incredible view! I need to get somewhere where there are mountains...

2024-10-31 08:36:24

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Only edit those with short clips, keep long form long

2024-10-24 08:25:05

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Holding your own keys isn't really even about technology, but about being able to carry the associated responsibility of having those keys. The majority won't want that.
Some will not be capable, most will not be interested.
As long as there is the backstop of being able to exit, it's perfectly ok for the majority to be on a varying scale of semi-centralized custodial platforms (the more of these the better). This is also the solution for the scaling problem.

2024-10-17 08:29:25

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Wow, ok. I was a bit unclear what the exit tax situation was as I remembered seeing a lot of discussion around the topic, but you're saying that some exit tax is already in place?
I did some googling before posting and all I saw was headlines on some _potential_ tax being considered, but of course these things are complicated... and 39% is insane.

2024-10-17 07:59:49

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I hope I'm not ruining the positive spirit... just because it's in your head doesn't prevent the state from claiming the right to tax it, so I think their questions are valid - even though they don't understand the tech.
I'm sure you're probably already aware of this. Just thought I'd mention this for others - too many examples of people paying a heavy price for getting these things wrong.
Good thing you're getting out in time and the UK doesn't (yet) have an exit tax!

2024-10-12 08:44:36

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Definitely agree! I'd also add that for many, the best answer might be living in a few different places. I'm hoping to bring down the cost (both in money and hassle) of this lifestyle with Sovereign Landing!

2024-10-12 06:27:29

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This may be a bit technical, but explaining how to receive and send zaps would be great. It took me a while to wrap my head around these TWO DIFFERENT things. It helped when I finally understood that it doesn't even have to be the same wallet...

2024-10-12 06:14:51

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The deletion seems to work for me, can't see it. I understand that it's relay-dependent and that technically the internet never forgets anything (with certainty), but it's basic UI wisdom to always offer the user the ability to undo things.
I accidentally reposted one of my own posts in Primal just after posting it. Not a biggie but I didn't like it as that can come across as spammy... can't unpress that button 😞

2024-10-09 13:10:22

If you say you're not happy with taxation in your country, the politicians are quick to judge you as "selfish" or even "enemy of the poor".
This is a trick to try to turn reality on its head. Let's disassemble this lie!
This is a distillation of the main points from a blog post I wrote - I recommend you read the whole blog post, but you can use this note as a preview!
https://www.sovereignlanding.com/high-future-preference/morals-of-opting-out-the-system/
The state claims to exist for the poor and the weak, but in reality all they have is a giant resource-destroying machine. Real time, money and energy is being expropriated from real people.
A large part of those resources gets ground to nothing. A worse scenario is that those resources don't go "for nothing", but get used for actively bad purposes - perhaps even for murdering people.
Even when the resources are not used for evil purposes, there are people actively benefiting from them being "wasted". Don't mistake all of it to just be incompetence!
When you opt out of this system or even speak out against it, the proponents of this machinery will loudly judge you as an enemy of the poor. Be careful not to fall into that trap!
But what if everyone opted out of the system? Clearly that wouldn't be any kind of solution for the poor who really are in need of help. How do we solve this?
The details are beyond the scope of this post, but they have been described in an excellent way by Titus Gebel in his book Free Private Cities: https://free-cities.org/free-private-cities-third-edition/
In a nutshell: all societies have always had systems to help the people in need. They haven't always been perfect, but neither is the current system. We can do better!
All we need to do is look back in history to find examples of what worked before the government decided to "help". They've just hijacked systems that worked quite well before without any violent intervention.
It is important to note that artificially supporting the current system isn't a "moral good". Sacrificing your life energy for a dysfunctional system isn't a moral act, it is just waste.
The only morally questionable act is supporting these systems. They are starting to resemble the ideas that the Soviet Union was built on.
Those ideas weren't bad because they were implemented in a wrong place - they simply do not work, period. You can't wait for the politicians to get this though. No one is coming to save you - you need to act!
Sovereign Landing can help. Check us out at:
https://www.sovereignlanding.com

2024-10-09 11:24:07

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Yet contracts are a thing, and government doesn't need to get involved in those. I haven't yet looked at the contents of the original post, but private arbitration has been a thing forever and is widely being used between businesses.

2024-10-07 13:38:51

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Good to see you writing! I guess we may have bit of the same problem, the post lengths getting out of hand 😄
While you correctly recognize the problem as "politics", I think the real problem is just caused by the current form of democracy:
People who don't have a stake in things can vote on how the resources get used!
Ultimately that's what's causing these problems.
You focus on UK politics, but of course these issues are not UK specific. These exact same problems can be seen all around the Western world (and beyond, but mostly in "the west").

