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  1. Last 7 days
    1. In April 2023, Mitsunori, 87, sitting in the family home adorned with photographs of his favoured second son, described how he rearranged the pins on his pachinko slot machines so that everybody in town thought they were a winner. His upfront losses were eye-watering. Then he moved the pins back into place — and started making serious money. Watching his father, Son learnt how to hustle. But the boy’s ambitions went way beyond pachinko gambling

      competition

  2. Sep 2024
    1. Remarkably, philosophical theories of secession have not distinguished between having the right to secede and being justified in using force to exercise the right

      critical critical critical

    2. One difficulty with this response is that it appears unrealistic under current conditions: once a region has achieved full independence, it will have little incentive to continue to share its resources with the remainder state in order to preserve its welfare functions and there is no effective international agency to ensure that it does so.

      violence...

    3. Wellman, however, takes another approach. He argues that the continued sharing of resources from a newly created independent state with the remainder state need not be limited to instances in which the poorer region would be left unviable without the seceding region’s support

      this is one plausible reason neighboring states may accept literal secession. essentially protection money/goods/services.

    4. Moreover, the remedial right only approach need not reject claims to independence on the part of nations; it only rejects the much stronger assertion that nations as such have a unilateral right to secede

      so there's kind of two paths here.

      advocating for the stuff you want within the confines of state/s constitutions.

      advocating for states to grant you actual sovereignty over your archipelago

    5. Given the tendency for unilateral secession to provoke massive violence, the obvious strength of the remedial right only approach

      protect these people from themselves

    6. Plebiscitary theories, in contrast, hold that the (pro tanto) unilateral moral claim-right to secede exists if a majority residing in a portion of the state chooses to have their own state there, regardless of whether or not they have any common characteristics, ascriptive or otherwise, other than the desire for independence.

      so this is the most relevant theory but network state theory as it currently exists assumes at least one common interest

    7. Remedial right only theories analogize the right to secede to the right to revolution, understanding it as a right that a group comes to have only as a result of violations of other rights

      sovereign individual rights blah blah blah

    1. Network union. A wholly digital entity, organized in a social tree structure, that engages in collective action on behalf of its members. The collective action is key for building organizational muscle. Network archipelago. A network union that begins acquiring and networking properties in the physical world. The physical interaction is key for building trust. Network state. A network archipelago that gains diplomatic recognition from at least one legacy state. The diplomatic recognition is key for attaining sovereignty.

      "from at least one legacy state", ?

      history and cycles -- we have the same with network states, no?

    2. And now we have a way to talk about origins in a realistic way. You’re founding a startup society. You begin as a network union, maybe crowdfund territory to become a network archipelago, and could someday grow into a network state. All of these are types of parallel societies

      okay, so this isn't a book about network states. it's a book about start-up societies

    3. Thus, the legitimacy of a network state comes not from top-down declamations, but from bottom-up consent, as each netizen has opted in

      this is the existing logic behind states

    4. Assumption: Digital Primary, Physical Secondary

      key

    5. controlled by private keys rather than a username/password combination, then the same encryption techniques that make it difficult for an outsider to seize an individual’s private keys can make it difficult for a foreign rival to steal a legitimate government’s private keys

      people are vulnerable

    6. Diplomatic recognition requires a putative state to have clout, and clout is in turn established by a publicly verifiable on-chain census of population, income, and real estate, to prove that your growing society is as large as you say it is. That’s why the aforementioned census is important

      why?

    7. In the meantime, physical law enforcement itself is gradually turning into something done with autonomous robots - whether they be legged robodogs, rolling cameras, or flying drones. So more law enforcement is being done from a command line. And that trend gradually converges with the concept of digital law enforcement by a network state.

      wtf does this mean

    8. but with one enormous difference, which is that if we can build many different startup societies to choose from, then there is much more practical consent of the governed, because there are many startup societies to choose from with explicit social smart contracts.

      how is this the case if your funds can be frozen? how do you exit? with what money?

    9. and more smart devices within those territories are owned by the society

      so it's not "private" things are owned by "the society"?

    10. Ford could be a holocracy or a co-op. So long as everyone has consented to be governed by the Ford CEO by signing an employee agreement, and can leave if that agreement is no longer congenial, Ford’s internal arrangements are ethical.

      key. political philosophy, contractarianism.

    11. It has a substantial physical component: all the buildings around the world crowdfunded by its members.

      ...okay

    12. Admission to this social network is selective, people can lose their account privileges for bad behavior, and everyone who’s there has explicitly opted in by applying to join

      how do you keep people in or push them out?

      even status quo countries have issues with immigration, no?

    1. Multiethnic empires like the Soviet Union were not traditional nation states because they had more than one nationality

      but they were states...

    2. Either someone thinking about starting new countries must want to create a powerful new military (dangerous!) or else they don’t have any guns and will get crushed by those that do (dangerously naive).

      why is this naivee??????

