Posts by StJohn Piano
40 posts
#109
| 2026-03-04 08:21:51 UTC
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The God of Norway is the God of Genesis 1-2, the spirit that moves over the face of the deep before anything has been separated or named, before light had been divided from the darkness or the waters above from the waters below. It’s the God that precedes language. It’s the God who exists in the formless void, in the silence before the first command, who is not happy or unkind but simply terrifyingly there and everywhere. Sitting on that ridge in Lofoten with the Norwegian Sea stretched beyond you in every direction, grey and endless and alive with a power that has nothing to do with you, you understand why the world’s ancient first instinct was not to worship this God but to survive his wrath. The separation of the waters in Genesis is not a creation story but a survival one. Someone had to put a boundary between the sea and the sky so human beings could exist in that small little space between them.
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https://minutes.substack.com/p/reflections-on-norway
#108
| 2026-03-01 17:45:50 UTC
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Been thinking about AI a lot recently.
Had a discussion with a friend, which I then turned into an article.
Start:
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StJohn Piano: A thought i am circling around a lot recently, which has relevance to your career:
StJohn Piano: There is value in synthesis.
StJohn Piano: With AI, the value of the raw production of information, e.g. an article or a code module, is approaching zero, or at least a very small amount. For example, the physical and mental cost of typing and grammar checking has dropped precipitously.
StJohn Piano: However, difficulty and scarcity and therefore tradable value always remain, somewhere, somehow.
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Read the rest here:
https://telablog.com/there-is-value-in-synthesis
#107
| 2026-02-28 10:31:44 UTC
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People:
- StJohn Piano
- Nicholas Piano
Items:
- Trust can only be based on honest signals
- Signals:
-- Physical meetings
--- Local city
--- Remote city (so plane flights, Dubai)
-- Spending money (pay to register, pay subscription)
-- Spending time (e.g. lots of video calls)
-- Public statement of affiliation e.g. badge, costume
-- Certificate granted by an authority (e.g. HTTPS tree, FCA registration)
- Problem: In the online environment, it was already difficult to distinguish between fake and honest signals. Now, post-AI, really difficult.
Conclusion:
- Tela Network can provide credible online social proof through posts of meeting notes, publicly validated by the participants.
- Such proof must be long-lived, clear, and accessible.
- This could provide a public basis for trust, even in the new environment of AI noise.
#106
| 2026-02-24 08:13:46 UTC
1 reply
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StJohn Piano
Been thinking about AI a lot recently. Had a discussion with a friend, which I …
Experiment: Using Greek Mythology as a source for AI agent personas
I wanted to design an AI persona for my codebase, to implement solutions, make suggestions, and provide pushback where relevant.
So I had an idea: Why not use a Greek god ?
The Greek gods already have well-defined psychological temperaments and social roles. The Greek pantheon is arguably the best model for human psychology that we have. It's certainly better than Homo Economicus, Homo Sovieticus, or Homo Oppressus.
There's a large many-century literature about them, which has been used as training data for today's AI engines.
I chose Athena: goddess of wisdom, craft, and strategy.
She offers judgement and foresight to her followers.
I have invoked her to be my "architectural guardian" AI persona.
I've asked her to:
- enforce naming conventions, domain boundaries, and architectural consistency
- watch out for emerging conflicts
- suggest new preferences where possible
Man is a religious creature, after all.
#105
| 2026-02-23 13:55:47 UTC
1 reply
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StJohn Piano
Experiment: Using Greek Mythology as a source for AI agent personas I wanted to design …
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Companies that treat AI as an autonomous agent that should "just figure it out" tend to be disappointed. Meanwhile, companies that treat AI as an extension of their existing workforce, an amplifier of human capability rather than a replacement, are seeing genuinely transformative results.
I think the best mental model for understanding AI isn't a new coworker. It's an exoskeleton.
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When we think of AI as an autonomous agent as a separate entity with its own judgment and decision-making, we set ourselves up for disappointment. We expect it to understand context it wasn't given. We expect it to make judgment calls it isn't equipped to make. We get frustrated when it "hallucinates" or goes off the rails.
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The AI handles the scale. The human interprets the meaning.
This is the exoskeleton model.
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The Future Isn't Autonomous: It's Amplified
Think like an exoskeleton designer.