2024-10-07 09:17:04

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Thanks for the comment, glad to see you've really read things through!
I actually wrote the refund policy back when I thought it would be possible to have credit card payments. I was leaning into the reality of payment clawbacks: people are able to just pull back payments through their credit card provider, even when everything has gone well for them. The banks will side with their customer, not the merchant. In many cases it's completely unfair for the merchant, but it is the reality and cannot be changed.
With bitcoin payments, customer-initiated refunds are of course not technically a thing, but I think building on a bitcoin standard effectively "requires" the refund policy to be very much on the side of the customer.
It is extremely important to protect the long term reputation of the business and not let short term greed get on the way. If the customer feels that the service wasn't up to snuff, the situation needs to be corrected and at that point it's already too late to "fight" over money. The refund threshold has to be extremely low.
It is of course possible that some people might abuse such a policy, but then it becomes a question of numbers: is the increased trust of the majority worth the losses from a few bad apples? I guess that remains to be seen, but I'm betting that this is the correct approach.

2024-10-07 08:20:20

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Was the reason maybe connected to this stuff? I'm reading between the lines there that them being "uncomfortable" = cognitive dissonance?
https://primal.net/e/note1gl62rypp6qg2az2507e7t58nqy4tu8yfvn3hyvkkrfhewzdutupq728pal

2024-10-04 10:04:49

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It seems to be the latest update, I think in that episode @npub1myg…sn5p mentions that the podcast is taking a lot of time away from his coding... quite understandable.
The reason why I even looked up the podcast was this speech:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddvHagjmRJY
Hugely inspirational, and really unlocked my thinking around Sovereign Landing. I thought that I HAD TO have credit card payments on the site for the business to work.
Sure I've been planning to have bitcoin payments from the beginning, but I was stuck in the mindset of the credit cards being an absolute must.
To have those, you have to be registered with the state, otherwise the banks won't even spit in your general direction.
Well, I tried that, but I was still getting turned away from the banks. This whole summer I was fighting with them to be accepted, but it was just a miserable process of groveling in the feet of the bureaucrats, with make-belief work to conform with their idiotic made up requirements - wasting huge amounts of energy that should have been used for the benefit of future customers.
This is my blog post on that experience: https://www.sovereignlanding.com/high-future-preference/becoming-free-business-the-real-reason/

2024-10-04 09:39:49

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The "stuff we need" is a great point, as that will definitely be part of this service. Optimally, we could just get most landlords to "bite the bullet" and get good enough equipment so that all the necessary stuff is included in the rent.
There's a basic "common sense" list that we do require, but asking too much will be... too much.
A good example is my workstation. I need a 160*80cm standing desk with a 35" ultrawide display if I'm going to be working anywhere for longer than two weeks.
These two things alone can cost in the range of $1000 (depending on the country, can be even more than that). If I'm renting for $500 per month for two months, it's going to be a big ask to get the landlord to buy these :D
I see two main solutions for this:
1. We could convince the landlords that if they invest in this stuff, their apartment will be high in demand by our customers and they can then make back their money that way. This is probably doable over time, but can still be a tough sell before having a steady stream of customers!
2. Even if #1 works out well over time, it can never be a solution for "everything anyone wants". People will always want to have some of their own special things, and that's totally ok. We can help find those on the local market, or get them online (or maybe just help send them from country to country).
The bigger question with #2 is what then happens when you leave? Depends on the stuff and your plans of course - there are a few different choices.
If it's generic stuff that other people can use, we ("we" really meaning your local agent!) may be able to just find a buyer (another customer) for that stuff, or maybe buy it from you and rent it for those who want to use it.
You might also want to just store it for your return, or sell it yourself, but I'm hoping that this service will enable us to skip these "sell it yourself" scenarios - they're hardly ever worth the hassle.
My vision is that this service will allow seamless arrival AND leaving so that we can just pack our (hand) luggage and go without having to spend any brain cycles for the physical stuff.
I haven't yet put much of this in writing on the site because I need to be careful that the first customers don't then be like "but you promised that all the stuff would be handled and included in the base price!"... working on it, need to focus on the base service first :)
In any case, we will work with you on getting all the necessary stuff on a case-by-case basis, and then have better defined services for this when we have a decent understanding of the customer needs.

2024-10-04 08:23:13

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A camper van would actually be a lot more stuff than what I have now 😄 ... a few suitcases and a couple different workstations in different locations. A workstation is mostly just a wide standing desk and ultrawide 35" display. Need these to work, non-negotiable. Of course, these could fit into a camper van. I've been planning to do that too, but I'm not sure if I want that as my only choice. Overall any "one choice" seems to turn sour over time.

