🇬🇧 V and I have had a relaxing week, enjoying the Northern Irish summer weather. It has remained dry, with cool mornings and often pleasant sunshine in the afternoons. This is more like how I remember summers used to be when I lived here!

Over the weekend I had a nice Bitcoin meetup - it was good to see a few familiar and some new faces too! We had interesting discussions on how everyone is moving forward through all the current nonsense. I think we all agreed that the best approach is to opt out of as much corporate and governmental stupidity as possible, and to focus on our own lives and what matters most to us. Everyone understands how important it is to be able to use bitcoin for payments. You can do this in several ways as we discuss in Project Updates below.

We have a busy weekend ahead and then my birthday to look forward to. Updates on those next week. What are you planning?

Lecture of the week

I am not one to lecture anyone but I do enjoy to listen to and sometimes even to attend lectures where I can listen to people who are much more knowledgeable on particular topics than me. So it is that I really enjoyed this lecture, given recently in Dundee in Scotland by Steven Young.

Aether Drift and the most famous “failed” experiment

The lecture presents Steven A Young’s argument that the aether was deliberately removed from modern physics, replacing an ancient, living conception of nature with a materialistic and mechanistic scientific system. It combines scientific history, alchemy, metaphysics, theology, symbolism, numerology and personal interpretation. The summary below distinguishes what Young argues

Letter from ...around the worldRoger Price

This is a truly fascinating lecture. You will gain many new insights as to how The Empire works to corrupt "the science" and perpetrate their narratives, suppressing all evidence to the contrary. COVID was not the first time that they did this!

All of this encouraged me to dig deeper and I found Greg's recent interview with Leon Southgate. This may well be a step too far for some of you now but just bookmark this and you can come back to it when you are ready. You may not have to wait too long.

Leon Southgate

Greg Carlwood interviews Leon Southgate about Wilhelm Reich’s orgone research, Southgate’s experimental work with ORANUR, and his attempts to investigate relationships between orgone energy, consciousness, dreams and synchronicity. Claims throughout are presented as those made by Carlwood or Southgate. Leon Southgate | Orgone, Oranur, Consciousness, & The Energy Cartel • The

Letter from ...around the worldRoger Price

More in this issue

• Photo memories - Belfast and Bangor this week
• Project Updates - Browsers, AI developments and ways to pay
• Plenty of useful links - don't say nobody told you!
• Closing out - Hyperion and much, much more

🛠️ Project Updates

Something of an informational update this week on tools and technologies that I use every day. It is useful to know about these things and being able to use them will certainly come in handy. All of these are things that you likely should be interested in. What are you doing?

Browser update

You should be aware that Brave Browser has long been my go-to recommendation. It is a privacy-oriented fork of Chrome and they make a point of blocking ads everywhere, including YouTube. They have a number of other interesting features like blocking and denying all those annoying Cookie Notifications - you just never see them any more. Nice.

Recently I have noticed that Brave struggles to start YouTube videos - you often have to reload the page to get it going. This, among other things prompted me to look at Zen Browser which promises a Calmer Internet. It is a Firefox fork and I have to say it is what Firefox could have been now, if they had not lost their way. I guess they had the advantage of no legacy base and they could just make a browser as it should be. You can easily run this alongside your existing browser for some time to give it a try.

I highly recommend that you install Zen Browser (works on Mac and Linux, and even Windoze). You must install uBlock Origin ad-blocker and the best experience is with Vertical Tabs (on the side) and do make use of Spaces to group and separate areas of activity. This setup perfectly runs YouTube videos without any adverts or glitches - what are you waiting for?

Happy to hear your feedback and recommendations- what works for you?

Interesting times in the AI world

I came across these three items, all observing AI developments from different perspectives. You will see a common thread developing if you look.

First up, Techlead has already done his own hands-on testing of Kimi K3 - the latest open-source output from China. I can recall how Kimi K2 shook up the AI world in July 2025 and I feel K3 may do likewise this year.

The significant insight to pick up is that Kimi and the other Chinese models are open source - as such anyone can run them and make a business with them. There is genuine global decentralisation and competition. Even more interesting is that Kimi does not need to invest anything in AI hardware or data centers since this is also distributed - and you can even run open source models on your own computer.

As Sean points out below, this is very strong competition for those incestuous Big Tech companies that want to keep you locked into their Walled Gardens.

It will be very interesting to see how this pans out. For now, I see this as a Golden Age of Opportunity for those who want to adopt and up-skill to make use of this new technology. I have a number of projects on the go and will be sharing more in coming weeks.

One example comes from CalleBTC who is the lead developer on Cashu, the Original and Best Bitcoin-based eCash. He has been making use of this to do security audits on all of his software.

Interestingly, the US-models are so Censored with Gatekeeping that they will not even allow this work to be done but the open source Chinese models not only find the bugs but fix them as well.

Enjoy the Golden Age while it lasts - what are you building? A cynic might say that you are watching The Empire bet on all the horses in the race. That may be so but you can certainly have fun and use it to your advantage!

Many ways to pay

We covered quite a few interesting topics in our Bitcoiner Meetup. Among them was sharing our findings and recommendations for tools that enable and facilitate using Bitcoin as money - both directly and indirectly.