    1. But the Network of the global Indian diaspora is just on an exponential rise. Indeed, I think the 2020s will be for the Indian Network what the 2010s were for the Chinese State - somewhat ignored at the beginning of the decade, but an important global force by the end of it.

      they're everywhere, running businesses, etc

    1. The less-obvious point is that BTC — and its adjacent group of web3 users — are becoming a media power that will eventually topple the NYT, much as the 20th century US’s media power eventually outcompeted that of the Soviet Union. Why? Decentralized media. You can see early signs of this with Substack, Mirror, and NFTs…but in brief, the best content creators have better things to do than work for the establishment. They can become publishers of their own, by founding their own media companies. As with the CCP’s transition to a martial power, the BTC/web3 transition to a money and media power is not at all conventional wisdom

      yeah

    1. Crypto Capital is the international ideology of Bitcoin and web3. It’s stateless capitalism, capitalism without corporations, decentralized censorship-resistance, and neutral international law

      WHO ENFORCES INTERNATIONAL LAW

    1. Now we see why a focused moral critique is so important

      artificial separation of moral from material

    2. what we call a network state, as it would need legal recognition from an existing government

      legal recognition or diplomatic recognition?

    3. one that justifies its existence as a righteous yet peaceful protest against the powers that be.107

      peaceful protest

    1. empowering high-performers in the private sector to positions of influence in the Executive Branch. This impulse, inspired by the American faith in market competition as the

      Test

    1. We can synthesize these into a unified theory of cycles. The left cycle starts with a group of revolutionary leftists that then become institutional rightists. The right cycle starts with a group of determined rightists that then become decadent leftists. The libertarian cycle starts with a group of ideological libertarians that end up building a bureaucratic state.

      yes, insightful

    2. That’s why reopening the frontier may be the most important meta-political thing we can do to reduce political conflict.

      insightful.

      the salient point here is that frontier reduces pressure over scarce resources, and that politics (and economics) are conflicts over resources.

      social concerns are an exception ofc.

      but then again, federalism solution = reduce tension through states with different laws

    3. Professed ideals were just a mask for tribal interest.

      yes, materialism

    4. But if you track each of their careers back, you’ll see something like this episode, when Soros was funding Orban and both were on the same side as revolutionary forces against the Soviets. At that point in time, Soros was the philanthropist and Orban his protege, much as a venture capitalist might back an ambitious young founder. That’s a classic example of how backers seek leaders in the market for revolutionaries

      very insightful

    5. More recently, technological and moral innovators have grown to be at odds, because the US establishment now regards its economic disruptors as enemies

      don't founders? i guess the smartest one's, like thiel, want monopolies

    1. So, practically speaking, an “internet frontier” is easier than the other three. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to use the concepts from the network state to reopen the physical frontier, through a hybrid internet/land strategy, as described in this book.

      okay nice

    2. That closing took away paths for ambitious men, and ensured that they couldn’t easily become founders on their own plot of land

      the DNS is the new public land

    3. Towards the end of this period, authors like Charles Nordhoff in Communistic Societies of the United States noted how important the frontier was, how bad it would be if that avenue for ambitious men was closed off, and how nasty the Trade-Unionists were getting

      isn't this a good argument for land first?

    4. Stories that decenter the US, in other words, but that still give the world hope

      star wars is a movie about al qaeda that we love.

      so another way to look at my constant nitpicking is as a first step towards thinking about what those inconsistencies mean for the theory itself.

    1. But most of the time biomedical innovators are portrayed as evil, with all the attendant consequences. False histories shape our reality. We all live in Jurassic Ballpark.

      i really want to progress my analysis beyond pointing out exceptions, like "Elizabeth Holmes", but...it just feels really polemical

    2. that their downranking of dissident voices not fully efficient, that their late-breaking attempt to impose speech and thought controls on a free society not fully consummated, that (a) the initial refutations were even published and (b) that you are seeing some of them combined into one document.

      this is a great reason to do primary sources, because they are harder to censor or distort.

    3. Power over truth. In these incidents, if you stop to count, you often realize that the reports were off not by say 50%, but by 1000X or more. Why do these “reporters” still have their jobs, then? Because their job wasn’t to make money, but to make power. That is, they weren’t trying to predict the future correctly for the sake of making good investments, but to repeat the party line to keep people in line

      I suppose this is the value prop of prediction markets.

      Aggregate all of this data into assessments (a) more accuracy, (b) reward people who are right

      which are "network-y"

      but they're not very good at...normative stuff?

      i.e. "will the u.s. invade iraq" versus "will the U.S. invasion of iraq on net be good?" i suppose you could be like "well here's a proximate milestone/kpi" but that seems kind of difficult to both create the market and attract sufficient good faith liquidity.

      i suppose you could like train models on successful people but then you need to know what information they used to make their decision.

      which tbh is why i like this data underlying prediction markets idea

    1. That Realignment would be the Network against the State

      what does this mean?

    2. That third way is to support regional rearmament rather than fighting everyone else’s wars on their behalf.

      lol this is wild

    3. China’s lawful evil ambitions in East Asia should be tolerance for America’s chaotic evil interventions in the Middle East, that defending against a potential Chinese drone armada should mean acceptance of endless destabilization by the US military.

      this is over lol

    4. The Iraq War can be seen as a transition point, as can Samantha Power’s R2P doctrine that left Syria in ruins

      this is like...a crazy misrepresentation of what the article says.

      the article says that obama refused to intervene despite people like powers.

    5. Up to this point, these pushes have not been thwarted by the “ethics” of the US establishment, but by some combination of political opposition, Constitutional constraint, and bureaucratic incompetence.

      this incompetence is kind of the point of the system, right?

