The Bugle Weekly — July 15, 2026 · 11 min

Richard Greaser discusses the current state of Bitcoin culture, criticizing the “pleb node movement” and its negative impact on the community. He reflects on the TV show “Andor” and its themes of rebellion and freedom, drawing parallels to the Bitcoin space. Greaser also delves into spiritual perspectives on adversity, emphasizing the importance of finding meaning and purpose in the face of challenges.

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Topics & Timestamps

• 0:00 — Rebellion and the Imperial order
• 1:18 — The current state of Bitcoin culture
• 10:32 — Critique of the pleb node movement
• 16:20 — Reflections on Andor and revolution
• 31:26 — Spiritual perspectives on adversity

Pull Quotes

Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously, and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy.

There are whole armies, battalions, that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere, and even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

There’s nothing inspiring about arguing with grumpy Nazis.

What started as this attempt to differentiate good intentioned individuals that were excited about something turned into a movement of a bunch of low context easily manipulable goofballs.

In a representative democracy, the pleb is not actually given a vote on anything consequential. They vote instead for other individuals who will then vote on things that are consequential.

I don’t wanna be the one feeding the cancer Looking in the mirror, asking if I’m just a puppet in their play I’m just trying so hard to find my way

Pain and darkness are what pushes us to grow I know there will be better days It’s what lets me carry this weight

