36 - Happy Halloween
🇹🇭 We are very happy to he here in southern Thailand where the weather is warm and the people are friendly. Life here is not complicated and one of the best things is to be disconnected from all the nonsense going on elsewhere. We are focusing on our own priorities, looking after ourselves and living peacefully - supporting local community in places that we visit.
Recall that back in Issue 13 we discussed about choices, decisions and priorities along with some suggestions you might find useful.
I am continuing to work on my Bitcoin and Lightning projects - a part of which is sharing the educational material with you - check out the segments in Issues 33, 34 and 35 and do ask any questions you have - I am happy to explain or discuss with you.
Why is everything in such a mess?
In case you are wondering why things are in such a mess in the world these days, go back and read Issue 9 - How did we get here. You will see that the mess is more than 100 years in the making and much of what you thought was true is not in fact the truth is more likely to be the opposite of what you believed.
Particularly helpful and insightful references include:
- The Fiat Standard - how government issued money works - you will likely be surprised that things are not what you believed - in particular how wars are motivated and funded - unfortunately the rot goes much further into academia, medicine and food. Perverse incentives.
- The Creature from Jekyll Island - how a cabal of bankers captured and corrupted the system and the world's money
- When Money Dies - pertinent and timely reminder of how and why economic collapse happens - plenty of signs to look for and practical suggestions
- Report from Iron Mountain - the 1967 US government panel which concluded that war, or a credible substitute for war, is necessary if governments are to maintain power
- Sun Tzu's Art of War - clearest possible advice that wars should be as short as possible to avoid useless squandering of resources
The writers of the American Constitution understood fully the dangers of money being controlled by any "elite" group and they did their best to include protections in the US constitution. It did take the bankers multiple decades and puppet presidents to circumvent these but do so they did.
" If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around(these banks) will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
You might want to go back and re-watch The Matrix Series.
As with that moment in "The 6th Sense", once seen it cannot be unseen.
T0 keep you from seeing clearly you have the incessant division and distraction from mainstream media, social media and politicians who are all driven and motivated by the captured and corrupt financial system. The corruption goes deeper than you imagine.
In case you missed it
Do go back and check what we discussed last week about Halloween. You will likely be surprised that it has not always been the "happy clappy" festival that people seem to think of it today. Strangely too it is a festival that is recognised at the same time in all continents and for similar reasons - even from continents that were not understood to have had any communication.
Perhaps not unrelated - keep in mind that the night of 7-8 November brings the second total lunar eclipse of the year. The previous one ushered in the collapse of Terra Luna and all the consequences that followed - just a coincidence?
🛠 Update on my Projects
Following on from our discussions on the nature of money you should enjoy DerGigi's recent article - On Digital Scarcity. Fascinating article - read and learn!
"The difference between the Linden Dollar, World of Warcraft Gold, Fortnite V-Bucks, the Euro, and the U.S. dollar is in scale, not in nature. While V-Bucks are created and controlled by Epic Games (the company that created Fortnite), the U.S. dollar is created and controlled by the Fed. One impacts millions of people, the other billions. The mechanism that keeps these monies in check—the rules of the game, if you will—is the same in both cases: central decree." - DerGigi
💰 Bitcoin & Lightning
Recall from Issue 14 that Bitcoin is important because for the first time you have an alternative store of wealth and energy in some other form than government produced and controlled money (or derivatives therof). Bitcoin is genuinely decentralised money and not controlled by anydi government. Use of bitcoin is optional and permissionless - you can decide to use it and you do not need permission from anyone.
Technology that I am following includes:
Lightning is important, being the solution that brings safe scalability to transactions using Bitcoin. Amazingly it allows instant transfer of bitcoin worldwide with immediate settlement without any central control. It is like cash that just works globally. Currently growing at 25% in 4 months.
Slashtags
These aims to bring self-sovereign identities to users and allow for the building of local-first applications, and create a reputation system or web-of-trust. Slashtags uses keyPairs to identify and address peers and attach metadata about them, giving rise to reputation and private yet interoperable webs-of-trust. Watch SLP362 John Carvalho - Slashpay: Bitcoin Payment Negotiation
Holepunch
This enables easier development of peer to peer and collaborative applications. As proof of concept the developers have released Keet to exchange instant video, message and file communications in a truly P2P fashion. Listen to Paolo, Tether CTO, explain the technology here or watch the full interview with the image below
🎓 Reading, listening and learning
Below are some more interesting sources that I came across, or was reminded of, in the past week - for your enjoyment and edification.
