Bitcoin Tech Talk #478
Interesting Stuff
- has this article on what this oft-used slur by the left actually means and goes through the historical context in which it happened. As the article shows, Fascism really is a form of socialism and is much more like its brother political philosophy, Communism than leftists believe. The main difference is that under Fascism, trade unions reign supreme, whereas Communism got rid of unions altogether and instead opted to use party bosses to rule. If the difference sounds subtle, that’s because it is. Sadly, the usage of the term Fascism has evolved since to be a meaningless one of disapproval of some group that the user of the term disagrees with, something the Soviet Union pioneered after WWII.
Antichrist Analysis - This is one of those articles that has to be read to be believed. Peter Thiel has apparently been studying who the biblical Antichrist is and goes through a wide range of literature in this long-read for First Things. He analyzes four different works, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Alan Moore’s Dystopian Comic The Watchmen, and a long-running Japanese manga called One Piece. These are not typically works that you would connect with the Antichrist from Revelation, but there’s a lot of symbology in each work that Thiel unpacks. Apparently, examining who the Antichrist could be is very popular in Silicon Valley right now and this piece is certainly part of that trend.
Warren G Harding - Mises.org has an article on this not-too-popular president, showing how he’s been unfairly maligned due to the agenda of the FDR apologists. As the article shows, most of what’s said about him even now is framed in terms of being lazy or abusive of power, when in fact he was a fairly shy man who resisted the urge to intervene in the markets. His handling of the 1921 depression contrasts sharply with what both Hoover and FDR did from 1929-1938 in that he let the economy recover on its own instead of insisting on all kinds of programs. The article is a reminder that history is almost always put through a lens of propaganda based on what the historian wants you to believe rather than what actually happened.
- has this book review of the education of Cyrus, perhaps the greatest ruler of the Persian Empire. The book is not about the accomplishments of Cyrus, per se, though they are many, but about how he was raised. As the book review makes clear, he was trained from the beginning to be a military leader. What stood out to me is how foundational the basics were in his training. He learned how to drill soldiers really well and ultimately, being a great military leader made others want to follow him, many whom he had just defeated. The lesson here is that if you want respect and adoration, become worthy of it by being great, especially at the mundane things, like drilling soldiers.
Somalian Fraud - This long read is about the billions of dollars of fraud that the Somalian immigrants have scammed from the state of Minnesota. This is not just a single program, but many, including a childcare assistance program ($100M), food assistance programs ($50-$100M/yr), resettlement programs ($200M), housing subsidy programs ($30-$50M/yr), heath care programs ($100M). The total estimated by the article ends up being around half a billion dollars from a relatively small community, much of which ended up as cash in East Africa. The coordination involved in making such large scale fraud possible is staggering, but not surprising given the terrible incentives of welfare programs like this.
What I'm up to
Model Collapse - I talked to the pseudonymous Copernican about his idea applying AI model collapse to other places, including human cognition and ideology. We talked about a whole gamut of things, including the idea that education is what people train on and as that educational material goes through multiple generations of training on the previous generation of content, it gets nonsensical pretty quickly. We also touched on the role of compression of information and various ways in which centralization creates the right conditions for model collapse.
Jethro’s Podcast - This was a short conversation, originally meant to be about 3-5 minutes which ended up being 13. We talked about my visits to El Salvador, Noblesse Oblige, Christianity and Bitcoin and how common sense is how El Salvador has improved so much so quickly.
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
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