2024-10-04 07:54:34

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It was trying to open Electrum wallet, even though I have the Alby extension installed... so I think that depends on user/OS settings. Electrum has probably marked itself to my OS as "the bitcoin wallet".
I had this same functionality on my own site working already, but it was through the Alby Lightning Publisher WP addon and it was causing other issues (backend kept crashing). Alby crew is looking into it, so I'm hoping to get my lightning donation buttons back online soon 😃

2024-10-04 07:13:57

@npub1rtl…jtfs posted this thing about Ross yesterday, and that made its way into my dream. I was in some rural deep south town, maybe somewhere Alabama or Louisiana. It was voting day and I went to vote in some old wooden church. When I arrived, the local election officials were doing crack at the backseat of some 70s mobile.
When I arrived they got out to see if I had the right to vote, and I showed them my Finnish driver's license (which doesn't officially count as valid voter ID even in Finland, lol). They didn't understand it but because it clearly was an ID, they let me through.
I don't remember all the details from inside the voting church, but RFK Jr. was there and he was pissed because someone was smoking indoors. Somehow this smoking tied into the fact that he was telling people to vote for candidate #6, but at this point I had already voted... for #7.
I woke up confused and angry for having voted the wrong candidate.
After I regained my senses a bit, I was just laughing at this crazy unrealistic dream - there aren't that many candidates in US elections!
#note1xqs…cw50

2024-10-03 13:47:09

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Tested and it worked. UX could be improved by having a lightning metatag so that Alby browser extension could pick up on this without having to use the clipboard (many clickety-clicks could be avoided that way). Also, would be nice if content loaded automatically after the payment is received, no need to keep the QR code on the screen after that.
As a side note, I'm not at all convinced that QR codes are the best way to go on websites. Better way is to just have direct payment buttons like Primal (for example) has for zapping. One click and done - or 1-2 clicks more if the payment needs to be accepted in the wallet. QR codes are a good fallback if the browser doesn't have payment support extensions.

2024-10-03 10:58:22

@npub1klk…x3vt spitting absolute fire on this Nostrovia podcast with @npub1myg…sn5p (link to the full podcast episode at the end of the post). This part of the conversation was such gold that I made it into a separate clip: https://m.primal.net/LJjL.mp4
This part of the conversation is about the book Second Realm: https://libertyunderattack.com/product/second-realm-book-on-strategy/ (you can download and listen to it for free)
My highlights from the conversation in text:
[Gsovereignty]
...We can also orange-pill the world by hiring everyone...
[Max]
Yeah, cause ultimately free people are productive people and productive people want to build stuff...
Not just do we need to produce services and goods in the 2nd realm that cannot be acquired in the 1st realm, but likewise there is a demand in the 2nd realm that cannot be provided or satisfied in the 1st realm... and so then 1st realm agents will migrate into the 2nd realm in order to produce those goods and services for 2nd realm inhabitants.
[Gsovereignty]
I think I will take that hint and start referring to the bitcoin world as the 2nd realm
[Max]
Yeah it's a perfect fit...
... (Second Realm) It's a book on strategy, how to build a productive parallel society that gets humanity through this dark time of parasitism. We need to have people continuously producing, DESPITE the enormous amount of theft that is going on, and we need to build tools and strategies that make being productive cheaper.
There is a gigantic demand in this area, and therefore huge opportunities for value creation and profit.
So, this is ultimately I think what is going for us, like back during the Soviet regime: you had the Soviet economy, centrally planned and everything going to shit and rotting and no value being created at all, and you had the much more liberal western societies with more free market producing enormous amounts of incredible things.
You just see the two markets and centrally planned slavery societies always underperform property-rights based freedom societies, like always has, always been, will always be... just because of economic reality.
So in the long run we will see exactly the same thing happening again: the first realm, centrally managed, fiat-controlled and slave/theft based system is going to dwindle and further decrease in capital.
It will devour itself more and more, and as it is dying it will have to devour itself even at a faster rate, just to keep up. While simultaneously the free world will produce things that we cannot even yet imagine, at a scale we cannot even fathom...
...and that will continue to increase, as we continue to write the code that decreases the cost for doing so, and we're not stopping to write the code!
The full episode is here: https://fountain.fm/episode/1UPPuhyd3St7E3RCpBsX

2024-10-03 07:08:23

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I agree with your general sentiment when it comes to religions - but I think it's mistaken to say that the _concept_ of god is fiat. It might be just misled superstition, or something else, but I wouldn't call it fiat.
Completely disconnected cultures don't have the same general concept because someone told them so. Definitions of that concept are another thing - that can be fiat.

2024-10-03 07:01:14

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Exactly. The right to exit is the key. Understanding this makes so many past fights just irrelevant, and allows building & scaling "not fully but decentralized enough" systems.