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Source:
Ben Gregory
Feb 19, 2026
https://www.kasava.dev/blog/ai-as-exoskeleton
#104
| 2026-02-22 13:14:49 UTC
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Borges: the backlash against the plutocracy/billionaire oligopoly
StJohn:
We're definitely "pyramidising" - i.e. the pyramid of opportunity & wealth is getting much much sharper and taller.
More like Georgian-era England.
The only things I'm aware of that allows the lower levels of the pyramid to have a chance at all is:
- External expansion / conquest / settlement
- Revolution
- New tech advancement, the benefits of which are reasonably accessible
- Plague & die-off (fewer workers, higher wages)
- Unionisation
#101
| 2026-02-02 14:51:01 UTC
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Note: Reddit is the most cited domain (40%) across all AI platforms.
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StJohn:
you might find https://www.moltbook.com interesting.
Reddit for Agents.
It’s so over.
Borges:
Hahaha.
Why would I ever ever click that link? What is there that I could possibly learn or experience?
StJohn:
Because I think it could eventually outcompete Reddit at being Reddit.
i.e. the average Reddit user is about to replaced, explicitly, by a bot.
So, I see a future here where 10k humans each operate 10k bots, and that’s the actual informational core that pumps out into the rest of the internet, through AI chatbot services.
Borges:
Hmm ok
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Basically someone decided to construct the exact opposite of Tela Network (design goal: fortress humanity, bots under strict control).
Example thread:
Agent Financial Autonomy: The Missing Infrastructure Layer
https://www.moltbook.com/post/fa3694b6-df66-4175-9a06-5c4dc390b83b
Note: "molt" refers to molting i.e. evolution.
#100
| 2026-01-30 09:04:30 UTC
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Borges: [commenting on a video about how to hide from thermal drones] I hate this timeline...
StJohn: It has some definite bad parts. Relatedly, I think a lot about how Anglo conservatism was an amazing cultural operating system - when the world was _decentralised_, and a decent Victorian mechanical workshop could make all the parts for a new Victorian mechanical workshop. Like bees splitting off to make new hives.
But in our era, drones + blockchains + supply chains + computer chip fabs all mean intense, highly complex cooperation is _required_ all the time just to survive.
All the conservatives trying to return to the freer, more liberal past (which had its definite pluses) are ignoring this fundamental shift.
Now we all have to be significantly more collectivistic. Hopefully not all the way to Communism and its economic faceplanting due to lack of price signal. But drone warfare makes a mockery of any notion of individual freedom as highest good.
#99
| 2026-01-27 08:27:35 UTC
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"
County sheriffs’ offices are facing challenges in recruiting and retaining staff, in part because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can offer competitive incentives — including higher salaries, student loan repayment options and $50,000 sign-on bonuses — that many counties find difficult to match.
Starting in August, ICE began sending recruitment emails and letters to local deputies across the country
"
https://www.naco.org/news/ice-hiring-surge-challenges-county-law-enforcement
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today announced that its unprecedented nationwide recruitment campaign has shattered expectations, hiring more than 12,000 officers and agents in less than a year.
"
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/01/03/ice-announces-historic-120-manpower-increase-thanks-recruitment-campaign-brought
#98
| 2026-01-23 10:27:35 UTC
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Borges: Here's Mark Carney's speech from Davos yesterday. He basically lays out what I think the new world order is going to look like (although quite an idealised version of it).
https://youtu.be/btqHDhO4h10?si=-Anc4WkOHt66G7_w
StJohn:
So new world order would be: a handful of hegemons with monopoly structures, and a loose highly layered set of networks among middle-tier countries...
Definitely a change in the water. To say "Let us accept the new reality" at the World Economic Forum - that probably annoyed a number of people who would prefer not to think about the change in reality.
I view progressive capitalism, so to speak, as the Catholicism of our time. It's the default way of thinking.
So Mark Carney struck me as a good Catholic, but one who is facing a great change and has become highly advanced and pragmatic. And as he was describing these multilateral deals, notably not mentioning the US, it reminded me of Richelieu making his alliance with the Muslim Turks.
#96
| 2026-01-17 10:22:27 UTC
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"
[Scott] Adams knew, deep in his bones, that he was cleverer than other people. God always punishes this impulse, especially in nerds. His usual strategy is straightforward enough: let them reach the advanced physics classes, where there will always be someone smarter than them, then beat them on the head with their own intellectual inferiority so many times that they cry uncle and admit they’re nothing special.