    6. Yes, you can argue the Chinese are building colonies in Africa…but they’re functional colonies, with new roads and ports to carry raw materials, unlike the blasted hellscapes left by US military intervention in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the like

      it's kind of wild to blame U.S. for Syrian chaos.

      this is actually a great example of multilateralism run amok.

      assad faced an uprising because technology and "democracy" spreading through the middle east, there was a power vacuum, and everyone fought over it because U.S. had war fatigue. then ISIS appeared and everyone had to band together to beat it.

    7. The short counterargument is that it may instead be best for countries to rearm, and take on their own defense – rather than having an increasingly chaotic US try to fight a Second Cold War on others’ behalf in the middle of an internal Cold Civil War and what might become a Second Great Depression

      well...this isn't what folks think and for good historical reasons. including little polemical anti-interventionists like mearshimer

    8. The people of the State among the reds are more prominent. These are the secular nationalists, the national security hawks, the people who may not like the left-authoritarians but who will nevertheless reflexively support the US in every foreign intervention. They may agree that the US is trending in a bad direction, but they think China is far worse. As such, they’re still building drones, coding surveillance, and cheering videos like this one where the US admits to fomenting the color revolutions that are often otherwise denied.

      this is very...limited? leaves out domestic issues

    9. They realize on some level that (a) Network > State in many contexts and furthermore that (b) the Network-aided global ascent of tech founders and populist leaders could reduce their control over the State, so they have chosen to (c) strike first by gaining control of those tech companies that have achieved state-like scale.

      yup this is true / prescient.

      began in china

    10. The left-authoritarians are the main proponents of the political power theory of truth, as “truth” is whatever they find helpful to move political power into action.

      wheras the right finds "the truth" in human nature

    11. Each member of blue tribe will have to make a choice in the years to come: are they loyal to neutral decentralized networks that treat both Americans and non-Americans equally, or are they actually just loyal to the US establishment — essentially nationalists in disguise?

      don't you want network state nationalists?

    1. If all you have to offer is a higher standard of living, people may come as consumers, but they won’t come for the right reasons. The consumer-citizen is coming to enjoy a great society, not to sacrifice to make a society great

      dude...i'm not sure this is true.

      people came to the u.s. for "freedom to practice religion", what does that mean?

      physical security and economic security.

      revolution kicked off for economic reasons?

      most secessionsist movements do too?

    2. Synthesis: The Network/State

      he does acknowledge this stuff, again, but i don't think he starts from the correct place

    3. superhuman answers to difficult questions using the knowledge of all of humanity

      in all honesty - what is the value of this?

    4. Encryption thus limits governments in a way no legislation can. And as described at length in this piece, it’s not just about protection of private property. It’s about using encryption and crypto to protect freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of contract, prevention from discrimination and cancellation via pseudonymity, individual privacy, and truly equal protection under rule-of-code — even as the State’s paper-based guarantees of the same become ever more hollow.

      okay so this is my more fundamental issue.

      everything of value, or at least almost everything, has some sort of intersection with the real world. the more value the bigger the intersection.

      i don't understand how it could be otherwise unless you want to trade the physical world for living in some sort of VR reality.

      which lol would still require massive massive data centers and massive massive energy requirements.

    5. The State is Still A Leviathan

      okay here's another version of the critique: instead of viewing network states as this ethical alternative to the state, where the state is an ethical opponent to the network state, why not state that the goal is to capture the state, and reposition the state as a sort of minority/terrorist view.

      and these states can adopt new conventions (i.e. cryptocurrency standards, whatever) which while imperfect would affect the material lives of people.

      so it would be imperfect and perhaps supplanted but still advance history, which i think we think is good.

      and in this gerardian sense, you have to become the thing you hate to reform it in order to get to the next level.

    6. This is, on balance, a good thing — the fact that tech is no longer highly dependent on the triple dysfunction of SF/CA/USA is crucial to the world’s future

      yes, but the capital is still there

    7. As incredible as it may sound, the blockchain is the most important development in history since the advent of writing itself, as it’s a cryptographically verifiable, highly replicated, unfalsifiable, and provably complete digital record of a system

      i agree with this, but again, physical land

    8. As a complement to mobile, the Network offers another way to opt out of State-controlled physical surroundings: namely, to put on a VR (or AR) headset, at which point you are in a completely different world with different people surrounding you and different laws

      sthiss reliant on states

    9. COVID-19 lockdowns may be just the beginning of State attempts to control Network-facilitated physical exit. But in normal circumstances, smartphones are helping people move ever more freely, while the borders of physical states are frozen in place.

      okay so again this cashes out in terms of why you want to start with physical

    10. people who live geographically near each other share values and (b) therefore laws should be based on geographic boundaries. The alternative is that only people who are geodesically near each other in the social network share values, and therefore the laws that govern them should be based on network boundaries

      ignores the economic/material factors that draw people together

    11. Encryption > State Violence

      so in favor of non-state violence

    12. When we say that the Network is the next Leviathan, which we can abbreviate as “Network > State”

      how is the "network" inherent in any of these concepts?

    13. So it doesn’t matter how many nuclear weapons you have; if property or information is secured by cryptography, the state can’t seize it without getting the solution to an equation.

      well this isn't true, as various seizures have shown.

      the physical world still has primacy

    1. We have more examples that show that some facts really are determined by societal consensus, while others are amenable to decentralized verification.

      well this is the importance of social epistemology, no?

