Bitcoin Mining Geography, Texas Stock Exchange vs NYSE, and Nostr Protocol Explained

Rob Long [00:00:00] Rather than reading a thousand books one time, it'd be better to read a hundred books 10 times. So, and I don't mean that to say that I would find a hundred books that I put on my list and then never read any other books, but that I want this core that I return to and get more deeper value of that I would come back to. One of the things I've realized is that our society is totally stratified by iq. One avenue that people like to use to get to know you is like, oh, what, what sports do you follow? And so if you say, I don't really follow any sports, sometimes they don't take that hint and they, they just keep talking to you about sports 'cause that's what they were wanting to talk about.

Vance Crowe [00:00:41] Howdy. I'm Hannah Nwi Schwer a production lead at a soybean seed facility in central Illinois. And you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we sit down with my longtime friend, Rob Long, who returns to the podcast. Ever since Rob and I have had children, we don't get as much time to sit down and talk. So the podcast gave us a chance to just have a free flowing conversation, which you're gonna get to sit in on. We talked about how there's a new stock exchange opening up in Texas, how states are asserting their own rights. We talk about things like geology and what does it take to be one of the 100 books that goes on Rob's bookshelf. And of course we do a deep dive into Bitcoin, but with Rob's extensive knowledge, we're gonna talk about things in ways that you've likely never heard before. We'll get to that interview in just a moment, but I have two housekeeping things I wanna share with you. First, longtime listeners of the podcast know that I do Legacy Interviews. This is where I sit down with an individual or couple to record them telling their life stories so that future generations can know their family history. Now we get people from all over the United States and Canada to come do these interviews. And one of my favorite things happens about a day or two after the interview. That's when we get an email from somebody that describes what their parents felt like when they did the interview, or how exciting it was. Just this last week, one of our clients wrote us and said, we picked up dad and we had an eight hour drive back to Iowa.

Vance Crowe [00:02:14] And we have never heard him share as many stories as he did in that car ride. This warms my heart, and it's actually really similar to other feedback we hear, where after an adult has been asked to reflect on their life, they not only have a great experience doing the legacy interview and they feel great about what they have captured, but now they know that people want to hear their stories. So they share many, many more things with their families, and this becomes a change of pace around their family and home. If you are interested in having me sit down with your loved one to record their life stories and hopefully to get them to share a lot more stories with you, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more. One other note, I have decided after my many years working in agriculture, that I think there's a gap in the way that podcasting and news Roundup is going. So what I wanna start doing is recording a weekly show. I'm gonna live stream it, and it's just gonna be at first about 30 minutes. My hope is to capture a bunch of the news stories that are going on right now and how they're relevant to both people in agriculture, but what people living in the cities and suburbia should know about it. But I know that I actually am not the expert on this. So I've decided that I'm gonna start inviting some of the podcast hosts of ags biggest and hottest. So you can expect on Thursday evenings between six to six 30 that I'm going to start recording a live show that you can tune into live or listen to the next day.

Vance Crowe [00:03:46] We've got a lot of details to work out, but we're planning on launching this on July 11th. So set your calendars for 6:00 PM on July 11th. All right, without further ado, let's head to the interview with Rob Long. Rob Long, welcome back to the podcast.

Rob Long [00:04:02] It's great to be back, Vince.

Vance Crowe [00:04:05] So we are longtime friends, but now as parents, we don't actually get to see each other anywhere near as frequently as we usually do. So a podcast is like one of the rare opportunities for us to sit and talk.

Rob Long [00:04:15] Yeah, it's a good excuse to to sit down.

Vance Crowe [00:04:18] So when you look out at the world, I know you are focused on reading long-term things, you're, you have your list of 100 books. What are you paying attention to out in the world that's strong enough to get you away from your 100 books?

Rob Long [00:04:32] Away from my books? That's interesting. Not, not a whole lot. You know, I do my job and I have my family and then I read and kind of take care of my my home and that's, that's about it.

Vance Crowe [00:04:44] What do you do? Like if there's news that you're taking in, how do you do it?

Rob Long [00:04:49] RSS feeds, that's one long form stuff as long form as possible, but it's hard to find good, like, you know, something that somebody sat on for months and improved and wrote and is, you know, in depth as opposed to just, Hey, I heard this yesterday, I am gonna re regurgitate this to you. You know, I listen to podcast, obviously, but that's, those are not long form enough either.

Vance Crowe [00:05:16] Yeah. We belong to a small like group where we can share messages and when people in the group share something from Spotify, it like, drives you up the wall. What's going on there? Like, why do you hate that so much?

Rob Long [00:05:29] Because

Vance Crowe [00:05:30] You

Rob Long [00:05:30] Have to be a subscriber to get to that stuff, typically. And they could just unilaterally choose to remove any of that content at any point. That's true of anything that you don't own. But the beauty of podcasts generally is that it's a direct relationship between the producer and the consumer, right? Like you publish your podcast and the people who go and download it that don't get it from Spotify are downloading it directly from you or whatever server you say that you've stored the MP three file at. But this centralizes the whole thing and gives a single point of failure. Right. And kind of, that's the, you know, it obviously it allows Spotify to, to monopolize this and pull it in so it's easier to use. It's nice. The URLs are hideous, they're ugly. They, they, they hurt my eyes to look at, you know, they're just garbled, awful, ugly strings. But yeah, I just, if you have a podcast, I want a link to the actual publisher as opposed to this intermediary that's making it available.

Vance Crowe [00:06:38] I remember RSS feeds, like, were way more common in the past. There used to be that little like, you know, bar and I remember it being orange and you could just like click on it. It doesn't seem like that is as common though.

Rob Long [00:06:51] Yeah, well I think it's because there's just fewer people using blogs. Like most blogs still support RSS feeds. They're really easy to do, really straightforward. It's just a little file that is, you know, has little digests of your articles that sits on your website that an RSS reader will pull down and show you what's available. And then basically it's just a list of links of, of content and then you go to wherever the original content is, is served. But after Google Reader was shut down in whenever that was, 2010 or something, it was a long time ago, that was kind of the one that most people were using at the time. 'cause it was really easy to use it, it really went downhill from there. There are a lot of places that picked it up and do just as good, like Feedly is out there, they're, they're just as good as Google reader ever was, but that's still hugely centralized. So there's, I don't know, there's, there's people who still consume these things and, and do stuff that way. But if you stay in the walled garden of Twitter or Facebook or wherever else, LinkedIn, these places, that's where you find new content. And that's kind of the problem, right? Like it's being served to you by the algorithm. It's being chosen in relevance of some other method than what you care about. Right? So I may have grouped my feeds into some, you know, categories or something, but it's like I have enough of them that I can just kinda look at them and scan around and see what I wanna read and what's a priority for me, and that's how I do it.

Vance Crowe [00:08:23] Yeah, I think there's like some level of discipline that I would love to develop in this way because I noticed, so I never used to use the for you tab on Twitter, but now that it's XI like checked it out. I was like, all right, let's see what the algorithm on Twitter gives me. And I quickly found that it is detecting somehow likely what I'm copy pasting and saying he wants to see a lot more of this. And so like things that it made me chuckle. I throw a meme in with a group that I'm with, well now that you know, for you is just filled with these memes that are hilarious, but are like, you know, putting, putting Skittles into my mouth all day long and I'm, I like, it's hard to get away from it. Then you're like, all right, well I need to clean up this algorithm by, you know, clicking on other things. And, and it's just like that every time you go to touch it, you're just making it worse, right? It's just like getting worse and worse. So I would love to figure out how to have the discipline and the coordination or the, the organization of it to make it so I could, I could choose the people I like and not be so much in the walled gardens. I think I

Rob Long [00:09:30] Know what you'll say here, but my suggestion is just burn it down. Just delete your account. Go away. I, I need to take that advice myself. I haven't logged into my Twitter account for months and months. I should just get in there and delete it. But if you

Vance Crowe [00:09:46] Don't

Rob Long [00:09:46] Have access to it, then you can't use it, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:09:49] Yeah. I mean, that's how I got rid of, you know, like my desire to be on Facebook or these things. Like, you just stop using it and it goes away. I think like the, I I, you know, am definitely a person that likes new and novelty, so I need to find some way to get new information. And I definitely have podcasters that I don't want to go individually look like, oh, does this guy have a new podcast out? What I want is just to have it like, okay, and this, this one's right at the top because it's a But

Rob Long [00:10:16] Isn't that what podcast feeds are for?

Vance Crowe [00:10:19] I, I don't know what a podcast feed looks like. What you, I mean,

Rob Long [00:10:22] I mean, it is literally an RSS feed a podcast. Like that's the, that's the meaning of a podcast is it's a list of episodes and it has a little link in there to the MP three, MP three file that your player can understand and recognize that. So like, why do you need Twitter to tell you when there's a new episode when your podcast app tells you if there's a new episode?

