LynAlden
Lyn Alden

Is there anyone who is *strongly* interested in being an early round beta reader for my sci fi manuscript?
Near-future sci-fi, crime/thriller/cyberpunk. A blend of action and multi-character depth, and moral analysis. The action is key and all, but alpha readers thus far cried at the character aspects; that's what hit them hard enough to care how they would engage with the action.
Strict Requirements for first-stage beta readers:
-I need to know/trust you personally, either in person or very well online with high reputation, to the point that I'd send an unfinished manuscript to you. There's no strict requirements, but if you know, you know.
-You like sci fi and/or fantasy books, and would be happy to read and offer objective (even brutal) feedback on a sci-fi action/crime thriller novel within the next month or two.
-You can comment or DM, for privacy sake.
That's a small group, but I'm putting it here on Nostr first for what I consider my pre-beta or readers. I will then expand 10x on Twitter and elsewhere for my full beta readers.
Meanwhile, I'm in the early revision stage. Manuscripts won't be sent out immediately. I'm still doing revisions and working with alpha readers, but I'm at the stage where I can start *planning* for the next step to see who might be interested to be early beta readers. Nostr folks get the exclusive early notice here.
I do tend to move pretty fast, though.
All pre-beta readers that provide meaningful input would be mentioned in the acknowledgement section, if the book were to be published, which of course I cannot guarantee will happen. I will only publish good books, one way or another.
But like, the alpha readers do like it. ;)

2024-11-13 13:16:01 GMT

Part of me hopes that we drop to $85k and chop around there for a few months and establish an $85k gang.
Just for meme potential.

2024-11-11 22:46:08 GMT

The Arcane Season 2 soundtrack is just as good as the first season.
This was my favorite track so far:
https://youtu.be/8sekyV_o2pM

2024-11-10 16:26:32 GMT

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And Midjourney literally struggles making non-supermodel characters.
Like, certain faces I want to be tougher/plainer and it wouldn't do it, so I literally said ugly in the prompt and this popped out:
https://m.primal.net/Lytl.png

2024-11-10 12:41:55 GMT

Price breakouts are really important and it’s great to finally see one, but I’m also kind of in the camp that anything under $100K is boring by this point.

2024-11-10 05:22:12 GMT

I updated the one on the top right.
AI generation makes it hard to get expressions right. Not only would her character definitely be smiling, she'd probably be trolling the others for looking so serious in their profile pics.
https://m.primal.net/LyTR.png
#note1z8x…nnl9

2024-11-10 01:59:09 GMT

I messed around with Midjourney to create initial renderings of some of the main characters of my hobby sci-fi manuscript.
Would that movie poster interest you or nah?
https://m.primal.net/LyMn.png

2024-11-09 18:11:39 GMT

gm
In fiction, the point of view from how we see the story can often color how we perceive the ethics of characters. And of course, that lesson can apply in real life as well.
If you ask most people if Neo and Trinity in the Matrix are heroes or anti-heroes, for example, they’ll probably say heroes. There is nothing particularly dark or edgy about them other than kind of a general “cool” factor. They’re pretty chill and well-meaning people in their downtime, we care about their relationship, they help their friends, they have rather pure motivations, etc.
But in the Matrix, agents can teleport themselves into any unplugged person. Which means that when Neo or Trinity attack a place, they pretty much have to slaughter everyone. Leaving survivors means that agents can teleport in. Innocent guards and stuff just get wiped out by the dozens. The stakes of humanity being enslaved by the machines are so high, that the characters don’t even really debate the ethics of this; they just accept it.
Like literally the opening scene is Trinity killing police, and the audience is like “wow cool” instead of “so, is that the antagonist?” The famous lobby scene consists of Neo and Trinity wiping out tons of guards that are just doing their job of guarding a skyscraper. In the sequel, Trinity sends a motorcycle bomb into a power station, and then murders the remaining guards as they attack her. We all basically like Trinity, and yet there are platoons of widows and orphans out there from all the guards she killed. There aren’t really even any scenes of her reflecting on that, like finding it emotionally difficult in any way to do those things or feeling in any way haunted by it.
If the Matrix story was shown from like, a detective’s point of view, these characters are terrorists and would either seem like outright villains (if you don’t know their motivation) or anti-heroes if you do (ends justify the means; mass-murder is okay and not even worth feeling bad about if it saves billions).
So, how the movie *frames* things for us makes a big difference. We closely follow Neo and Trinity so much that we’re like, “of course they’re the heroes”. The same thing happens in real life with political commentators and things like that; a cultural narrative can frame something as wholly good or wholly bad when often it’s actually kind of complex.
Therefore, it’s a useful practice whether in analyzing fiction or real life, to always ask how you could invert the framing for something.

2024-11-07 19:40:59 GMT

Along with Steve Lee of Spiral and Ren of Electrical Capital, I co-authored a paper on Bitcoin consensus and the analysis of risks around protocol upgrades from a technical & economic perspective:
https://github.com/bitcoin-cap/bcap
Here's the v1.0 PDF version:
https://github.com/bitcoin-cap/bcap/blob/main/bcap_v1.0.pdf
It explores what consensus is, how Bitcoin has historically upgraded its consensus over time including through contentious periods, and what some of the future paths and associated risks there are for potential changes in the future.
The paper doesn't take a stance for or against any given consensus change, but rather analyzes the field for how changes are made (which partially evolves over time as the network grows, i.e. 2024 is different than 2017 is different than 2009), and what some of the specific risks are for contentious changes from a blended economic and technical perspective.
For example, we analyze scenarios around bounty claims, which is a risk that can manifest when the majority of miners adopt a change but only a minority of economic nodes have:
https://github.com/bitcoin-cap/bcap?tab=readme-ov-file#how-might-this-occur-with-a-soft-fork
And in a world of sovereign holders, corporate treasurer holders, ETF holders, and so forth, some of that could play out differently today or in the future compared to how it might have played out in the past. And so we provide a framework to help analyze those scenarios and risks.
For the v1.0 version, we had the paper reviewed by major exchanges, ETFs, corporate treasurers, developers, miners, legal experts, philosophy professors, etc to make it as accurate and helpful as an educational resource across domains.
However, we consider our initial version to only be the start. We're releasing the paper to the public domain, and inviting people to contribute to it or even help maintain it on Github.
It's a living document, in other words. We're not the authorities on this; we just did a lot of research and review on the topic as a starting point. If there's something you think could be clarified, or something you disagree with, then we invite your contribution! And a big thank you to the initial people that reviewed it and provided feedback for the initial v1.0 version!