    2. We can now think of written history as an (incomplete, biased, noisy) distillation of this full log

      interesting how do you do history given our current biolotical contraints? i.e., say we have all available data, you still run into the sampling bias problem

    1. But a full log, a cryptohistory. The unification of microhistory and macrohistory in one giant cryptographically verifiable dataset. We call this indelible, computable, digital, authenticatable history the ledger of record.

      interesting but how do you reconcile this with lack of identity data?

    2. It is the most rigorous form of history yet known to man, a history that is technically and economically resistant to revision.

      not from the perspective of identity though

    3. The people under the microscope are fogging the lens.

      nice analogy

    1. America’s religious colonies succeeded at a higher rate than its for-profit colonies, because the former had a purpose. The slightly longer answer is that in a startup society, you’re not asking people to buy a product (which is an economic, individualistic pitch) but to join a community (which is a cultural, collective pitch).

      this is my core disagreement, religious movements need land

    2. We use these tools to discuss the emergence of a new Leviathan, the Network

      wtf does this mean?

    3. Similarly, it’s one thing to operate as a mere citizen of a pre-built country, and quite another thing to create one from scratch

      this is the argument for land last

    1. and a plan to crowdfund many pieces of territory around the world

      who protects this property? not just from invasion, but from appropriation, purchase by outsiders who don't believe in the state

    2. Could a startup society follow a similar path? Yes. A cryptographically auditable census could prove that a growing startup society had 1-10M committed digital citizens, large cryptocurrency reserves, years of continuous existence, and physical holdings all over the earth. That numerical traction could then be used to achieve the societal traction of diplomatic recognition.

      if this is true, why aren't corporations states?

    3. This in turn leads us to the societal definition: a new country is one that is diplomatically recognized by other countries as a legitimate polity capable of self-determination

      this is just...le sigh.

    4. we organize our internal economy around remote work, we cultivate in-person levels of civility, we simulate architecture in VR, and we create art and literature that reflects our values

      why remote work? i get that's some of the idea but...missing out on a lot of wealth and becoming very import dependent

    5. And finally we arrive at our preferred method: the network state. Our idea is to proceed cloud first, land last. Rather than starting with the physical territory, we start with the digital community

      i just disagree with this. not how it worked in the past. think of pioneers. some risk taking dudes got together, got some land, started from there

    6. Because we want to build something new without historical constraint

      no such thing

    1. As the population and economy of a startup society grow comparable to that of a legacy state, with millions of citizens and billions in income, it should eventually4 be able to attain recognition from existing sovereigns

      this is just silly. although - if you don't have useful natural resources or capital why invade. but if capital...goods

    2. should eventually be able to negotiate for diplomatic recognition from at least one pre-existing government, and from there gradually increased sovereignty, slowly becoming a true network state.

      i mean...maybe if it's in one place. in 20?

    3. Physical access is granted by holding a web3 cryptopassport

      access to private property. private property within private property?

    1. moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition

      "a measure of"

    1. The Dominican Republic has been a political and economic success story in contrast to its neighbor and, unlike Haiti, is secure enough for the secretary of state to spend the night.

      sasssssy

    1. Still, some think Próspera may already be too far along to fail: There is simply too much capital already invested, too many commitments made, to have them torn apart in Tegucigalpa. The government is making “emotional arguments more than anything else,” González told me. “If they had the legal right to do what they’re trying to accomplish, they’d have already done it.”

      great writing. the parallelism

    2. He said he was inspired to help found Próspera after reading Machiavelli’s writings on the impossibility of reforming a system from within. “The idea is that if you go to a place where nothing, nobody has a stake, there’s no entrenched interests, you can make really deep reforms that won’t affect any of the players,” he said. Years of dysfunction and corruption would be replaced by radically simple governance. A free market and political stability would attract top innovators and investors from the West while empowering Latin America’s legions of microentrepreneurs — the guys on the side of the road selling oranges or “a chicken leg in a bag,” Delgado said — to grow real businesses.

      there's this idea that our existing institutions are so broken that they ought to be thrown out. this is...arrogant. existing institutions are, i hate to say it, lindy?

    3. In turn, jobs, technology and educational opportunities would pour into the host country, which would share in the revenue, too

      why?

    4. This ruling country would act as a “guarantor” to the host country and write its own laws and regulations, which would attract private companies to invest and build the cities

      guarantor = they're not nations

    5. There are about three dozen charter cities currently operating in the world, according to an estimate from the Adrianople Group, an advisory firm that concentrates on special economic zones

      key

    6. Patri Friedman, grandson of the economist Milton Friedman and the founder of a start-up-cities fund that invested in Próspera

      what is this fund

    7. Próspera is a private, for-profit city, with its own government that courts foreign investors through low taxes and light regulation. Businesses can choose a regulatory framework from a menu of 36 countries or customize their own.

      polywhatever governance

    8. he works collecting taxes and managing public finances for the city’s 2,000 or so physical residents and e-residents, many of whom have paid a fee for the

      what do they do with these taxes?

