A E Vincent

Story in #awildandpreciouslife Shortlisted Wasafiri Life Writing Prize. Nostr:

[A E Vincent @annieevincent]

https://t.co/wYsFQH9b03

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

BREAKING: "Greater Israel" is now marketed in London. Like in Montreal and in New York.
Apartheid without borders.

P.S. This explains why criticism of Israel is being restricted (and "anti-antisemitism" laws keep appearing). Apartheid is not only a crime. It is a business model.

[Bitcoin Events UK @BitcoinEventsUK]

The new Meetup Breakdown is out now - Issue 96! 🗞️

🔸 10 Bitcoin meetups
🔸 2 new bitcoin-accepting business
🔸 2 upcoming events

🇬🇧 Your weekly update on the UK Bitcoin scene.

https://t.co/f7iGOTlSI8

Subscribe for free and don't miss a thing.

[Tony Lapidus @TonyLapidus]

Gary’s Economics breaking down the UK local elections

@garyseconomics

[Clare Hinchcliffe @Subversivite]

I'm glad it can finally be reported that Rajiv Menon KC, lead defence barrister in my daughter's (Filton 6) trial, is being *prosecuted*

Judge 'Injustice' Johnson is trying to punish Rajiv for a brilliant speech in the 1st trial because it led to the jury refusing to convict.

[lemn sissay OBE FRSL @lemnsissay]

If you are in Islington Green between now and 4pm . I am the guy on the bench holding back tears, and a laptop, reading heartbreakingly beautiful new testimonies from https://t.co/4Za7OHf9e6 . They come in day and night.

#tellmesomethingfamily

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ @gladstein]

African countries are now 6x more indebted to the IMF than when this person took over as director of the Africa department

I would say he did his job very well

[lemn sissay OBE FRSL @lemnsissay]

Mayday Mayday. My new website launches today. It is Tell Me Something About Family. https://t.co/SmR5KarVhI

The website is a world map and for every message a pin prick of light appears.

Zoom in on the light to see the messages around the world. To contribute a message click on "Take Part". There is no data collection. The site is pure. It is my art work. You can upload photographs too if you like.

It will be live for 31 days from today. It is the month of my birthday. Opening this site for this month is my birthday present and so is every one of your entries.
https://t.co/SmR5KarVhI .

[Tehran Tadhg @TadhgHickey]

Let me get this straight. The rise in antisemitic attacks in Britain has NOTHING to do with Israel's (self proclaimed only Jewish state) litany of war crimes in recent years but IS connected to the protests and marches opposing those war crimes. Perfect. Got it.

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

"Southern Water admits sewage pollution which occurred weeks after record fine."

In 2021 Southern Water was fined £90,000,000 for illegally dumping sewage into the environment on almost 7,000 separate occasions.

They have now also admitted that for the following 2 years they kept on illegally dumping sewage into Swalecliffe Brook in Whitstable and Faversham Creek causing fish kills and widespread devastation.

Can someone explain to me why the CEO and directors aren't going to jail for this?

https://t.co/wSr8NwpyQM

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

For a human rights lawyer, @Keir_Starmer has alarmingly little interest in international law

"Foreign Office unit tracking Israel’s breaches of international law closes due. Department will also lose access to database of 26,000 verified incidents"
https://t.co/Ch7KQ3Eohi

[courtneybonneauimages @cbonneauimages]

It was wild for me today to be at the funeral of Amal and see journalists there who are mouthpieces for the very media outlets who are complicit in our murders.

They’re a fucking disgrace to the profession and to see them stand next to her coffin and cry, as if they haven’t been whitewashing Israeli war crimes for years, was mind-boggling. The audacity. The hubris.

May all Israeli propagandists and their mouthpieces on the ground one day be put on trial for their crimes.

[Freddie New @freddienew]

To anyone in the UK worried or concerned about this:

- Peer to peer trading of Bitcoin between individuals is not and has never been illegal in the UK. It's not even regulated by the FCA.

- Bitcoin now has statutory legal recognition as property in the UK pursuant to English law. Any holder of Bitcoin remains free to deal with it, hold it, or send it peer to peer for fiat cash if they so wish.

- This FCA action (taken under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017) was likely against organisations or institutions operating without appropriate FCA licences to perform cryptoasset activities (but more info needed).

We need to monitor the progress of this investigation carefully to understand how and why they are attacking the rights of individuals to deal with their property, and understand how to guard against this attack, and ensure that such attacks are defeated in future.