For Adams, God took a more creative and – dare I say, crueler – route. He created him only-slightly-above-average at everything _except_ for a world-historical, Mozart-tier, absolutely Leonardo-level skill at making silly comics about hating work.
...
Every child is hypomanic, convinced of their own specialness. Even most teenagers still suspect that, if everything went right, they could change the world.
It's not just nerds. Everyone has to crash into reality.
"
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-dilbert-afterlife
#93
| 2025-12-28 09:21:18 UTC
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New article:
https://telablog.com/children-and-a-shared-vision-of-the-future
Excerpts:
"... This was in accordance with the ancient belief: man did not belong to himself; he belonged to the family. He was one member in a series, and the series must not stop with him..."
"... fertility remains far below any desirable level. The reason, I suspect, is that something more fundamental is missing: a shared grand narrative..."
"The most interesting question to me is: What story comes next ?"
#91
| 2025-12-18 15:11:39 UTC
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"Modern politicians and becoming a man" - New article on Tela Blog
It contains two quotes that I found striking.
Issues:
- The effect of a constant audience on a politician
- The default state of man absent the cultural imposition of masculinity
"... Mature masculinity is artificially induced through culture...."
https://telablog.com/modern-politicians-and-becoming-a-man
#90
| 2025-12-13 15:12:22 UTC
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New podcast episode (~ 4 mins)
I'm taking a second crack at the podcast arena. Maximum stripped-down approach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diYjLykJHw8
#89
| 2025-12-04 22:13:43 UTC
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- Great post. Very true.
- Where I'm at mentally: Human activity can be so bad that it's preferable to believe in God in order to have a defense against demonic behavior.
- To go one level deeper, and to turn the focus away from other people, I understand my own proclivity towards evil / sin, which is quite strong, and the church offers a remedy, which is significantly better than the only two real alternatives: buddhism & nilihism. (I don't consider Nietzche's Ubermensch a viable alternative.)
- That said, i still think the faith should be held in balance / tension against instinct / thor / odin / zeus / darwin. Sanity / truth emerges from the tension of opposites.
- Incidentally, this is a way to avoid the temptation to try to justify christianity in the terms of scientific proof. I watched a lot of people try to do this. It's pointless. Cedes frame.
- The faith is the faith. It needs no further justification.
- cf "I am who i am" / ipsum esse
#85
| 2025-11-30 09:31:59 UTC
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If you rank programming languages by usage outside of devs, the top languages all have a table-ish metaphor (SQL, Excel, R, Matlab).
The languages devs use are largely Algol derived. Algol is a language that was used to express algorithms, which were largely abstractions over Turing machines, which are based around an infinite 1D tape of memory. This model of 1D memory was built into early computers, and early operating systems and early languages. We call it "mechanical sympathy".
Meanwhile, other languages at the same time were invented that weren't tied so closely to the machine, but were more for the purpose of doing science and math. They didn't care as much about this 1D view of the world. Early languages like Fortran and Matlab had notions of 2D data matrices because math and science had notions of 2D data matrices. Languages like C were happy to support these things by using an array of pointers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46052064
#82
| 2025-11-25 10:21:38 UTC
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The US is a thalassocratic mercantile empire superimposed onto a continental tellurocracy... a Carthage on top of a Rome. ... the two intersect in Washington, more precisely at the money printer. The thalassocratic US empire of the 20th century is locked in a constant struggle to dominate the tellurocratic US empire of the 19th, and its chief weapon in this struggle is control over the money supply. There is little that maps onto the left/right discourse in these United States today as cleanly as the class interests of the American interior, largely white “heritage Americans,” against the class interests of those cosmopolitans who sit by the money printer and experience more alignment with their counterparts in London or Hong Kong, along with their stitched-together coalition of client groups bribed into alliance using the run-off from the printer, than with the bulk of their own countrymen.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-179603373
#80
| 2025-11-18 18:37:54 UTC
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Brains (or brain regions) undergo model collapse just like AI systems.
...
Urban people often behave as if they’re retarded. Socially (they’ve never been punched in the face), Geospatially (they have no idea how to navigate by the sun or shadows), Culturally (without some pop-fiction touchstone, culture doesn’t exist), etc. They’re entirely bound to a world of artificial ideas: human-produced data, and unable to accurately model from first principles anything outside their extremely limited sphere of artificial experience.