2024-11-03 15:00:17 GMT

gm
This weekend I finished the (very) rough draft of my hobby sci-fi novel manuscript.
115k words, 45 chapters, front to back readable.
Written in two months, but thought about for years which made the writing come out faster. It needs a ton of revision work, especially since fiction writing isn't my expertise.
Most people have to edit/revise down their manuscript, but I envision this being filled a bit more to 120k+ words.
For reasons I can't say due to spoilers, the third act was the hardest for me. For most writers, the second act is the hardest, kind of that "meh" middle. My middle was tight and fun and easy to write. But due to a couple nontraditional story structure elements, as well as the most technical action sequence in the story, the third act was *really* hard. But I managed to figure it out and am quite satisfied with it.
Now I have to revise and optimize it all.

2024-11-03 06:09:22 GMT

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@npub1trr…hdpu seems like the tag didn’t stick in my OP

2024-11-01 00:53:20 GMT

I appreciate people across the political spectrum, and have friends in multiple worldview camps. Especially since they are often from different countries with different contexts. My friends do tend to cluster in certain areas due to our shared interests (i.e. I am freedom-oriented in general), but there are people who consider themselves to be anarcho-capitalists and others that consider themselves to be aware progressives, for whom I would invite them to my home and stay in our guest area.
But I have a visceral disgust toward people who I perceive to be playing a role or being consciously fake. I'm not against people playing an actual obvious caricature for satire of course. But in the modern era, there is a tremendous amount of audience capture, gaslighting, fake social media influence that is meant to come off as genuine, and influencers and politicians treating their audience as though they are literally retarded.
Once I perceive someone as fundamentally fake and consciously playing a false role that they pretend is real to their audience, they're done to me. This behavior has been on an enormous uptrend in the past few years, much to my provocation. It's an acceleration of cynicism. Those that do this are intelligent but cynical toward their audience, manipulating them either for personal gain or for their political purpose.
Be aware of this trend.

2024-10-30 04:58:06 GMT

When I ate a lot of carbohydrates, no matter how thoroughly I brushed and floshed my teeth every day, my dentist would be like, “eh you could do better.”
When I sharply reduced my carbohydrates, even when I was a bit less thorough in brushing, my dentist would be like, “it all looks great, good job.”
Just my multi-year experience. I don’t claim to say it’s universal.

2024-10-30 02:29:15 GMT

I’ve been watching Jon Stewart for 25 years now, and he is still a shockingly good comedian and commentator.

2024-10-26 16:16:22 GMT

"There are people who hold bonds. We call them poor."
https://m.primal.net/Liwo.png

2024-10-25 14:56:12 GMT

This might be a dumb question since I haven't been following NIPs lately, but wouldn't it be cool if there was an edit feature to tell clients to replace an old note with a new note on their user interface?
It wouldn't *actually* delete or edit the original note of course but if many clients listen to that then at least in terms of what most users will see, the note will have been edited. Or, clients could show the edited version and then also have a small "show original" button to see the original version.
Can anyone chime in and say why this wouldn't work or why it's way more complicated than this description to do in practice? I'm curious.

2024-10-25 04:56:26 GMT

Taxes be like:
#note1q02…0zkv

2024-10-25 04:33:01 GMT

It has become so weird that the US Right supports Israel’s war on Palestine while the US Left supports Ukraine’s defense against Russia.
Political sides dig in. The wars become associated with culture.
There is so little voice today from those who oppose aggression. Those who support Jews but are not onboard with Israel’s actions against Palestinians. Those who support Ukrainian independence but don’t want to commit unlimited troops for border regions that literally speak Russian amid a complicated history.
More people die in Sudan and Cambodia than Israel/Palestine, but we are all focused on Israel/Palestine because it’s a conflict of cultures. Religious cultures but also western imperialism vs the global south. The focus of it all. That occupies our attention even as bigger massacres occur elsewhere that aren’t directly across these massive fault lines.
I refuse to engage in attention whoring. I support peace in most instances globally, other than total war against someone’s existence where it becomes right to fight back. People have a right to self-defense. And those who have power over others have a responsibility to hold back on using it fully.
Keep in mind that at any moment, tons of violence is occurring globally. The media directs you to a subset of it that is geographically, economically, or culturally relevant for their purposes. You ignore or are unaware of the rest, and get emotional about what is fed to you. That’s how most people act, anyway.

2024-10-24 16:23:46 GMT

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I forget 90% of that movie and yet remember that scene in detail. I think it was worth it. If someone asks me “is Mission Impossible good?” then that’s one of the top ten scenes in the franchise that come to mind from a positive perspective.

2024-10-23 01:14:54 GMT

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101 on how gold was confiscated:
You had to turn it in for dollars by a deadline prior to dollar devaluation, and there were massive prison consequences for not turning it in, but little resources in terms of investigating who didn’t turn it in. That would be expensive. So it was fear based. Focusing on illegality and tail risks on edge cases more than enforcement on average.
Institutions had to comply immediately, since it’s all visible. So the government broke liquidity in the domestic gold market, which was enough for their purposes. Gold became a hard-to-trade illegal relic for those that held it.
If a small family hodled some extra bars for 40 years until it became legal again, they did okay.
But can the government track bitcoin in the 2020s better or worse than gold in 1930s for enforcement purposes? That’s the right question.
And don’t just think of confiscation. Think of 70% selective taxes and things like that. Far more within the current rule of law. That’s the sophisticated approach. Don’t take it. Selectively tax it by a lot.
Those are the politics to push against from a bitcoin perspective.

