227 - Hello Holywood!
🇬🇧 Back in Belfast. Stephen Fry's Mythos, Simon Dixon on regime change, Bitcoin privacy with ARK & Monero, a surveillance report on Apple & Google, rising memory costs, world religions explored and ranked.
🇬🇧 Over the weekend we packed up in Palma and early in the week we flew back to Belfast for a bit. We will be visiting family and friends in and around Belfast, Holywood and Bangor in the coming weeks - so say hello if you are nearby and want to meet up!
The weather was the first shock - it is 18 C degrees colder here with rain-showers daily along with a few sunny spells. This is the regular Northern Ireland summer - get used to it!
Apart from that, we have been re-establishing our daily routine. We have joined up with the QUB sports club to use the swimming pool and gym. I am enjoying my daily yoga and morning project work with a view over the golf course and we have squirrels and all sorts of birds to keep us company on the terrace. V has her favourite coffee shops to read her books and we have good public transport.
We might get out and about around Northern Ireland on this trip. To be seen if we do or of there is enough going nearby on to keep us close to base like in Palma.
Book of the week
Over the last few weeks I have been re-reading Stephen Fry's Mythos. This book is absolutely fantastic and it is something that everyone should have read and be familiar with. Fry retells a vast selection of ancient Greek myths in a modern, witty and accessible style. I highly recommend the audiobook, read by Stephen himself and it is great to read along with the eBook.
The book begins with the creation of the cosmos, starting with the primordial force Chaos and the emergence of Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (Abyss, The Deep), Erebus (Darkness), Nyx (Night), Hemera (Day) and Aether (Light). From there it traces the tangled family tree of Titans, Olympians, monsters and mortals - covering stories of Zeus and the Olympians, divine revenge and retribution, the birth of Athena from Zeus's head, Persephone's descent into the Underworld, Pandora's jar (it was not a box), Prometheus and fire and much more.
Roger Price
Click for summary and to obtain your own copy
Stephen's retelling of these stories is superb. He makes them accessible and fun to listen to. You will quickly come to recognise all the key players, their personalities and traits. If you are new to these stories, you will be (beyond) amazed by them and the behaviour exhibited within. Keep this in mind as you read this week's Closing Thoughts and some more that I will share in the coming weeks.
Monologue of the week
Meanwhile, things on the Geopolitical Stage still seem as ridiculous as ever. One person who has been pretty much on the mark from the outset is Simon Dixon. Every week he does an analysis of events of the week just past, shares his interpretation and updates his position with new findings and information.
Roger Price
Simon's recent analysis is spot on again - click to understand and know more
Simon argues rather convincingly that both the UK and Israel are currently undergoing a Regime Change, which involves replacing leaders and policies to prioritise digital identity and AI-driven control. The Financial-Industrial Complex (FIC, the top-level financial system that oversees both the MIC (Military) and TIC (Technological)) is coordinating these changes.
He sees the UK as a nation lacking financial sovereignty, noting that its government is frequently rotated to serve specific agendas, such as enforcing new digital surveillance frameworks.
Just imagine what nonsense and absurdities are planned for 4th July and the 250th Anniversary of the USA. Whatever you see, you can be sure that it is Empire-orchestrated distraction, bread and circus. Beware of False Flags.
More in this issue
- Photo memories - Around Belfast this week
- Project Updates - Bark, Monero and NVK insights
- Plenty of useful links - don't say nobody told you!
- Closing out - Things you likely did not know
Around Belfast this week
🛠️ Project Updates
It is essential that we have good money that can be used for transactions and purchases. This is in addition to the ability to store wealth outside of the collapsing system. The projects that I support and share facilitate this. What are you doing?
Bark Goes Mainnet with Steven Roose | SLPfast 743
One of the most important aspects of Bitcoin is that it is digital money that you can exchange freely with anyone for payment of goods or services. I strongly recommend that you take the opportunity to familiarise yourself with how to make and receive payments using Bitcoin - you can thank me later.
There are many ways to make payments - the method you choose will depend on the value of the payment. For smaller values you will likely want to use one of the Layer 2 forms of bitcoin like Lightning or eCash. Recently some additional options are becoming accessible using the ARK protocol which expands on Lightning. One such implementation is Bark.
For a refresher on another ARK implementation - check back here.
