umbra

Excited to share my first open‑source contribution to the Nostr ecosystem! I’ve built Zap Visualizer — a tool that turns your zap stats into cyberpunk‑style identity cards for your Nostr profile and socials. What it does? - Fetches your real‑time zaps from Nostr relays - 5 visual themes: Matrix, Cyberpunk, Oceanic, Inferno, Royal - Exports high‑res PNGs, ready for sharing anywhere - No tracking, no account — privacy‑first by design Perfect for zappers and creators who want to showcase their impact in the Bitcoin ecosystem. - Try it: https://zap.0xumbralabs.xyz - Code: This is my first public project, so I’d love your feedback. What features or themes would you like to see next? #nostr #zaps #bitcoin #opensource #buildinpublic image
[SPOILER ALERT: The Three-Body Problem] Re-reading the Doomsday Battle gave me a different kind of chill this time. While most readers admire Zhang Beihai as the ultimate hero of endurance, I see a stark allegory for the current geopolitical psyche. Earth (The Challenger) was locked out of fundamental science by Sophons. But within that lock, they maximized engineering and GDP. They looked at their shiny fleet and deluded themselves into thinking they had caught up to Trisolaris (The Incumbent). Then the Droplet arrives, and the illusion of parity shatters in minutes. But here is the deeper, more unsettling realization: I suspect Liu Cixin himself is the real-life Zhang Beihai. Like his character, he recognized the inevitable outcome decades ago. He projects the absolute conviction of a "Mental Seal" patriot to operate within the system, while secretly embedding the harsh truth into his work: "Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is." Confronted with such hubris, he knew the only path to survival was the ultimate crime: Escapism. #ThreeBodyProblem #SciFi #Geopolitics #TheDarkForest
Hands down, The Beach Tower Okinawa has the best breakfast buffet I've had in Japan. The unlimited Wagyu beef (literally ate so much) plus the DIY sashimi rice bowls with raw egg and natto are incredible. The hotel itself is a bit older but the 270° ocean view from the room is insane. They even do free ramen after 10pm but I was always too full to try it lol. Honestly, I'd fly back just for this morning steak fix. #Okinawa #Japan #Travel image
Honestly, I'm kinda blown away by how usable Lightning is these days. Phoenix is probably "safer" with full self-custody, but Wallet of Satoshi is just ridiculously frictionless. I get it—"not your keys, not your coins"—but I'm not stashing my life savings there anyway. That's what cold storage is for. For everyday pocket change? Totally fine with the trade-off. Living in a place where fiat-based QR payments are literally everywhere (and the whole narrative is tightly controlled), I honestly had no idea BTC payments had caught up this much. I can't even imagine how seamless Strike or Cash App must feel. This is legit innovation. One question though: Since BTC is clearly the harder money, why would I ever want to spend it? Shouldn't I be dumping my melting fiat first? #Bitcoin #Lightning
I used to harbor a deep, structural prejudice against Bitcoin. It was a mix of arrogance and the subtle conditioning of the state apparatus. I thought I was financially literate—I even arrogantly cited JK Galbraith’s A Short History of Financial Euphoria to dismiss Bitcoin as nothing more than a digital tulip mania. But I owed it to myself to challenge my own bias. I couldn't ignore the fact that minds far sharper than mine possessed a conviction I lacked. That curiosity led me down the rabbit hole—from X to Reddit, and eventually, to @Lyn Alden . Lyn writes like an apostle of economic truth. I picked up Broken Money, and it only took a few chapters to dismantle my entire worldview. I realized my understanding of money was fundamentally flawed. I saw how Bitcoin’s scarcity, portability, fungibility, and divisibility render it the apex predator of value storage—a role gold can no longer fulfill in a digital age. That was the red pill. I dove back into the signal—initially through Bankless, but eventually finding my home in @preston 's Bitcoin Mastermind. The quarterly roundtables with Preston, @Joe Carlasare , @HODL , and especially @less , were a revelation. Jeff’s chart of the S&P 500 denominated in Gold shattered my perception of "growth." It was a moment of absolute clarity: what we call "gains" are often just an optical illusion of currency debasement. High asset prices are merely the receipts for fiat printing. It made me realize that without the constant injection of liquidity, the so-called "corporate growth" curve might just be a flatline. It begs the question: what would the stock market actually look like if we were still on a true Gold Standard? They say everyone buys Bitcoin at the price they deserve. My entry price is simply the tuition fee for the time it took me to wake up. I spent years wandering the DeFi wilderness, speculating on ETH and researching altcoins like Kleros, reading Vitalik yet shamefully ignoring the pristine collateral staring me in the face. But better late than never. I am here now. I am fascinated by the ethos of open-source and freedom. I wouldn't be who I am without the selfless sharing of others in this space. I hope to pay that debt forward—contributing my own signal to the noise to help build a better world. Hello, Nostr. ⚡ #Bitcoin #Macro #Introduction #Plebs #Nostr #Grownstr