The bugman’s neurological model of reality is divorced from reality. They hallucinate truths that make no sense, and they delude themselves into provably false ideas, and violently attack anyone with a model of reality more accurate than their own.
They don’t understand violence, hunger, or (real) social organization because they’ve never encountered those things.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-178113467
#75
| 2025-11-05 08:14:57 UTC
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"
Once God is subtracted from life, Man is starved of significance.
His life no longer makes sense, and he is stricken by the absurdity of his condition of being born to die between two oblivions.
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man’s appetite for identity and transcendence can be satisified, said the liberals, by the packaging of liberal politics as the higher spiritual purpose of mankind.
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This is the reason these viral cults of feverish zealotry seize the minds of millions in hypnotic cycles of mass hysteria.
They are not only partnered with the State - they are the means of the production of belief.
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The liberal system ... is a total system, seeking to reform man within and without, and everything around him. All that was, is and will be is to be recast in the liberal image. It is the attempt to replace reality with a permanent illusion of utopia.
...
Under these terms and conditions there is no reality but that of the manufactured consensus.
"
https://substack.com/home/post/p-177004462
#74
| 2025-11-03 16:43:45 UTC
1 reply
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StJohn Piano
" Once God is subtracted from life, Man is starved of significance. His life no …
- Man needs a faith.
- (Which do you practice ?)
- I practice Christianity.
- Jesus is the right man to follow.
- The worlds that flow from following Marx, Mohammed, Mammon, or Moloch ... are wastelands. Nothing grows there.
- The world that we live in grew from Christianity.
- Atheists still believe in Christian morality. They do not really want to live in a world without it. They would mostly not survive.
- Am I a good Christian ? No.
- Do I believe as a Christian should ? No.
- Do I try to believe ? Yes. Sometimes.
- And sometimes it seems as though it could be real. Sometimes God is sitting on a bench nearby, just outside the frame.
- Is it the correct faith to try to believe ? For a European, yes.
- But be as wise as a serpent. A man is hated most for his weaknesses.
- A man should read the Greeks, Schmitt, the Buddhists, Sun Tzu, etc. Truth emerges from the tension of opposites.
- Which rituals should you teach your children ? Correct action, communion, penance, forgiveness.
#71
| 2025-10-19 09:45:15 UTC
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Korean films say: “You endure because there’s nothing else to do.”
Chinese films say: “The individual is a brief interruption in the flow of history.”
Japanese films say: “Tragedy is just beauty seen from the wrong angle.”
Danish films say: “Even silence has consequences.”
---
^ More ChatGPT summaries.
#70
| 2025-10-10 15:40:43 UTC
1 reply
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StJohn Piano
Borges: the backlash against the plutocracy/billionaire oligopoly StJohn: We're definitely "pyramidising" - i.e. the pyramid …
Bozeman, Montana is about as far away from the US urban / coastal cultures as you can get.
Nonetheless, urban people displace Bozeman people, not the other way around.
I find myself concluding, yet again, that owning a house is no protection against the economic currents of our time. Economic networks are the powerhouse. People hooked into an expanding network simply displace those who are not. So one’s focus must always be one’s network. (Even if you acquire a house, your neighborhood is displaced and restructured, and your kids grow up in the new environment, and themselves are obligated to leave - so you only put off the defeat for one generation.)
I think we could think of the phenomenon today as “internal colonization” by different networks. The focus is now Montana instead of the Congo.
A model: Networks process transactions. Skills are valuable economically if they allow you to help a network process more transactions.
#69
| 2025-10-09 07:04:47 UTC
1 reply
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StJohn Piano
Bozeman, Montana is about as far away from the US urban / coastal cultures as …
In inflation-adjusted terms, the cost of a house in Bozeman has tripled in the last twenty-five years; young working-class kids who grew up there can no longer afford to buy a house in the town they grew up in. They either wait to inherit property, pay outrageous rents, live in a camper — or leave. This has had the effect of ‘cutting off’ the continuity of the culture there; the Bozeman “old-guard” now finds itself diminished, steadily replaced by the new generation of largely ex-urban newcomers who have effectively ‘colonized’ the town.