Full Transcript

Read the full transcript

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously, and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions, that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere, and even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this, the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it’s so unnatural. Tiridine requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try. hello and welcome back folks to another subscriber episode this is rich greaser you know to be honest i have probably recorded uh like four hours of content that i have discarded and i am confident this time i’m not so you can hear the finished product of this but yeah i’ve been thinking a lot and just reflecting a lot on what i’m seeing in the bitcoin culture right now it’s something i do regularly and you know sometimes it takes me a lot of time to just like sit and process what i’m seeing to step back to you know poke and prod And it is very, very clear that a lot of people are very scared right now for a variety of reasons. When you listen to the scared Nazi pleb talk, they’re terrified that Bitcoin, this thing that has been their savior, their anchor, for some of them years, some of them it’s a relatively new thing. They’re terrified that it’s going to be taken from them by other people, by the bad guys, by the financial institutions, by the spammers, by, you know, all these individuals and characters that are, one, using Bitcoin differently than them, are different than them, think different than them, have different incentives than them, and that they have very little understanding. up and you know for many of these you know nazi uh scared nazi plebs they they have a low context for one how bitcoin works but like how the larger broader ecosystem of the way that people interact with bitcoin they’ve got their people that they they hang out and talk with on on social media on nostr on twitter they’ll listen to the same podcast as them they gauge perspective or like their entire perspective and in the way that they gauge sentiment is based on youtube comments on on twitter comments on the vibes that they feel as they’re watching somebody through a screen a computer screen they listen to the person’s the inflection in their voice they you know they it’s they they don’t shake these people’s hands very regularly or like have interactions with them in person or sit down with them at bars you know for a long time and so there there’s a lack of entropy in the way that individuals oftentimes are shaping their their perceptions and i think we’re all at danger of this and this is really one of the dangers you know just today my entire feed is about people talking about how the twitter algorithm has rapidly change or massively change they’re like i see my friends now hello friends i missed you the way that these algorithms work on these social platforms is they essentially are framing and creating reality for these people and i’ve noticed that the more that i engage with a certain topic the more that I see the topic. And I get kind of tired of it because I just get tired of engaging with these topics from time to time. There’s nothing inspiring about arguing with grumpy Nazis. And I’m not really sure how grumpy Nazis are. I think there a variety of reasons why I have targeted the plebs so much And it not because I don like these people It’s not because I don’t think that they’re bad people. It’s because I think they need a little bit of a reality check for their own sake. For their own sanity. That they’re getting their vortexes spinned by plebsloppers. And they have no idea. they just have no defense for this uh whatsoever that even you know the the the base premise of you know referring to themselves as plebs and associating with each other as plebs is counterproductive in and of itself you know in in talking with people like you know avi burro for example who is somebody that i i like and respect a lot who had a brand based on pleb you know some my great friends like John and Max, they, you know, ran a podcast, Pleb Minor Mafia, or Pleb Minor Monthly. They have a group chat. You know, the term pleb was popular for a while, and it essentially meant that you weren’t an industry shill. And it’s how people learned to associate with each other is there was the insiders, the shills, and then there was the plebs. Like the plebs was an individual that was an enthusiast that didn’t have like an expressed, you know, interest in anything. Or so they claimed they’re just a, you know, goofball that listened to a lot of podcasts and, you know, wanted to have a positive impact on the world. And they were tired of seeing people like pop, chill block five or whatever. And, you know, what happened with this group of people that were super passionate, you know, a bunch of meme gangs, the meme gangs were made up with plebs. Like, what happened with this group of people is a lot of people began working in the industry in one way or another. And a lot of the people that were working in the industry figured out that they could virtue signal to the plebs and they could become loyal customers. And so there became this giant operation by savvy marketers to essentially traffic the plebs as their product base. So, you know, VCs would fund these companies. the companies would put all this marketing spend into marketing in the plabs they would they would spin their vortexes get them all excited give them a moral crusade they would issue purity tests and the purity tests were meant to differentiate this company from their competitors they they might not have a competitive edge but they they can issue you know purity tests and market to the clubs and you know understand the social ecosystem and that gives them enough differentiation to get a strong customer base and so what started as this attempt to differentiate good intentioned individuals that were excited about something turned into a movement of a bunch of low context easily manipulable goofballs and and that’s what a large portion of this this whole discussion around BIP 110 has been and what is frustrating about it is that it’s really poisoned the conversation because when you have a bunch of individuals that have no idea what they’re talking about and they just like stand up and they stop their feed they make a bunch of noise it drowns out any individuals that have any legitimate criticisms you know they latch on to unproductive activities that that are not going to yield the results that they’re