Vance Crowe [00:10:43] Well, my podcast app is Spotify, right? And so then I'm, I'm logging into there to get 'em. And like, I think that the, the, one of the other challenges is like, at least when I was for a few years ago, like when the transition went from RSS feeds to podcasts or to, to like Spotify and these other Apple podcasts, these kinds of things, the players themselves, if you went to like, lock your screen so you could put it in your pocket, now the, now the player stops playing. And like, so there were all these attributes that the paid ones did that, like the the RSS feeds that I was using weren't doing. And so, like, I think

Rob Long [00:11:23] You're mixing up RSS or pardon me, podcasts and video, right? Like YouTube does this, a YouTube video, if you close the screen, it stops playing

Vance Crowe [00:11:35] Unless pay for the premium, unless you're paying for premium.

Rob Long [00:11:38] But like, there are no podcast playing apps that I'm aware of that would do that. Right? So if you're on Android, which I don't think you are a good one that I use is Antenna Pod. This is a open source app that you download that you just, you know, it's a standard thing. You, you put in your feeds and you can import and export them as an OPML file and off you go.

Vance Crowe [00:11:59] I wanted Fountain to Work. The, the one that gives you satoshi for, for listening. And then like, you know, as a, as somebody putting 'em out occasionally gets satoshi for it, but it was just, it's not even as good as the ones I'm trying to get away from. So I just,

Rob Long [00:12:15] It's hard to do, right? Because it has to be first a good podcast app before it does all the other fancy stuff with the Bitcoin payment stuff. So to me it's just a non-starter, right? Like, and things would come out late through there. Yeah. I didn't understand why it wasn't just the straight RSS feed, but with the, the payment stuff built in. But

Vance Crowe [00:12:36] That's, I

Rob Long [00:12:37] I appreciate that they're doing something that they're trying to break through and, and get money to go directly to from consumers to producers. But yeah, it just doesn't work well enough.

Vance Crowe [00:12:46] I mean, that's my dream. And like I got, I, you know, Bravo to fountain. I'm happy that you're out there. Yeah. But the, that's my dream is like, just let people pay only what they're listening to have it be such a small amount that they don't even think about it. You load $5 worth of, you know, Bitcoin into your system. And then just let it slowly pay people out as you're listening to it. And, and when I'm, you know, if I only listen to five minutes of a, of a podcast, like don't give them that much for it. That is brilliant. That's what I want. I think that's what rewards content creators, not for grabbing your attention, but actually keeping your attention and, and doing right by you. And it also pulls the model away from advertisers in a, in an important way that I would love to see more of.

Rob Long [00:13:29] Yeah. And nobody can step in between there and say, we don't like this kind of content. We don't think you should do that. Or, you know, it's, I wouldn't say it's sensor proof, but it's definitely sensor resistant, right? It's not easy to interpose between the, the producer and the consumer.

Vance Crowe [00:13:46] I mean, if I think about just one year ago, the amount of stuff that's being going on with Bitcoin has like radically increased. Like Lightning has gotten better and better. I mean, I remember when, when Lightning, one of the, I think we were early on when you and I were on Lightning was just getting started or just kind of just being known. And it's much, much easier to use now.

Rob Long [00:14:08] It's still the wild west though.

Vance Crowe [00:14:10] Yeah.

Rob Long [00:14:11] It's still wild out there. And it's, it's like, it's really hard, for example, to run your own lightning node and do that successfully. There's a lot of weird aspects of that that you need to be aware of or you can get in a lot of trouble there.

Vance Crowe [00:14:23] Yeah. I started to take my Bitcoin node and then be like, oh, I'll also turn this into a lightning node. And then I was like, no, no, no, no. There's like, I'm opening up a portal to the, to the dark people that know a lot more about this than I do, and I don't want to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of Bitcoin, this, this has been an interesting time to watch, you know, Trump has come out and said, you can donate to me in Bitcoin. He said a few days ago, I want the US to be the, you know, the Bitcoin mining capital of the world. Texas has started really amping up on, on their energy generation in order for that seems, seems like bullish for Bitcoin.

Rob Long [00:15:06] Yeah. It's interesting though. I would say the potential downside of this is that as it is politicized, if he supports it, then the other side hates it. Right? That's kind of how this stuff goes. But it did seem like the Biden administration already hated it because they don't want, they don't, they seem to not want people to use Bitcoin. They have very strange rules. For example, the SAB 21, the special accounting bulletin 21 thing, which re requires banks to hold the Bitcoin in a hundred percent reserve, which makes perfect sense, except that it doesn't apply to anything else. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:15:50] And you're not even allowed to have a hundred percent reserve bank. Yeah. You're not allowed to. Right.

Rob Long [00:15:53] But then on top of the hun, and that's just for the Bitcoin, and then on top of that, you have to have a hundred percent of the, the dollar value of that Bitcoin also in reserve. So in effect, that's 200%, which just makes it feel like they don't want banks to ever custody Bitcoin for people. Which seems like really the only way that banks could be relevant in Bitcoin. 'cause it kind of eliminates the need for banks in a lot of ways in, you know, without lending 'em that sort of thing. There's, it doesn't do that. But so now there, there was kind of this softening where it seemed like they were indicating that they would not veto that bill. And then the weekend before the bill was coming up was when Trump went to the Libertarian national convention and made all of these wild claims about, you know, he's gonna free Ross

Vance Crowe [00:16:45] Ulbrich free,

Rob Long [00:16:45] He's going to, you know, support self custodying of Bitcoin and allow mining and, you know, cut off the SEC's weird rulemaking stuff. And then the next week it was actually vetoed, you know, they turned around on their thing of saying they would let it pass and then vetoed it. And I don't know why, right? But maybe this is, maybe they're like, well, we're not actually feeling any pressure on this now that he's doing it, our people are gonna go go against it. So just, you know, go ahead and do what you were gonna do anyway.

Vance Crowe [00:17:20] Yeah. I think there's the potential for this huge politicization. And I saw that like as, as Trump put out some ad, you know, that was very like Bitcoin branded kind of thing. And I'm like, ooh, you know, I I, he's is like, I'm not on team Trump, I'm not on Team Biden, I'm on team independent sovereignty. Right? Right. Thats like, you know, whatever these guys are doing, they can go do their own thing, but it's not with me. But like the politicization of it is very dangerous. But on the other hand, the team that chooses I'm not playing with Bitcoin over the long term, is going to get themselves in a very, very difficult position. And so that position won't be tenable over the long arc of history, but in the short of medium term, it definitely could be a, a power wedge. Yeah.

Rob Long [00:18:06] And I think generally the way our democracy works, this will go away very fast. Like they will, they will flip and become pro Bitcoin I think in the end, if not pro Bitcoin reluctantly allowing it. I think, I think if voters demonstrate actual preferences for people who support Bitcoin, then they will change

Vance Crowe [00:18:27] Like that. That's how it works. The, the, the stuff that's happening, like it's, it's like gradually then suddenly that I think is very interesting is like Texas has seemed to deeply embrace Bitcoin. Like they're, in the last couple of days, they've started announcing more energy projects and then they're saying, you know, Bitcoin is going to allow us to create the energy generation that we think we will need in the future for ai. But the difference between Bitcoin and AI is you need energy all the time for ai. But with, with Bitcoin, if you like all of a sudden need that energy because there's a heat wave going on and everybody's slipping on their air conditionings, now you can shut off the Bitcoin because the prices go too high. And so they were saying Bitcoin is going to be an essential part of making their their energy base. Yeah.

Rob Long [00:19:13] You can't do curtailment with ai, right? Where you Yeah. Where you turn it off and divert the power, sell it back to the grid instead of consuming it because you have to keep it running. Right? It's like a data center for AWS or any, any other big company that runs data centers. They need that power all the time. Like they're a good anchor customer. But yeah, if there's more demand, they, it's hard for them to slow that down. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:19:39] And then prices just go absolutely wild. But if you can build up a huge

Rob Long [00:19:43] Amount

Vance Crowe [00:19:43] Of energy, and then that way if you don't need it, then the Bitcoin can buy it and it can be used and then shut it off when it's not there.

Rob Long [00:19:52] Now Bitcoin will always go and find the cheapest power generation wherever that is, because it doesn't matter where it's located. So it allows you to locate the consumer right next to the producer, because the thing that's being exported is just digital, right? The actual blocks that you're mining that you're signing, you don't need to have transmission lines where you have lots of waste or huge amounts of, you know, wilderness that you're slicing this giant wires through or anything like that. You could put it on a remote island with a volcano on it and suck heat outta there and make, make power that way. It doesn't matter, you know, so it'll just go to wherever it's the cheapest.

Vance Crowe [00:20:32] And this is one of those, like, when you have the realization about this, like being able to generate energy and then consume it right there with Bitcoin and then transport that Bitcoin somewhere else, this is like one of those things that when you grab the idea, I describe it as that sense of awe when you see like the edge of the universe, right? You're just like, oh my gosh, the potential of this is so far beyond anything I thought that I would get to when I started on this journey of learning about it. But it's also like one of those key blocks that fits into place in my mind of like, oh, this is so much bigger than just like, oh, I'm, I'm investing in Bitcoin. Like you are a stock. You're like, no, no, no, this is gonna radically reshape. Now Alberta can have all their, their oil that they're not allowed do their natural gas that they're flaring off of their rigs. Now all of a sudden they can turn that into Bitcoin mining and tra and, and actually use that energy. Yeah.