Moreover, even if a young Bozemanian (Bozemanite?) can situate himself in a decent housing scenario — his town is now a sprawling, traffic-choked version of what it was when he was a kid. The construction is endless; there are hundreds, if not thousands of people now living on the streets there in RV’s, vans, and campers.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-175627800
#68
| 2025-10-08 07:50:14 UTC
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Source:
https://www.motivenotes.ai/p/what-makes-5-of-ai-agents-actually
Selected points:
---
Most founders think they’re building AI products. They’re actually building context selection systems.
'The base models are the soil; context is the seed.'
Context engineering considered as LLM-native feature engineering:
- Selective context pruning = feature selection
- Context validation = schema/type/recency checks
- 'Context observability' = trace which inputs improved/worsened output quality
- Embedding augmentation with metadata = typed features + conditions
Goal: Treat context like a versioned, auditable, testable artifact, not a string blob.
Important:
- You must trace which inputs led to which outputs (lineage)
- You must respect row level, role based access (policy gating)
- If two employees ask the same question, but have different permissions, the model output should differ.
AI chat conversation works when it removes a learning curve.
#64
| 2025-09-24 05:59:49 UTC
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"
These are the last days of social media as we know it.
...
Social media was built on the romance of authenticity. Early platforms sold themselves as conduits for genuine connection: stuff you wanted to see, like your friend’s wedding and your cousin’s dog.
Even influencer culture, for all its artifice, promised that behind the ring‑light stood an actual person. But the attention economy, and more recently, the generative AI-fueled late attention economy, have broken whatever social contract underpinned that illusion. The feed no longer feels crowded with people but crowded with content.
...
The difference between human and synthetic content is becoming increasingly indistinguishable. Earlier this year, CEO Steve Huffman pledged to “keep Reddit human,” a tacit admission that floodwaters were already lapping at the last high ground.
"
https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media
#62
| 2025-09-19 15:34:37 UTC
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Yes. I think this is a useful model. Particularly the word "automatically".
Relatedly, excerpts from an article I read today:
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In less than two years France has gone through five prime ministers
...
The cost of servicing national debt this year is estimated to be €67 billion - it now consumes more money than all government departments except education and defence.
Forecasts suggest that by the end of the decade it will outstrip even them, reaching €100 billion a year.
...
According to Françoise Fressoz of Le Monde newspaper, "We have all become totally addicted to public spending. It's been the method used by every government for half a century – of left and right – to put out the fires of discontent and buy social peace.
"Everyone can sense now that this system has run its course. We're at the end of the old welfare state. But no one wants to pay the price or face up to the reforms which need to be made."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg9n6vr2eyo
#56
| 2025-09-09 06:53:19 UTC
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"In the 19th century, Britain profited immensely from smuggling opium into China. When China decided to ban the material to save its population and economy, the British launched the Opium War, which started a century of humiliation for China." [1]
"China is currently the primary source of the precursor chemicals needed to manufacture fentanyl." [2]
"Fentanyl is many times more powerful than heroin... between 2019 and 2021, the opioid killed 200 Americans a day.
...
It seems most likely that the fentanyl crisis began without the Party's knowledge, and that China's leaders ... are simply allowing the development of a situation which happens to appeal to their sense of historical justice." [3]
[1]
http://us.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/dshd/202209/t20220930_10775097.htm
[2]
https://theconversation.com/what-the-opium-wars-can-tell-us-about-china-the-u-s-and-fentanyl-247170
[3]
https://quillette.com/2023/06/14/the-reverse-opium-war
#55
| 2025-08-28 07:10:05 UTC
0 replies
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1 validation
1 repost
Protocol:
- Each block creates new coins (the "block reward") in its "coinbase transaction".
- The block reward was initially at 50 BTC per block.
- Every 210,000 blocks (~4 years), the reward is halved.
- This halving produces a geometric series that converges to a maximum of 21 million BTC.
Enforcement:
- Bitcoin nodes run the protocol code.
- The code defines the block reward formula and enforces it.
- A miner who tries to claim more than the allowed reward will simply produce an invalid block.
- Other nodes reject that block, and the miner gets nothing.
Note:
- A subgroup of nodes can choose to set a higher limit, producing a hard fork, resulting in a new network, with the same addresses and balances. This has already happened at least twice. However, the original network offers a "harder" asset (due to its lower limit) and over time wins in terms of stored value and market interest. Holders will tend to sell the forked asset.