Directly

To make payments directly in Bitcoin, the best way is with Lightning. It works reliably now and it is easy to get started. There are many excellent wallets - Blitz (of El Salvador fame) and Wallet Of Satoshi are excellent to start. Use these for your first payments. Consider them like your cash wallet - don't keep more than a hundred or so pounds/dollars. For larger amounts (thousands) Phoenix is a good option.

For eCash (another direct method), Cashu is the way to go. Good alternatives are MiniBits and Macadamia (iOS). For larger communities of users, Fedi is a strong player - for example it is the The go-to Wallet on Bali and many other locations.

Indirectly

You have long been able to use Bitcoin to buy via Bitrefill where you can buy Gift Cards, eSIMs and Mobile Top-up. More interesting is that there is now an increasing range of providers of prepaid Visa or Mastercard that you can top up with Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies).

A quick internet search will turn up plenty of good prepaid cards for your location - for example in Hong Kong we have:

• HashKey Exchange Card - Fast eKYC using the NFC reader on your smartphone for your HKID.
• RedotPay - consistently highlighted for having the smoothest onboarding experience for locals since its app natively reads and processes HKID documents. They offer both physical and virtual cards, which are highly useful for tap-to-pay while traveling.
• Wirex - A longstanding mainstream option for HK residents. Wirex is notable for offering competitive, near interbank real-time exchange rates. It provides a free monthly allowance for zero-fee international transactions.
• Halocard - A popular virtual card in Hong Kong because it is a US-issued Visa funded easily (and for free) via stablecoins.
• Kolo - Highlighted as a standout for zero foreign exchange (0% FX) fees and zero maintenance costs, while also paying out 2% in BTC rewards. It is ideal as a cost-effective secondary card exclusively for international trips. Kolo is also available in many other countries, including UK.

Treat these like your Lightning or Cash wallet - do not store more in them than you need for daily expenses - you can easily top them up when you need. Also, virtual cards are useful but pick options that also give you a physical card.

One company to avoid is Crypto.com. They are the Ryanair of crypto. Avoid them at all costs. Their support is dreadful and I lost all faith in them due to their mishandling of a fraudulent transaction due to leak of card details from a restaurant website where you were required to enter details to guarantee the reservation. We are older and wiser - wisdom shared with you too!

Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA)

Most people who are familiar with Bitcoin will recommend that you consider it as a savings account. You put some money into it in an ongoing basis - every day, week or month - whatever works best for you, regardless of the current price.

When you need, you can transfer bitcoin from your "savings account" to your spending wallet and use it. As the price of bitcoin goes up, you will benefit from increasing spending power - when the price goes down your DCA savings buy you more bitcon than before. Since you will have bought Bitcoin recently you become less sensitive to the price swings - in fact you can take advantage of them. The more who do this, the more valuable Bitcoin and your savings will become.

Likely some of you already know this and do it - do share your own experience and recommendations.

🔗 Links for your edification

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

Chad is back - he has been through a lot

You might recall that last year Chad gave a rather inspirational series of 90 days of walk-and-talk monologues. He has been missing for a while. You may find some inspiration here too.

Chad is back

Chad’s monologue centres on recovering from prolonged anxiety and burnout by returning to a personal baseline—or ‘zero’—and rebuilding through small, familiar actions. Significant points * Accumulated stress: Chad describes how repeated personal and professional pressures became overwhelming and affected his sleep, motivation and ability to function normally. * Sudden

Letter from ...around the worldRoger Price

A comeback begins by identifying your ‘zero’: the familiar, manageable point from which you can start moving forwards again.

Chad’s message is that you should not wait until you feel completely ready. You should begin with one small action, rebuild gradually and retain a larger goal to work towards. Pay attention too to what he says about local contacts and community. Bitcoiners already know and vaue this too.

What Jon sees is rather clear once you see it

Jon explores whether triumphal arches were originally entrances to larger structures. Using the Columbus Union Station as primary evidence, he highlights how architectural fragments can be misinterpreted when detached from their surroundings. He suggests that many isolated monuments may be results of demolition rather than intended designs.

Jon on arches

Jon revisits a question from his previous video: were structures commonly called triumphal arches originally entrances to larger buildings? After examining images in which monumental arches are visibly integrated into substantial architectural complexes, he considers this idea plausible. Rather than accepting that these arches were built solely as symbols of

Letter from ...around the worldRoger Price

Jon also questions conventional historical narratives and speculative antiquitech theories regarding building functions more generally. What is your impression - how do you explain these observations?

🤔 Closing Thoughts

I was pleased to hear that some of you also enjoyed Hyperion. One of you even put a smile on my face with the story of reading the book many years ago in the university bookshop because it was too expensive to buy on a student budget! However you read this book, you will be changed afterwards. I also enjoyed Quinn's take on it and I share it here but be aware that it contains quite a few spoilers!

Quinn’s Hyperion

The transcript is an enthusiastic, spoiler-heavy deep dive into Dan Simmons’s Hyperion Cantos. It concentrates on Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, while using selected material from Endymion and The Rise of Endymion to interpret the series’ larger mysteries. The notes below reflect what Quinn says in the

Letter from ...around the worldRoger Price

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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

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