2024-10-02 10:51:58

Why I started Sovereign Landing
I've been location independent for over 8 years. Nomadic lifestyle isn't easy, but Sovereign Landing solves my biggest pain...
During these 8 years, at times I've attempted to have just one permanent base. Every time I try, reality seems to start sending me subtle or not-so-subtle hints that I shouldn't even be trying that... so I'm now leaning 100% into a semi-mobile lifestyle - permanently.
I'm not constantly moving around because that would be just a ton of wasted energy, but I'm not living anywhere permanently either. A few different places per year.
This comes with some issues of course. Nomadic lifestyle is especially challenging over the long term - most people who try this just give up. Many find lack of community the worst aspect, but I've never really cared about that - my communities have always been online.
What I personally find the most difficult is the actual moving - having to find a new apartment in a new country, and setting it up. That's tolerable to do maybe once, but the frustration compounds over time.
This happened again in the beginning of 2024. I was busy with life and knew I wanted to go to Tbilisi, Georgia, so I did. I just thought I'd get a temporary Airbnb while I find an actual longer-term rental. Should be easy, right?
Well, it's never that simple, and that hit me once again when I started the apartment hunting process. I remembered vividly what absolute drain of energy it is. It usually means weeks of focus destroyed.
That's true even if you hire local help, as that hiring process by itself can be long and arduous! If the first person you hire can't get the job done (somewhat likely!) you have to start from scratch - fffffuuuuu...
I did find a good reliable local person in Tbilisi (Nina), and during her apartment hunting I just couldn't help thinking "if this thing here and that thing there was done slightly differently, this could be like 10-100x easier". These things kept popping up in my head.
Nina was working as a real estate agent part time, and when she mentioned that she could have time for more customers, I just put 1+1+1 together.
I know something about online marketing. Nina is an expert on the local market. And I'm definitely an expert on taking sort-of-functional processes, ripping them apart and turning them into great customer experiences. That's how the idea of Sovereign Landing got started!
I've been building this project primarily with myself as the primary customer avatar, but it's now high time to start getting some market feedback from OTHER people - preferably customers! 😀
I'd highly appreciate it if you can check out the site and let me hear your thoughts?
https://www.sovereignlanding.com/

2024-09-25 10:45:23

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A not-at-all-thought-through idea that came to mind just now when reading this. Maybe the "vote to kick" system could be a betting market:
You vote for/against kicking an account with sats. If majority of the votes (sats) vote for kicking that account, the ones who voted for kicking get the sats of those who voted against it. And vice versa...
Not sure how/if this would work in practice, just a random idea.

2024-09-25 09:34:07

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That's like asking "how does internet make money?". It doesn't. Businesses built ON the internet can though 😉

2024-09-25 08:34:16

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Just out of curiosity: in your mind, was this also the case during the covid lockdowns?

2024-09-25 08:26:32

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Any and all collectivist projects that don't require violent repression or coercion of others are ok. You're free to start any such project, as long as one of the project requirements isn't violent expropriation of resources from others... I hope you don't feel that this is a deranged starting point?

2024-09-23 07:34:30

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Martti Malmi and Iris. I was a user there back when Martti was working on his own decentralized protocol. Then Nostr came around.

2024-09-20 11:05:43

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Excellent questions. I don't see the nation states necessarily dying out, just diminishing in importance. Same thing has happened with the examples you mentioned: they're still around, but not in the same sense as they once were.

2024-09-20 11:02:59

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Also check out Owncloud. There was something fishy with Nextcloud, but I can't remember the details...

2024-09-20 10:49:55

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Those are payment for providing liquidity and routing services, and come with a risk of not having that bitcoin in cold storage. No risk-free yield there.

2024-09-20 10:33:31

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The question is this: would you even want customers who would be driven away by bitcoin? :D

2024-09-17 08:16:29

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Try fasting, as it will give you perspective on food: you can go without it for long stretches of time. It's natural and healthy for humans to skip meals. Do it on a low-stress day/days and reset your relationship with food.
For me intermittent fasting was the easiest long-term win: just skip breakfast (it just takes time & money for basically no benefit) and you're already on a 16/8 intermittent fasting schedule. Ridiculously easy to do.
It helps to recognize that what you eat is a habit, so read Atomic Habits by James Clear and go from there. Experiment on what works for you. Some people find it easy to stick to a super-specific diet, others fluctuate with some kind of 80/20 logic and cheat days. There are no right answers, just experiments.

2024-09-17 08:07:52

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I call them commie-caps: they are not chosen by free people on the free market, but forced from "above" to solve a mostly non-existent problem: plastic ending up in oceans isn't a problem in the countries where these were forced on people. Plastic gets into oceans from countries where these are not in use...

2024-09-16 15:36:47

Hah! Finally got the NIP-05 working on my own domain. Had to put it on a subdomain because for some reason it just wouldn't work on the main domain (don't have root access to that server and troubleshooting was a pain) so I set up another server just for the NIP-05 verification... bit of a chore but hey, at least it works now! :D