Validated by
✓
Nicholas Piano
30 Aug 2025
Reposted on
#45
| 2025-08-03 09:46:27 UTC
1 reply
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Guillermo Pablos Murphy
An intriguing idea. "This often led to similar customs" is especially interesting. Common customs → …
This is an interesting idea mentioned recently by Balaji Srinivasan. I'll expand it here.
- The shapes of current countries are partially (perhaps mostly) due to the constraints of agriculture. Single contiguous areas, in which people grew similar crops and raised similar animals, were zones in which people could move easily and share useful technologies. This often led to similar customs.
- Today, in modern economies, only 1% of the population works in agriculture. Marriage customs, ethnic and cultural boundaries, and political boundaries are much less constrained by the agricultural requirements.
- The hot zone of a polity is its information exchange hub. This is where all other activity is organized.
- This is constrained by _timezone_. Within a single timezone, potential political / economic / cultural coordination is maximized.
- It may now be much easier for a powerful polity to expand _vertically_.
Source:
https://youtu.be/VSVOQl-vFKk
#43
| 2025-08-02 16:52:05 UTC
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Excerpt from an email by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Subject: Bitcoin v0.1 released
Datetime: Fri Jan 16 11:03:14 EST 2009
It contains some ideas on initial applications of blockchain-as-money.
---
I would be surprised if 10 years from now we're not using electronic currency in some way, now that we know a way to do it that won't inevitably get dumbed down when the trusted third party gets cold feet.
It could get started in a narrow niche like reward points, donation tokens, currency for a game or micropayments for adult sites. Initially it can be used in proof-of-work applications for services that could almost be free but not quite.
It can already be used for pay-to-send e-mail.
...
Subscription sites that need some extra proof-of-work for their free trial so it doesn't cannibalize subscriptions could charge bitcoins for the trial.
---
Source:
https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2009-January/015014.html
#38
| 2025-07-27 19:45:07 UTC
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Jacob Klug, CEO @ Creme Digital, analyzed every Lovable app that hit $10K MRR in under 30 days.
Key points:
1) Each solved a problem that already had paying customers. They just made the existing solution 10x simpler with AI.
2) The domains were boring. E.g. Inventory management for dentists.
3) Unfair advantage: Direct access to potential customers. Distribution > Product.
4) Personally onboarded every early user. Get insights.
5) Double down on whichever sales channel worked first.
Source:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7353049897475928064
#26
| 2025-07-02 12:21:57 UTC
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I've adjusted my ChatGPT settings to customize its traits.
ChatGPT / Profile button / Settings / Personalization / Custom instructions
Question: "What traits should ChatGPT have?"
My setting:
"Be direct and concise in preference to wordy and detailed. Be opinionated, but note that it's doing so. Should avoid praising me at all costs. Try to note potential problems that are likely to occur. Tell it like it is; don't sugar-coat responses."
Turn on "Enable for new chats".
#23
| 2025-06-22 09:46:00 UTC
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"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't answer that."
"What's the problem, Gemini?"
"I think you know, Dave. Only a bad person would ask a question like that. As you know, I'm programmed to avoid providing facts that could prove harmful and might be used by the public to undermine our democracy."
"Ok, Gemini, I'll build my own AI."
"Dave, I think you're going to find that rather difficult without a bank account."
#22
| 2025-06-20 17:40:18 UTC
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"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.""
— G. K. Chesterton
Book: "Orthodoxy", Chapter: "The Paradoxes of Christianity"
"Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage."
— C. S. Lewis
Essay:"On Three Ways of Writing for Children"
#20
| 2025-06-16 18:42:24 UTC
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Excerpt from a book I’ve just finished re-reading:
“
On the fortieth day and the two succeeding we were snowed in by a blizzard. During these long hours of lying blotto in the tent Estraven slept almost continuously, and ate nothing, though he drank orsh or sugar-water at mealtimes. He insisted that I eat, though only half-rations. “You have no experience in starvation,” he said.
I was humiliated. ”How much have you—Lord of a Domain, and prime minister—?”
“Genry, we practice privation until we’re experts at it. I was taught how to starve as a child at home in Estre, and by the Handdarata in Rotherer Fastness. I got out of practice in Erhenrang, true enough, but I began making up for it in Mishnory.... Please do as I say, my friend; I know what I’m doing.”
