🇹🇭 We had a fairly busy week here in Bangkok. The weather has been fantastic. Over the weekend we had cooler weather (around 29 degrees) and nice breeze. It feels fresh in the morning and not too hot in the afternoons. Evening also are pleasantly cool. Seems like this cooler weather will continue till mid Feb - how great is that!

On Saturday I did a super meetup walk from Itsaraphap MRT on the other side of the river. There is a lot to see in this part of Bangkok and a lot of historical significance to this area. These meet-ups are excellent and there are opportunities to join such trips every week here. You get to meet all sorts of interesting people from all over the world - some just visiting and others who live here, both full time and part time like us.

First stop was Wat Ratchasittaram, right beside the MRT station - this is a spectacular site with several temples and you are welcome to visit and sit and reflect. Next stop was the King Taksin Shrine - one of our walkers shared the King's history and lots of information about this and neighbouring sites. From there we visited Wat Hong Rattanaram, heading towards the river and Ton Son Mosque which its historic burial ground.

Next stop was in the Portuguese district, with its narrow streets. We stopped at the Portuguese museum for coffee before visiting on to Wat Kanlayanamit Woramahawihan, Santa Cruz Church, before making our way to the magnificent Wat Prayurawongsawas Worawihan with its beautiful garden, lake, and giant stupa.

Lastly we took the Chao Phraya Sky Park Bridge across the river. I never knew of this bridge that has seating areas for pedestrians to get beautiful views of the city and the river.

On Saturday evening I went along to the BoB Space bitcoin meetup. This was a review of the year and part of their Educational Outreach, inviting quite a few local bitcoiners and interested folks. Among other things we discussed the best educational material available and BoB Space has been supporting many interesting Bitcoin development projects. I also met some very interesting people and we had some good discussion on Anatomy of the State.

Monday evening was the regular Satoshi Square Bitcoin meetup at Soi 23. As usual there was a great crowd of people and I got to talk with a few interesting new visitors from Switzerland, New York and UK as well as many of the regulars. Plenty of discussion around how The Sovereign Individual is playing out (we are living now in Chapter 10) and how people are getting residence rights abroad to opt out of the nonsense in their home countries.

One recurring theme that I catch in all my meetings and discussions here with people is that they are awake to things being "not normal" and there is a sense that something is coming or will happen soon. Likely you also feel it and in this week's Useful Links I share with you an excellent explainer as to why all of this is happening. Then in Closing Thoughts I share with you some expectations that you might well want to consider. Forewarned is forearmed - or perhaps you prefer to keep your head in the sand and just go with the collective?

We are not going to participate in the coming lunacy or give it our energy. Instead, do say hello and let's catch up as we travel round this year - our plan is below:

Book of the week

Having finished the marathon read of Name of the Wind, I was looking for something lighter and shorter to read this week. You will likely recall that I am a fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. This week I picked up one of the less-commonly mentioned books but it is a great read and I enjoyed it a lot.

It was this review by Mark that prompted me to think about this book that I otherwise had not considered. It is certainly true that this gives some very insightful commentary on all of the religions and their antics. Also on how people and society behave. Needless to say - this is all rather relevant to what is happening today and this may well give you some useful insights.

And after watching this next review I knew this had to be the book for this week! ICYMI, the significance of the turtle and Discworld should not skip your attention.

So - have you read this - WDYT? What is your favourite book from Discworld?

In a related vein

All of the discussion on Gods, religion, authority, crusades, good and evil combined with our recent discussions on Buddhism, Gnosticism, and Hermeticism reminded me of another great book that I have read and recommended before. This week I also re-read much of Eckhart Tolle's great book: The Power of Now and I recommend you do too!

I recommend that you get both the audiobook (read by Eckhart himself) and the book to read along and make notes. The book is in the style of dialogues and questions from his many seminars and public talks all gathered into the most useful order and sharpened to use the clearest possible language.

Take your time. Do not skip the Prologue. Feel free to read and listen to each chapter a couple of times over several days. As you do this you will keep seeing more each time.

If you have read this or want to discuss - do reach out - happy to chat.

More in this issue

• Photo memories - walking Itsaraphat to the river
• Project Updates - Hands-on with terminal - these tools are essential
• Plenty of useful links - don't say nobody told you!
• Closing out - What to expect in 2025 - the second seal has been broken

🛠️ Project Updates

I am restarting some hands-on work with my servers and computers. Since it has been a few months it takes time to get back up to speed and I have had to fix a few configuration glitches. If you do any work in the Linux Terminal you absolutely must know and use these tools. I'd love to hear your recommendations too!