looking for because they are they’re afraid and they’re they’re ignorant and they’re being manipulated with you know very like blatant kind of populist tactics instead of we the people it’s we the plabs you know just the bullshit the same bullshit in you know that you see the kayfabe that you see in politics and it’s they’re demanded they think they can demand that to be taken seriously and they’re not being serious which is why you know i think it’s important to to to reflect back to them that they’re not serious and they’re they’re not going to realize it for a while if they if they have the self-awareness to ever realize it like the only way that they’re going to realize is it is through pain and through bad decisions and through you know living in in fear for a lot of time and you know because when you when you turn your brain off and you run around like a chicken with your head cut off like a pleb scared pleb it’s bad for the relationships in your life it’s bad for making critical decisions like you’re just not gonna you’re not gonna do too well but anyway so i i want i wrote this article and i didn want to turn this all into to bit 110 but think you know there some themes that I want to talk about that I think are important And I get to it after I read this article So you know the article that I wrote, it’s called the case for banning plebs from running notes. Bitcoin discourse has gotten political consisting of name calling, smear campaigns and scrutiny over developers’ sex lives. Plebs do not understand technical merits and therefore cannot debate them. When developers explain technical ideas to them, they say they disagree and that it was never explained to them. I don’t think that plebs are bad people. I believe what we are witnessing is a serious social problem. Tragedy of the commoner. Most of us have come to the conclusion that a representative democracy is the best form of governance. The plebs elect leaders who decide what the plebs are allowed and not allowed to do. Should the plebs be able to do drugs? Should the plebs be able to drive drunk? Should the plebs be able to open a bank account without a government ID? Should the plebs be able to board an airplane without getting their balls fondled by a mall cop? The plebs feel like they have a sense of control by choosing the leaders who make the decisions for them. Yet they actually contribute very little in the process. This pacifies them. When children are idle in restaurants and other areas that require them to sit and focus, they’re often given things like coloring books to keep them entertained and occupied the pleb is very similar in the voting mechanism as well as all the kayfabe that goes along with it the political process to capture their buy-in to the voting process is like a coloring book for a child at the cheesecake factory the adults the Epstein client list sit and determine the future outcome of the world and the plebs are mesmerized by their plebs slot in the restaurant if the child begins to become distracted or unfocused the adults need to give them a new activity to do or maybe guide them through an activity to help them refocus the constant change in power between different figureheads is similar to changing activities for children at the dinner table it creates variety and prevents them from being bored more importantly it creates an oscillation back and forth between outrage and feeling relatively at peace as their leaders switch back and forth between representing superficial values that they either share or despise there’s a different segment of the population though that can’t be so easily distracted by cave by k fabian circus great pleb revolt current pleb revolt against bitcoin core is that they are seeking a cathartic change in leadership which they are accustomed to experiencing in democracies. They feel something is wrong, do not know how to name it, and have populist figureheads giving a name to their feelings, even if they still do not understand what is happening. The great man, great villain myth is playing out right before our eyes. Fingers are ported towards a great villain. the extraordinarily hot former bitcoin core maintainer gloria and a heroic hero steps in to save the day luke with mechanic as a spokesman without the ability to supplant a vigor head without any significant structural change in the system itself instead what is happening is the pleb revolt is actually looking to create real structural change the bitcoin development process a revolt has the opportunity to spread into a violent uncontrolled revolution the logical solution it should be simple to see that there’s a pretty straightforward solution to all the drama which is that the plebs should be banned from running notes people are allowed to participate in the circus of democracy by running for office but there are minimum thresholds for them to do so in having to get past primaries, canvassing by collecting large amounts of signatures, and needing organizational capabilities to accomplish this. While there is no actual mechanism to ban a pleb from running a node yet, mechanisms such as making node costs so cost-prohibitive and complicated that plebs won’t do it are entirely possible and should be considered. In a representative democracy, the pleb is not actually given a vote on anything consequential. They vote instead for other individuals who will then vote on things that are consequential. As has thoroughly been documented by Professor Crowder’s Bitcoin University, having a node is having a direct vote, which is far too much power for the uninformed pleb. Order and balance should be restored to the Bitcoin development and can be accomplished by implementing similar strategies that have been implemented by American representative democracy For those who are discouraged by the raucous caused by the Kayfabians listen to Marz Spitzbar case for the novel option of not going to note I’ll play that here in a second after this. But I finish by saying, thank you for reading my article. I’ve put countless hours into writing this on my typewriter with my wife to describing it onto Twitter. We have smoked many cigarettes. if you would like to support my credential journalism please subscribe to and boost my podcast which so happens to be the most thermodynamically sound podcast in the world thank you for being a subscriber to it but uh here’s uh so mars is crashing out today on twitter spaces with the this terrence guy and i’ll uh turn it up to 2x speed so we get through it faster.