Rob Long [00:21:23] The thing exporting is hash rate rather than the actual, you know, energy itself that's itself

Vance Crowe [00:21:29] Describe it,

Rob Long [00:21:30] Right? So yeah. That, that unlocks a lot of stuff around the world and really shifts the, the focus from, we have to find ways to locate the energy generation to where the consumption is like big cities and, you know, industrial concerns and these sort of things to just go wherever you can most efficiently produce power and that's it.

Vance Crowe [00:21:54] Yeah. 'cause right now when they're creating energy, solar fields or wind farms, they wanna put that right next to a city. So that, that way the city, that's 'cause you generate the energy you need to use it. Right now we don't have the battery power. And what this is causing is outside of Chicago, instead of using all that land for farms, you're turning it into stupid wind farms and, and turning all the farm ground into solar farms because you're like, well, we want to generate it as close as we can to the city. Well now you could go way out into the middle of the desert, there's nothing out there and, and start using

Rob Long [00:22:27] Or in the ocean or something. I mean, just anywhere, right?

Vance Crowe [00:22:31] Yeah. And, and also I think it's going to bring countries online in ways that are really amazing. So I, I'm keenly interested in the Ken, whenever they talk about Kenya and Bitcoin, because I lived there for a while and I have like a, a, a moderate understanding of how their culture and their economy works. And to think about like, well one of the reasons that they haven't been able to do, you know, large energy projects is they don't have necessarily use for all that electricity, but you have to build the electric before you have the demand for the electric. You can't wait for the demand and then build the electric. You have to do it in advance. And Bitcoin gives you a chance to soak up all that extra supply and then as people have more demand, then trade it off. It's like a great way to figure out the chicken or egg problem of energy.

Rob Long [00:23:17] It's like a a yeah. A developing economy, right? Where you have Bitcoin there as the anchor customer of that service. And then as things get built out, the the demand for the electricity there will go up and the price will go up and then the Bitcoin mining potentially moves on to some other place and you're just left with people who are there consuming it as regular customers that wouldn't, that Bitcoin doesn't want to compete with.

Vance Crowe [00:23:43] Yeah. And what do you think of the, the idea that people will end up having miners for things like heat generation, but then also a conversion of their, their,

Rob Long [00:23:54] I know people local are really excited about this, but I don't see this happening anytime soon. Like PE enthusiasts are doing it right now, right? Like for sure, but I think in terms of like, you know, your grandma having a plugging in the, the Bitcoin, you know, heat pump or whatever, it's just not gonna happen anytime soon because those machines become worthless in a few years, right? In terms of their, their ability to produce Bitcoin. The, the network is constantly growing so fast and your proportion of the hash rate that you produce determines how much output you get from every block that's mined. And as you go a year, two years, it's gonna, it just gets exponentially less and less and less and less. And yet you're still, you know, doing this inefficient process to heat something up with electricity. It's like, yes, there is heat generated and we can use that to do other things, but it doesn't seem to make sense to me in the short term. Maybe something will change. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:24:55] I, I'm hopeful on this. Like, I imagine somebody's machine shop, right? They can, they can just have a, a walled off thing. 'cause miners, if you've ever heard 'em, they're loud, they're really loud and, and, but if you had a little place that you could, you know, put in a cubby where you could block or dampen some of that sound and then just pipe it into your shop, that's good. But the cost of getting a new miner that keeps up with the overall hash rates.

Rob Long [00:25:19] I mean, I feel like, I guess what I'm saying is, I think even over the long run, my guess is that it would always just be more efficient to just have a heating element and run electricity through that. And if you wanna do Bitcoin mining, do that also. You know,

Vance Crowe [00:25:32] I, yeah, there, there's like a, there's a, a pull towards wouldn't it be nice, but it may not, it may not work. Going back to Texas, I don't know, you, you know, you're always reading your 100 books, but, but I I have you seen that they've proposed starting their own stock exchange there as opposed to being in New York? Yeah,

Rob Long [00:25:51] This

Vance Crowe [00:25:51] Is like, as soon as you say it, you're like, oh, I bet, I bet there are a lot of crazy regulations in New York on that stock exchange. And it would be interesting to see a state that is more leaning towards freedom. I don't know that Texas is like a libertarian haven, but it's more free than New York.

Rob Long [00:26:08] Yeah, I mean there's a lot, there's a lot of inertia of finance in New York, right? Just because there's been trade and production and it's kind of this cultural center and has been for centuries and that's why they're there. And it makes a lot of sense for the exchanges to be there. But definitely things are changing, you know, and they've milked that. Like the, the bit license is one of those things that they instituted to charge anybody who wants to do Bitcoin or crypto, whatever business in New York needs to pay this special license to do that. And no other state has this, it's just New York and they can get away with it because that's where so much of the financial talent is. And so if you wanna run a company to do that, it's beneficial to you to do it there. But I think Texas has a lot of potential. Like people have said there's, you know, deep water ports there, there's connections to, you're much closer to south and Central America. There's a lot of business to be done there. Miami gets a lot of that now. I think Texas, you know, competes with that and yeah. Just different regulations being in a different place as a good thing.

Vance Crowe [00:27:20] Well, and like a lot of people moved to Texas recently and you know, the core of finance is not computers moving really fast, right? The core of finance is relationships, trust a creativity to, to figure out like what kind of deals are we doing? How do, how does it all work? And so if you're living in a place that is just overregulated that is constantly coming in between two groups of people or two people wanting to make deals eventually that, that, you know, highway robbery, that toll taker eventually starts having people say, well, we just aren't gonna use these roads anymore. We're gonna go somewhere else. So to me, like to have a competitor to the New York Stock Exchange is awesome. And I also think that it, it pulls some of that centralizing power away from the East coast, which I think is a good thing.

Rob Long [00:28:09] That would be an interesting, to have a competitor to say, oh, well, well you're gonna, you're gonna go public 'cause your company gonna go to the New York Stock Exchange or the whatever, the Texas Stock Exchange. Right? Like that, that would be an interesting question. And would you see, would, would this be a further, you know, seam in the economy splitting along ideological lines where it seems like this started with like credit card processing companies and various things that would start rejecting certain types of transactions and you know, basically pulling political goals or outlooks into their business. You could see this further pushing that apart.

Vance Crowe [00:28:51] Has that changed? Did that go away or did it just become so normalized that we just have forgotten about it? I mean, I remember for a while there it was like, oh, we're no longer going, we're no longer gonna process gun transactions, right? You can no longer use a MasterCard to, to buy a handgun or whatever. I has it gone away? I don't

Rob Long [00:29:08] Know, I don't know how you would measure such a thing. This is purely an impression that I have, but it doesn't feel like politics and business are unmixing at all.

Vance Crowe [00:29:19] No, no, no. It feels any

Rob Long [00:29:21] Way

Vance Crowe [00:29:21] Maximizing. Yeah.

Rob Long [00:29:22] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:29:24] I mean I think that it'll be interesting to see what states try and align with places like Texas. Like, you know, we, we definitely, I had a Chris Bennett on a few, maybe a month or two ago, and we were talking about, you know, if 10 years ago the Texas governor had called for other states to send their national guard to protect the border when the national government isn't doing it and they're gonna be in conflict. This would've been like the most unthinkable idea you could possibly come up with it. We wouldn't even seem realistic in a movie. And now it happened and went away and like, you know, people are used to it. So like the next time that comes up, it's gonna be so much easier for those things to happen rapidly than they ever did before.

Rob Long [00:30:11] I mean, it definitely seems that like there's a block of states that have acted together, both with the deploying international guard to Texas or if their attorneys general kind of joined together in lawsuits against the federal government for various things. That's like, you know, the kind of central states right? From Missouri through Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida seems to be in that block. And then some states in the, you know, out west a bit. I dunno, it's, it's curious to see how that goes. I don't, I, I don't relish the idea of, of that happening, but I think unless the states assert their rights to govern themselves, like they created the federal government, not the other way around, and it has all of its power granted to it from the states and the people, they will just continue to take it,

Vance Crowe [00:31:06] I think. Yeah. And, and it's, it's horrifying to think about like what would it take to get political will around this? Like there's, there's like a possibility of it being like, is it gonna be something big? Right. Or will it be a thousand little cuts that people just get fed up with it? But it definitely feels like we are headed towards a fracturing of states versus centralized. I don't

Rob Long [00:31:30] Think it has to go that way. I think if the states could demonstrate value to their citizens by taking on solving certain problems that we perceive the federal government as not solving, then they could just gradually start assuming more and more things that they, that they have a right to assume. Right? I mean,

Vance Crowe [00:31:52] The only states that are gonna have that power are the states that control their own budgets like that, that have a budget surplus as opposed to a budget deficit. 'cause right now, the reason the federal government is so powerful is that they just can shower money on people for their public schools, for their interstates, for these kinds of things. And if you as a state can't keep up the infrastructure that you have, you're dependent, it's like the kid that needs his dad's money to, to survive.

Rob Long [00:32:19] Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, I don't know anything about that. I don't know which states are net positive, net negative, any of that. I

Vance Crowe [00:32:25] Don't know. Missouri's been good about it. I'm, I'm happy to see that. And I don't know that the whole state feels the same way that I do, but I think that there's definitely, Missouri has been very good about having a balanced budget. Some states require it and other states just keep taking bonds out. And I mean, like the state of Illinois is so far in debt that, that they have to have some kind of crazy bail out in order to get outta whatever mess they're in. Yeah. A hundred books.