2024-10-22 11:27:34 GMT

Gm.
I had trouble sleeping last night, so instead I reached 100k words in my hobby sci fi manuscript. Full length will be ballpark 120k.
I’m going to take a break from adding new words to it, and will spend some time editing the first 100k.
The reason I was able to write most of the first draft quickly (two months, as a side project) is because I had a bunch of plot outlines and character details bouncing around in my head for a long time. But the last part is less fleshed out, even though I know the outline of the ending. So I need to let it sit for a bit and collect some more thoughts on it, rather than rush to get it on paper. Sometimes a random shower thought driving while listening to music helps you think of that detail that completes a scene or ties scenes together.

2024-10-21 14:45:16 GMT

I like paranoid crypto anarchists. Good folks doing good work. Big fan.

2024-10-19 13:47:51 GMT

This chart is kind of shocking actually. A society completely flipped the mechanism for how it deals with people who are problematic for themselves and others.
https://m.primal.net/Lazc.jpg

2024-10-19 02:38:52 GMT

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Epic. Thanks for sharing!

2024-10-19 02:35:41 GMT

Miles is one of my spirit animals.
He hikes mountains faster than me and parties harder than me. I’m a fan.
#note1afv…ypwe

2024-10-19 02:14:24 GMT

Roya is one of my favorite accounts on Nostr.
She was an early adopter, and from the start I somehow found her posts and enjoyed them. One of the most genuine accounts here. I know little about her but after more than a year of following her I'm a fan. Her posts make my Nostr experience unique and positive.
#note1a0v…qvye

2024-10-16 23:11:08 GMT

Masculinity is under attack lately. But I like masculinity actually.
I know, shocker.
The fact that so few U.S. presidential or vice presidential candidates have had beards in modern history is funny to me. I think men usually look better with facial hair, and the older they get the more likely that is. 20-somthing or 30-something strong jaw dudes often look great without facial hair. But when men are 50 or 60 or whatever, that salt-and-pepper beard is so rad and almost always beats the no-beard weak-chin look. I actually think it's weird that neither Biden nor Trump have a beard. JD Vance looks like shit without a beard. Growing a beard is the best move he ever made, imo. And yet the media is like, "A vice president candidate with a beard?"
Masculinity can be rough around the edges, but that's what we need sometimes. It's usually balanced by other societal aspects. In some societies it gets extreme and needs to be pushed back on. My husband has a temper, but his temper is part of his power and why he impacts the world to the extent that he does. So when I interact with his temper, it's not about eliminating it, but rather it's about appreciating it but making sure it's directed in the right direction.
Masculinity and femininity are good. They don't need to be forced. Nature is diverse but society tries to categorize nature into narrower categories. Feminine men and masculine women are cool too. But that doesn't change the fact that masculine men and feminine women are also cool.
I grew up kickboxing and submission grappling. I'm a tomboy. I'm a feminist in terms of promoting equal gender rights. But at the end of the day, I appreciate masculine men. I was never attracted to men who were weaker than me in any capacity, but rather was always attracted to men with gravitas.
The easiest approach to life is to 1) respect biology as it is but then 2) also appreciate the divergences that inherently exist within it.
Trying to equalize nature is to fight against it. And yet trying to eliminate the diversify of nature is also to fight against it.
Nature is fascinating, and I do my best to appreciate it.

2024-10-16 19:11:12 GMT

GM.
I'm bullish on bitcoin, and I think a lot of people overthink it.
One of my favorite metrics is the market value vs realized value ratio. The realized value is basically just the on-chain cost basis. The value of UTXOs at the dollar price during which they last moved between wallets, which often means the time people pulled them from exchanges or deposited them to exchanges.
https://m.primal.net/LXov.png
A relatively small amount of marginal buying can push up the market value by a lot. Like how if you buy one house on a street, it can boost the estimated price of all houses on that street even though only one of them traded hands. But when market value becomes stretched relative to cost basis, it means that part of the market value is kind of illusory. We don't *really* know what houses on that street are worth if only one of them traded hands recently and thus liquidity was low. Over time, as more houses on that street trade hands and we have more price points, the estimated value of the street becomes more real. The same thing for bitcoin; as more bitcoin trades hands at certain levels, it starts to make that level "real" compared to how real we should consider it when it just touches a certain level for a little while with limited volume.
Right now, bitcoin is at an all-time high in its realized price, i.e. cost basis.
Back when bitcoin was poking over $60k in April 2021, the cost basis for the network was only about $350 billion. Now, at the same market price, the cost basis approaches $650 billion, or more than twice as high. The marginal bitcoin has traded hands and moved between wallets at much higher prices than years ago, even though the market price is about the same. In other words, these levels have been truly liquid and been consummated by the market more than they were back in 2021, and thus the price is more robust at this level than back then.
The launch of the spot ETFs pulled forward some excitement this year, and so we've been in this big consolidation since March. But even in that time period from March to the present, the on-chain cost basis increased from like $520 billion to $640 billion, and so price discovery and progress is being made despite the ongoing price chop.
As the network builds a bigger and more solid base like it has been doing, it can set the stage for the next major breakout. The network looks healthy to me.
https://m.primal.net/LXpf.png

2024-10-15 03:03:20 GMT

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And yet you fuck with every one of my kind-oriented posts, it could be noted.

2024-10-15 00:05:33 GMT

I’ve had a less fortuitous route with my fertility, but nonetheless I love this chadness:
#note1vgd…jkwa

2024-10-14 14:29:32 GMT

Gm
It seems we like the coin today.