I would love to, and again, I’m not the most type of person in the room. I’d like to see that happen. I actually came up to advocate the opposite. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a growing movement called the Not Gonna Node movement, and it’s for the technologically illiterate retards such as you and me. If you can’t understand the basics, why get involved? You can actually choose to not run a node. In fact, you can offload those responsibilities to the poors and the plebs and the third worlders. You don’t have to worry about this, bro. You can spend time living your life, raising a family, doing things that make you happy, as opposed to crashing out over ghosts and boogeyman and Bitcoin. And you can choose to say, hey, what, you know what? I’m not going to participate in this faking gay node war, bro. I’m going to actually go do something productive with my life. So I’d like you to join us. We could add you the group chat if you want. Let me know. Hit me up in the DMs and that’s all I got to say. Why is it no word faking gay? Because it’s got people crashing out all over the place, bro. We used to call this FUD. You know, we used to point out FUD, these narratives about how Bitcoin’s on the verge of failure and we used to laugh at it and call it out. I haven’t heard anyone use the term FUD around here in years, you know? but I want to bring that back. This is FUD, bro. That’s all this shit is. I’m so new here. What is FUD-ing? See? Natalie doesn’t even know what it means. You’re on certain candide. You’re doing a disservice to the new… Yes. Okay, I’m glad you know that. It used to be calling out these narratives by people from the outside, like the politicians and, you know, Visa and MasterCard, that blockchain will never work, Bitcoin will never work, it’s expensive. You know, what about solar flares? Solar flares are going to crash a network or it’s bad for the environment. We used to laugh at all of that. And now we got a bunch of people in Bitcoin who apparently don’t seem to understand the basics coming around saying bullshit like we’re on the verge of collapsing jpegs jpegs are you fucking kidding me jpegs are gonna kill the strongest monetary network ever ever built that’s fun that’s fun that’s why it’s a faking gay node war and that’s all this is this is show this is kayfabianism that’s what this is people coming on this app engaging in worldwide wrestling nothing more this doesn’t matter this this activation will either succeed or fail probably fail in my humble opinion although i’m not gonna note her and i’m barely technology technologically literate as i was saying earlier so i could be wrong with that but bitcoin will continue on i assure you mark my words i enjoyed that crash i thought i thought it was pretty good you know i i recorded an episode with max from ungovernable misfits i i don’t know when i’m going to put it out you know one of the things i’ve been realizing over you know the past year is everybody’s crashing out about bitcoin is uh in a variety of ways not everybody but you know what i mean it’s it’s really been in many ways a renaissance time to use bitcoin because you you go in there the fees are incredibly low uh there there’s a lot of products out there that just make it really easy whether it’s you know like self-custodial nodes that swap and back and forth between uh liquid or you know the spark or you know whatever it’s there there’s a ton of places accepting bitcoin and like as over the last few months as everybody has been losing their shit about nodes you’ve got steak and shake except in bitcoin this massive fast food chain you know they’re doing things like trying to make their food at least appear healthier the square terminals are getting turned on everywhere i mean it’s just i i go places and and i’ve noticed it’s been really easy to spend bitcoin and to use it as money and the transaction fees are low and all the circumstances in the world that would make bitcoin a compelling thing are happening the government’s launching all these crazy wars you know the middle east is exploding the global economy is you know melting down and you know and i was talking with max it’s like when you’re a dissident in many ways when shit starts going bad across the board that’s like one of your best case scenarios because it’s like okay your dissident ideas which you’ve been promoting people might be more open-minded to it because it’s it’s a little bit more apparent they’re going to be a little bit less uh excited about mass surveillance when they can’t afford their taxes and they’re getting pissed off about it but when everything’s working out they don’t really have a reason to think about anything so at a time that it seems like it’s it’s one of the most opportune times to promote a technology like bitcoin you get so much of the user base that is active on these social platforms where you know a lot of the other npcs hang out and you get them all crashing out and losing their shit and becoming the biggest futter they’re the biggest futters of Bitcoin they’re attacking it because it does not fit their purity test anymore so therefore it’s bad and they’re going to go and anything defamatory that they possibly can about individuals building on Bitcoin, using Bitcoin, they’re just going to tear it all apart. And it is very interesting to watch. And a lot of people that I know are becoming very discouraged by it. They’re becoming very confused. What is the proper response like you know should they take all these retarded plebs fears seriously like you know should they care about you know all of this fud like is it good use of their time or do they just need to put their head in the sand and ignore it and so you know individuals that you know historically have been really excited like you know even if they’re not all wrapped up and their their brains turned into mush by plebs slop they might be impacted by this in one way or another where they’re discouraged and and not only that they’re they’re feeling like