Rob Long [00:32:50] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:32:51] Have you ever taken a book off of your 100 list?

Rob Long [00:32:54] Just this year I started doing that. I, I started out with, so the, the idea just to kind of set the table is that rather than the, there's kind of a quote behind this that is unattributed, that rather than reading a thousand books one time, be better to read a hundred books 10 times. So, and I don't mean that to say that I would find a hundred books that I put on my list and then never read any other books, but that I want this core that I return to and get more deeper value of that I would come back to. And that's kind of the criteria for what goes on the list is that it's important enough to me that I would enjoy reading it again multiple times. And so I started out with, you know, zero books on the list. So I kind of went through and added some books that I knew that I liked, that I wanted to come back to. And then over the years as I read a book, I, you know, I kind of take notes on things and I keep a, keep it in a system called Obsidian, right? Which is this note taking app. And I kind of have some fields that I store, like how, how do I rate the book? What genre is it, the author, all that kind of stuff. And then one of 'em is a checkbox for whether it's in the 100 books list. So I just reached a hundred, you know, a few months ago. So I, I have started taking books off the list to, to fit new ones on.

Vance Crowe [00:34:17] And is that just like scrolling through and being like,

Rob Long [00:34:22] Yeah, it is that I have, I have like a rating, right? And I go from one to five what I thought about the book, and usually books on the top 100 are four and fives. So I would kinda look for a four and, and see,

Vance Crowe [00:34:35] Oh, that's interesting because eventually it'll hopefully all be all fives. Right? If you, if you read enough fives.

Rob Long [00:34:41] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:34:41] What, how would you grade the one through five? What's that grading system look like?

Rob Long [00:34:46] I mean, five is like super, super good. The best book ever, you know, and one is like, just advise everybody. I, I know to not read that. I don't, I haven't been real rigorous about that. That's just kind of a feeling.

Vance Crowe [00:34:59] And a two three is like, eh, I wouldn't go outta my way to criticize it, but I also wouldn't Yeah.

Rob Long [00:35:04] Tell

Vance Crowe [00:35:04] Anybody about it. Yeah.

Rob Long [00:35:05] And four gets you on the list or considered for the list at least.

Vance Crowe [00:35:08] I know I've said this before when we've talked, but like, I grew up in a house where my dad collected books and you would think that like, that people talk all the time like, oh, I wish I could have a house just filled with books. Well, I had that and, and my dad still in his eighties still collects books. And I came to realize that most of it is noise because you can't know what is in all of those books. Even if you read every one of them thoroughly. There's only a small percentage of the population that could be like, look at every single book and remember very clearly what's in there. And I became the type of person that was, like, my radio rating system is probably like, if I dislike the book, I throw them away. I don't, I don't like go put them back into the world, which like really bothers some people, right? I don't have a book burning ceremony, but it's definitely like, I threw away Yha Book just this morning that was sitting in my house. I finally read enough of it that I was like, I can confidently throw this away. 'cause I don't want other people reading it. Like, I don't wanna propagate those memes. So that's, I'm just not going to, and then I would say there's like an, an amount of books that are just gonna go on a pile, but they aren't in the, the special shelf that I'm like, Hey, nobody touched these. Yeah, they should be exactly where they are. And then there's the, like, I want other people to read this, so I'm willing to go buy it to, to give it out. I

Rob Long [00:36:28] Mean, to me, there's, there's a couple of different uses for the books. Some of them are actually references that I will go to and look things up that I remember, you know, these are facts that I want to know. And like, kind of given the analogy, it's really only meaningful if you know what a Bitcoin node is, right? But that every book is like a running your own node for that book. That you don't have to go to some third party to either buy a copy of the book or look at a digital copy or listen to an audio book, which they can and do edit, right? Like if you, if you have an audible book that can change at any time, and they're, there's, they're not gonna tell you what they edited out or why or anything, but if you have a book sitting on a shelf, that's, that's what it is until the end of time, until it's destroyed. I like that aspect of it. But also I feel like every one of those books, I want to be a portal to a conversation. Like I, I'm dying to have a conversation about any one of those books with somebody who would come to my house, come in my office and say like, oh, that's interesting. What's going on here? And I would say that's, those are the, those, those are the books that if you want to have a conversation, a a deep one with me about something, I'm excited to talk to you about any one of these things and, you know, want to hear about these things. So that's kind of where I hope it goes. I don't know, I don't know how much of that I really get, but

Vance Crowe [00:37:50] I mean, it's true. Like you go look at somebody's bookshelf and it, it should create, it should stimulate a conversation. And I'm a firm believer that if you have a book on a bookshelf, like you should be able to talk about that book. And I had the experience, I went to visit my sister who's moved in with her long-term boyfriend in New York. He had a small bookshelf, and I was like, this is glorious. I can look at the history of his mind and I can talk with him about, some of them are sci-fi fantasy, some of them are, you know, Spanish literature. Some of them are all the, and like, you know, some of them I don't know anything at all about. So we can talk about that. And, and also the ordering of books is also very interesting. Like how do people choose to, to put them together? There's, there's something really autobiographic or can be autobiographical about that.

Rob Long [00:38:36] Yeah. I've split mine out into like fiction, nonfiction, philosophy, poetry, things like that. And then, and then the one thing that's like, just to my eye, I hate the books that are just all random thicknesses and heights all over the

Vance Crowe [00:38:52] Place.

Rob Long [00:38:53] So in each genre I go from tallest at the left to shortest at the right and that, so there's this like sawtooth pattern in the sections, and you can tell

Vance Crowe [00:39:05] Where

Rob Long [00:39:05] The section is

Vance Crowe [00:39:06] Aspy nature.

Rob Long [00:39:06] Exactly.

Vance Crowe [00:39:07] You know, speaking, you were mentioning poetry, and this got me thinking like, I have come to realize that I don't intuitively have the ability to rhyme and create this like, melody that goes with poetry. And I didn't know this until I listened to my wife read children's books to our kids. And I would, I would all of a sudden be like, oh, that book is not as horrible as I thought. Like I was reading it. And it seems so like, stilted, but she could naturally find the rhythm of it. And I'm now like, trying to get better at this. But I think it's a little bit like, you know, if you don't learn colors at a young age, you're really only gonna be able to distinguish if you like, you could get a little better, but you're never gonna get great. But I, I have found that this may be one of the reasons why I've been very repelled by poetry. Plus the other reason is like, I'm always trying to read with speed and

Rob Long [00:39:59] Yeah. That, that's the exact

Vance Crowe [00:40:00] Opposite,

Rob Long [00:40:00] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:40:01] Yeah.

Rob Long [00:40:01] You're trying to, you're your quality over quantity and there are other channels of information in a poem than just the words that you're scanning through, right? Like, I mean, that's where it is contained in, but the, the, the pacing of it, the, the look of it, like the on the page, how it is set up or the spacing of everything is trying to convey something to you ideally. And being receptive to that. It, it's fascinating to me. It's like just cramming more information into fewer words.

Vance Crowe [00:40:34] And I had optimized as a young kid for speed and my, my ability to read a book and know what happened in it. Really. I, but I over, as you and I have discovered over long term, like one, my retention of that information definitely falls off rather quickly.

Rob Long [00:40:53] And

Vance Crowe [00:40:53] I think like, there's, there's things that I just don't, don't get in it. But when I was in grade school and my goal was to read literally every book in that library, which I did, right? Like the co the the cost of it was that I was not paying attention to what was right in front of me.

Rob Long [00:41:08] Man, I, I think I read a book about a year ago, the Wizard of Oz, which, you know, I had never read that before. And it, it was fascinating to me that I, it it felt so easy and comfortable. Like it's a, it's a young adult book anyway, so it's not like super complex. But the, the interesting part about it was that the action just proceeded forwards and there was never any references to like, previous things or imp you know, or like switching from one timeline to another, like where there's two parties and they're doing something and we're kind of going back and forth and seeing what happens. It just goes straight through this one fluid motion. And I think that's why it's easy for kids to understand because it just kind of goes straight through and you don't have to pick up on subtleties or anything. And it was like, oh, that's interesting. It's just easy to read because of that, but yet still entertaining and good.

Vance Crowe [00:42:04] So I think I can relate. I just started reading my three-year-old daughter Black Beauty.

Rob Long [00:42:10] Oh yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:42:11] And like, there's something really soothing. First of all, black beauty so far, we're a few chapters in is awesome. It's a, it's an introduction to a little girl about like, the pieces of a mane and like, like a bridle and, and like how is, what is, how does a horse get trained and what does it go through? Because the whole thing is, I, I don't know if you've read it is a long time from the horse's perspective of like, what's going on around it. And, and like it's, it's, I'm so excited that we're just now beginning chapter books where, where Violet can take a chunk of information and then the next day stack something new on it. Whereas, you know, children's books are about like, we're just gonna read this one thing and then we may read it again and again and again. Which was fine for the time. Yeah. But it's really engaging with me and her to have this relationship about like, then the next morning, well let's tell mom what happened to, you know, black beauty last night. And there's something I I, I don't know really great about reading children's books and kind of progressing along here.