2024-10-13 15:00:29 GMT

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https://m.primal.net/LUrq.jpg

2024-10-12 15:05:01 GMT

The fact that more public companies haven’t run the MicroStrategy playbook yet is kind of wild actually.

2024-10-12 15:03:51 GMT

The Jackal was a movie from 1997 that followed the villain (Bruce Willis) as much as the hero (Richard Gere).
While the movie had some flaws, especially Gere’s fake accent, I do really like that concept of following a villain as much as a hero. It can work well in a lot of contexts. Has to be the right type of villain though. Complex and interesting, or entertaining.
Arcane did that too, which is part of why I liked it.

2024-10-12 15:00:31 GMT

Gm
St. Louis is a pretty awesome city.

2024-10-11 18:34:25 GMT

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GM!

2024-10-11 14:37:06 GMT

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Gorgeous.

2024-10-11 04:13:46 GMT

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❤️

2024-10-10 22:27:09 GMT

One of like two times a year I wear a dress.
#note1grw…kpnq

2024-10-10 16:32:51 GMT

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Nah, DBZ really did have other dimensions.

2024-10-10 16:15:36 GMT

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Probably somewhere in the spectrum between the two, but closer to Abercrombie, yeah.

2024-10-10 16:03:05 GMT

There are some forms of age censorship or ratings that, when you examine them, are kind of backwards.
An example is the Yugioh dub. When Yugioh was dubbed into English and played on western cartoon networks, they didn’t want to show as much death as in the original Japanese version, even though they were for the same age group. Just different cultural standards. So for the dub they created the concept of the Shadow Realm, and so instead of getting killed by a death trap, someone will instead have their soul sent to an eternity of darkness. Hell, basically. This was considered more suitable for children as a concept: eternal darkness and unhappiness rather than physical death.
A lot of Brandon Sanderson books are kind of PG-13. There is a lot of action and death, but usually not a lot of blood or gore, curse words are in fantasy language and thus mostly don’t count. But like, some characters get magically tortured in agony for centuries. Just not in a bloody way.
My novel draft is basically a rated R book. Violence, blood, curses from characters that would curse, etc. But ironically far scarier things happen in Sanderson novels than mine! Nobody gets a century of agony in mine. Just good old fashion normal temporary agony. But because it’s more explicit, that makes it equivalent to R.

2024-10-10 13:27:03 GMT

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Nah.

2024-10-10 04:47:51 GMT

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Depends how I feel about it at the end, along with some alpha readers’ feedback.

2024-10-10 04:35:37 GMT

Update: I think I've picked the main potential path for the first half of Act 3, which was the least-outlined part between sections I had more firmly mapped out.
I need to flesh it out more, but there's progress here.
And a minor spoiler is that I had a more action path and a more emotional path for this portion, I decided on the emotional path. There's no shortage of action before and after, and this emotion is worth it to flesh out here.
85k words in.
#note1s5y…g5kn

2024-10-10 03:08:51 GMT

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With Bruce Timm running it, I might check it out.
I'm not the target audience anymore but nostalgia is great.

2024-10-10 02:32:45 GMT

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If you’re that far in, definitely finish Unlimited with the kids. I don’t even consider Unlimited a separate show; I just view it as the rest of the Justice League show.

2024-10-10 02:31:07 GMT

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This is kind of the dichotomy, since we are so self-aware of it now. Some people grind their whole life and on their deathbed wish they grinded less. But to reach peak impact, it takes unfathomable grinding. The best grinders are often not the best parents, friends, or lovers.
I grinded through college and then for like 15 years, always doing three things at a time. Achieved a lot of professional success, and more then I thought. Right now I’m purposely like, “I’m going to grind less for a bit, and pay attention to some of those old folks who die saying to grind less”.

2024-10-10 01:48:25 GMT

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Absolutely rekt.
But two decades later it's the one I write about.
And it's partially because they had 14 years of build-up. They ran a full generational arc well, which is really hard.

2024-10-10 01:47:08 GMT

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Autists unite.