Douglas Tuman: Leading the Monero Charge
Douglas Tuman is a prominent advocate for Monero who believes in the power of disruptive technology to enhance personal liberty. He promotes Monero as a superior alternative to Bitcoin because it is unstoppable (meaning no central authority can control or censor the transactions) and untraceable. He is deeply involved in building the Monero ecosystem through projects like the Monero Talk podcast, the Monerotopia conference, and XMR Bazaar, a peer-to-peer (a system where individuals trade directly with one another without needing a middleman or bank) marketplace.
Roger Price
Although he previously ran for US Congress as a Libertarian (a political advocate for minimising government intervention in personal and economic life) to protect digital privacy rights, he now believes he can achieve greater real-world impact by supporting the development of tools that normalise the use of untraceable digital cash. Tuman is particularly optimistic about the upcoming release of Full Chain Membership Proofs, a technical advancement he considers the most significant update in the project's history.
The State Is Farming You with NVK - TFTC: #760
An inspirational one to close out. NVK, from Brazil but now living in Canada, is an entrepreneur who makes the Coinkite Bitcoin security devices. He is also well known for encouraging the use of AI by developers and he shares some interesting tools here that he makes available on his website.
Marty Bent
Click for summary and to listen to the discussion
nvk
Click for simple instructions to get started with Bitcoin
nvk
Click for those who want to do more useful things with AI
🔗 Links for your edification
The following are links from my Liferea RSS feeds - learn, enjoy and share.
Think about it...
I do not always agree with TechLead but he does pretty much nail it in this recent monologue. At least you should have considered what he discusses. It may or may not be for you and it need not be "all-in". Speaking from personal experience he is right on about all of this.
Roger Price
A rather good explainer
You don't hate Big Tech and Government enough
- Apple is shifting Hide My Email aliases from icloud.com to private.icloud.com, making these addresses easily identifiable and blockable by services.
- Google is updating its ad measurement practices to utilise IP addresses for personalisation across the EEA, UK, and Switzerland, raising significant concerns regarding user fingerprinting.
- Google is finalising the removal of Manifest V2 support in Chrome, which effectively forces users toward Manifest V3 and degrades the capabilities of powerful ad blockers like uBlock Origin.
Roger Price
Surveillance Report - click to know the details
- Canada is moving forward with a controversial surveillance bill that includes provisions for metadata retention and mandates for companies to create encryption backdoors.
- The UK government intends to implement a social media ban for those under 16, a move criticised as an ineffective 'gatekeeping' measure that ignores the accountability of exploitative companies.
It is a game of chicken - they are playing you
Roger Price
Pay attention - act soon if you want to do anything
Practically - this should push you to consider getting and using one of the excellent second-hand or refurbished Lenovo or Dell laptops and running Linux on it. We have discussed this many times eg here.
Society been in a similar predicament before - recall When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson - The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar, Germany. Yes it recounts the story of a hundred years ago but you will be surprised to see how relevant this is today, albeit on a bigger scale.
🤔 Closing Thoughts
We have discussed before about all the religions of the world and how organised religion divides people up against each other, making them fight among themselves rather than pushing back on the real evil that is the Empire.
Recently I came across these excellent summaries and overviews of the big picture. This complements and extends on my own research that we reviewed back in March 2023.
Roger Price
Click for summary and to listen to the complete overview
Some facts might surprise you: The 'Big 4' Largest Religions (by followers)
| Rank | Religion | Approx. followers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Christianity | ~2.4 billion |
| 2 | Islam | ~1.8 billion |
| 3 | Hinduism | 1.2 billion |
| 4 | Buddhism | 500 million |
- Judaism is often counted as the fifth major world religion, but only has ~16 million followers. It is included because of its age and disproportionate influence for reasons that you may understand by now.
- By size alone, the fifth-largest would be Chinese Folk Religion (labelled here Chinese Syncretism) — "syncretism" meaning a mixture of different religious ideas.
Tracing the lineage
You might be surprised but there does seem to be traceable family tree from Adam and Eve to the "time of Jesus". This is a most useful and informative piece of work and I encourage you to consider it in conjunction with Jason's research that I will share with you next week.
The narrative begins with the origins of humanity and moves through the Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—who established the foundational lineages. Jacob had twelve sons, each becoming the progenitor of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The account details the Exodus led by Moses, the formation of the Monarchy under kings like David and Solomon, and the eventual division into the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. Key historical events, such as the Babylonian Exile and the reconstruction of the temple under Persian rule, are integrated into the timeline.
Roger Price
A rather well-done explainer - Good to use both date systems
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- Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix
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- The Architect
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