Rob Long [00:43:13] Yeah, that's the thing. Like

Vance Crowe [00:43:14] If you

Rob Long [00:43:15] Don't have children and you're not around them, reading the books are, is kind of, you know, it's like, it's a little strange, but being able to see it through their eyes and read it and try to like advance them a little bit past where they're comfortable. This is, this is a great joy. It's wonderful.

Vance Crowe [00:43:34] Do you have some children's books that you've enjoyed reading with your kids? You mentioned Wizard of Oz.

Rob Long [00:43:40] Boy, I would have to go and yeah, lately it's been my, my two older kids have been like, I have a, a very young 2-year-old who is, you know, still in little, you know, cardboard books and then the, the older ones are read to themselves now. Lots of, you know, graphic novels and these sorts of things and some chapter books. But, so we're kind of in a no man's land. And I'm looking forward to that like maybe two or three years from now when the youngest gets more into the, the chapter books

Vance Crowe [00:44:15] We, we read every night. Like it's, it's just a part of the whole routine. And if, and if I try and skip it, 'cause I'm like, got a lot going on or whatever it is, just total disaster occurs. So we like, you just have to do it. And the, there's there's a couple of children's books that I really like, like, I don't know, maybe you, you've seen Ada Twist Scientists? Oh

Rob Long [00:44:35] Yeah, yeah, we have.

Vance Crowe [00:44:35] And maybe you guys gave that to us as Blakely and like there's the, that's a whole series of, but like, imagine me reading these books, not getting the rhyming pattern in it. Like I, like, I look back on the first few times I've ever read those books. But anyway, I really like the, that one. And there's Iggy Peck Architect, which is a really good one.

Rob Long [00:44:55] That sounds like it's in the same series, right?

Vance Crowe [00:44:57] It's in the same series and it's all about Lila Greer's classroom and stuff, so Yeah.

Rob Long [00:45:01] Yeah. One of my hobbies that I've been engaged with for a long time is fossil collector. So I'll, I'll throw this out there and just say that in St. Louis here particularly, we have an interesting place to do that. There's lots of interesting places across the United States and the world to do this, but the interest here is that we have this layer of limestone here that's from 300 to 400 million years old. And there's tons of things in there that are just fascinating to me, like that you could walk around in the middle of the, you know, north American continent and find seashells and crinoids and all kinds of interesting stuff. And the only reason they're there is that these animals invented this way to protect themselves that made them out of stone, right? Like limestone is calcium carbonate and that's what they built their shells out of. And obviously that's why it's still here.

Vance Crowe [00:45:58] Whoa. I always thought that was in the reverse. I always thought that the limestone came from these little animals, you know, growing up bringing their shells and then being crushed then o over time.

Rob Long [00:46:10] That's right.

Vance Crowe [00:46:11] So the, they were taking ca calcium carbonate and turning it into that stone.

Rob Long [00:46:16] No, that's what it is. Like they are made of calcium carbonate, that's what they are. And then they die and they build up and layers and layers of stuff forms and that's, that's where you get this, right?

Vance Crowe [00:46:28] Yeah. It's amazing to, to, to go out. I mean, I've gone out with you in the first like, I don't know, five or six times I was kinda like, here Rob and I are stepping on some rocks and looking down. But when you start to be able to discern a pattern, like, oh, it's right there. I'm, I like, it's amazing. It's like a, like a rush when you find one and I'm sure as you go deeper and deeper, the rush gets

Rob Long [00:46:50] No, and they're beautiful forms. You know, I mentioned crinoids, these are things that are related to starfish and sand dollars. They're called echinoderms and they have this fivefold symmetry. So if you can picture a, a sand dollar, it has these five kind of leaf shaped little, you know, lobes in the, in the shell there. And these chronos, they look like a little cheerio, you know, a little kind of circular thing that you find. And I've found ones that are shaped like a Pentagon, right? Like there are different species of them all over the place and they just, it's just fascinating to see what, you know, what came out of this and kind of the variety that was around here and that, you know, 400 million years ago we were in a shallow tropical sea. Whereas right now we're in the middle of a giant continent, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:47:43] And is that because like the temperature was just different or was our axis to the, the sun different? Like how, how, yeah.

Rob Long [00:47:51] I mean, when I say tropical sea, I mean literally, you know, the North American plate was down under the equator at that point in time. And it has since moved to the north as, you know, plate tectonics ax on the, on the surface there. And it was shallow, right? Like, so there's a place south of here where there's this igneous rock that comes out, Tom, so mountain, it's the highest point in Missouri, not super high, you know, compared to anywhere else, but it's like whatever, 2,500 feet or something like that. And it's actually a, an old volcanic calera. And at that time it was an island chain that was there. And so it was just like a, a shelf, a continental shelf. So it wasn't a deep sea. The, the continent was still here, but the sea level was higher and there was a, there was an ocean there, there,

Vance Crowe [00:48:42] You know, as I think about this, I think like you have to have a certain amount of in, like you have to be curious about this stuff, but then you also be, have to, have to be able to model in your mind the way that the world looked, even when you can't see it, right? Like, so I don't know if you're looking at diagrams in, you're able to build this model in your mind or how, how that works.

Rob Long [00:49:01] Yeah. I mean, if you've studied geology like in, you know, maybe college or something like that, you see maps of what the world looked like. If you turn the clock back and you see kind of the, the pania continents come Yeah. Pangaea, right? So the continents move around and glomerate and split, split apart. And absolutely

Vance Crowe [00:49:21] One, one of the things that comes to mind is that some of these activities that you're talking about require you to have a certain amount of like intellectual horsepower, right? Iq, one of the things I've realized is that our society is totally stratified by IQ and that like a person can go, I, I think like it is kind of a touchy subject to talk about, right? Like, I do not believe I have a high iq. I think my verbal ability is like, let me trae around with people that are high IQ that I, that I am not capable of. But I think like we are deeply stratified in our stratified in our culture with people that have higher IQs and people that don't. And I think that this is one of the causes of a lot of our like societal strife going on right now because I think we live in completely different worlds in a way that when we were a much more agrarian society, you had a bigger mixture and it wasn't so focused on rote IQ didn't take you that much further when what needed to happen was like the rows of crops needed to be hosed.

Rob Long [00:50:30] Yeah. I, I think though that, that the benefit that accrues to a high IQ is allowed by hiding how reality actually works. I don't think, I think if we, you know, structured things slightly differently that it, it wouldn't shake out that way. That yeah, you can, you know, do intellectual tasks, but like the ability to make things change in the physical world is in the end much more important. And if your, your physical security, like we just, we just take that for granted that we're all, we're just fine driving our cars around doing whatever, but if there were, you know, roam roving gun battles happening in the streets or some kind of

Vance Crowe [00:51:14] Conflict

Rob Long [00:51:15] Going on, it, it doesn't matter what your IQ is, it matters how fast you are getting outta the way and seeing something coming, you know? Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:51:23] That's right.

Rob Long [00:51:23] We just don't typically have to deal with those things right now, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:51:28] Yeah, that's right. And I, I think like the, the stratification of, of like the type of work that people do, and maybe, maybe it's not even, maybe IQ is too like generalist of a term, right? Like it's 'cause you need MEChA like mechanical knowledge on how to make a car work that that is something like you could be HighQ I iq but not be able to do that, right? There's some kind of like, how do I get these gears to work and I'd rather have

Rob Long [00:51:55] A high IQ mechanic than I would a low IQ mechanic. Mechanic. I think it doesn't exactly segregate perfectly here, right? Like I think smart people are smart in different ways.

Vance Crowe [00:52:06] Yeah, that's right. I think IQ probably is too, too barren of a, of a thing. But the reason that I was thinking about this is you, I think people in the, in the of taken bureaucratic world of, of corporations and things like this, they can live for days or weeks, months at a time without almost ever encountering somebody that has an IQ of a hundred or below. So a hundred is like the, the center of the bell distribution. You know this, but like, so for people that don't know if you have a hundred iq, you are, there's 50% of the population has more than you, 50% has less than you. And this is a staggering realization because a hundred IQ is about the type of work that I believe it's like an elementary school admin, you know, you've gotta be able to keep track of schedules and you have to know whose kids or what parents, it's not incredibly sophisticated. It doesn't have to be that complicated. So 50% of the population would not be capable of doing that job, or approximately 50% of that. And I think like most people in the modern world just don't encounter people that are below a 100 on a day-to-day basis, but that's half of more than half of the population.

Rob Long [00:53:17] Yeah. And if the economy becomes so rarefied that the only way to get value out of it is to be typing into a computer doing kind of, you know, ab very abstract things, then we're, we're kind of overspecialized here, right? We need people to dig ditches and do real things in the real world. Otherwise, you know, we're at, at the mercy of people who can actually do that. They can be denied us, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:53:46] Yeah. I remember when I worked for a paving company and like a hardscaping company that would build these giant walls, like, like, that could hold back a huge amount of earth. The guys working there. I don't think they were all that, they certainly weren't book IQ smart, but like the ability to create level ground in this weird Wisconsin soil and then be able to physically lift these blocks and keep everything completely flat and isolated, like, I don't care if you're a high IQ programmer, you can't do that unless you've done it for a long freaking time. And we've definitely, in our culture way vaulted this guy up and way pushed that guy down.

