I am not willing to even imagine this scenario, it hurts me deeply. I've lived in 4 countries, traveled to over 25 and there has never been a feeling "I am ready to spend the rest of my life here."

Geopolitics is a fucked up game and instead of fighting the system, struggling from politicians' choices, dealing with insane policies, I would rather be willing to move.

I am not running whenever a problem appears, but having an ability to get out, and being ready is just part of the prepper mentality that makes you stronger and gets you in control of the situation in a moment of crisis.

I’ve also experienced the 5 year pivots. It almost feels like a natural cycle some of us go through.

Most of my pivots have been defined by external achievements and changes in environment. I hope the next will be more defined by internal growth, success and the same for those I surround myself with.

This last 5 years has seen me become:

• More creative in my career & technical pursuits
• More thoughtful & spiritual - seeking more knowledge & perspective
• More aware and at peace with the ills of the world
• More conscious of legacy
• More focused on community
• Located somewhere that brings me peace & supports the above

The prior 5 years I was ignoring and sabotaging many areas of myself, prioritising others. I feel wiser for it and calm about whatever twist awaits in these next 5.

There's the backpedal I was expecting. Those are conferences too. Someone is always paying for the space food etc. You just dislike the sponsors less.

The BTC Mag conferences aren't my first choice either, I passed on both this year... but they are something interested people should experience at least once so that they appreciate the smaller conferences. Even someone on a budget could skip the conference ticket and just lobbycon / offsite parties in the area.

Just because you didn't extract value from them doesn't mean there was none to be had for someone more resourceful.

I think it’s cool you can donate sats to the entire SN community! Just dropped 1,000 sats in there today

People always talk about SWIFT like some fancy technology for international settlement that has all sorts of advanced automated verifications.

I don't think many people realize that SWIFT in practice means that each bank employs ~20 people that run specifically configured Windows in a virtual box that runs an MS-DOS application.
The most common flow is that the person prints out all transactions/wires they need to do that day and then manually inputs those to the MS-DOS application (yes, by manually reading and rewriting the printed transaction from another software. This tech is before copypaste was invented). One person does around 60 transactions per day this way.
They also make notable % of mistakes and so part of day is spent communicating with other banks on resolving the mistakes. There are differences between countries, e.g. Deutsche Bank makes less mistakes than Spanish banks...

This is SWIFT...

I know this because I was recently debugging issue in this space for a major bank.