this big shift in you know cultural ethos because like a lot of the the social ecosystem you know when a lot of the companies that you know people were working for went under and ran out of vc money last cycle they started pivoting you know to other products and you know things like like paper bitcoin and that’s where paper bitcoin summer came from and you know it’s just people are watching things change they’re watching the so-called social ecosystem change and they’re going through whiplash and they were promised glory by podcasters and they’re not experiencing glory right now and you know you ask why the sentiment’s low you know to to like some people like want analysis of like who’s who like who are the feds causing disruption in the ecosystem you know who are the good guys or who are the bad guys and i think it’s just like a murky game it’s you don’t know what people’s incentives are you don’t know what people’s intentions are some people that are like unproductive provocateurs are a little bit more obvious than others some people are a little bit more subtle than others it’s hard to know but uh i wanted to talk about and this is let’s see how long i’ve been around okay 30 minutes of rambling to get to what i actually wanted to talk about so that’s just setting the stage so i’ve watched this this tv show quite a few times since it’s come out i’d like to say probably like four times it’s been a lot and i’ve been studying it closely because i i genuinely think it is like the best piece of content that i have seen in a very long time especially given you know the social ecosystem which we find ourselves in you know being you know very like dissident minded and wanting to take on a powerful establishment force or claiming that we do in central banking which is the the tv show and or and i hope you recognized the beginning it was like the mimics uh or whatever the guy’s name manifesto he was a minor character you know that died early on and he wrote this uh you know beautiful manifesto about being a rebel and like having hope you know when the times are rough and one of the things that i really liked in the manifesto was this idea of freedom being this really disorganized phenomena and you know there’s a lot of individuals that will you know they they like this aspect of bitcoin culture which is that you know there aren’t leaders there’s no like party structure I mean, I guess there’s PodConf and, you know, the conferences, but in, you know, these media companies, but, you know, there’s no like party structure like in the political world. There’s not really any at least, you know, foreseeable top-down control of everything. It’s a mosh pit of a lot of different people with a lot of different ideas and opinions about things. And, you know, people like that because that is how freedom is in a lot of ways. That’s the alternative to top-down approaches. You know, what scares old people is this idea of anarchy, which is just, you know, kind of a less structured way of organizing things. things and uh you know there’s so many aspects of this show that i love because it’s just tracking this this revolution that is uh this rebellion that is growing around galaxy and in the star wars universe and leading into you know the the main story arc which is luke skywalker blowing up the death star you know and eventually confronting uh palpatine or sidious and his father Darth Vader and blowing up Death Star 2 and that whole thing It just shows the shows the pieces kind of forming together and and how this this the spark of rebellion the spark of revolution is started with an ember essentially with with largely one guy named ruth and luthan rail and it shows how the the wheels of bureaucracy and tyranny just collapsed due to to incompetency in a lot of ways it is easily the most inspiring piece of television that i’ve seen in a long time and i would put it at the top my all-time list actually at this point you know i imagine i’ll probably watch it a bunch more times going in the future you know and i think it’s important as somebody that tries to tell stories to really study how well it’s done because the the timing of it is very you know unique and odd too because disney has been putting out shitty you know piece of content after shitty piece of content especially with the star wars franchise and and then they just come out with the banger it’s just so relevant it doesn’t feel like there’s uh you know a bunch of like woke garbage in it It doesn’t feel like there’s really an agenda, you know, that is subversive to, you know, you as an individual. It feels like it’s, you know, a very inspiring story. And you probably really get down into it and nitpick some of the stuff going on and make it questionable. But I just find it’s so above and beyond the status quo. It’s just, it’s really good. It’s really good. You know, and I think one of the things that is different in it than where we find ourselves in this social ecosystem is that in their world, there’s a clear understanding of who the good guys and the bad guys are. Like, there’s this monolith institution in the empire that are the bad guys, and then there’s the rebellion, the good guys. And, you know, one of the things that I liked about it is it added complexity, and I think this just makes it a little bit more relatable. it added complexity to the rebellion that there was a bunch of factions and they didn’t really get along and so you have like the the bureaucrat uh rebels and then you’ve got like the uh the spy rebels like cassie nandor and then you’ve got uh in luther rail and then you’ve got the like crazy deter bob rebels like saul guerrera and you got all these different factions that are you know in one episode there there was a really good scene where cassian gets caught in between a rebel group that was infighting it was like a bunch of plebs the cannon fodder that were all trying to kill each other and they were arguing and bickering back and forth and he gets caught up in it he’s like aren’t you guys