    1. But the timing of the indictment—in the midst of Telegram’s aggressive push to make crypto-backed financial services a central offering—speaks loudly, according to Seth Goertz, a former U.S. Attorney specializing in cryptocurrency and cybersecurity.

      interesting that US Attorney makes this claim about Telegram really being about crypto

  3. Aug 2024
    1. The conflict was eventually resolved in 1858, writes Schindler, after Buchanan succumbed to Congressional pressure to wrap up what was seen as a stalemate headed toward an unwinnable conflict

      so they got the space because they erected defensive barriers.

      so this is like the "taiwan" approach.

      versus status quo more like the hong kong approach

    1. Morrison gave Pound the idea that the right-hand side of the xin (hsin) character represented a “hatchet,” shown hacking away at the wood supposedly represented on the left. It was Pound’s own inventiveness that associated the ancient Chinese hatchet with the Fascist axe and his own increasingly vindictive hatred of complications that provided the rubbish, which is not present in the Chinese original

      this is critical - not start from new, not destroy

    1. “It’s a job for rich kids.”

      kind of every job now lol

    2. “It’s like a whole world of intellectuals and artists got a multibillion-dollar grant from the tech world,” Smith said. “But we mistook that, and were frankly actively gaslit into thinking that that was because they cared about art.”

      This kind of parallels how low interest rates led to over-supply in tech

    1. Okay, let’s face it. I might have a mild case of intellectual menopause going

      hahahahahahaha

    2. It is easy to see the many ways I’m not anything like John Ransom

      lmao there is an undertone of panic, the lady doth protest too much

    1. Only men have the opportunity to engage outside the home in civil society and fully participate in the state

      but it's historically boundedd

    2. Hegel claims a religious point of view can help furnish individuals with ethical principles and help us lead a more ethical life

      Yeah but is this really saying that it's the way it ought to be, or is it just saying that religion provides a framework to make determinations.

      I mean, one thing you could argue is that by hastening the process of making determinations, we ought to be religious because it'll help us reach the next determination.

    3. nearer to feeling

      would be a good title for a book

    4. Something is mine when mutually recognized as my possession by another. This is the first appearance of right where the activity of my free will in taking possession is free, and not mere arbitrariness. It is this agreement between two individuals forming a kind of contract which is so important for Hegel

      Okay, so the idea is to figure out the checkpoints where a concept goes from vague to determined. So when it "becomes" something. This feels like a a helpful approach to thinking in general.

    5. We progress from one stage to the next in a distinctive way where apparent contradictions arising in each stage are dissolved through attaining a higher stage, where this cycle is repeated and progress made since the beginning remains present where what was abstract and opaque at first becomes more concrete as we advance to the end of this work

      so basically thinking.

    6. For example, our first apperception of some thing or object of thought might be as a pure being. As it is pure, it may appear to lack determinations – and so be nothing. In this way, Hegel holds that our thought has moved from pure being to pure nothingness. But yet what we apperceive is a something and so this is seen as helping overcome the false opposition of pure being and nothingness to a new, higher category of becoming as what is before is taking further shape as we sharpen our grasp of it.

      false oppositions

    1. Operating expenses are covered by charging a fee of 10% on earnings in excess of the original investment and by charging an additional 5% withdrawal fee

      this is kind of high

    1. Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities by virtue of health, good looks, and being a good mixer. He married for money and he has done lots of other things for money. His code is not his own; it is that of his class—no worse, no better, He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value—success. Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would

      "That is his sole measure of value - success."

  4. Jul 2024
    1. Secret organizations set up to combat secret organizations give the same flattery. The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through “front” groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy

      mimetic conflict, the whole choose your enemies wisely because you become them

    2. One, Foreign Conspiracies against the Liberties of the United States, was from the hand of the celebrated painter and inventor of the telegraph, S.F.B. Morse.

      why are innovators so prone to conspiracy?

  5. Jun 2024
    1. "We can do more to heal Grandmother Earth and protect her sacred children. The birth of this calf is both a blessing and warning.”

      Imminent crisis is prerequisite to a savior.

    1. The £8mn Longitude Prize was awarded on Wednesday to Sysmex Astrego, a Swedish company whose method cuts the analysis time for urinary tract infection patient samples from two or three days to less than an hour.

      good example of well-designed grant

    1. he too wants to shine a light on the foolishness and wickedness of Western pols

      hm. old spy novels emphasized politicians as locus of control and businessmen as villains. villains in the sense of antagonists. what about villainous businessmen who are in the locus of control?

    1. but rather my emotions, which filled me with desperation whenever I squeezed myself into a mold that was so small and so constricted that I could no longer move

      hm so this is what women have been complaining about

    1. Going to a Rogan show for “work” might function similarly, giving us cover in case we accidentally enjoyed it.

      The most masculine thing is devising covers for activities you enjoy, but may be considered feminine or frivolous.

    1. “etheric realm,” as well as in some fifteen thousand hours of recordings that have for many years been stored in a concrete bunker in Montana.

      common technique that I haven't used; tell the full story up front, or at least allude to it, before dropping in deeper down below.

      not an intro paragraph but like a different story to contain your story. this is literlaly just an intro. but whatever, like the introduction of a detail as a segue into a story anchored by another detail

  6. May 2024
    1. While his dad had favored bribing Balkan seamen to move his product to Europe aboard cargo ships, police said, the younger Nesic turned to smaller vessels to evade tightening screening procedures at Brazilian and European ports. Nesic allegedly bought cheap fishing boats that he retrofitted with extra fuel tanks, stuffed with cocaine, and staffed with Balkan or Brazilian crews to make the Atlantic crossing.

      this would be a cool opening scene, the motorboats trailing the cargo ship

    1. parvenus

      love this word

    2. Information about ownership can, however, be found in the pages of Tatler or on the message boards of Ismaili Muslims unhappy about their tithes being used to pay for the extravagant lifestyle of a man who is both their religious imam and the descendant of an aristocrat ennobled by both the Iranian and British monarchies
    1. That which distinguishes an agent from a servant is not the absence or presence of a fixed wage or the payment only of commission on business done, but rather the freedom with which an agent may carry out his employment

      this focus on the parameters of the entrepreneur's power are really interesting.

      is there an opportunity here? where, as a super lazy person, i can advise people on how to design systems resistant to laziness?