Rob Long [00:54:28] Yeah. So yeah, if you find yourself the person who's sitting at a computer and you know, you're, you're, you hear the, the term go touch grass from time to time, you know, like go outside and encounter reality. You, you, yeah. You should feel a little alarmed if you don't have any connection to the real world outside of the computer.

Vance Crowe [00:54:47] Yeah. These, I was talking with a group of people, I was in a, in a group meeting the other day and people were talking about how expensive it was to plant a tree. And I'm like, it's really not that expensive. It just cost you a shovel. Really? What mean? Like, they were saying, you know, it's a percent if you, if you go out and buy a tree at like a tree nursery and then you want them to plant it, they were like, and they charge a percentage of the tree to planet. And you're like, yeah, well the alternative is a shovel and that's hard to do. And they, they were like, literally like, well, I wouldn't know what to do. And I'm like, well, let me tell you how this works. It's a hole and you've put it in the hole and then you put the soil back around it.

Rob Long [00:55:25] I feel like once you get stuck, like I, I, I, I can see where that would come from. I've encountered people with this attitude, right? Of like, oh, I, I, I wouldn't know what to do, but like at some point you just have to jump over the chasm and just try to do something right? And then you're like, well, I remember I did this thing I didn't know how to do last week. Maybe

Vance Crowe [00:55:45] I

Rob Long [00:55:45] Can do it again this week and just start building on that. I

Vance Crowe [00:55:48] Dunno. And that's like, I think one of the most important things a parent can do is to like, oh

Rob Long [00:55:52] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:55:53] Constantly get your kids to do things that they're like, because the easiest answer in the world is I don't want to, which is usually I don't know where to start, right? Like, at least for me, procrastination occurs when I'm like, I don't know what the first step is. And so therefore I'm like constantly avoiding it because I haven't figured out what that first step is. So my method to get through procrastination is to be like, alright, let's look at this and what would literally be the smallest step that I could take. And then once you take that step, you get it. But the world is bifurcated now in a way that I think the people that aren't touching grass don't, don't, don't have to do new things like that.

Rob Long [00:56:32] Yeah. If you've had experience of like, oh, I need to fix something, right? Like a, a an a electric circuit or a mechanical device or something like that, and you've never done it before, it just seems like magic that, you know, somebody's like, oh, I don't, I wouldn't even know what to do. Right. But it's just, it just keep, keep iterating on things like that and figuring out that you do like they're human beings too. Just figure it out and do it.

Vance Crowe [00:57:01] Yeah. One of the best experiences I had was after I worked as a deckhand on a ship, I went into business with my buddy court and we bought a house and renovated it and he would leave to go back on the ship to keep money coming in for our housing project. So I would go to Home Depot and buy, you know, electrical for Dummies. Now I don't know that I would wanna live in a house that, that guy guy that was Yeah,

Rob Long [00:57:24] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:57:24] Wiring it did electrical for dummies. But all of a sudden you realize like all the systems in your house, except for the appliances, all the systems themselves are really, really simple. Like shockingly simple. And once you understand just like what is the basic principle here, it's very, very easy to move things forward. But when you, when you've never touched it, it all looks like very complicated.

Rob Long [00:57:50] I agree. This is an experience that I have from time to time where meeting new people, one, one avenue that people like to use to get to know you is like, oh, what, what sports do you follow? And so if you say, I don't really follow any sports, sometimes they don't take that hint and they, they just keep talking to you about sports. 'cause that's what they were wanting to talk about. I've had that happen several times recently. I'm like, I don't really follow sports too much. You know,

Vance Crowe [00:58:20] See what you, you know, you're perfectly willing to be silent with another person. Whereas if a person came up to me and wanted to talk about sports and I was not interested, I would be more than happy to let them explain to me everything they wanted to about sports until we finally hit on a thing that I wanted to talk about. And then we would go in that direction.

Rob Long [00:58:37] Well, this was at a a, a wedding reception. I was at a table with, with a guy. And, you know, he was from Wisconsin. We were up there and he was telling me about, you know, a golf course on the, you know, the coast of Lake Michigan and how neat it was and all that sort of stuff. And I was like, interested in that. But also this guy was a bartender, so he had a an unbelievable ability to just talk,

Vance Crowe [00:59:04] Just make

Rob Long [00:59:04] Conversation, you know, which you can imagine a bartender. Yeah. And, and he really just wanted to talk to tell me about sports, not to talk about it, but tell me about it. So,

Vance Crowe [00:59:14] Well there's something that, like, I think Ian, my wife pointed this out to me of like, if we are talking about something I don't wanna talk about, I'll ask you a bunch of questions until we eventually get to the point where I get to bring up the thing that I wanna talk about. And it's a little bit like, come out here in the, in the, yeah. In the deep waters. Most of my conversations when I'm meeting, because I'm meeting a lot of new people. 'cause my daughters now go to this school, and so we're trying to meet more parents and everything. And ultimately I'm waiting for my opportunity to be like, so what, what do you think about Bitcoin?

Rob Long [00:59:50] Yeah. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:59:53] And I've yet to have like that payoff, but one day it will. Right? It's just like the, the podcast is the same thing. Like all the podcast guests come around here and, and eventually if you're listening to the podcast, you know, like eventually I'm gonna be like, so what do you think about Bitcoin?

Rob Long [01:00:08] Yeah, I mean, I, I work with tons of software developers and technical people. And even in that crowd, it's, it's even not, you know, it's certainly not a hundred percent, but probably less than 50% of people that are wanna talk about it or care about it in any way.

Vance Crowe [01:00:23] I mean, I think like there's, there's like an alienating factor to it almost. Like there's, there's something that, that people, it's not just that they don't wanna talk about it. Like somebody doesn't wanna talk about golf or they don't wanna talk about, you know, basketball or whatever. But like, if you bring up Bitcoin, there's like a groan. There's like a, I don't, you know, that doesn't occur with other subjects. Is that because there's obnoxious Bitcoin people like me out there like forcing this conversation or

Rob Long [01:00:50] I don't think that's it. 'cause I think they're probably would, they haven't had that experience. 'cause there's just not that many of those. Right. But I think it's more of a, like, it's a strange topic that nobody really, you either, like, I don't, you know, it's weird internet money, you know, that that's just, they're like, I don't, I don't get it. I don't know why we're talking about this. Or it's a scary thing. Like it's associated with, you know, money laundering or terrorism or, you know, all of the, the fud that's, that's thrown out, but,

Vance Crowe [01:01:20] Or the people that are like, ah, I wish I had gotten in on it, but I didn't get in on the big, on the big bump on it. And so there's like a, I missed out and so now I rejected, or I had a chance to be a part of it. And I, I, I wish I had, but I just didn't

Rob Long [01:01:34] Even that, that's a conversation, right? Because you can have that conversation like, oh, when did you first hear about it? What did you know? You thought it was interesting that enough that you, you know about it. So like, that's, that's a great reaction. That's something you can work with. When

Vance Crowe [01:01:47] Did you f first hear about it?

Rob Long [01:01:50] Sometime probably 2011 or 2012. And I've, you know, I'm certain that I bounced off of it. The, at least the three times. That's the standard. You know, you hear about it several different times from several different ways before you really, you know, think of it as a real thing and, and consider doing something with it. So yeah, 2013.

Vance Crowe [01:02:14] Yeah, we were in a, a hookah bar and I was like, Rob, give it to me one more time when I had the like, awe inspiring moment.

Rob Long [01:02:25] Yeah, yeah. No, that was a, that was an interesting time. And that was a long time ago.

Vance Crowe [01:02:30] Yeah. I mean, we were 11 years ago, 11 years ago. I mean, like so far, so far before we had children or, you know, all the different things that happened. And if you were to say like how this game were to play out, you know, using the baseball analogy, what inning are we in?

Rob Long [01:02:47] Oh, I don't know. I don't know. That's an interesting question. It, it depends on a lot of things, right? Like if you assume that Bitcoin itself as a network continues to operate the way it does, you know, you can look at it in its own terms and say that it will continue paying out for every block until 2140 something some, you know, like a hundred years from now, 120 years from now. But in terms of like the human uptake and use of it, I think it just depends on what happens else in the real world, right? Like if, if the dollar were not losing purchasing power so rapidly over time, I don't think people would feel so excited to go use it would be an interesting curiosity. It'd be like, oh, it's like email for money or something, you know, this kind of thing. But as it is, the store of value is a, is a pressing, urgent need that we have. So I think that's, it's not good. It's not good that we need, it would be nice if we just had a normal, you know, currency that didn't dissolve out from under us. But I don't know,

Vance Crowe [01:03:57] I like the term epoch for this. Like, I think, I think there was an epoch before you got in, right? Like, you know, where it actually started and there were people doing it, you know, for year, like three years or whatever, four years. And then I think there was like the, the early adopter epoch, right? Where there's people that are like, I wasn't in at the very beginning and now I think we're probably in the third epoch where like all of those people are in, and now it's going to more, I don't, I don't know that the like normal technology adoption curve that you see everywhere is, I think it's exactly that.