on the same team and they’re like you know just tearing themselves apart and see us to get out of that situation and escape from them these were people that were fighting on the battlefield together against the empire and without lack of leadership that the plebs started tearing themselves apart but i think you know the these types of stories are really inspiring uh there there are types of you know the the stories that i think really resonate and have staying power over time and really are cherished and beloved There are stories that capture this battle of good and evil, this larger scale battle that’s happening. You know, Star Wars is one. Lord of the Rings is one. There are a lot of stories like this. The Hunger Games, you name it. If you think of, like, you know, Batman, Marvel franchise, like, if you think of a story, there’s a good guy and a bad guy. There’s somebody that represents good, somebody that represents evil, right? And somebody goes on the hero’s journey. And what it is, is it’s allowing you as the viewer to role play in the story, stepping up and offering something good in the world and entering into this battle against evil and overcoming it. And for many people, Bitcoin has been that narrative. I think for most of us, you know, to a large degree, Bitcoin has been that narrative. it has been that invitation to step into a larger story to think more critically about things and to evaluate who the who the good and the bad guys are but i i think like where there’s a huge differentiation between these stories in the real world is that in the real world the lines are a lot blurrier and in the real world that this battle between good and evil is happening within all of us and some stories capture this well but it’s different when you’re experiencing it on the daily basis when you’re getting pulled in in various directions when you’re when you are trying to understand the world around you and you’re trying to understand yourself and you’re having trouble determining truth from fiction you filled with fear you filled with self out you filled with fusion the battle is happening in you and you know a huge part of it is based on like the inputs that you’re experiencing you know from from the views around you but you know i’m not an atheist i do believe that there is you know a spiritual aspect of this that’s happening it’s just the the way that i the only way that i can really you know understand it well and when you look at these stories like many of them like where where did this roadmap get started it got started in religion and you know i i know the most about the bible i mean i guess i haven’t really studied too many other religions but you know it’s the world is predominantly dominated by monotheistic religions today they have a clearer sense of of good and evil like when you get into the more like pagan religions you know which used to be very uh large it was interesting because there wasn’t like a a clear as clear of an example as good and bad it was it was a lot more nuanced you know like when you look at the nordic gods for example it’s like odin you know is to the the worshipers of those gods like he was he was not omnipresent he was not infallible like the christian god he think he got he he was prophesied to get killed in ragnarok but ragnarok’s even interesting i’ll talk to about that here in a little bit but you know and there were these you know greek gods that in the the roman and greek roman and nordic gods you know were similar in the sense of like they they were they had personalities that were more understandable to humans because they they lacked perfection and they yeah but anyways they they fought amongst each other and they fought against other creatures that were you know larger than them the so so that’s kind of like how the framing of good and evil was to some degree it was like the nordic gods fought against the the frost giants the the greek gods fought against the titans and the giants and the humans were kind of just like you know caught in the in the middle of this you know spiritual war in a lot of ways this is there’s been a theme and understanding you know of what is going on throughout all of human history in christianity you know there there’s a heaven and a hell there’s two warring battles happening there’s there’s god and the army of angels fighting against lucifer and the army of fallen angels and you know lucifer somewhat has dominion over the earth and so you as a human you’re you’re born into a battleground it’s a spiritual battleground in which the you know army of evil is is trying to steal your stole for all of eternity and you know whether you know you believe any of these stories or you may still understand the world this way and like even atheists kind of have a sense of you know they create their own moral compass for themselves to some degree like rand and her philosophy of objectivism was all about creating a moral compass that was different from what was ascribed to her through religion or through, you know, the Marxist morality of the Soviet Union. You know, you look at some of these atheists, they, you know, worship the climate. To some degree, you know, humans really, they always choose to worship something, whether it’s God, whether it’s themselves, whether it’s, you know, a larger idea. is because to deal with adversity and to deal with the battleground of this world that we find ourselves in we need a larger sense of meaning and purpose in our lives to carry us through we need a reason beyond pleasure to wake up in the morning and move this is how you get through struggle is how you get through difficulties which we all inevitably face in one way or another it’s it’s a result of living in this world which is an inherent battleground is you will experience pain and difficulties and and and trials and tribulations now a lot of these belief structures are similar in the sense of they they i don’t know about like greek mythology as much but in nordic mythology and in christianity