Ready for a hot take? Check this: money has no inherent value. Besides being a special kind of money that allows for disintermediated transfers, the same applies to bitcoin. As banal as it may sound, money is just a means to an end. As a matter of fact, it’s a…

It’s almost tautologically true that specialization within a social system increases with sophistication. In fact, increasing specialization could be one way to define social sophistication. Example 1: Our global society is pretty sophisticated. I know how to create products, ace a trivia contest about “The Wire,” and find the best…

Although Breez often ranks highly on lists of the best “Lightning wallets,” attentive readers will have noticed that we never refer to Breez as a “wallet.” We’re not trying to confuse anyone. On the contrary, it’s the language of “wallets” in the context of Bitcoin and Lightning that’s confusing. Wouldn’t…

Many techniques we use every day blow me away. It’s not that animation, calculus or knitting are very impressive in themselves or even very difficult to learn; the miracle is that anybody came up with them in the first place. These all involve huge conceptual leaps, envisioning and realizing a…

Every time you google something, every time you g̵o̵o̵f̵ ̵o̵f̵f̵ do serious research on YouTube or Instagram, every time you order an Uber, every time you check your portfolio or read the news, you’re using the web. As a matter of fact, you’re using the web right now reading this…

Swiss Army Knives are little miracles. The idea of putting a knife, a corkscrew, tweezers, a couple of screwdrivers, and a can opener onto a single device is pretty absurd. But they’re still so useful! No camping trip or pocket is complete without one. …

Liebig’s law of the minimum is 1) wonderfully succinct; 2) applicable to a broad range of diverse contexts and; 3) not developed by Justus von Liebig, as you might think, but by Carl Sprengel. Go figure. It states: …growth is dictated not by total resources available, but by the scarcest…

Snowballs are fascinating. As they roll downhill, their surface area increases, allowing them to collect even more snow at a faster rate. And as they collect more snow, their mass increases, raising their velocity, increasing the rate of accumulation still further. The “snowball effect” isn’t a cliché; it’s an exciting…

Anyone who’s watched sci fi movies about time travel knows that there are certain critical moments when relatively small decisions lock-in momentous future trajectories. Like when Marty McFly almost (but didn’t!) become his own father, or when Kyle Reese and Sarah Conner … uh … made John Connor, when Lou…