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@ a95c6243:d345522c
2025-03-01 10:39:35
*Ständige Lügen und Unterstellungen, permanent falsche Fürsorge* *\
können Bausteine von emotionaler Manipulation sein. Mit dem Zweck,* *\
Macht und Kontrolle über eine andere Person auszuüben.* *\
Apotheken Umschau*  
**Irgendetwas muss passiert sein: «Gaslighting» ist gerade Thema** in vielen Medien. Heute bin ich nach längerer Zeit mal wieder über dieses Stichwort gestolpert. Das war in einem [Artikel](https://norberthaering.de/propaganda-zensur/dwd-referenzperiode/) von Norbert Häring über Manipulationen des Deutschen Wetterdienstes (DWD). In diesem Fall ging es um eine Pressemitteilung vom Donnerstag zum «viel zu warmen» Winter 2024/25.
**Häring wirft der Behörde vor, dreist zu lügen und Dinge auszulassen,** um die Klimaangst wach zu halten. Was der Leser beim DWD nicht erfahre, sei, dass dieser Winter kälter als die drei vorangegangenen und kälter als der Durchschnitt der letzten zehn Jahre gewesen sei. Stattdessen werde der falsche Eindruck vermittelt, es würde ungebremst immer wärmer.
**Wem also der zu Ende gehende Winter eher kalt vorgekommen sein sollte,** mit dessen Empfinden stimme wohl etwas nicht. Das jedenfalls wolle der DWD uns einreden, so der Wirtschaftsjournalist. Und damit sind wir beim Thema Gaslighting.
**Als** **[Gaslighting](https://bayern-gegen-gewalt.de/gewalt-infos-und-einblicke/formen-von-gewalt/psychische-gewalt/gaslighting/)** **wird eine Form psychischer Manipulation bezeichnet,** mit der die Opfer desorientiert und zutiefst verunsichert werden, indem ihre eigene Wahrnehmung als falsch bezeichnet wird. Der Prozess führt zu Angst und Realitätsverzerrung sowie zur Zerstörung des Selbstbewusstseins. Die Bezeichnung kommt von dem britischen Theaterstück «Gas Light» aus dem Jahr 1938, in dem ein Mann mit grausamen Psychotricks seine Frau in den Wahnsinn treibt.
**Damit Gaslighting funktioniert, muss das Opfer dem Täter vertrauen.** Oft wird solcher Psychoterror daher im privaten oder familiären Umfeld beschrieben, ebenso wie am Arbeitsplatz. Jedoch eignen sich die Prinzipien auch perfekt zur Manipulation der Massen. Vermeintliche Autoritäten wie Ärzte und Wissenschaftler, oder «der fürsorgliche Staat» und Institutionen wie die UNO oder die WHO wollen uns doch nichts Böses. Auch Staatsmedien, Faktenchecker und diverse NGOs wurden zu «vertrauenswürdigen Quellen» erklärt. Das hat seine Wirkung.
**Warum das Thema Gaslighting derzeit scheinbar so populär ist,** vermag ich nicht zu sagen. Es sind aber gerade in den letzten Tagen und Wochen auffällig viele Artikel dazu erschienen, und zwar nicht nur von Psychologen. Die *Frankfurter Rundschau* hat gleich mehrere publiziert, und [Anwälte](https://www.anwalt.de/rechtstipps/gaslighting-beispiele-anzeichen-strafbarkeit-212449.html) interessieren sich dafür offenbar genauso wie Apotheker.
**Die** ***Apotheken Umschau*** **machte sogar auf** **[«Medical Gaslighting»](https://archive.is/Wx5YM)** **aufmerksam.** Davon spreche man, wenn Mediziner Symptome nicht ernst nähmen oder wenn ein gesundheitliches Problem vom behandelnden Arzt «schnöde heruntergespielt» oder abgetan würde. Kommt Ihnen das auch irgendwie bekannt vor? Der Begriff sei allerdings irreführend, da er eine manipulierende Absicht unterstellt, die «nicht gewährleistet» sei.
**Apropos Gaslighting: Die noch amtierende deutsche Bundesregierung** [meldete](https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/service/newsletter-und-abos/bundesregierung-aktuell/ausgabe-08-2025-februar-28-2336254?view=renderNewsletterHtml) heute, es gelte, «weiter \[sic!] gemeinsam daran zu arbeiten, einen gerechten und dauerhaften Frieden für die Ukraine zu erreichen». Die Ukraine, wo sich am Montag «der völkerrechtswidrige Angriffskrieg zum dritten Mal jährte», [verteidige](https://transition-news.org/wikileaks-der-westen-wusste-dass-ein-nato-beitritt-der-ukraine-riskant-war) ihr Land und «unsere gemeinsamen Werte».