there there are end times there are prophesied to end times so you know there’s the book of revelation you know which i need to read through and you know understand a little bit better i remember reading it when i was younger just being confused by it you know and i think there’s a lot of interpretations that that came out of it like i read the left behind books when i was a kid and you know every time i came home and my family wasn there i was like terrified that you know they got raptured or something and i looked for their like clothes bunched up on the ground fortunately that didn happen i was always afraid that i was gonna get left behind but yeah the nordic mythology there there’s ragnarok it’s the end of the world there’s this great battle that’s happening you saw the the the warriors that go and they die in in battle and they go to valhalla which is odin’s hall like They sit there and they fight every night and kill each other and then wake up the next morning to do it all over again because they’re preparing for this end battle against the opponents. And it’s like prophesied that Odin dies in it, you know, and all of these things. It’s the end of the world. And, you know, I think a lot of there’s been a lot of times, I think, in my understanding of American history, like people have felt like it’s the end of the world. there have been these armageddon apocalyptic situations that have happened you know periodically and the society has been you know faced incredible economic difficulties they they’ve faced you know war and famine and all sorts of stuff and i think during those times and i would argue that we’re in one of those times we’re in one of those times where it feels like we’re heading towards end times and armageddon and it doesn’t help that there’s a bunch of people you know in washington and different places in power that seem like they’re trying to conjure jesus back and you got like you know one of the richest billionaires in the world that runs like the largest private intelligence company palantir you know doing essays on or lectures on the antichrist like it kind of feels like we’re going to the end times in one way or another and i think you know the the promise that bitcoin has provided so many people is this idea of being able to escape armageddon the bitcoin is their messiah from you know this orwellian future in which the anti-crash rules over them and they all have to like pay using their mark of the beast or you know whatever and so i think this is part of the reason why so many people are crashing out because they’re like this is our last hope you know this is our last chance and i think this is a faulty promise to take you know i spent a lot of time my life thinking about the end of the world and you know thinking about armageddon or you know revelation or whatever and i think one thing that’s clear is that none of us have the ability to really predict when it will happen and that the best way to live life is to know that you will die someday and so you have to have this balance between trying to maximize what you’re experiencing today with also maximizing the long term. So you don’t want to do things at the expense of the long term where you you handicap yourself, but you also don’t want to completely miss out on living in the present for thinking, you know, for later because you don’t know what’s going to happen. You can spend your whole life toiling for retirement to find out that you have cancer. You’re not going to make it to get your pension and you could have been you know going and slaving away at a job that you hated your whole life with the intention of gambling away your social security check at the slot machine just to find out that you’re not going to make it there you’re not going to make it to vegas and there’s a very real potential that we we don’t experience you know this armageddon that a lot of people are feeling in the back of their head or in their hearts or you know this heaviness of the times that we’re in but there is a very real potential that we do and and so i think there’s like this uh you know kind of dual these two ways to look at it which is that it’s important to actually fight you know for the things that you think are important and in my case i you know it’s it’s freedom and you know human liberty you know not not just for like i i’ve begun to like care less about fighting for other people’s rights and and and just like really you know fighting for my rights and fighting with people that are fighting for the rights if that makes sense like allying myself with people that are actually allies versus you know coming up with this like oh we need to make these decisions because you know starving african kids can’t afford to run notes like it’s just not where my motivation like i’m not going to completely change direction in my life so that starving and african kids can run bitcoin notes like i i am trying to maximize my decisions so that i can use bitcoin and like people in my community can use bitcoin like that’s just the way that i think of it but i think it’s just you know the best and most moral way to think about it because you know having this paternalistic attitude of you know making decisions for trying to make decisions based on the behalf of individuals that you have no idea about and never mad it’s just kind of you know silly and it’s a it’s a minute it’s a pleb slot manipulation tactic but uh but i think it’s a it’s important you know to fight for the things that you think are important then also trust that other people around you are also fighting for things that are important to them and know that this this battle of freedom is it’s it’s it’s a truly decentralized fun that isn’t directable in the sense of like a top-down approach like there’s no way that the masses are ever going to come together and be unified in this and i don’t really even know if you want that because that then it just kind of turns into whatever you know you were fighting against before most likely and