bitcoin (3)

Hey,

Bitcoin is a rabbit-hole. It’s impossible not to fall into it once you start getting interested in this technology. Medium is the message, and trying to understand the impact of Bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies at large) in the world is daunting. What is money? What is privacy? What are states? Why should we organize this way when we have this kind of tech? Can we be sure that it’s a good thing for us? Well, we don’t know, and we can’t for sure. It took telephone 75 years to reach 50 million users. Radio took 38 years, TV 13, Internet 4, Facebook 2, and Pokemon Go 19 days. Social experiments gets distributed to the public quicker, especially now that we don’t rely on custom-made devices to access them. Will hyper-bitcoinization happen, like maximalists predict?

1. 📖 I finished reading The Sovereign Individual. It’s been an interesting read. Back in 99, the authors made a few predictions on how microprocessing and asymmetric cryptography would impact the world. They compare our current political landscape with the downfall of the catholic church in the XVI century. They also talk in great lengths about how the Logic Of Violence changes during the transition to the Information Age and what will happen to our democratic industrial societies (Trumpism, etc…). They are off a few bets and sometimes are redundant or develop extreme and contradictory ideas but it is still a good book to understand why politics as we know it might cease to exist.
2. 📖 I started reading The Bitcoin Standard. I already learned about Rai Stones in how an Irish-Americans named O’Keefe crashed a micronesia island’s economy. Informative!
3. 🔐 Sarah Jamie Lewis on her favorite (and hilarious) vulnerability discovery: The Blowjob Injection Attack.
4. 🛠 The Raspiblitz is a DIY bitcoin and lightning network full node on a RaspberryPi. One can now access a global payment network and transact with the entire world for around 150 euros. How mind-boggling is that?
5. ⚡️ Could we create a new banking system on top of the Lightning Network? Nik Bathia thinks so and I’m clearly not in a position to have any valuable opinion on the question, but it’s inspiring.
6. 🔐 The best privacy-respecting browser, TOR, gets a new release and hits 8.0.
7. 👩‍🎨 A sub-reddit dedicated to empty and dead malls. It’s fascinating to take a look at these empty concrete buildings, and it’s impossible for me not to think of them as witness of the past. Will these buildings one day get a new life?
8. 🎧 Sou Kono – Midnight Ravers. Sou Kono is a French-Malian band. They produce a music mixing electronic and traditional vibes, but without ever being a cliché.

Happy reading,
Marc

Image Credit & Copyright: The Pencil Nebula in Red and Blue by José Joaquín Perez.

Hey ya,

What’s up? Here are some cool stuff that inspired me this week. A lot of music, some cool videos,

1. ??? La talentueuse Oli Clément commence une série de posts sur le travail pour aider ceux qui en souffrent.
2. ? Fancy fat rock’n’roll with psychedelic vibes? Sunflowers – Castle Spell is your fix.
3. ? Describing Khruangbin – Con Todo El Mundo is a tad hard. Maybe slow chill-out-space-funk? Anyway, listen to it when you need to chill.
4. ? Chassol is a genius and proves it by ultra-scoring this hilarious Key & Peele’s Cunnilingus Class video.
5. ? Waymo shows off what it’s like to ride in a truly driverless self-driving car
6. ℹ When You Give a Tree an Email Address. The city of Melbourne assigned trees email addresses so citizens could report problems. Instead, people wrote thousands of love letters to their favorite trees.
7. ? Bitcoin’s Lightning Network is now in beta, on the mainnet. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is.
8. ? Spike Jones directed the Apple’s HomePod ad starring FKA Twig and it impossible not to think of Jamiroquai – Virtual Insanity when watching it.

Thanks for reading!

Marc

P.S: You can receive this directly in your inbox. Drop me an email and I’ll send it to you every week.

Hey you,

Here are some links I think are worth sharing.

1. ℹ️ Scientists are stunned. North Pole temperature are above 0ºC and the sun won’t rise until March 21.
2. ℹ️ What’s more normal than worshippers with AR-15 rifles wearing crowns made of bullets? Everything.
3. ? Seeing Depression or Anxiety only through the biomedical lens is wrong. Is Neoliberalism Making Our Depression and Anxiety Crisis Worse?.
4. ? Mental health is produced socially: The presence or absence of mental health is above all a social indicator and therefore requires social, as well as individual, solutions. We need new ways of treating depression.
5. ?‍? Bio-like robots which all parts are printed as one at once by Additive Manufacturing.
6. ??‍? I couldn’t really explain what is a waveform until I read this. Let’s learn about Waveforms. (This link does not work in Firefox, open it in Safari or Chrome).
7. ?‍???‍? How would you use Bitcoin as a display of wealth?
8. ? I dig the hip-hop vibes from Rejjie Snow’s latest album Dear Annie.

Thanks for reading!

Marc

P.S: You can receive this directly in your inbox. Drop me an email and I’ll send it to you every week.