2024-10-10 01:38:19 GMT

Western animation is ethically weak lately.
This is a post that analyzes one of the most heartbreaking moments in children’s television history, and one that has stuck with me almost two decades later.
But the broader theme is that I find it interesting partially because these types of instances measure what a society considers its maturity level to be. It’s like a sensor gage on a given generation.
It’s about the death of Ace in the finale of Justice League Unlimited, which is a bigger deal than it sounds like. A child died in the final episode of a 14-year kids' series, which is unheard of.
It ended one of the biggest animated epics ever, and was the biggest gut punch I ever had as a kid watching a show vs what kids watch now. And it’s about how it relates to modern animation.
But as a preamble, I’ll first highlight the social importance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which most readers will recognize in more recent terms. Its main story line from Iron Man in 2008 until Avengers Endgame in 2019 was an epic run, in terms of social awareness and revenue. There are movies in the universe after that, and there are more planned out to at least 2027, but that core 11-year period was the key story arc from beginning to end focusing on its original hero and its major villain.
And it wasn’t easy to copy: Warner Bros tried to do it for the DC superheroes but couldn’t build that same scope due to their shitty bureaucracy and entering it secondarily. The MCU was known for cool action, but also its frequent use of humor. It was exceptionally well-played even as it was criticized sometimes.
But many older Millennials and younger GenX’ers know that DC had a prior strong run: The DC Animated Universe, or DCAU. Marvel had good animated content back then, but it was DC that won market share in that era.
That was the golden age of DC comics animated shows. And for animation, it was *super* serious. It started with Batman the Animated Series in 1992, and ended with Justice League Unlimited in 2006, 14 years later. It included the Batman series, the Superman series, the Batman Beyond series, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited. It was a shared universe where continuity between shows mattered, and it was all under the same executive production of Bruce Timm. So, it’s sometimes called the Timmverse.
If you ask me who my favorite Batman is, I’ll say Kevin Conroy, the guy who voiced Batman in that universe. My default base version of Batman is the Bruce Timm and Kevin Conroy version. Absolutely legendary in terms of quality and quantity. Everything else relative to that is a smaller adaption from my perspective. It was generation-defining.
It’s a generation-defining set of stories. In my mid-thirties, this series still affects my aesthetics of storytelling and fiction. When I’m seventy I’ll still remember this series. For many kids at the time, this series of shows was absolutely defining. The core of western animation at the time. It was super serious, and explored all sorts of moral themes.
And notably, unlike Avatar (2005-2008) and other shows that came at similar times and later, the DCAU was a series of kids’ shows that featured almost all adults. We, as kids at the time, watched adults solve adult problems in this universe, because realistically adults solve adult problems. Not a fun-group of kids on an adventure. I liked kid-based Avatar the Last Airbender and similar kid franchises like Teen Titans, Legend of Korra, and the more recent She-Ra, but kids and teens solving world-ending issues inherently brings unbelievability. Even as a kid, I was like, “nah it’s unrealistic that people my age would solve this shit” and wanted to see adults like Batman and Hawk Girl Shayera solve adult problems. And that’s what the DCAU did for 14 years from 1992 to 2006. A show featuring mostly adults, but for teens.
But to bring this post to a point, I’ll just describe the ending of this 14-year shared universe. Because it’s what someone like Bruce Timm does when he runs all of it.
Batman Beyond, which was set in the future with a super-old Bruce Wayne and his young protégé was a well-received show from 1999 to 2001 but never had a solid climax. They instead put their focus into Justice League and Justice League Unlimited instead, which was also amazing and ran from 2001 to 2006.
So, when it came time to end Justice League Unlimited, and their overall universe, how did they do it?
The penultimate episode of Justice League Unlimited involved fighting their final external villain as would be expected. Darkseid acquired Brainiac technology, and became a god-tier threat for the climax. Superman finally dropped all of his social safeguards, admitting that he always holds back because the world feels like cardboard for him and he wants to be safe around it, but that he has to unleash it all now, and decided to absolutely fucking rekt him despite all external consequences it might cause. Even then, he also needed Lex Luthor to help take this threat out. It was a big external situation.
But because this 14-year universe was well-written, they didn’t end on just that action stuff. After that climax, they resolved it on character depth. They started their story with Batman in 1992, and they never got an actual Batman Beyond finale, and so they decided to end their 2006 Justice League series with a Batman Beyond true finale set deep in the future to finish the Batman arc as the core of the multi-series. That’s the benefit of having an executive producer that oversees all of this. Continuity and conclusion.
In that finale episode, which closes both Justice League and Batman Beyond, Bruce Wayne’s 30-ish protégé Terry McGinness is having an existential crisis while Bruce Wayne is like 90 or 100+ years old and dying, and Terry talks to Amanda Waller, who was historically a mostly well-meaning villain but is now very old. And she is like, “if you want to know who Bruce Wayne is and who your legacy is, know this story.”
And she tells the story that ends Justice League, back when Bruce’s Batman was still active. It serves as the ending for both Justice League and Batman Beyond.
There was a young psychic girl named Ace, raised by Amanda Waller’s division. She could manipulate peoples’ minds to an absurd degree, and was a major threat in an episode several seasons ago that viewers were familiar with that Batman dealt with in the middle of the Justice League show. She was a young super-villain that didn’t want to be. The Joker gained control of her, and used her to do a major attack, which Batman had to deal with as the rest of the Justice League dealt with her weaker colleagues. And he dealt with her via kindness to appeal to Ace rather than hurting her as a child. She wasn’t malevolent; she was just manipulated by the Joker. And it worked. Amazing dialogue writing.
Years later, there was the end-scene of Justice League, as recounted by Amanda Waller. Ace returned to Gotham. As a young teen girl now, she was dying. And as she died, due to her sheer power, the world around her became chaotic. Her powers were exceptional; she was almost omnipotent in like a 5-mile radius. Multiple superheroes tried to reach her, but couldn’t. Amanda Waller noted that she would have a fatal aneurysm in hours or days, and as she went through this process, it kept getting worse. When she died, she would likely take out the entire city of Gotham due to her own fear and chaos.
Amanda had a device that could target Ace’s brain and kill her, but nobody could get close enough to activate it due to Ace’s crazy powers. Batman offered to do it. Amanda Waller was like, “nobody else can get close, and to be clear this will kill her,” and Batman was like, “I know. She met me before. She might let me get close. I’ll do it.”
So, they sent Batman in. Nobody else could get close to Ace, but he alone could just walk through her defenses.
As he reached her, she was like, “They’re afraid of me, aren’t they?”
And he was likes, “Yes, they are.”
She was like, “They trained me in a lab, robbed me of my childhood. And now I’m dying, aren’t I?”
And he was like, “Yes, you are going to die. I’m sorry.”
She was like, “I read your mind as you came to me. You never meant to use Amanda’s device to kill me. That’s why I let you get close.”
And he was like, “No, of course not, Ace.” And he threw it away.
And she cried and said she was afraid of dying, and asked if he would stay with her as she did. And he said of course he would. So Batman just sat on the swings next to this child and comforted her and was there for her for the rest of the day, until she died of her brain aneurysm.
And because he calmed her down and made her peaceful, none of the devastating effects of her death happened. She didn’t die in a lethal explosion to the city as Amanda Waller feared; she died in a peaceful removal of her environmental effects thanks to Batman. And Batman carried her body out, sadly.
https://m.primal.net/LQeA.png
After 14 years of action; that’s how the entire DCAU shared universe decided to end things. With Batman’s character in terms of how he deals with a dying child. Kindness over action. A sadness from multiple parties that can't be fixed, but can be met with kindness.
Few western sub-18 shows today would touch something like that, let alone make it their moral resolution for a 14-year arc.
This is my Batman.