that throughout all of human history there there’s been these great you know battles between tyranny and freedom and and so you know one of the big ones that’s hopefully relevant to you and your understanding was you know the the cold war between the west and the east and you know like largely speaking the the u.s and and the soviet union but ultimately at the day i just think that’s a you know it’s not the best framing because as we all know today living in the american empire like the u.s was never really the good guys in the story they were just significantly less bad guys but uh but the The Soviet Union was like this insanely, insanely oppressive society that had total surveillance over the population, you know, and just had such a low value for human life. And felt the tyranny is not permanent. And I think that’s something that’s important to understand, you know, because I oftentimes hear people say things like Bitcoin is humanity’s last hope. It’s like humanity’s last hope for what? It’s not true. You can’t predict the future. If he can say that with so much confidence in predicting the future that Bitcoin is humanity’s last hope, then, you know, like, you better be making a bunch of money on Polymarket or Predix or whatever. I mean, so much confidence in predicting the future. It’s like, no. You know, I was listening to Shadrack, and, you know, one of the things I appreciate about Shadrack is he doesn’t really care a whole lot for living in echo chambers. I think I live in echo chamber much more than him, and I appreciate him because he’s such a good source of entropy. people one of the things that he said on the podcast is like he’s afraid for you know bitcoin people that they’re they’re getting too stuck in these like myopic world views or one-sided world views that they forget that there a whole other world that the cypherpunk movement is is way more than just digital money and plebs a lot that technology could be used for freedom in in quite a few different ways and and that there a lot of people that have different perspectives than them that might actually be much closer allies to them than they think you know if they they slow down and and uh stop focusing so hard on stop focusing on like these minute differences that people have and so the idea that bitcoin is humanity’s last hope like what what was bitcoin you know bitcoin came into the it was introduced at a dark time in in human history you know during right after the 2008 financial crisis do any of us have a like romanticized understanding of the story you know it’s it’s what’s got our buy-in largely speaking we we don’t know a lot about it and i think a lot of us you know buy in and propagate this like very rosy perspective of the story because it is compelling but if something like bitcoin can come into the world and change the world we have no idea what the future holds and you know a huge part of why bitcoin has been successful is it’s you know not just like the myth of satoshi nakamoto but it’s been you know people that have interacted with it and you know a lot of people have gone to prison for using it you know and for promoting freedom like there there have been the martyrs there have been lots of people taking risks and in many ways you know if you’re using it today you’ve been taking risks and this is a huge reason why i just hate the term pleb i think it’s so stupid it’s because i think like you know what like if you believe what you’re doing is important then you know it’s important to like treat yourself like you’re important and calling yourself a pleb is is doing the the polar opposite of that but anyways i think a lot of people are having their conviction test tested they’re having to you know stop and reevaluate why they’re doing what they’re doing they’re feeling pain in a variety of ways whether it’s socially economically relationally psychologically like it just i mean even physically maybe all of the above and uh You know pain causes people to question you know to try and get out of pain you know a lot of circumstances Not everybody like handles questioning well but you know it does It does lead to questions. And, you know, if you navigate pain properly, it leads to growth and it leads to real opportunity. And so that’s where I’m going to leave you guys. This is what I’ve been thinking about, you know, for the last couple weeks and really trying to figure out how to synthesize all of this into a cohesive episode. And I think I pulled it off. Thank you guys for being subscribers of The Beagle Weekly. Thank you for tuning in. If you found this helpful, chill out. And I will talk to you guys soon.

We’ll be right back. I wanna feel like my life is worth something A reason to live, I’m tired of numbing I look around and the crowd is all confused Why do they play like they’re trying to lose? I know I’m not the one with all the answers But I don’t wanna be the one feeding the cancer Looking in the mirror, asking if I’m just a puppet in their play I’m just trying so hard to find my way I hear the lies creeping in They say all is lost no way to win All around I see the fires burning Flames of freedom the tide is turning Ashes fall, but darkness won’t have the final say I’ll fight so hope we’ll survive another day Another day

It’s all a chaotic mess What will come next? Every time I gain some ground It feels like I control less I have to fight to feel alive It’s the only way for my soul to survive I need a wind to see some hope It feels like I’m at the end of my rope It’s when I’m pushed to the edge I find how far I can go Pain and darkness are what pushes us to grow I know there will be better days It’s what lets me carry this weight All around, I see the fires burning Flames of freedom, the tide is turning Ashes fall, but darkness won’t have the final say I’ll fight so hope we’ll survive another day Outro Music

Show Notes

Twitter Article by Richard about why Plebs Should Be Banned From Running Nodes

https://x.com/GreaserRichard/status/2077149877054685657?s=20