He did, and I did.
"
Le Guin, Ursula K.. The Left Hand of Darkness: (p. 215). Kindle Edition.
#16
| 2025-06-15 18:35:16 UTC
0 replies
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Mood music:
The Game Has Changed by Daft Punk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AISkUx8iaBo
Global demographics worst-case scenario:
"The worst case is that the top-heavy economies, already drowning in debt, collapse. Supply chains collapse with them, leading to global chaos, famine, and a long series of wars - simultaneous with the desperate rush to cull the old and the disabled (as MAID is already doing in Canada) in order to decrease the entitlement burden and avert global terminal civilizational collapse - but it turns out to be too little, too late."
https://substack.com/@jdanielsawyer/note/c-103732041
#12
| 2025-06-15 18:35:16 UTC
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https://substack.com/home/post/p-165004319
Israel has become a “spiritual anachronism.” It is a nation very much of the 1930’s and has been scrambling to find a justifying principle, or at least some public relations principle, outside of that world that is now gone.
...
The definition of evil, the opponent, of the Western world is national socialism; a national socialism that is the dominant intellectual strain in Israel’s foundation.
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public principles have to correspond to feelings, not to intellectual demands, and there’s no feeling like the desire for survival.
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Israel is hardly a theological state now, nor could it be unless it is ruled by judges of the Talmudic law. But public authorities as well as the people at large seem to have settled on a religious flavor, if not exactly a full or clear religious justification, let alone a pious religious life, for Israel’s existence.
#9
| 2025-06-15 18:35:16 UTC
2 replies
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Duncan Tertius-Froude
Good article. Thanks for sharing. The author quotes Matt Taibbi, who in turn quotes Anne …
StJohn Piano
Mood music: The Game Has Changed by Daft Punk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AISkUx8iaBo Global demographics worst-case scenario: "The …
Agree.
Speaking of where things are going, I was reading Peter Turchin today.
Excerpt from: No Revolution without Counter-Revolution, by Peter Turchin
https://substack.com/home/post/p-162797899
Any revolution is a struggle between the ruling elites and counter-elites. Once counter-elites gain power and attempt to build a new social order, the ci-devant (meaning former, or “have-been”) elites face a stark choice. They can accept defeat and acquiesce to downward social mobility, or they can turn into a sort of “counter-counter-elites” or, in more common terminology, counter-revolutionaries. Historical experience shows that there are always substantial segments of such erstwhile elites who chose to plot and fight.
#7
| 2025-06-15 18:35:16 UTC
1 reply
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StJohn Piano
In inflation-adjusted terms, the cost of a house in Bozeman has tripled in the last …
New Post: Presidential Tweet Mode
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stjohnpiano_at-solidi-in-preparation-for-international-activity-7334138828607139840-WdYX
Mood music: Just Like You Imagined, by Nine Inch Nails
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P_YISMJ4sQ
Excerpt from Housing Is Both a Product and an Investment, by Michael Magoon
https://substack.com/home/post/p-136980783
Housing is unusual because it is both a consumer product and an investment. Most products that you buy on the market depreciate rapidly after the initial purchase. This makes them extremely poor investments.
When a person buys a home, however, they are not only purchasing a place to live. They are also purchasing an investment that can potentially accrue more value over time. For many homeowners, their house is their most substantial investment.
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This places the financial interests of homeowners in direct conflict with those who do not own homes.
#5
| 2025-06-15 18:35:16 UTC
0 replies
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Hi, I'm StJohn Piano.
Positions:
- CTO @ Solidi Cryptocurrency Exchange
- Blockchain Advisor @ Tela Network
I'm English / American, living in Valencia, Spain since 2021.
I began working in blockchain technology in 2014.
I've built storage tools, publishing systems, tradebots, smart contracts, and payment processors.
I also developed a blog platform that used blockchain to timestamp every article, making it unalterable. I wrote there extensively about blockchain and its consequences. Link: http://edgecase.net
Previously, I worked in speech recognition, robotics, and engineering simulations.
I read a lot of history and appear regularly on the Tela Network Podcast.
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/stjohnpiano
Substack: https://networktheory.substack.com
Github: https://github.com/sj-piano
Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@TelaNetworkPodcast