134 - Equinox this weekend
🇮🇹 At last we have slightly cooler weather here in Palermo. One night we had heavy rain and ever since it has been a good 10 degrees cooler every day - it is now a very pleasant 17-26 degrees every day. There are occasional rain showers - usually during the night and nothing like they are getting in Central and Eastern Europe. We certainly did pick the better part of Europe to be in this month!
V and I get out and about around the city every day - we have got our bearings and preferred routes. Palermo is an amazing city - it has vast historic buildings on every street - these are clearly not from this age. We are also getting out of the city and visiting nearby sites including Cefalu, Mondello and Monreale. All of these are recommended and well worth a visit.
Cefalù is a 40 minute train ride from Palermo. The Duomo di Cefalù is the town's main feature. It's a Norman cathedral, supposedly built in the 1100's by Roger II of Sicily featuring rather impressive mosaics, including the famous Cristo Pantocratore. Of course you can go up on the roof and terraces with a few interesting views. The old town is also rather interesting with a quirky highlight being the Lavatoio Medievale, a medieval washhouse carved into rock.
Monreale is an easy 20 minute bus ride from from Piazza Indipendenza. The main site there is the Duomo di Monreale. It is yet another cathedral with vast mosaics, possibly as much as 6400 square metres, being considered the largest and best example of Byzantine Mosaics in the world.
In other news this week Facebook arbitrarily and capriciously decided to remove my posts to my newsletter, claiming that they violate their community guidelines. Clearly the Empire is out of control and they are ramping up censorship of everything. Be sure to be subscribed to the newsletter via my website if you want to keep receiving my updates and insights.
Facebook is a perfect example of socialism: You get if for free. You have no say how it works. The guy who owns it is rich. You have no rights or privacy, AND if you say one thing they don't like they shut you up.
Book of the week
I recent weeks I have been in contact with several subscribers who are increasingly unhappy with the situation developing in their country and the local political and employment situation. It should be clear why this was inevitable (some would say planned) as laid out in The Sovereign Individual. I have given you some tips and techniques that I find useful and you can use them to improve your situation and get out of a rut - not least practising the "7 Habits" that are the opposite of what everyone does by default.
One additional book came to my mind again this week. I last mentioned it to you a year ago. It is a book from 1999 and while the wording and some of the concepts may feel a little dated but it is worth dipping in and reviewing. Take and use what works best for you - horses for courses!
Roger Price
Click for my review of John Gray's book
Combining insights from Western psychology and Eastern meditation, he presents a proven method to become happy, confident and at peace through four easy-to-follow steps:
- Set Your Intention: Recognise where you are now and determine where you need to go in order to achieve success.
- Get What You Need: Learn how to get what you need in order to be true to yourself.
- Get What You Want: Create outer success without sacrificing inner happiness.
- Remove the Blocks to Personal Success: Recognise what is holding you back, and clear the way for both inner and outer success. You have everything within your reach right now to live a rich and fulfilling life.
More in this issue
- Photo memories - Florino, Politeamo, Pretoria and Palatine
- Project Updates - Bitcoin Covenants and getting AI to work for you
- Plenty of useful links - don't say nobody told you!
- Closing out - An interesting journey through things you likely did not know
Royal Palace, Palatine Chapel, Plaza Pretoria, Teatro Politeamo and Villa Florino
🛠️ Project Updates
This week I have got a few interesting listens. First up is Michael's 4-years-on interview - listen and learn. Next, Peter Todd has done an absolutely thorough and definitive review with everything you could need to know about Covenants and how they could evolve. The third is an interesting discussion on how you can get AI to work for you, bypassing and avoiding the "guard-rails" that the Empire has installed.
Michael's graduation interview
Michael Saylor has now been in bitcoin for a full four year cycle! He joins us to celebrate, reminisce, and project how bitcoin will evolve in the next 20 years. This is a great discussion and Michael and Saifedean certainly do not agree on everything - Saifedean adopts quite an absolutist, all-or-nothing perspective; Michael is rather more realistic and pragmatic considering "how do you get there from here". You will certainly learn from this discussion - I tend to side with Michael - WDYT?
Michael also shares with you his Bitcoin24 model - you can freely download this and refine it. This is an open-source model designed to simulate long-range outcomes of various Bitcoin strategies tailored for individuals, corporations, institutions, and nation-states. You can input your own assumptions tailoring it to your view on the world and its evolution.
Covenants - do we need them?
You will be aware that I am very conservative when it comes to Bitcoin enhancements. From all that I have heard I could be ready to support OP_CAT in its new, verified and limited form. This can simplify many things and it does also enable covenants. I am not in favour of rushing faster and this latest read by Guy convinces me that slow is best for bitcoin changes.
Guy
Click for an interesting and informative read. Peter's extensive analysis here - Part 2 here
From the analysis it seems that current lightning is well able to support 10's of millions of users with current techniques and technology being fully used - this does not include those enabled by chaumian eCash (millions more). For me, this is more than enough for now and any additional changes that need a soft-fork should be validated first for a prolonged period on Liquid or even Bitcoin Cash - the purpose being to demonstrate real demand and safety - before making any change to native Bitcoin.
AI - more interesting than you imagined
This interview of Alex by Greg was most interesting. Like Greg, I was initially discouraged by the thought of yet another AI interview but this one will genuinely surprise you. Alex explains the techniques that he uses to get the AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) to work for you, obviating their guard rails. Also the discussion on using AI to translate non-English documents that have not yet been captured by the Empire and extracting wisdom from them should make you think.
