the recurring raccoon i

the recurring raccoon i

curious curation for the nocturnal

weekly ramble

Rocky sat slumped at his cherry veneer desk trying to concentrate as his students jabbered on about lord-knows-what in several various languages that he neither understood nor wished to learn. Cotton chinos that had shrunk down a size-and-a-half and a pair of worn-in Birkenstocks mercifully absorbed his perspiration so as not to show or smell too offensively to someone standing at arms length, but still irritated him in this heat. He chose this outfit for its breathability, knowing it would not be the clothes themselves but only his concentrated effort to be languid in movement and manner that would save him. It was not out of laziness, for surely, if the company had invested in repairing the HVAC so that the air conditioning reached his room, then there would scant be reason to slow down, but as it stood, he was doing everything he could given what he had. Nothing more.

He sipped coffee that was too strong out of a mug that shamelessly brandished his company logo. He stirred in a packet of sugar with a pen (both which had been haphazardly stored in the top drawer of his desk.)

Welcome to my newsletter. I am the anonymous Rocky. I am connoisseur of words, a passion which has invaded my life from all corners, interested in using language creatively, anonymously. I will write to you from my burrows on a recurring basis to share some of my experience with being anonymous online, some tech-stuff I have been exploring and my reading and listening recommendations. How will you know if it is something you will like? Subscribe. It is free and I will publish only once per week. There is little harm in it. You can always unsubscribe if I become too burdensome, (which I intend only to do in the most endearing of ways.) And I’ll promise never to badger you for money, something I’ll leave to the other rodents.

By subscribing you will also get this weekly ramble – worth the click, if not anything else herein. There is always much to talk about, so very much to talk about . . . .

weekly read

do you want to be someone or do you want to do something?

Joan westenberg's recent blog post explores how constraints feed creativity more than ambition. Goal setting might lead one to vacuous pursuits where at the end the pursuant has forgotten the 'what for?' Working within set constraints is especially prescient to being anonymous online.

Constraints do not block creativity. They aim it. The sonnet form is maddeningly restrictive. Yet Shakespeare produced infinite meaning inside 14 lines. Jazz musicians work within a key and tempo. Architects must respect the load-bearing capacity of concrete. The painter who begins with a blank canvas faces more paralysis than the one who starts with a frame and a palette.

weekly review

An BTCpay plugin allows the creation of paywalls and will handle subscriptions on Ghost, which in fact, this newsletter is an experiment in. A few notes:

  • technical users can still “view page source” and get around the paywall (but why would bitcoiners be technical?)
  • subscriptions and paywalls are payable with Bitcoin or whatever else you can manage to accept on your self-hosted instance of BTCpay--I think tether might have support.
  • Without an account on Stripe, Ghost will default you with a $5 subscription tier. This price tier will automatically apply to your BTCpay and can only be edited within Ghost’s web interface, which requires making an account on Stripe, prompting for lots of unnecessary KYC. Feel free to do this if you would like to accept payment via Stripe, but I don’t recommend it (not great for anonymity). Simply create an account, verify the email address and navigate back to Ghost to edit your tier pricing. This is a workaround, and is not ideal, as Ghost's default fiat payment method cannot be changed. It is a good start, though, and perhaps if enough people use this, then Ghost will consider fixing this. My solution was to make a required acknowledgment that I will not be taking fiat:
  • The setup was straightforward using the BTCpay’s guide, and took me the better part of an hour – the more difficult task is in setting up one’s own BTCPay instance.
  • Lastly, without your own STMP configuration, BTCpay will not handle automatic subscription top-up reminders, but provides a well designed admin user interface with notifications that make manual reminding pretty straightforward.

weekly recording

I've always admired this duo; maybe they have a song that can serve as an anthem for this newsletter? Perhaps this one?