**Merken Sie etwas? Das Demokratieverständnis mag ja tatsächlich** inzwischen in beiden Ländern ähnlich traurig sein. Bezüglich Friedensbemühungen ist meine Wahrnehmung jedoch eine andere. Das muss an meinem Gedächtnis liegen.
***
Dieser Beitrag ist zuerst auf ***[Transition News](https://transition-news.org/bitte-nicht-von-gaslichtern-irritieren-lassen)*** erschienen.
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@ 04c195f1:3329a1da
2025-03-01 10:36:50
***Yesterday's chaotic Oval Office meeting between Trump, Vance, and Zelensky exposes a harsh truth: Europe can no longer depend on American protection. The time has come for Europe to reclaim its sovereignty and rebuild as an independent power.***
## A Diplomatic Theater With No Happy Ending
Yesterday's chaotic scenes in the Oval Office revealed more than just diplomatic tension—they exposed the fundamental weakness of Europe's strategic position. As President Trump, Vice President Vance, and President Zelensky engaged in their uncomfortable public spectacle, one truth became painfully clear: Europe can no longer rely on American protection.
The awkward press conference featured about 40 minutes of relative calm before descending into 10 minutes of complete chaos. This final meltdown was likely never intended to produce meaningful results. Each participant appeared to be performing for different audiences—Trump and Vance signaling to their base, Zelensky demonstrating resolve to European allies. Without concrete security guarantees, any agreement would be meaningless for Ukraine, a reality all parties surely understood beforehand.
When Vance spoke of diplomacy as a "new strategy"—ignoring numerous failed diplomatic initiatives—he crossed a line that provoked Zelensky's visible frustration. The subsequent breakdown wasn't merely a failure of diplomatic protocol but the public collapse of a relationship Europe has staked its security upon.
## The Price of Misguided Priorities
This moment of crisis presents an opportunity if European nations are willing to confront uncomfortable realities. The time has come for Europe to emerge as a third global power, independent from both Eastern and Western influence. However, the path forward requires acknowledging our current weaknesses.
European leadership has squandered decades pursuing ideological luxuries while our industrial and military capabilities have atrophied. While obsessing over multicultural social engineering, progressive identity politics, and globalist agendas, we've neglected the fundamental responsibilities of sovereign nations: securing borders, building defensive capabilities, and fostering national cohesion.
The defense of European nations begins with domestic policy. A society divided against itself cannot stand firm in the face of external threats. This principle applies whether discussing Sweden's defense posture or the broader European security architecture.
Photo by [Christian Lue](https://english.daneriksson.com/p/true) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/)
## Reclaiming National Identity and Purpose
To rebuild our defensive capabilities, we must first address the internal fragmentation deliberately cultivated across the political spectrum. The active policies of societal division pursued with increasing fervor since the latter half of the 20th century have undermined the very foundations of national identity and common purpose.
Strengthening national defense requires citizens who understand their shared heritage and believe their nation is worth defending. In practical terms, this means confronting difficult questions about immigration, assimilation, and the presence of potential fifth-column elements within our societies. Nations with higher social cohesion demonstrate greater willingness to defend their collective interests.
The current crisis in Ukraine and the uncertain American commitment should serve as a wake-up call. European nations must rapidly rebuild industrial capacity, military strength, and most importantly, a sense of shared purpose. This demands breaking free from the ideological constraints that have guided European politics for generations.
Although European establishment politicians show little appetite for such fundamental reassessment, events are accelerating rapidly. The dramatic scenes in Washington should catalyze serious reflection across European capitals. We cannot hold our breath waiting for political leadership to regain sense—we must push the conversation forward ourselves.
Europe stands at a crossroads. We can continue our dangerous dependence on unreliable partners, or we can reclaim our sovereignty and rebuild our strength. The choice should be obvious, but making it requires courage our leaders have thus far failed to demonstrate.
■
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@ fd78c37f:a0ec0833
2025-03-01 08:57:55
**Author**: Zhengyu Qian, Eric Zhang
**Original Link**: https://research.dorahacks.io/2025/02/22/maci-mailbox/
We are not reinventing email.
Even a glance at the TOC of [IETF RFC 5322](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5322) reveals: email is long-standing and well-established, but far from simple. This is just one piece of the puzzle in today’s email system.
What we would like to do first is to review the essence of message delivery.
## Proto-mail
A typical process of message delivery can be broken down into three critical components:
1. Individuals intending to exchange messages—referred to as the **users**.
2. An intermediary, or **agent**, that facilitates the delivery.
3. The **message** itself.
Message delivery takes place when the sender hands over the message (e.g., a written note) to an agent—a person (a messenger), a device (a beacon), or an institution (a post office). The agent then dispatches the message to the recipient.
