Bitcoin Tech Talk #513
Interesting Stuff
The Extreme and Center Democrats - Two stories, both about the state of the Democratic party. The first is by Celina101 who traces the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America from Bernie Sanders to Zohran Mamdani. Among other things, the organization had at its conception, an explicit non-Communist policy. That has been scrapped as it has been taken over by the younger people whose conception of Communism is probably more in line with China and Vietnam than the USSR or East Germany. The second is by Paul Waldman who argues that centrist Democrats have zero organization and are destined to lose, despite having pretty lucrative sinecures in academia, media and non-profits. Both articles essentially say the same thing from two different vantage points. Lots of young people, the foot soldiers of the Democratic party are going socialist/communist and there’s little that’s stopping them.
Skid Row - A journalist spends three days on LA's Skid Row expecting to find evidence of malice and instead discovers that the situation is probably much more due to incompetence. To wit, there is over $250 million in annual nonprofit revenue producing virtually zero visible improvement, with open-air drug use flourishing literally outside a LAPD station. The homelessness-industrial complex turns out to be less sinister plot and more bureaucratic entropy, where good intentions get devoured by institutional bloat and six-figure executive salaries. It is a perfect case study in how government-adjacent organizations optimize for self-preservation rather than solving the problems that justify their existence.
Green-lit Lives - Dave Greene argues that certain demographic groups receive pre-cleared career paths into lucrative positions while anyone who notices the pattern out loud gets dismissed as a bitter crank. He illustrates this with his college acquaintance who coasted from undergrad through law school into a cushy government role despite being, by his account, remarkably uninformed and lazy, on a trajectory that simply would not have existed for someone of his profile. The most insightful part of the piece is how The Imposter Syndrome, now nearly ubiquitous among highly positioned people, is essentially due to the thumbs on the scale and as such most of the highly positioned people are loathe to talk about their own success as anything other than merit. Mental gymnastics, in other words, are table stakes for any institutional success these days.
The Millennial Midlife - Sour by Priyanka Desai writes a bout the coming Millennial midlife. The main difference versus previous generations is how they’re coming into midlife without the traditional accomplishments of home ownership and career stability that gave previous midlives a certain shape. The response is splitting into two extremes rather than the classic red-sports-car cliche. One end goes loud with very public and visible obsessions with fitness culture, like run clubs and Hyrox competitions. The other end goes quiet, retreating into a variety of much more private things. Probably the most interesting one described in the article are dopamine sites. These are sites where you can browse fake menus, fill up fake shopping carts and track couriers that aren’t delivering anything. It’s about as sad a way to get a dopamine hit as I can imagine, yet it’s becoming a thing.
Jason Arday - Librarian of Celaeno writes this evastating satirical takedown of how Cambridge University circled the wagons around this blatantly fraudulent academic. A professor credibly accused of plagiarism and fabricated biographical claims that sound pretty crazy, like having only learned to read at 18, ran 600 miles in 6 days, having overcome a brain tumor and having taught at universities that don’t have any record of him. The Cambribdge faculty dismissed all criticism as racism and even weaponized concerns about self-harm to shut down accountability. It is a textbook example of how DEI commitments create perverse incentives where institutional fear of appearing discriminatory overrides simple BS detection. When you replace merit with identity as the organizing principle of an institution, you destroy the credibility of everyone the system claims to elevate.
What I'm up to
Problems of Inheritance - This is a panel I did in Prague about what Bitcoin inheritance currently looks like and why self-custody is so scary for people. We talked about practical considerations and the mental shift between using wealth ourselves and thinking about being a steward of wealth for your family.
Holy Seed - I spoke to some Christian Bitcoiners in Korea and talked about the transition between Judges and Kings. My contention in the video is that Israel wanted a king as a way to shirk responsibility, which ended up in centralization which ultimately added all manner of taxes, oppressing the people. I argued that a decentralized, cooperative system is what makes civilization possible and is the unique teaching of Christ.
Nostr Note of the Week