Rob Long [01:04:32] Is

Vance Crowe [01:04:32] It, I think there's

Rob Long [01:04:33] The early adopters, right? And then the, and the enthusiasts, and now we're into the, the first, you know, large chunk of the, this is the crossing the chasm book, right? That has this normal distribution. And then the, the first bit of it are the, the people who invented it and the people who, you know, are just super enthusiastic about it because of the technology or whatever. But there's the, you know, the, the, I forget what the bulk of it is called, but basically the first half of the, of the normal distribution coming into it. And I think right now you have the ETFs that allow people who just have money in 4 0 1 Ks to buy into it in this way. It's not exactly Bitcoin. They have exposure to the price of Bitcoin is what they have. They don't have the Bitcoin, the ETFs have the Bitcoin. But I think once they see that and then kind of understand what's going on, the next logical step is to take self custody of that Bitcoin. And especially if you have, you know, legal reform that makes that explicitly something that we have the right to do. I mean, we already do, right? But I don't think the government necessarily agrees with that. So

Vance Crowe [01:05:47] Yeah, I mean there's a lot more people that own crypto and I'm being very specific in saying that as opposed to Bitcoin than I originally thought. I mean, it's, it's like not an, it's like tens of millions of people. So it it's a lot of people.

Rob Long [01:06:02] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:06:02] But there's still so, so, so many more, I mean, billions more people to go. Well,

Rob Long [01:06:07] I mean, the estimate that I've seen is that it's on the order of 50 million people in the United States that own some form of crypto, which I believe probably most people who own crypto also own, you know, own Bitcoin and maybe something else. So that's a solid block. And if they demonstrate, you know, voting preferences based on promises made and delivered on, you know, keeping that free and unencumbered, then I think that'll change things for the good.

Vance Crowe [01:06:39] And I think we'll also not hear about things that are going on in other countries. I mean, like in the US there's like, I remember when you and I first, we used to, we actually gave like, I don't know, I won't call 'em classes, but like little intro lessons to Bitcoin. And I can remember talking about, I talking about wild hyperinflation. Like imagine living in a place that has hyperinflation and after one of the things you were like, Hey, don't use that example anymore. Because the people here like literally cannot imagine what hyperinflation is. Like, like, like they, they don't even have a perception that inflation is bad. They don't, and then like, you know, fast forward 10 years, I think that there's nobody in America that doesn't now know, like, know the experience of having your money go down in value. They just don't have a, they don't, they don't connect Bitcoin with being a way to get out of that cycle.

Rob Long [01:07:32] Yeah. I was listening to a conversation, I fe I don't remember if it was, it was Representative Massey talking to somebody. And it was not Tucker recently. It was, it was Tom Woods, that's what it was.

Vance Crowe [01:07:47] Oh, that'd be interesting.

Rob Long [01:07:48] On the Tom Woods podcast. Okay. He was saying that every year that he's been up there, he puts in a bill to, to abolish the Federal Reserve. And that it's usually like, it's the, it's like a joke, you know, it's just him and one other person that signs onto it. But that in like this year there was 25 other representatives that signed onto it, which it's not gonna pass. It's never gonna pass. Right. But the interest has gone from literally zero to a little bit more. And that's interesting.

Vance Crowe [01:08:20] Yeah. I mean, I think libertarianism as a, as a concept of like freedom is growing, but the idea that the Federal Reserve is something that you could abolish is something that, like, it wasn't even on people's radars. Because like if you go to Washington DC and you see the building that they like term as the Federal Reserve, you're like, this is just a, this is just the government, right? They don't, and you and I actually used to live down the street from a guy that worked at the Federal Reserve and you know, he would always make it very clear like, oh, we're not government employees. It doesn't say.gov at the end of our, at the end of our email if I

Rob Long [01:08:55] Don't know how that's supposed to be comforting, by the way.

Vance Crowe [01:08:57] Yeah, right.

Rob Long [01:08:58] Like, yet you still have this power over our currency. So

Vance Crowe [01:09:02] It's, it's wild.

Rob Long [01:09:03] So like,

Vance Crowe [01:09:03] It's, it's difficult. I don't even know that I actually know the, the correct answer here. They're a private company.

Rob Long [01:09:11] I don't, I don't know the answer, right. Like the, like clearly the, the, the president appoints the, or the Congress, I dunno, somebody appoints the, the, the Federal Reserve chairman, right? But banks own shares of stock in the Federal Reserve, like the big banks do. I don't know what they own. What is it that they actually own? What do they get out of those shares? I don't know.

Vance Crowe [01:09:34] Yeah. And do they get paid a dividend off of that? Like, or is it just that they Yeah. Like, and what is that? And like the relationship between the treasury and the Fed, like there's that famous video. These are, these

Rob Long [01:09:46] Are all questions that have answers by the way. And I just have not looked them up. Right? So I'm not saying this is a mysterious thing that we just don't know. I'm, my my point in this is to say I don't know the answer and it's confusing. And I don't know where I would look exactly like who I would trust to tell me the answer to that.

Vance Crowe [01:10:04] Yeah, I mean, and like you can find people like Jeremy Laco who's been on the podcast several times. He'll talk to you about like, well the treasury, what they do is they go borrow money, you know, they issue notes and then they can use those notes to get the federal. Like, but as soon as I start digging into it, he's somebody that I trust. Like I'm just like, yeah,

Rob Long [01:10:24] But

Vance Crowe [01:10:24] Like, why would you do that? And ultimately it comes down to this is some kind of symphony created by a per, I don't necessarily mean a good symphony, I just mean like, it's just music created by people. And so it, it's not like physics where you're like, oh, there is a natural order to this. It, it is an order created by human beings. How is noster

Rob Long [01:10:47] Good? I use it every day.

Vance Crowe [01:10:48] Talk about Noster. That's actually a great, great subject.

Rob Long [01:10:51] Yeah, it's a tricky one to talk about because it's very young, you know, it's very much talk of protocols and programming languages and this sort of stuff. But the concept of it is to create a system where I can produce messages and they are relayed to people who wish to consume them, right? And that this message is cryptographically signed, not hidden, but a authenticated that I'm the one that produced it such that I could sign it with a private key, you know, my public key. So you can take my public key and say, oh, does this verify and say, yes, no one else could have signed this message, but Rob who created it. And the purpose of that is to just allow communication and to create what we would call a web of trust. So if I trust your public key and I trust other people that I know personally and say, okay, I, I understand this is this exact person's identity, that if somebody new comes up and I know somebody else that I trust trusts that person, then I'm much more willing to listen to them, do business with them, whatever. I'm much less likely to be scammed by some, you know, random nonsense going on. Or there are a whole lot of other uses for this. A lot of the, the most popular one is as a replacement for something like Twitter where people post messages and respond to one another and like things and do that.

Rob Long [01:12:27] To me, that's not the most interesting use case of this. This really is just the messaging part I'm interested in essentially migrating podcasts and RSS feeds to this format so that I don't even need to go to a single website where that could be taken down. I could just go to any relay that relays noster messages and find what I'm looking for there if they've published it there. So it's kind of a, it decentralizes the distribution even further. And yet at the same time, cryptographically ensures that what I'm receiving has not been edited in flight by somebody.

Vance Crowe [01:13:09] Let me see if I can repeat this and if I got it right because I I've been on no stir a little bit, but I, you know, it, it didn't hold like immediate value to me so I didn't hang out. Yeah. In the same way. And it's like very clunky 'cause it's, you know, written by people, for people that know how to do this, but that everybody has their own key that allows them, just like Bitcoin, you have a public key and a private key and the public key is says, Hey, if you wanna send stuff to me, send it to this address. And the private key is the, the thing that you sign that makes sure that if I send you a note, you know, it's actually from me. Somebody didn't like get in the middle and, you know, 'cause on Twitter, Elon could jump in there and send messages from Vance's account.

Rob Long [01:13:52] Yes.

Vance Crowe [01:13:52] And it, it might look like it's coming from my account, but it's not. Or Gmail, the same thing. But this one it would be your much more secure in the sense of you're sealing that it's, it's going from one person to another and my seal is, is on there. The information gets stored on relays, which are essentially like servers at, at somebody's house. So I could say what or, or wherever. But if I had one at my house, I could say, of the information that comes to my node, I want to save some of it on this, on this relay so that other people could access it as well. Yeah, not exactly.

Rob Long [01:14:32] So the, a relay is just more like a, a a server. And a lot of them now they, when we first started out, like when I started out there was like, I was aware of a hundred other people using this thing. There's been, you know, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people signed up and, and used it since then. But the idea is that it's just an open place like a URL. So it might be, you know, relay.dous.io right? Which is a, a notable Noer app. And so when you publish a message, you have a list of relays that you use and it just sends your message to all those relays. So anyone who is listening for messages coming from me would and is also sub, you know, talking to that relay would receive that message in real time or whenever they connect to it, it's stored there. So it's like, you know, I, I put it out here and anyone can come and read it at any time. And then since it's gotten more popular, there are a lot more relays that will charge an amount of Bitcoin for access to that relay for, for the ability to write things to the relay.

Vance Crowe [01:15:43] Oh,

Rob Long [01:15:44] Generally you can read from them, but if you wanna write to them, you gotta, you gotta pay a little bit through, through the lightning network of Bitcoin.