    2. The point has been made in the previous paragraph that a firm will tend to expand until the costs of organising an extra transaction within the firm become equal to the costs of carrying out the same transaction by means of an exchange on the open market or the costs of organising in another firm.
    3. The main reason why it is profitable to establish a firm would seem to be that there is a cost of using the price mechanism. The most obvious cost of “organising” production through the price mechanism is that of discovering what the relevant prices are.

      turns out trust is very expensive, in crypto

    4. But this implies that those who direct pay in order to be able to do this and are not paid to direct, which is clearly not true in the majority of cases

      fun sentence

    5. It can, I think, be assumed that the distinguishing mark of the firm is the supersession of the price mechanism

      supersession is a fun word

    1. According to the head of Poland’s Armament Agency, General Artur Kuptel, describing the system in Polish media earlier this month, radars suspended from the tethered balloons will monitor the sky as far as Ukraine, Belarus, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad from Polish air space.Advertisement · Scroll to continue

      Hm, nice establishing shot?

    1. So I make it hard for myself, because, sure, every time, naturally, you’re less fertile. You come up with fewer stories as time goes on. You have fewer ideas. So I’m very afraid of when the moment comes when I don’t have any new ideas.”

      I need to keep track of my ideas. Fortunately I generate a lot of them, making up for late start.

    2. “We can constantly renew ourselves and give another leap and go even farther,” he said. It’s not a question of age, he explained, but of temperament, of being the kind of person who keeps pushing, keeps trying new approaches.
    1. It is rare for academic ideas to reach the Amy Adams stage without drawing scholarly fire. Since 2023, three articles have appeared in scientific journals, with 45 authors in all, arguing that the claims made on behalf of the wood-wide web have far outstripped the evidence.

      definitely a trend of popular theories aligned with woke narratives being beat back

  7. Jan 2024
    1. “The last thing in the world I’d want to write about is this place,” Vivian said at the door. “I can’t imagine anything more boring.”

      This idea that the CIA is so boring. Parking. Anodyne questions. Typical corporate America shit.

    1. Well, we did make money because we had advertisers that had advertising banners across a lot of the user pages because they were very specific

      monetizing without user surveillance

  8. Aug 2023
    1. Of the hundreds of pages of Esmaeilion’s writing I have read, one image has stuck with me. In his memoir, It Snows In This House, he describes taking the school bus as a six-year-old in Kermanshah. Every winter morning, he waited in the dark by a slim mulberry tree on a little patch of land used neither by pedestrians nor by cars, staring ahead, looking for a pair of headlights. The metaphor offered by this image encapsulates his position: Esmaeilion standing in the strange landscape of Iranian politics, at a corner traversed by no one else. He stands looking into the dark, not just with his two eyes, but through two bullet holes in his heart, waiting for the lights that will put an end to his wait.

      beautiful writing

  9. Jul 2023
    1. When counting dollars, a single customer may be retained or churned but they may also be retained as a customer by spending more or less in the second period relative to the first. As such, we separate out expansion and contraction into the growth accounting.

      So contraction = decrease in marginal revenue from paying user

    1. Aviv Ovadya of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center fears we are headed into “a catastrophic failure of the marketplace of ideas” with “no one believing anything or everyone believing lies.” He calls this “the infopocalypse.”
    1. Kalshi’s cozy relationship with the United States’ top derivatives regulator raises concerns about how regulatory agencies view their responsibilities, after Dodd–Frank, to manage risk and regulate private markets. These concerns are all the more relevant in the wake of recent regional banking crises and widespread fraud in the crypto markets. But there is nothing extraordinary about the CFTC’s attitude. With bank closures and wire fraud dominating the headlines, who wouldn’t want to hedge? Every crisis has its response. “The world is increasingly volatile,” Kalshi’s website recently read. “Protect yourself and your business against all the unforeseen effects of real-world events.” It would be irresponsible not to.

      so what exactly is the issue? is it that there's no inherent value behind the instruments? is it that the people who could actually use these contracts to hedge are not likely to use them? is it psychological, i.e. this desire to gain control over an unpredictable environment?

    2. “MORALLY REPUGNANT and grotesque,” “wasteful and absurd”—Senators Ron Wyden and Byron L. Dorgan did not mince words. They urged their colleagues on the senate floor to reject the Pentagon’s proposed futures market on terror attacks. That was 2003. The Pentagon had suggested allowing traders to place bets on the likelihood of a bomb detonating outside a market in Kabul, for example, or a bioterror attack occurring in Tel Aviv.

      lol

  10. Jun 2023
    1. As a result, tōjisha-kenkyū is now in the early stages of being implemented by corporations, universities and hospitals as a means of identifying problems and fostering diversity within workplaces.

      interesting, a less political form of DEI

    1. “So heartbreaking. We need to take better care of our women, athletes, mothers. So many systems let her down,” wrote elite runner Molly Huddle on Instagram. “Not even Olympic champions can feel safe giving birth in this country. We gotta do better.”

      reads like a story of someone who committed suicide, not died during childbirth. very sad.