2024-10-10 01:15:24 GMT

I have some family members facing this damn hurricane. I hope all is well down there.

2024-10-09 21:31:11 GMT

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Kind of, yeah. Like I mean if we’re talking legendary intro songs, I’d have to put Cowboy Bebop up there.

2024-10-09 18:53:38 GMT

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That episode was an absolute banger, and yeah it was the conclusion of Justice League Unlimited but also served as the conclusion for Batman Beyond which never otherwise got a proper conclusion. And thus by extension it closed out that entire Bruce Timm DC animated universe that ran from 1992 with Batman to 2006 with Justice League Unlimited.
I should write a note about that episode actually. The Batman/Ace seen was one of the biggest gut punches in kids animation history.

2024-10-09 17:39:53 GMT

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It was part of the same universe. The same executive producer Bruce Timm, and continuity. Batman, Superman, Beyond, and Justice League are like one big unit with a beginning and end.
I like it all.
And this was about the quality of the song intro.

2024-10-09 14:21:07 GMT

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It was, yeah. The whole DC animated universe of that era under Bruce Timm was amazing.

2024-10-09 14:19:08 GMT

I think out of all Saturday morning cartoons I watched as a kid, Batman Beyond had the coolest intro song/video.
It’s the only non-anime cartoon opener that I still remember today. Whenever the intro would play after whatever lame show it came after in the lineup, I’d be like “oh heck yeah!”
https://youtu.be/WS1s3T-rnFU

2024-10-09 14:15:13 GMT

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It depends. Many do outline the plot ahead of time, and I did. For me it’s not the end chapters that are hard but the late-middle.

2024-10-09 14:14:03 GMT

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Luckily an order of magnitude less complex than GoT!

2024-10-09 12:21:14 GMT

Does anyone have recommendations on an ideal way to buy bitcoin in Dubai?
I have a friend there asking for recommendations.

2024-10-08 01:16:08 GMT

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Yeah I’ve been documenting it here on Nostr for the past month. 75k words in. I don’t know if I’ll get it good enough to publish, but I do plan to finish a full draft.

2024-10-08 01:14:47 GMT

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Absolutely.

2024-10-08 01:03:04 GMT

The hardest part of my random crappy sci-fi novel hobby project, is going to be the first half of the third act.
The first two acts were very well outlined ahead of time. This story idea has been bouncing around in my head for a long time, and so when it became time to write it, most of it flowed easily.
And the climax of the third act has also been pretty well figured out for just as long.
It's that late-middle part that's still kind of a black box. The first half of the third act. It's not that I have nothing planned there, but rather it's like I have three potential paths to choose from, and various combinations between those paths.
Going to have to put a lot of thought into that section to tie the whole piece together.

2024-10-07 23:30:31 GMT

The Tao Te Ching was libertarian like 2,500 years before libertarianism became a thing.
Chapter 75: Stephen Mitchell translation:
When taxes are too high,
people go hungry.
When the government is too intrusive,
people lose their spirit.
Act for the people's benefit.
Trust them; leave them alone.

2024-10-07 18:19:34 GMT

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https://m.primal.net/LOAT.jpg

2024-10-07 01:09:39 GMT

In my ongoing sci fi story, there was one character where I wasn't sure whether they would live or die at the end. I decided it today.
I had outlined much of the plot from beginning to end with spots to fill in a while ago, but that particular outcome wasn't determined yet.
But after writing 75k words, and experiencing that character a lot, it gave me the right vibes on what to do.
https://m.primal.net/LNTL.png

2024-10-06 21:54:03 GMT

Been spending less time online this past week.
More time walking, and more time writing offline.

2024-10-04 03:03:50 GMT

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If “accidentally checked notifications when non-important people comment but they’re still fresh” qualifies, then sure.
And I do tend to get provoked on repetitious thematic items. People who do the “reply guy” thing for 25+ cynical posts in a row on any medium start to look like losers. I’m usually nice for like five times and then after that I’m like, “this is either a retard or someone purposely trolling.”
I don’t want you to look like a loser, Frank. You’re here on Nostr persistently and don’t even like bitcoin. That’s fine. That’s why I haven’t muted you yet but probably will soon like I do with bots increasingly, since you’re almost as predictable as bots now. I only mute bots and pseudo-bots.
Instead, I invite you to emotionally redirect however you see fit and recalibrate as a real person as though us Nostr folks were meeting in real life.
Because I highly doubt, if we had a Nostr meetup, you’d talk to me in person as you do here. I’ve had more meetups with people here than you probably have. In the flesh. I’d talk to you nearly the same in person as I do here. And I meet so many online critics at major events that become polite pussy cats face to face. Most enemies that tend to be the weird “online only” enemies tend to be way more polite in person.
I start out with the *shocking* notion that we are all real people having a virtual conversation online. I keep underestimating how inhuman most people get when they are distanced from social impacts face to face and so forth. They become weaker versions of themselves, and thus become ignorable not-like entities amid the bots.
That’s how I view you. I think and hope in real life that you’re a stronger and broader version of the narrow cynic you present on Nostr, because nobody who bothers to be here this long is as pathetic as your persona in real life. It would be sad if that was a real view. You’re better than what you present.
And yet, my weakness is that I resist the urge to mute unimportant people because I keep hoping that they will undergo the hero’s journey or “adulthood” and start acting in virtual world similarly to how they act in real life.

2024-10-04 02:28:54 GMT

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I scrolled down your timeline and it has zero or a few likes per post. There are no Nostr plebs listening to you.
It’s actually kind of sad. Just come back into realistic dialogue with the rest of us rather than being a cliche bot.

2024-10-04 02:23:59 GMT

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Yes, for fun. I don’t know if I will publish it.