Midnight Commander and Tmux

This week I have been doing quite a bit of work on remote computers. This has involved quite a bit of working with terminal and moving files around. The best thing that I did this week was to refresh my memory on two excellent must-know tools. Midnight Commander (mc) and tmux.

Knowing and using these tools will change your life when you have any remote system administration to do. Rob from Tech Craft has an explainer on each of them. Watch and listen and you can thank me later!

00:40 - Tour of mc, 02:27 - Getting Started, 03:01 - UI Overview
04:11 - Customising Layout, 04:47 - Directory Panels, 05:33 - Info & Quick Look
06:09 - Panel Switching, 06:22 - Faster Navigation, 07:35 - Copy, Move & Delete
09:14 - Bulk Operations, 09:53 - View & Edit, 11:23 - Images, Movies & PDFs
13:25 - Working with Archive Files, 15:31 - Accessing Remote Machines
16:44 - Hotlist, 17:31 - Custom Themes

Let Rob explain to you how to use tmux. It is truly brilliant.

01:09 - Tour of TMUX, 03:03 - Installing TMUX, 03:26 - Staring TMUX
04:09 - Keyboard Shortcuts, 04:41 - Windows, 06:53 - Panes,
08:43 - Pane Resizing, 09:30 - Session Management, 11:50 - Customisation
15:44 - Customising Appearance

Zoxide and fzf will blow your mind

For the longest time, I've used cd exclusively for navigating in the terminal. However, when it comes to nested directories, the only way to speed this up was to either use aliases or my shell history. Since discovering zoxide, that's all changed...

🔗 Links for your edification

The following are links from my NetNewswire feeds - learn, enjoy and share.

Maverick is not optimistic

You likely know that he is a Perma-Bear. Well now he has his foot to the floor. Even broken clocks are right twice a day but now it feels like he might well be onto something. He shows you his scorecard towards the end where he does his best to make things pretty objective and easy to assess for yourself.

And things are certainly as bad or worse in the UK - listen here. and here.
Thanks to one of my subscribers who sent me this truth from the early 1980s.

Techlead is back...

A few of you found Techlead's comments last week to be somewhat challenging, although the consensus was indeed that he is not wrong. He's back with another straight-talking and likely divisive diatribe. Yet again, he is likely not wrong!

Advertising model leads to absolute corruption

If you were in any doubt about the insanity behind (and exploitability of) the advertising model of Google (and similar big tech platforms) you might want to listen to UE's examination and questions. Everything that I see here looks like outright fraud being committed in the open. So - WDYT?

So, what's the problem?

Thanks to one of my subscribers who pointed out this excellent educational website and video explainer. He begins by pointing out many societal issues that you will certainly recognise; these may affect you directly or indirectly and to a greater or lesser extent but some of them will apply to you. He goes on to explain how all of these societal issues have one underlying cause - that of the quality of money and the Government/State's ability to just create more money (Big Red Button) at no cost, in unlimited quantities and without accountability.

Remember: if you allow the government to create more money in an "emergency", they will keep creating "emergencies" to create more money and you have a downward spiral. It works just like drug addiction.

On the positive side, Joe does tell you what you can do to avoid the issues and how to opt out of the collective nonsense. It is easier than you might think and you can go step by step. We did discuss this back in Newsletter #14.

The above might well remind you that we have also discussed this with Allen Farrington's essay on The Separation of Money and State. While this may sound archaic/academic and boring, it would be a good idea to read this now and understand it.

"I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop."
~ F.A. Hayek in 1984

🤔 Closing Thoughts

As I mentioned above, most people that I meet and discuss with are awake to the current nonsense and are expecting to see even more coming down the pipeline soon. None of us can stop what is coming but you can choose how you react to it and (recall the 7 Habits) this will determine much more including how you experience things. Above all: remember that you do not need to participate in the madness of the collective - opt out of it.

As Jason says: "you cannot save the world but you can save your world."

For those who want to dive deeper into all of this and understand what is really behind the breaking of the first and second seals (and more) click here below:

Alex is likely right in his latest assessment - you might take a couple of minutes to read it - you can and should opt out - do not participate or give your energy.

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No one can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
- Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix

Any questions or anything else? Feel free to comment below!
You can also email me at: LetterFrom@rogerprice.me

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