    1. Explore both land and sea on this chain of islands, rocks, and pinnacles on the Washington coast. Take an early ferry from Anacortes to Orcas for a full day. Start by hiking a 6.7-mile loop to the top of Mount Constitution (the island’s highest point). Refuel on artisan, wood-fired pizzas at Hogstone, then head to West Beach for a two-hour guided sea kayak tour with Outer Island Excursions.

      this sounds cool #trips

    1. The great majority of Saudis still didn’t know who Swedish House Mafia was, but there were relatively privileged teenagers on hand whose lives would probably never be the same again, and who—perhaps without consciously realizing it—had just felt the exhilaration of seeing their world begin and end in the same flash of light.

      "begin and end in the same flash of light"

    2. he idea is to fund a massive economic and social transition while oil is still in high demand, and then build an entirely new economy in time for the 40% of the population that’s now under 25-years-old to actually have something meaningful and productive to do with their lives.

      "to actually have something meaningful and productive to do with their lives"

    1. . Even with them, the world will never be fully under our control. Nor should we wish that it was, because that would be a world without serendipity or joy. Fortunately, we may not need more Promethean control; rather, we need more free time and an ethos fit for the purpose.

      time to explore complexity versus effort to impose simplicity

    2. Most would agree that flourishing in time consists of free, active, thoughtful engagement with the world in accordance with one’s nature.

      for me this is writing.

    3. Leisure today exists for work, which means that it is not actually leisure at all.

      "These are things I have to do so I don't become depressed"

    4. For decades, most people have organized their lives around the forty-hour, five-day week. What if it were fifteen hours a week? What if it were zero? What comes next is open to negotiation and experimentation, but the process would necessarily require what Nietzsche called a revaluation of values. The idea of work for the sake of work would become an insult to human intelligence and dignity. Lives dedicated to the insatiable pursuit of money or other zero-sum goods would come to be recognized as pathological. The culture of commercialism presumably would be curtailed, or replaced with new norms and institutions emphasizing fulfilling experiences over luxuries and stuff. The very idea of “unemployment” would cease to exist. Greater investments (of both time and money) in liberal arts educations and institutions would come to be seen as not only desirable but necessary for equipping people to lead fruitful lives.

      we have this right now, it's just confused.

  11. May 2023
    1. I’m not quite sure how it will happen, or if I’ll live to participate in it, but I suspect we’re entering a world beyond language where we’ll begin to realize just how deeply blinding language has been for the human consciousness and psyche.

      I will put this on the perceptualveilution mood board

  12. Jan 2023
    1. They build, own, and manage their own facilities. They hire veterans. They had some ideas for how to encourage local ecotourism: A solar-powered visitors’ center. Sponsorship for more and bigger OHV races. A new RV park. Job training. Support for local community organizations

      I mean...this is conscious capitalism no?

    1. This captiousness is not my favorite aspect of myself. I know that I’m actually wrong about all this stuff, that gun people call guns guns and point them all over the place, but I can be pedantic, even about things I have no interest in. If it helps, I also bristle at anyone referring to a vinyl record as “a vinyl.”

      this guy is autistic lol

    1. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism. I spend a lot of time in countries all over Africa, and they’re like, ‘Eh, we wouldn’t mind a little more globalization actually’.

      I had an eerily similar experience

  13. Sep 2022
    1. Coordination involves incentivizing people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do

      This is key, the issue isn't motivating people to just follow their passions or whatever

    2. The mindset that “research funding” is all that research enabling organizations do is wrong.

      For instance, maybe Gitcoin should offer more incubation style support versus small sums.

    1. Our plan is to bring the best of old-school blogging to a modern news feed experience and to have our editors and senior reporters constantly updating the site with the best of tech and science news from around the entire internet. If that means linking out to Wired or Bloomberg or some other news source, that’s great — we’re happy to send people to excellent work elsewhere, and we trust that our feed will be useful enough to have you come back later. If that means we just need to embed the viral TikTok or wacky CEO tweet and move on, so be it — we can do that

      Chainverse can play a role in personalization/recommendations for feed first platforms. Perhaps we can create our own feed.

    1. Staying disciplined. Despite its success, USV has kept its funds small. Its latest early-stage vehicle is $275 million, a modest sum for a franchise of its stature. This discipline has helped USV maximize returns.

      quite small considering the investment universe

  14. Aug 2022
    1. but simply because the vow had itself changed who the vower was.

      you are your commitments

    2. Forms of modern life may differ in quite a few respects – but what unites them all is precisely their fragility, temporariness, vulnerability and inclination to constant change. To “be modern” means to modernize – compulsively, obsessively; not so much just “to be,” let alone to keep its identity intact, but forever “becoming,” avoiding completion, staying underdefined.

      modernity is a process, it's constantly becoming

    1. But as Echo Chambers grow in size, it becomes a greater challenge to hold them together by shared ideas—so usually, the binding beliefs are honed down and simplified to the common denominator ideas that the whole community can get behind. So while Idea Labs get even smarter and more nuanced as they grow, growing Echo Chambers become even dumber and more sure of themselves.

      Key for growth

    2. Tribal language is the Primitive Mind’s way of signaling to each other: “Let’s fucking do this. Let’s band together and go to war.”

