Recorded my final @The Progressive Bitcoiner interview with @Trey Walsh earlier today. Bittersweet to say the least but I finished the conversation feeling hopeful about the future of our left movement within bitcoin and I think Trey likely brought new people into the space who will pick up the torch that he carried after Mark stepped down. The struggle continues!

Happy for Trey, but this is sad news for me. I still think we need more content that takes a different perspective on bitcoin and which also challenges existing mythologies around bitcoin that exist within and outside of the bitcoin community. Honored to be the last episode, let’s make this a memorable one, Trey. View quoted note →

"Instead, she’ll pursue her campaign against Riot from afar—and widen her scope. She has joined the National Coalition Against Cryptomining, a protest group that backs a nationwide ban on crypto mining. “When we leave things up to each state, it’s like playing whack-a-mole,” says Sawicky. 'We need a big federal law.'" Wow, I did not know there was a national coalition against bitcoin mining...

WIRED

The World’s Biggest Bitcoin Mine Is Rattling This Texas Oil Town

A cash-strapped city in rural Texas will soon be home to the world’s largest bitcoin mine. Local protesters are “raising hell.”

I'm autistic, and I've experienced a lot of unnecessary hardship in my life because I didn't know I was on the spectrum, but even after knowing, I wasn't taught what to do to better understand how my brain works so that I could navigate the world. Through autistic-centered therapy, I've learned a lot over the past several years, and I have many thoughts... I've been thinking a lot about the importance of early intervention in autism. Temple Grandin and others emphasize how important this is. But what does that even mean? I think it does not mean teaching autistics to be like neuroypticals. The problem for me and others on the spectrum is that we've been taught to understand the world as if we had a built-in intuitive system. A heuristics way of managing sensory input, one might say. But the problem is that autistic people don't have such well-developed systems, but we do have strong analytical systems. My theory is that every disabling aspect of autism is because of information overload and trauma. We get more information in every domain compared to neurotypicals. So we can't make intuitive guesses with limited data, we actually have too much data, so we need to take a more cognitive and analytical approach. Yet, through cognitive approaches, we can actually make better decisions/observations/connections than neurotypicals. So I think any kind of intervention should reflect this. Whether it is in childhood or adulthood. It should be focused on interpreting, navigating, and managing sensory inputs. For those on the spectrum, this means it will be cognitive processing the vast majority of the time. Teaching autistic people to sense their bodies and learn how to cognitively interpret them will go a long way. Interventions for helping those who are non-speaking who have trouble controlling their body--to me--should focus on increasing the signal-to-noise ratio in motor systems. But also teaching them how to communicate through letter boards and typing as early as possible is essential to avoid trauma and worsening sensory overload. There's cutting edge research showing a direct connection between emotion and sensory overload in the brain. Finally, we need acceptance. Autistic people experience so much abuse through their lives, one study reported 9 in 10 autistic women experienced some form of sexual abuse. They concluded the targeted abuse of those on the spectrum had no relation to perceived diagnostic "deficits" but rather, autistic people are singled-out because we are different. Nothing more, nothing less. Teach your kids to accept those who are different. Autistic people have higher rates of suicide. Therapy for those on the spectrum is mostly about undoing all the harm neurotypicals did to us. Most autistic people are traumatized, but it doesn't have to be that way. Autism is a neurotype and a spectrum. It can be both abling and disabling, depending on how severe the information overload is. But I think if we reframe how we look at it, and we address the foundational challenges, we can make it so that no aspect of autism is disabling. Don't try to cure us. A different way of interpreting the world can only benefit society, not harm it.

The Democrats rebrand is to take a Neocon imperialist ideology and package it within a hip, younger, and culturally diverse wrapper. They aren’t stupid. This isn’t a real win for struggles against oppression. This is just system capture. When your own identity becomes reified and sold back to you, it looks like you but something is missing. Sense it. Act on it.

Bitcoin for me right now is about finishing my PhD on bitcoin mining. It’s a lot of work but I am as close as I have ever been to being able to defend my thesis. I have a lot of educating to do among the academic community about why any of this even matters. It’s not an easy task. But we have a good story to tell, so I am fully committed and putting all my energy into this.

I wish the Twitter/X algorithm wouldn't only pick up on my most "controversial" posts. But it seems like most people only want to engage with posts that push their primal, primate emotional buttons.

When a Nobel Prize winner gets 13 retractions on their peer reviewed publications...Ugh. Grateful that there are other scientists fact checking, but still, this is such a problem. The incentives are misaligned.

Retraction Watch

Nobel prize-winner tallies two more retractions, bringing total to 13

Gregg Semenza A Nobel prize-winning genetics researcher has retracted two more papers, bringing his total to 13. Gregg Semenza, a professor of gen...

Ultimately, no pubco mining company can resist the investor push toward AI. Profit margins, profit margins, profit margins.

TheMinerMag

Marathon Puts AI on Horizon with New Board Directors

Marathon Digital appears to be exploring AI initiatives as the bitcoin mining giant appoints two board directors with expertise in the field.

David Graeber on how to trigger Bitcoin Twitter during a bear market: "Then there's also libertarian socialism, which means the democratic control, not by the state, but by communities or by workers, self organizing in a voluntary fashion--that's genuine socialism in my opinion."

X (formerly Twitter)

ARTIST TAXI DRIVER (@chunkymark) on X

What’s Capitalism What’s Socialism @davidgraeber #TWT