Oh, and entirely unrelated to this, of course, please check out @vexl , @peachbitcoin , @hodlhodl , @bisq_network , @RoboSats or @Azteco_

[Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ @gladstein]

Some examples of Bitcoin payments working wonders around the world

What else did I leave off?

[Maria Popova @themarginalian]

"One of the functions of art is to give people the words to know their own experience... Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want."

Ursula K. Le Guin on storytelling and the power of language to transform and redeem https://t.co/X6a6zUFt5O

[Donna McLean @Donna__McLean]

Jesus. This piece.
https://t.co/wXSu5eHPS3

[A E Vincent @annieevincent]

@redrumlisa @DennyTWright You might have luck going direct to a housing association- this one only requires you to be over 55 to apply -they want working people as they need a mix so it’s manageable - lots of these places have younger older people now who are working https://t.co/OVugxA7KHl

[Saifedean Ammous @saifedean]

Value is not a physical thing

To all the people who think bitcoin can’t have value because it’s not tangible...

Tangible assets constitute the following percentage of the Mag7 market caps:

Nvidia: 0.66%
Apple: 1.38%
Tesla: 4.06%
Microsoft: 7.29%
Alphabet: 8.39%
Meta: 9.56%
Amazon: 16.28%
Combined weighted average: 5.79%

If you liquidated all of these companies’ physical assets, they wouldn’t amount to 6% of their valuation. There have been days in which the market caps of these companies have moved by more than the total value of their physical assets.

If 94% of the value of the most valuable companies on earth is non-physical, then value does not have to be physical.

If digital things have no value, then you should have no problem with giving me your computer to erase all the data from it. I will return your computer to you in the same exact physical form. I will just press a few buttons that remove all your data, photos, and contacts, and make it impossible for you to restore them. If value can only be tangible, then all of these digital things have no value, and you shouldn’t mind me deleting them as long as the devices return in their original state. I don’t think you would.

Technology, data, business knowledge, customer base, brands, and so much more are non-physical assets whose value likely exceeds that of all the planet’s physical objects and land. This is something most people understand in their daily lives, but because most people have no understanding of money, they do not understand how it applies to money, too.

Most people think their money is physical, but in reality, most fiat currencies today are 90%+ digital, and usually less than 10% of the supply is physical paper money. There are no stacks of dollars in your bank sitting in a box under your name, available for you to pick up at any time. A tiny fraction of the money is physical, and the rest is digital, manufactured in various quantities by your bank, government, central bank, and other pedophiles, in quantities based on pure vibes. People still give this non-physical fiat money value because it is the only money they can use with a bank account, since governments only license banks that use their local fiat shitcoin. There is no need for the money to be physical to work; digital fiat money works as well as physical fiat money; or as badly.

Bitcoin is an entirely digital money, but it is given value for far more intelligent and peaceful reasons than fiat money. You can read more about that in my books The Bitcoin Standard and The Fiat Standard, which you can buy from Amazon or https://t.co/Va3iL87Ups.

A common objection to bitcoin’s value is: “But if people stop believing in the value of bitcoin it can lose all value.” But that is true of everything. If people stop believing in the value of gold, it would lose value and just become another worthless rock. If people stop believing in the value of electronic devices then Apple and Nvidia go to zero. If people stop believing in the value of Manhattan, then all Manhattan real estate goes to zero. If people discover that tomatoes are poisonous, they stop believing in the value of tomatoes, and the entire planet’s tomato industry goes to zero. Just because something is physical does not guarantee its value, as we can see from the infinite amount of sand and rocks on our Earth left completely untouched by human hands. Physical things can be valueless and non-physical things can have value. Value and physicality are two independent things that are orthogonal to each other. You are doing yourself a disservice if you are unable to benefit from the world’s most advanced money and best saving technology because you are unable to see that value can be non-physical in this one instance, when you have no problem seeing it elsewhere.

[Jesse Tevelow @jtevelow]

https://t.co/QJXQUuBz0E

[Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ @gladstein]

A day in the life of Bitcoin’s 17th year:

✅ $1.4 trillion, 90-year-old firm releases new BTC product

✅ Energy exporter demands payment in BTC

✅ NYT still can’t figure out who Satoshi is

✅ Fortune 500 company rolling out BTC payments for 4M merchants

How we doing fam?