Remember that Brave Browser is the simplest and best way to have advert-free browsing. Out-of-the-box it removes most of what you do not want or need - also you can add in uBlockOrigin extension and it eliminates the rest!
You can also use RSS readers like NetNewsWire or Feedly to follow your trusted sources directly. This ensures that you do not miss anything and also that your sources do not get lost through shadow-banning or censorship that is prevalent these days.
🤔 Macro Economics and Investing
One might ask: if much of the UK pension money was about to vanish, where was it going? Partly to the bankers, of course, but mostly, as with any bubble, the value was simply illusory.
Guy reads The Final Bubble is Bursting by Myrmikan Research - do you see it yet?
"In 2001, Argentina forced private pension funds to purchase $2.3 billion in government bonds so that the government could meet external debt Payments. The following day, the funds listed the bonds as an asset, but the value was already gone (Argentina would later confiscate the whole pension system officially). Western countries have done effectively the same thing, only with much more subtlety, without even the players knowing. The pension capital is gone, spent, consumed by the state, all that remains is the realization that it is gone." - Daniel Oliver, Myrmikan Capital
Check out the original paper with some very eye opening charts to super charge the point made in this excellent work.
💰 Related to the above - John Vallis' latest "Macro Hang" with Jeff Booth, Greg Foss, & Preston Pysh is worthwhile listening.
🇳🇬 Lessons from Nigeria - Something of a CBDC Flop... This should be food for thought... The reality is that CBDCs and Bitcoin are entirely different in the most fundamental ways: you need the government’s permission and blessing to use a CBDC, whereas Bitcoin is permissionless and not centrally controlled. If you cannot see the difference yet - you soon will.
🤔 Might the lie be even bigger?
🇪🇺 Consider Saifedean's seminar on Clown Continent. What on earth is going on in Europe and how did things get so bad? In this seminar, he discusses the double calamity of skyrocketing energy costs and plummeting pensions and currencies.
Decades of green hysteria leading to dismantling of reliable power sources & underinvestment in reliable power generation. And decades of Keynesian dogma convincing the people (whose pensions are being destroyed) their government can pay for everything at no cost. Does the UK really need to spend 10% of its GDP on public healthcare? What exactly is it about medical care that makes it have to be so expensive and always getting more expensive? Could it be the endless government financing? How bad would truly private healthcare be really?
and then this!
Hot on the tail of the Cholesterol Con (we discussed it last week), Saifedean talks about another scam that you may or may not know about - that of Climate Change.
Alex Epstein gives 5 trends shaping the future of energy - do read his article in full
- Fossil fuels’ fundamentals remain strong
- Anti-fossil-fuel policies have caused a global crisis
- The anti-fossil-fuel establishment is in denial
- Humanistic thinking about fossil fuels is on the rise
- Many people are now thinking differently about fossil fuels
Also: How a fake climate emergency created a real energy emergency
And: 25 myths about extreme weather, refuted
🇨🇳 Insights into China
Lei's Real Talk gives fascinating insights - Check out her channel and you make up your own mind. For example: The text Xi Jinping omitted from his speech and his ultimate vision for China
🤔 You likely want to give this proper consideration
An Inconvenient Opinion from Europe. These days, anyone advocating de-escalation in the war between Russia and Ukraine is quickly portrayed as a right-wing Putin friend. When Elon Musk and Donald Trump suggested last week that it might not be a bad idea after all to see if we could avoid a nuclear war through negotiations, they were rebuffed.
In Kiev, the giant posters of Elon Musk, which Ukrainians had first put up to thank him for his internet satellite connections, were taken down. He can now surely forget that square with his name and a statue in Kiev.
As always - latest Max's Walk and Talk is well worth a listen and alternative perspectives that you ought to consider. DYOR - this is an important skill to have.
🤪 Finishing up on a lighter note
With time here in the far East, disconnected from the daily nonsense it is good to have time to relect and read - consulting widely with alternative sources. You might appreciate this short explainer from AfterSkool.
..or this extract and summary from lectures by Gregg Braden. You can find the full lecture from Milan here.
You can read the Gospel of St Thomas here. It is indeed omitted from the Bible and you might do well to wonder why.
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