crypto

How to apply recursive snarks for a fully scalable, fully private, currency

From the very beginning of bitcoin, people worried that it could not scale to the required size. It does not scale because it is a massively replicated public ledger. Thus any real solution means making the ledger not public. Which means either centralization, a central bank digital currency, which is the path Ethereum is walking, or privacy. You cure both blockchain bloat and blockchain analysis by not putting the data …

crypto

Enormous move in bitcoin coming up

The good news is that in the not very distant future, everyone who matters is going to be using Bitcoin. The bad news is that if they will be using something resembling currently available software, they will still be net peons, not netizens. Probably no dramatic price changes next week. Or next month. Maybe not next year. But we are on a big move up that will likely continue going …

war

Russia’s draft Agreement on Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation and NATO

Russian war aims are vastly broader than the Ukraine: In December of 2021, Russia proposed an agreement on “Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation and Member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization” The American reaction was shock, indignation, and genuine surprise. Surprise that Russia had the outrageous effrontery to ask for security. The proposed agreement is on its face a completely reasonable deal, just the normal …

party politics

A retraction

I predicted that Trump would be arrested and Epsteined. With defeat looming in the Ukraine, the future course becomes even more unpredictable. Looking at those in power as the Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive fails underneath them, I have no idea what the future holds, and I doubt that they do either. But we are no longer on the course that we were on a week ago. Putin cured Covid. When …

war

Possible outcomes of war in the Ukraine

Both sides have been fighting in the Ukraine using World War I tactics, and developments in the war have so far recapitulated World War I. Towards the end of World War I, the Germans, finally realizing they were going to lose the war of attrition, because of the immense industrial capability of America, attempted to regain war of movement, with underwhelming success, and eventually could no longer attempt to do …

war

War and game theory

Jesus as game theory: In a world of imperfect information, one tit for two tats. Old Testament marriage and family law as game theory: If you are stuck with with each other, the deal is going to generate value even if the value very unequally distributed, but if not stuck, prisoner’s dilemma. Negative sum actions are likely to be individually beneficial. It might seem obvious that if everyone could correctly …

Faith

The Logos

Around 350 years before Christ, paganism had died among the intellectuals. Not long after, it died among the common people, for we read writers in the late Roman Republic ridiculing attempts to motivate the common soldiers by appeal to faith. They believed the ordinary soldier was even more cynical than themselves. So the philosophers set to work manufacturing a replacement. For Aristotle, “logos” (“word”) was rational and responsive debate, and …

Uncategorized

Game

On Gab, I noticed a whole lot of wholly blue pilled people, not all of them shills. So, despite my frequent declaration that this is not a game blog and not going to turn into game blog, here comes another game post. It is kind of redundant, because everything that needs saying has been said in Setting the Record Straight, page 57, and Chateau Heartiste’s sixteen commandments of Poon. Ok. …

war

American logistic capability

American GDP is fake and gay. American GDP is for the most part not riggers in red states lifting steel, workers on the assembly line, cattle ranchers raising cattle, nor even truckers, warehouses, and shops moving goods from where they are made to where they are used, it is people in blue states doing business in permissions that allow riggers to lift steel and ranchers to raise cattle. American GDP …