Vance Crowe [01:15:51] That's an inversion of, of the way we put up content. Now, right now the content is, hey, hey company, I will give you this stuff for free. Like I'm just gonna give it to you and then maybe if you get some advertising dollars or you like what I'm doing, you'll give me money back, but not I'm gonna pay to post here. That's like

Rob Long [01:16:09] Right, because it's there, it's there to disincentivize spammers and people just wanna make mischief, but they're not gonna pay money to, to make trouble. And if the rate is high enough for the the spammer, it's not worth it, you know?

Vance Crowe [01:16:22] Wow, okay.

Rob Long [01:16:23] And it, and it seems to work.

Vance Crowe [01:16:26] Is it that it, that it works because there's money there? Or is it because there's just not that many people on noster and it's a bunch of, oh,

Rob Long [01:16:32] There's enough, there's enough pranksters out there that loves, you know, trying to test the system that they're absolutely happy to do that. Right. But, and it's, you can pay and and spam everybody, but you, you don't typically see that. So I think it, I think it works well. And if the customers on that relay became so valuable to a spam member that they would be willing to pay, then I think that would be a signal that you should just raise your prices. I mean, that's Relay operator,

Vance Crowe [01:16:57] That's exactly what I want going on with my email. I, I want, I want like if you wanna send me advertisements, just here's the price, attach a little, yeah, attach a little bit of money to that and I'll, I'll open that thing up and that'll make it so you are going to make double damn sure that I am going to value whatever it is that you put in there.

Rob Long [01:17:16] And probably people who want to advertise would also appreciate that because they are right now paying that fee. It's just not going to you. Right. They're paying a post office or they're paying Facebook or X or whoever

Vance Crowe [01:17:29] Oh, that's exactly right.

Rob Long [01:17:30] To get access to their customers and then they're just taking all of that money and giving you the, you know, ads that show up as opposed to just saying like, you set the price, set the slider bar where you want it, and you, if you read it, you know, then the money comes over to you, why not?

Vance Crowe [01:17:49] Seems fantastic. So what do you use it for? That's outside of if you don't, 'cause I initially got on and, and tried to use like the, basically the Twitter version of this is before Elon bought and turn into XI was like, I gotta get outta here. 'cause I'm,

Rob Long [01:18:03] I'm still on that train. I don't, I don't have,

Vance Crowe [01:18:05] I don't think Elon's anything special, I just,

Rob Long [01:18:07] No. But yeah, he

Vance Crowe [01:18:09] Improved it for me.

Rob Long [01:18:10] I do, I do use apps that like, I don't use dus, I use something called Amethyst, which is the, the Android client that, that acts in a roughly similar way. But you know, the other use case that I'm specifically working on, as I said is the RSS feeds slash podcasts migrating as a noster feed instead of an R-S-S-X-M-L file feed. And I've built some stuff that I'm working on getting out there where, so if you have an app, like I mentioned Feedly before, If you use something like that, you can kind of go into the settings menu and say, export my feeds. And what it will give you is a file called an OPML file and it's another XML file and it's just a list of all of your feeds, right? And so I've wrote this software that will take and parse that file and push all of those things into noster and then you can go and kind of mix and match. So I have my feed up there and if you uploaded yours, I could see what you have up there and say like, oh, Vance has this category called Bitcoin and it has all of his long form content that he follows about Bitcoin. I'm just gonna click this button and add that whole list of feeds into my feed, right? So that then I could export that file and import it into an RSS feed reader. Or what I'm getting to, what I'm working up to is just reading it through the site there itself, you know, as opposed to importing and exporting things all the time.

Rob Long [01:19:42] But I'm starting to keep it very, very simple. 'cause it can get wildly outta control.

Vance Crowe [01:19:47] I mean, I can tell you that I would personally love

Rob Long [01:19:50] To be able

Vance Crowe [01:19:50] To look at like, what's Joseph Ring listening to these days? What's, you know, Mike Compton checking out these days, what's Eric Ward up to? And then, and not having to be like, Hey guys, you know, flip me the in, you know, and in particular if there was a way for them to rate, you know, of the things they've listened to, to how would you rate this?

Rob Long [01:20:08] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:20:08] And then just like look at it, you know, that, that, that would be fantastic. That would be infinitely more valuable than the algorithm giving me this because it would be a curated list from people that I trust.

Rob Long [01:20:19] Right? As, and that's kind of the beautiful part about No Star is that you show up and like there isn't, it's not the same thing as saying, well, well Twitter is a platform, right? Like it's an application and the people you follow and who follows you is entirely trapped inside of that one application, inside of that platform. No, sir. Is a protocol. And there are many applications that use that protocol. So it would be like if you left Twitter and all the people who followed you and you follow are all still there, but you went to some other application like let's say Spotify, right? And you wanted to say, who are the people that I follow? What are the podcasts that they listen to? You could do that. Like, this is the idea. That's that's what I'm,

Vance Crowe [01:21:08] I mean that would be so empowering to the individual because then it strips out that that ability to take your followers somewhere, which is like a weird, it's just like, who are people

Rob Long [01:21:18] That like the

Vance Crowe [01:21:18] Content you curate and can they still get access to the content you curate? Or do they have to, like, I love this.

Rob Long [01:21:25] And it's not like technological wizardry, it's just coming up with a protocol that everyone decides that they agree that we'll use that, right? Like, 'cause you just, every, it's like Tower of Babel, everybody's doing it in a different way. I mean, partly because they don't want to share this, right? Like, you don't want to give somebody an exit if you have like this captive market. And that's part of the point of it. But also it's just, we don't have a standard for this. So this is an approach to a standard and if somebody comes up with something better, I'll use that. You know? So

Vance Crowe [01:21:54] What's the on-ramp to No Stir, what's the,

Rob Long [01:21:59] Probably using the normal like Twitter, social media type client apps. Like either dus, DAMU s.io. There's, that's the, the iPhone app or

Vance Crowe [01:22:10] As in Noster dus, right?

Rob Long [01:22:12] Noster. Dus. I say Noster, some people say Noster, there's 10,000 ways to say it. It's a, it's a terrible name, but like all things in computers, it is cursed to have the first name it was given, was a, was a joke by the developer, which is always the how it works.

Vance Crowe [01:22:27] And

Rob Long [01:22:28] Then it just sticks and nobody could think of something else. 'cause it's,

Vance Crowe [01:22:30] It's just what it, what it is. Yeah.

Rob Long [01:22:32] And if you're on Android, I would say use Amethyst.

Vance Crowe [01:22:37] Okay.

Rob Long [01:22:37] Which is a similar type of app. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:22:40] Well, it's very easy for me to carve out some amount of time that I'm giving to the apps to be like, all right, instead of doing that, I'm gonna jump over here and Yeah.

Rob Long [01:22:49] And

Vance Crowe [01:22:49] Try and get back into this. And

Rob Long [01:22:51] It, it, you know, if you were around in the early days of the internet, you'll know that the conversations and things that were happening there were almost entirely about the thing itself that they were just building. And that's, that's also the case here. And for 99% of people, this is like boring. I want to hear about some other thing, you know? But like, that is exactly what I want. So that's, so it's, it's the perfect place for me to, to, to talk to people and, and do this. But as it, as it grows, it will, it will change and do all sorts of different stuff. But it's a thing to watch. It's,

Vance Crowe [01:23:27] I mean, I know, so there, I'm, I'm interviewing the guy that runs the survivalist podcast, very popular, and he's very into No Stir. And I think that it, it's probably selecting for people that are, that, that they say, well, you know, there's, you may not be able to see the censorship and the control and the walled garden that's around you, but it exists. And so I'm building over here and if I could find a way to, to get involved with your podcast thing and see that curated list of my friends, I'm, I'm totally game. And if we could find a way to replicate Slack outside of Slack, that's the holy grail for me.

Rob Long [01:24:04] Yeah, no, there are people working on that. There are communities, there's, there's all kinds of improvements that happen over time. It's, it's so early in Noster people come up with concepts. So in Bitcoin, like they've been adding features since the very beginning, right? There are Bitcoin improvement proposals, bips, right? And there's like 400 of them now or something that have been, you know, proposed and approved in various stages and there's a similar kind of thing in noer and they just keep adding functionality to it. And if you're out there and you're a developer, if you're, even if you're just learning how to do, develop, you know, software developing, this is a really, really fun thing to work on because it's just dead simple. But the core concepts of computer science are, are here, like, you know, a hash function, encryption, all these sorts of things. And kind of the, the web development that's really popular out there that people have some basic skills in is all useful in this place, but it's a lot more focused and interesting. You can do a surprisingly lot of stuff. So if you're, if you're even remotely interested, just go play with it. You know, it's all JSON blobs. This means something to you if you're a developer, it's all JSON and they're just, you know, you're signing them and sending them and receiving them and processing them. So if you, if that means something to you and you're curious, go check it out.

Vance Crowe [01:25:35] Well great man. I'm glad we caught that last little bit in there. I think we talked about Noster one of the other times when you were on, but I think this is much better explanation than I ever understood before.

Rob Long [01:25:46] No, that was good. That was

Vance Crowe [01:25:47] Good. Well thanks man. Yeah.