      EchoChambergood bull

    3. First, it comes from a core distinction between how the two cultures view ideas. Idea Labs see people and their ideas as separate entities—people are meant to be respected, ideas are not

      Identify areas that are not echo chambers

    4. about

      To find valueslack for lkeytepirs and sentiment

    5. shared understanding that they’re all ultimately on the same truth-seeking team.

      Howfinelvalues

    6. The thing going on here is that Idea Labs are micro-divided, and macro-united. On a micro scale, Idea Labs and the people within them disagree often—that’s the intellectual diversity component.

      Key

    7. One of the coolest properties of an Idea Lab is its ability to play nicely with other Idea Labs and seamlessly meld together with them into larger Idea Labs. Take the simplest example: two couples.

      Can this dbmensard

    8. This single, multi-mind thinking system is far superior to its individual members at learning new things and separating truth from fiction

      ml to extract core beliefs and justifiators and tensionwithatherclusters?

    9. In a good trust network, the Skepticism character (i.e. the Belief Bouncer) is able to trust the Conviction character, which can spare everyone a bunch of work. When a proven high-rung thinker expresses info with a lot of conviction umph, the listener will lower the skepticism ohms without thinking too hard about it.

      Key

    10. In a good trust network, the Skepticism character (i.e. the Belief Bouncer) is able to trust the Conviction character, which can spare everyone a bunch of work. When a proven high-rung thinker expresses info with a lot of conviction umph, the listener will lower the skepticism ohms without thinking too hard about it.

      Key

    11. An Idea Lab has a binding process too: the scientific method

      References to data

    12. typical liberal democracy is premised on Enlightenment values like freedom and equal opportunity; an Idea Lab centers around the Enlightenment values of truth and free expression.

      Key Jest measureofnetworkhealth is diversity of influence

    13. control

      Apply networkanalysis to culture and subculture

    14. Cultures use incentive systems too. Instead of physical shocks or jail time as penalties, cultures enforce their values with social and psychological punishments like criticism, ridicule, shame, and ostracism. Instead of Snausages or money, they use rewards like praise, acceptance, approval, respect, and admiration.

      Key

    15. Each of those slices plays a role in influencing the thoughts and behavior of the individuals, and in turn, each person plays a small part in influencing the giants they’re a part of.

      How do we. Under start this?

    1. Broadly, OFAC has expanded its ability to sanction crypto actors and has rapidly increased the speed and bore with which it designates wallet addresses, but it has not hit that many wallet addresses overall. The office, while it wields theoretically broad powers, has limited resources. Consequently, each hit bears major significance for the Treasury’s subsequent policy direction. 

      this leaves out some of the most important guidance from treasury lol

  15. Jul 2022
    1. Many other investors are also working to broaden ownership of their companies. Insight Global, a staffing company owned by Harvest Partners and Leonard Green, gave each of its 4,500 employees a pathway to ownership: the quit rate fell from 45 per cent in 2017 to 14 per cent today. Similar results have been seen at SRS, a roofing products distributor owned by Berkshire Partners and Leonard Green. Ownership was broadened, employee engagement improved and the quit rate declined by three quarters.

      it seems like the benefits of employee ownership are the highest when... * engagement is low * you have a high cashflow / profitable business that someone would actually want to buy

    2. Ingersoll Rand shared ownership with all of its 16,000 employees across more than 80 countries. Over time, the company’s quit rate has dropped from 20 per cent to below 3 per cent. Employee engagement scores from internal company data rocketed from the 20th percentile to the 90th percentile
    3. Gallup surveys show that only 20 per cent of the global workforce is constructively engaged at work
    1. Inquisitor: You have sucked at the poisoned breast of Erasmus… But St John says “There are three that bear witness in heaven, the father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.” Anabaptist: I have heard that Erasmus in his Annotationes upon that phrase shows that this text is not in the Greek original

      LMAO

    2. Erasmus learned Greek at the beginning of the 16th century, and from his study in Queens’ College, Cambridge, he spread the word of how important it was to read the Gospels and other foundational texts of Christianity in the language in which they were first written. His battle cry was ad fontes (“back to the sources”)

      i love this

    1. We can go through the list of Forer statements above, and rephrase each one as a useful potential update you can make to your model of the world:

      this is very clever

    1. Assuming a conservative annual growth of digital content creation of 1%, using (3), we estimate that it will take around ∼3150 years to produce the first cumulative 1 kg of digital information mass on the planet and it will take ∼8800 years to convert half of the planet’s mass into digital information mass

      this is insane exponential growth lol

    2. In fact, Wheeler proposed reformulating the whole physics in terms of the information theory. He summarized his ideas in a paper that he delivered at the Santa Fe Institute in 19891313. J. A. Wheeler, “Information, physics, quantum: The search for links,” in Proceedings of 3rd International Symposium Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Physical Society of Japan, Tokyo, 1989), pp. 354–368. in which he postulated that the universe emanates from the information inherent within it and he coined the phrase “It from bit.”

      oohh santa fe institute

    3. this volume of digital information will take up more than the size of the planet, leading to what we define as the information catastrophe

      i mean, i guess we could create planet sized data storage centers?

      create things that deterministically reproduce knowledge (like DNA)

    4. assuming the current growth trends in digital content continue, the world will reach a singularity point in terms of the maximum digital information possibly created and the power needs to sustain it, called the information catastrophe

      what will happen once people realize this is an impending crisis?

    5. information catastrophe

      is permanent storage a good idea?