TheCarlwood
Click for a surprisingly interesting and informative discussion
However, even at the end of the interview I do not think that Greg accepted or understood that exactly what he does in these weekly interviews is the technique that will get you to the next level when dealing with AI systems. WDYT?
🔗 Links for your edification
The following are links from my NetNewswire feeds - learn, enjoy and share.
Let's start gently
This is an easy and informative listen. You ought to recall Rupert's fascinating books and lectures that I have referenced here before. Memory is strange. Repeated experiments have failed to locate where memories are stored in the brain, which leads to the suggestion that the phenomenon of memory tests the credibility of materialism.
In this episode Rupert and Mark discuss various kinds of memory, from episodic memory to habits. For sure the truth is something different from what you were taught. Among other things, Rupert refers to topics from last week's discussion around holograms.
Likely so...
This is an interesting analysis by denome. He uses an interesting combination of technical analysis over more than 100 years of data, combined with some rather astute macro and general economic observations around key inflexion points.
Lyn is always a great listen
I have included Paul's interviews before - for example this one on The Great Taking. He focuses on quality interviews, rather than quantity and this interview with Lyn is a good example. Listen and learn about the success of her book (my review here), fascinating discussion on Nostr (so many possibilities - give it a go), the Euro (an interesting idea, badly implemented) and considering Euro failure scenarios, evolving Sovereign debt strategies and more - links to specific topics below:
3:35 Freedom of speech, decentralised media, 10:34 Sustainability of the euro, 15:15 How to prepare for a post euro world, 19:39 A Bitcoin Standard, 26:40 How intertwined are the dollar and euro, 28:35 Our debt problem, 40:50 A new gold standard?, 43:45 Lyn's policy advice - "nothing stops this train"
Dystopia ahead
Guy's latest explainer is well worth a listen. This is the latest in a series and the others are worth checking too (links under his video). He lays out rather clearly the distinction between CBDCs and StableCoins and the motivations of the players behind each. My take on this is that the Empire is betting on all the horses (as usual, being Cantillionaires) and they will opportunistically adopt and enforce whatever they can get to work in each country/region.
Guy does conclude with some practical steps that you can take - in addition to having some bitcoin and knowing how to use it, along with the various scaling technologies.
It's happening to everything
For years I noticed that all the coffee shops, pubs and pharmacies were getting bought up and consolidated. You have likely noticed this too. Nicole (from Canada) also spotted this (and many more examples) and she explains rather clearly why this has been happening and what comes next. Spoiler: it's the cantillionaires that are "betting on all the horses" because they can. You cannot compete with them because they will always out-spend you with their "free money".
It is certainly good that her generation sees and understands what is going on though as she says, there is no obvious solution except boycotting them, seeking out and supporting small businesses and building parallel systems. My peaceful suggestion is below:
Unlike your elections - with Bitcoin every vote really counts.
Brian thinks similarly and he explains rather well why this may well work.
🤔 Closing Thoughts
This week I am leading you through a fascinating series of insights and research from others that you are likely unaware of. As always consider this in the spirit of Ethical Skepticism. To be honest - this explanation seems to be as good as, if not better than the Official Story.
Did you ever wonder how come you always see the same face of the moon and those amazing "coincidences" surrounding Lunar and Solar eclipses - how could the sun and the moon be just the right size in just the right position?
Let's start with the Prague Astronomical Clock, also known as the Prague Orloj. It is a medieval astronomical clock located in Prague, Czech Republic. It is attached to the southern wall of the Old Town Hall in the Old Town Square. The clock is one of the oldest functioning astronomical clocks in the world, dating back to 1410.
Watch the animation carefully in Christopher's video below - you will see it later in VoC's documentary. This was the state of knowledge in the 1400's and these insights are also supported by the Antikythera Mechanism. As Eric explained to you last week, it is especially since mid 1900's that the alternative (now mainstream) narratives have been ramped up to "11" and you are not supposed to think anything else.
The Antikythera Mechanism is an ancient Greek mechanical device, often regarded as the world's first analog computer. It was discovered in 1901 among the wreckage of a ship that sank near the Greek island of Antikythera, dating back to approximately 100 BCE. The mechanism is composed of a complex arrangement of over 30 interlocking gears, which allowed it to predict astronomical positions, eclipses, and the timing of the ancient Olympic Games. Per the official story this technology could not have existed before the late 19th or early 20th century.
For those looking for a complete explainer check this extensive website.
Now, listen to this interview from 1965 - before the "moon landing" that you know was fake. In case that is not fresh in your mind - check back to Charlie's explainer (with all the evidence you need) in Newsletter #131.
And then listen to Vibes of Cosmos' documentary below. You need to watch this with an open mind. If you have difficulty with this, recall all the things that have happened (and been unveiled) in recent years - all of which demonstrates conclusively that you cannot trust the official story from the Empire media propaganda machine.
Recall too Michael Talbot's book that we discussed last week and recall what Eric Dubay explained in "Escaping the maze".
You may well say "It's a stretch" but recall that there are multiple earth projections of the earth - horses for courses!
In case you are still finding it too difficult to break free from the lies that you have been told, recall that the Hebrew word "נָשָׁא" (nasha) means to beguile or deceive. It is derived from a primitive root that implies leading someone astray, either mentally or morally. Check the biblical references yourself.
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- Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix
- The Architect
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