Kirk

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Kirk
🛡️ Kirk@nostr.nz
npub16dvm...2dq2
Freedom Maximalist
Is there any archive of the original Let's Talk Bitcoin podcast episodes (from 2013ish)? The RSS feed only goes back to 2019:
Speaking of Bitcoin (formerly Let's Talk Bitcoin!) Podcast | Free Listening on Podbean App
Featuring analysis and discourse by hosts Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Dr. Stephanie Murphy, Adam B. Levine, and Jonathan Mohan, episodes feature frien...
 Those early shows with Andreas, Stephanie and Adam were absolute gems. Would suck if they've just been scrubbed from the internet forever.
Something I've recently realized is the extent to which Israel completely controls the US far beyond its middle-eastern foreign policy. If Javier Millei had all the same positions he currently holds, only instead of being slavishly devoted to Israel he was critical, do you think the US govt would be creating a strategic peso reserve to bail out Argentina? Of course not. If María Corina Machado wasn't a pro-Israel fanatic who proclaims that "the struggle of Venezuela is the struggle of Israel", would she be such a darling of the US establishment? Not a chance. You can believe anything about any other issue, but if you aren't full-throated in your support of a genocidal ethnostate in the middle-east you will find yourself arrested, deported, fired, cancelled, regime changed and just generally demonized. Almsot everything the US govt does is first-and-foremost to aid Israel: there's the direct financial aid, there's the endless weapons, there's the intelligence support, there's vetoing every UN resolution against Israel, there's running diplomatic cover for Israel, there's firing Ivy league professors and expelling US students critical of Israel, there's criminalizing US firms boycotting Israel, there's criminalizing speech against Israel in states like Florida, there's all the financial aid to surrounding Arab states so they don't intervene on behalf of the Palestinians but instead assist Israel whilst keeping their population in check (these are just bribes to look the other way), there's bombing Iran on behalf of Israel, the entire terror wars... It's endless and it's utterly sickening.
Two things stand out watching this 1981 episode of Phil Donahue: 1. The arguments for unschooling/home schooling are pretty unassailable. 2. Donahue was a master, and his popularity speaks to how we had more intellectual, more curious America. Ironically, I think the government schools have played a large role in why a show like this would not be feasible today.
I can't speak for 2013 and am not an OG, but the culture around Bitcoin was far more exciting during the 2018-2019 period. Instead of simping for politicians, obsessing over zombie treasury companies, and arguing about things like op_return that don't matter, the discussion was serious and engaging. Lightning was just getting started, the earliest coinjoin implementations were launching, soft forks were actively being worked on and debated, the podcasters weren't all promoting penny stocks... It was a better time, imo. This isn't hipster to recognize. We can be be glad that bitcoin is still alive, but there's more to bitcoin than NGU. There's many ways in which things are better: Nostr exists now, there's a lot more sustainable funding for open source developers, bitcoin has been massively de-risked and normalized as an investment, and we've all gotten richer...but we've lost a lot too. image
"Don't hate the player, hate the game" is one of those flippant things people say to absolve people of responsibility for the most blatantly unethical actions. It's a shitcoiner morality slogan. It is possible at once to understand that we are living in a golden age of grift, and that systems have evolved to incentivize people to check their principles at the door for a buck. Still, everyone has agency and can choose not to sel their soul for a few bucks, a few clicks, a few likes. It's important to find it within yourself to hate both the player AND the game.