priorities

61 - Palma - feet on the pedals

Roger Price

29 Apr 2023 • 10 min read

🇪🇸 Three weeks here already and we are getting our feet on the pedals (see below). It is already one year since I decided to switch into a different gear as we travelled around the world having escaped from the lunacy in HK; I remember clearly that phone call I received Friday lunchtime at the end of April '22 that pushed me over the edge. I went back and checked my Newsletter of that time and it still resonates rather clearly - you will likely find some interesting and relevant thoughts in it - read it below. With hindsight, it was certainly the right decision.

Click to read - switching into a new gear

And you can read our first impressions of Palma one year ago here.

Quad day out...

Midweek (why not) we got out and about on Quads - we are not too old for this yet! That said, we were the oldest ones out that day and we were certainly on the longest trip! Other couples were from Germany and United States. Pro tips: do use sunscreen and sunglasses are highly recommended; V had also found elastic straps to hold our bag of bits onto the luggage rack - especially handy on the off-road parts!

Podcast of the week

Whittney Webb is one of the best investigative journalists these days and her website, newsletter and blog, Unlimited Hangout, is a must follow. Her latest interview is with Catherine Austin Fitts, former US presidential advisor and author of Solari Report (also a must read). Pay careful attention to what she says about JP Morgan being the sole securities principal in the original Ponzi scheme, perpetrated by Charles Ponzi; unaddressed corruption is in your face.

Whether you want to believe in a grand plan or not is fairly irrelevant since all of the steps that have been taken in recent years and those currently under deployment and in planning lead firmly in one direction.

Click to listen - webpage has additional links

A couple of handy links shared by Catherine - indeed somewhat US-centric but easily applicable elsewhere including UK and Europe.

And UK Column did an interview with Alasdair Macloed that brings a UK-perspective to the above discussion - that of a former UK Banker turned financial advisor.

Topics discussed in this fascinating interview include:

The banking crisis and the failure of Silicon Valley Bank
Forgetting the lessons of the financial crisis of 2008
What happened to Credit Suisse and what it means for confidence in Swiss banking and banking generally
The problems with Global Systemically Important Banks (GSIBs)
What a sound banking system should look like
Why the current system is so unstable and prone to crashes
The nature and history of credit
How banks create money (currency) out of thin air
History Lesson: The Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland and how credit and banking helped to transform Scotland
The Roman legal basis of how the world treats money and credit

Culture too

With V being in charge of our social calendar, we also got to see Carmina Burana here in town - just a few minutes walk from where we are staying!

🛠️ Project Updates

This week I started trying out some of the cloud services that offer hosted servers. Whilst I think it is important to run my own servers that is difficult when you are on the road and there are real advantages to have the features that hosting services offer to help with firewalls, monitoring, backup, cloning, upgrade and downgrade of hardware etc.

The first service under test is Akamai (formerly Linode) - I signed up with a $100 free credit that is valid till end of June; that's perfect for me and I plan to max it out trying out all the features and multiple different configurations - you can cancel at any time and I intend to try out tall their services. If you want to get the same deal use this link; thanks, Jay. First things that I am testing are Nostr Relay, Nutstash and running my own git server - as well as all of the essential Linux hardening steps. They do already score highly on customer support; I was very pleasantly surprised by how helpful they were on a configuration question that I had.

One thing that I am already impressed by is using Tailscale to access remote devices securely. This greatly reduces the need to expose open ports and possible firewall misconfiguration. This can also be useful for those of you who need to do remote support on family PCs - or if, for example, you wanted to have a backup disk stored in a remote location (rsync is your friend). Christian explains:

Tailscale is like magic - click to watch

Over the summer I plan to look into Amazon, Google and Digital Ocean services. Longer term goal is to have one or more services that I feel fully comfortable with for some secure servers and storage to complement the physical servers that I maintain around the world - if you have experiences to share (or better suggestions), do let me know! I will also be looking into some bitcoin-paid services - my intuition is these may yet be more interesting due to stronger privacy protections.