2024-10-04 02:04:35 GMT

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I see a lot of personal bias on Nostr but not a lot of systemic intentional bias-fueled posts written purposely to manipulate. It’s not big enough for people to wake up and ask how they can inject the most misinformation as possible into a sentence, yet.

2024-10-04 02:01:06 GMT

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Because I’m writing about it for fun and education as I do it. This is social media.
I assume you are satire at this point. You go out of your way to be negative on any given thing. As a fictional character you would be considered one-dimensional and thus unrealistic by a test audience. Nobody is this one-dimensional without it being some intentional choice.

2024-10-04 01:53:16 GMT

Until election season is over, Twitter has reached rock-bottom to me.
I won’t say it’s unusable, since I am using it, but I have to navigate around its main thing to continue with the positive elements of the network effect that exists there.
And so many accounts are super biased on any given topic to a clearly irrational degree. I keep seeing things that seem like satire, but instead they are genuinely written to appeal to lower information people in a way that, from my perspective, is highly patronizing to them.
I find it so distasteful. The prior election year 2020 had a lot of polarizing elements obviously, but 2024 has more clearly conscious polarizing elements going on. Large influencer accounts whose motives are clear toward a broader audience with talking points geared toward child-level rhetoric and civic understanding. You can watch them as an observer speaking to their flock as though they were children.

2024-10-04 01:18:16 GMT

The gold standard that I reference as a baseline for how to write an exceptional supporting character in fiction, is Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes from Fullmetal Alchemist. Absolutely exceptional.
Two decades after my initial reading of him, he’s still phenomenal.
Fullmetal Alchemist, the mature manga/anime, has a world set in the early 1900s, except where alchemy is real magic, at least for the few people who dare to practice it. Alchemy is hard to do and has a high price. There’s also a massive alchemical conspiracy involved in the government and military that runs the main country of the setting.
Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes is not an alchemist. He’s just a kind and hard-working 30-ish year old guy that is really good and experienced and at his job in military intelligence. He’s also great with throwing knives as his main hobby.
In the early arcs of the story, Hughes befriends as a semi-mentor the younger main alchemical protagonists (Ed and Al) and is already a close friend with another military colleague major supporting senior character (Colonel Mustang, who is a flashier military officer and alchemist).
Hughes is incredibly friendly and positive, and sometimes serves as comic relief. The funny, chill guy. As all these heroes run around, he focuses on his work. And unlike all of them, he’s a family man; his wife and young daughter mean the world to him. He always wants to show everyone pictures of his 4-year old daughter; he’s just absolutely thrilled about his family.
But behind all the kindness, and correct obsession with his wife and daughter, he’s super smart. He’s a lieutenant colonel in military intelligence, after all. He’s not a genius or anything but basically he’s just highly competent professionally, socially, and ethically, and thus optimized his life well. He doesn’t pursue alchemy and so he doesn’t do all the magical things that some rare people do that can greatly exceed human capabilities in battles, but he’s great elsewhere.
In his military intelligence research, partially from talking to the protagonists, he figures out the entire main villain plot before anyone else does. Before all the protagonists and other supporting characters. He then tries to go to a private (non-surveilled) payphone to share that information with his close colleague Colonel Mustang, and is murdered in the process.
And that murder doesn’t go down smooth, since Maes isn’t a pushover. He gets attacked by a supernatural alchemical villain entity named Lust to stop him, and with his throwing knives he holds his own against her better than most humans would and manages to escape injured. And as he gets to the payphone, he is attacked by a second supernatural alchemical villain entity named Envy, who can transform into people. Envy transforms into a lower-ranking officer Hughes knows, but Hughes can tell it’s not really her from a minor detail, since he knows that officer well. So Envy transforms into Hughes’ wife. Since he adores his wife, that fucks him up even though he logically knows it’s not her. He hesitates at throwing a knife at his visual wife, and thus gets shot to death by Envy before he can relay the key information to Mustang and other heroes. He dies in the phone booth, seconds away from providing key information. He did everything right but was overwhelmed by the superior conspiracy. And yet his death left tiny clues.
The funeral scene is hardcore. Hughes’ wife is devastated, and his young daughter doesn’t even fully understand the concept of death yet. She cries and panics out loud at the funeral, wondering how her father is going to finish all his work while he’s in a box underground, which makes all the adult main and supporting characters absolutely die inside at how hard that is to hear.
Hughes gets post-humorously promoted two steps up to Brigadier General upon his death, by the key military leadership of the country who are behind the whole conspiracy. Colonel Mustang, who knows Hughes tried to contact him that night but doesn't know what about, devotes his entire focus for the rest of the story to figuring out what Hughes found and avenging his death. The protagonists (Ed and Al) are also devastated from it and keep him in mind.
The death of this supporting character sends arguably the biggest shockwave through the series in terms of emotion and plot. It's not a throwaway. It raises the stakes, gets all the main and semi-main characters dialed in, and he never gets reborn or anything like that. Hughes never comes back. He’s dead, survived by his wife and daughter, and his friends have to deal with that fact until the end of the series.
Few supporting character arcs hit harder than Maes Hughes, imo. Roughly two decades after first experiencing it, I’m still like, “damn.” That's one of those weeb generational impacts worth studying for fiction creators and appreciators.
https://youtu.be/h7QnAwJeJeg
https://youtu.be/xy9x9RMXrdc

2024-10-03 02:41:42 GMT

One thing I've come to appreciate about fiction writing is that it's as much problem solving as it is creativity.
Creativity is the spark of it. You start with a story idea. Vibes.
And then there's the basics. You have to put in your hours on reading fiction, and looking up tutorials on dialogue, exposition, structure, etc. Basically, spend a thousand hours reading things you like and reviewing all the mostly-right rules so that you can selectively break them when need be.
But the majority of the time actually spent on the craft, is problem solving. And as an engineer, that appeals to me. You have a series of scenes that need to happen for the story to occur, and have to figure out how to fill in the gaps to make one lead to another properly, i.e. mostly invisibly to the reader as though they're immersed and it's totally organic and really happened. And then you realize a plot hole with one of your scenes, and have to figure out how to tweak that scene or other scenes to fix the plot hole without creating more plot holes in a butterfly effect.
It clicks all the same fun challenge sensors that my brain has when it comes to engineering design or financial analysis.

2024-10-03 01:42:51 GMT

Currently listening.
https://youtu.be/VBLW0to9eZU

2024-10-02 19:17:54 GMT

At around 5pm eastern I’ll be participating in a panel at the New York Stock Exchange on the topic of Bitcoin/crypto ETFs.
With Nic Carter, Eric Balchunas, and Mike Green. They’ll livestream it on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/live/9HjylxjjCW4

2024-10-01 14:23:32 GMT

Markets be like
https://m.primal.net/LHaC.png

2024-10-01 00:12:39 GMT

During this talk, I dunked on Egypt's currency as my primary negative example of Broken Money multiple times.
And then during the Q&A, since this was Princeton, one audience member of course was like, "yeah, I was the former minister of finance in Egypt."
Imagine a movie where the main character is like, "freeze frame, rewind, how did we get here?" That was kind of my thought at the moment.
But he was cool. He ran finance for a two-year period during a benign environment. He wasn't the source of the issue, fully understood the issue of course, he asked good questions, and we talked afterward. But it was still one of my favorite "holy shit" moments in presentation history.
#note17jk…68dm

2024-09-30 23:15:57 GMT

Back in February I gave a Broken Money book talk at Princeton.
I put more prep into that presentation than any other I've done, since I often do firesides or panels and so forth. Eight months later it's still my go-to reference if someone wants the gist of the book. It recently crossed 100k views on Youtube.
https://youtu.be/soGXgiGoMRU

2024-09-30 14:23:16 GMT

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I thought about it and decided that bitcoin exists in the story but is like the size of gold at that point. Really big and common, but major fiat currencies still exist so far. Because the military industrial complex exists in the story, and hasn’t been de-fanged of its seigniorage yet.

2024-09-30 13:36:01 GMT

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Neither. Near-term on-earth sci fi. Can’t call it “hard” per se since some characters have telekinesis. Psionic abilities have always kind of been the sci fi version of magic, although in this world they are bound by conservation of energy and other details even though the underlying mechanism itself can’t necessarily be explained in rigorous hard sense.

2024-09-30 12:57:03 GMT

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Yeah that’s the main issue, that energy density. So for 10-20 years of tech progression I assumed better energy density. It’s not the only issue though. Lasers are a lot more fragile than normal guns. Guns get banged around all the time in the field for months and need to be incredibly robust, the electronics and optics of lasers kind of conflicts with that.

2024-09-30 12:53:12 GMT

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In my book draft, some guy needs a laser rifle for a specific purpose, and the guy giving it to him is like “these are pieces of shit man for reasons x y and z” but the other guy explains why he needs it anyway. And then I had to figure out what the gun’s details realistically are.

2024-09-30 12:49:13 GMT

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I’ve had some stories bouncing around in my head for years. And my husband is delayed overseas on a construction project, so I have a lot of extra alone time to write. Just ended up being the right time of interest and ability.

2024-09-30 12:47:56 GMT

I spent more hours than I care to admit yesterday studying laser guns, why they mostly suck compared to normal guns, and how one might design a less-awful laser gun given 10-20 years of better tech progression.

2024-09-30 11:25:05 GMT

Gm.
I wrote 60,000 words of (rough) fiction in the month of September. About half a novel. It’s been a really fun and creative process.
If you want to do something, just start. Starting is the hardest part for most things.

2024-09-29 06:04:50 GMT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIMb2lDIaYM&ab_channel=LinkinPark

2024-09-29 05:58:53 GMT

I love the comments to this note. Examples of people reconnecting.
#note15vu…w69v

2024-09-29 04:39:39 GMT

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An assessment of friendships that I'd consider eternal. And then a touchpoint on ones that were dormant.

2024-09-29 02:02:34 GMT

Woke up today and decided to reconnect with a very close college friend from 15 years ago. Just sent a minor note, he responded enthusiastically, and we caught up on 15 years of life. Happily to see how much he has gained in terms of profession, family, and hobbies while ultimately being the same person he was back then. Amplified.
Amazing connection. Took a total of 30 minutes back and forth.
My suggestion today is to reach out with a random act of kindness, or a distant reconnection. A reconnection might even be more for your own sake than theirs, but it often benefits both.

2024-09-28 17:22:32 GMT

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I met Phil briefly at a documentary filming. He was going to be interviewed after me. Before I left, I went over and was like “hey you probably don’t know me but I just wanted to say I’m a big fan of your work” and shook his hand. Dude’s a legend.

2024-09-27 02:49:49 GMT

Some of my readers today noticed that I dislike modern sub-3 minute songs.
My favorite newish rock band is The Warning. It's a rock band of three Mexican women. I've been a public proponent of them for over three years now. They have special potential, and keep growing.
They do some Metallica covers including of those older and longer songs. Naturally, I love it:
https://m.primal.net/LDLr.png
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-stoqv5W8RM&ab_channel=TheWarning

2024-09-26 22:45:35 GMT

Currently listening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6_hEscMgaQ&ab_channel=TheWarningVEVO

2024-09-26 21:38:24 GMT

A bad development for the Tornado Cash case, which has implications for bitcoin-based privacy tools as well.
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/09/26/tornado-cash-dev-roman-storms-criminal-case-will-proceed-to-trial-ny-judge-orders/

2024-09-26 20:59:42 GMT

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Sanderson has long action sequences that I like as an exception to my normal preference. They got a bit much for me in Mistborn Era 2 but in the first Mistborn trilogy and in Stormlight I liked them a lot.