Nostr fixes this

Here’s the thing that Nostr got right, and it’s the same thing that Bitcoin got right: information is easy to spread and hard to stifle. Information can be copied quickly and perfectly, which is, I believe, the underlying reason for its desire to be free. Click below to read Der GiGi's recent article on the topic - eye-opening!

Click to read the article - it includes a like for Guy to read it to you

eCash - following up from last week

For those of you wanting a bit more of an explanation about how Chaumian eCash works - check @Gandlaf21's presentation here:

Click for the presentation - step by step

@Rijndael also made a nice video explainer here - it is simple when you know how! For any of you who want to test with me - just reach out and ask!

Geyser.fund

The first is Geyser.fund discussed here in Nostrovia - The Nostr Podcast: Geyser.fund with Stelios. Listen carefully to what he explains: it is now possible to support development projects, originating from anywhere in the world. In designing the platform they decided against taking VC/Equity funding themselves due to unbearable regulatory constraints that would prevent them supporting projects from many countries and jurisdictions around the world. They chose instead to leverage the native money of the internet - this is a recurring theme that you will certainly hear more about in future.

This is just one of the ways that you can support bitcoin development. Happy to discuss with anyone needing more information or insight - just reach

🔗 Links for your edification

First up is reading and discussion of A Cypherpunk's Manifesto by Eric Hughes. You would do well to read the short document yourself or listen to this reading and discussion. Written 40 years ago you have got to admire the foresight at least; he got so much absolutely right.

We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organisations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. In reading this you will recognise the origin of some of Der GiGi's inspiration for his Nostr article above: Information is Rumour's younger, stronger cousin.

Charlie dissects the WEF Global Leader list

I have mentioned this list before - you can and should check it yourself. However Charlie will give you a head start on the highlights with his expert observations - this is a must-watch.

You ought be be able to spot plenty of Nepotism, Cronyism, Backroom deals, Collusion and Insider privilege. BTW you can check the list yourself and if (as is quite likely) some of your local politicians are on it you probably do want to do whatever you can to have them removed and/or prosecuted.

You can download the WEF Global Leader list here; look for your local politicians!

Lightning - gotta keep learning and building

Lightning enables Bitcoin to scale to millions of participants, enabling you to send and receive bitcoin anywhere in the world, instantly at almost no cost. You might wonder how this can be possible. Guy explains in his recent podcast: Basics_06 - The Lightning Network - listen and learn.

Once you understand this, the next step that many will take is to start building. Listen here as Spiral's Steve Lee explains the Lightning Development Kit and How Everyone Can Contribute to Bitcoin

Maverick has been away for a few weeks, as he explains. His latest weekly outlook is as interesting, insightful and provocative as ever. Click below:

And his update of Thursday should help you focus - it certainly sounds like stagflation to me and plenty of trouble ahead:

🤔 Closing Thoughts

Many believe that Bitcoin is “just one of thousands of cryptoassets”—this is true in the same way that the number zero is just one of an infinite series of numbers. In reality, Bitcoin is special, and so is zero: each is an invention which led to a discovery that fundamentally reshaped its overarching system—for Bitcoin, that system is money, and for zero, it is mathematics. Since money and math are mankind’s two universal languages, both Bitcoin and zero are critical constructs for civilisation. Consider this read-through by Robert:

Click to watch and Robert will read his article to you

As additional background you might like to check out this video from quite a few years ago on how Zero was discovered. Independently confirming Robert's explanation and providing some additional insights too.

Forward to a friend and let them know where they can subscribe

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

I am assuming that you are up to speed by now on the Matrix story and why this is important - so you are ready for Neo's encounter with The Architect. Watch and understand more...

Click for the explainer

🤔

"99% of all subjects accepted the program if they were given a choice - even if they were only aware of the choice at an unconscious level"
- The Architect

You have to see it for yourself.

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

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