Though direct communication, such as face-to-face conversation, falls outside the scope of this context.
## The Protocol of MACI Mailbox
The MACI Mailbox is an encryption-based mailing protocol that builds directly on the three components above, with modifications and extensions.
1. The **user** consists of two parts:
- An **account**, typically with a publicly visible **mailing address**.
- A **keypair**(a private key and its corresponding public key), which works its magic in encrypted communication.
2. The **agent** has a similar structure:
- An **account**.
- A **keypair**.
3. The message is simple, consisting of two fields:
- **Subject**.
- **Body**.
The following outlines the flow of message delivery in the MACI Mailbox protocol. The process of sending a message is addressed first.
1. The sender writes a **message**.
2. The **agent** encrypts the message **using its public key**, posts and stores it in a shared public database (e.g. a blockchain, Nostr), and assigns it a queryable **ID**.
3. The sender wraps the **ID** of encrypted message together with the **agent’s private key**, encrypts them using the **recipient’s public key**, and broadcasts the resulting encrypted data to a public space. Yes, **broadcasts it publicly**—feeling like encrypted radio communication yet?
In this process, asymmetric encryption is introduced twice, achieving something valuable: the decoupling of message storage from broadcast. This has at least two key implications:
1. It’s highly flexible to choose the infrastructures for encrypted message **posting and storage** as well as **broadcasting** facilities—both of which are **modular, replaceable, and trustless**.
2. Storage and broadcast infrastructures can be separately tailored to meet specific requirements. Typically:
- Message storage is expected to be inexpensive, reliable, and scalable.
- Broadcast infrastructure can be customized to fit the varying user ecosystems or needs.
Receiving a message is basically the reverse process:
1. The recipient indexes their mail in the broadcast space, decrypts it with **their own private key** (guaranteed by the principles of asymmetric encryption), and retrieves both the **ID of encrypted message** (storage address) and **the agent’s private key** (which, as you may recall, was bundled with the message ID before broadcast).
2. With the message ID, the recipient fetches the encrypted message from storage and decrypts it using the agent’s private key to obtain the plaintext message.
3. Tada.
It can be observed that the agent’s role described above is highly procedural, lending itself to a modular and replaceable design. This enables significant flexibility in the implementation of MACI Mailbox services and applications.
## Vota-Nostr Mailbox: basic architecture
The Vota-Nostr Mailbox is the first implementation of the Protocol by Dora Factory, consisting of several core modules:
- **A smart contract** deployed on [Dora Vota](https://research.dorahacks.io/2023/07/31/vota/) appchain to handle the broadcasting of messages.
- [Nostr relays](https://nostr.com/relays), used for publishing and storing encrypted messages.
- **An indexer service** to assist users in locating relevant messages, such as those sent to or from themselves.
- **A web app** as the interface for interacting with the Vota-Nostr Mailbox.
First, user accounts are implemented as on-chain accounts of Dora Vota (represented as a wallet address) paired with a public/private [ECC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic-curve_cryptography) keypair. Message content is kept simple as plain-text strings, with the flexibility to upgrade it later (Everybody Loves Rich Text).
Next, let’s push the boundaries for the agent. Ideally, users shouldn’t have to learn how to interact with it actively—think about fully automated agents. Or picture a stylish scene from *[The Day of the Jackal](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt24053860/)*: [Eddie Redmayne](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1519666/) casually discarding a phone after each call.
Thus, a disposable, one-time auto agent is designed for each mail flow. This agent consists of a randomly generated ECC keypair and a temporarily created Nostr account (essentially another keypair: [npub/nsec](https://nostr.com/get-started#understanding-keys)).
## Vota-Nostr Mailbox: communication workflow
In [Vota-Nostr implementation](https://vota.dorafactory.org/mailbox) of MACI Mailbox Protocol, the communication flow is as follows. Both the encryption/decryption of message content and the broadcast rely on elliptic-curve cryptography.
To enhance user experience, a “Sent Messages” feature has been implemented, allowing senders to index, decrypt, and review their sent messages. In general, with asymmetric encryption, only the recipient’s private key can decrypt the encrypted content. Technically, there are cryptographic methods to enable mutual decryption by both sender and recipient.
For simplicity at this stage, this issue is addressed by creating **a duplicate of each broadcast data** (on Dora Vota appchain). This duplicate is encrypted using the sender’s own public key, allowing the sender to decrypt it with their private key.
Since the Protocol decouples the storage of encrypted message from the broadcast data, this duplication doesn’t significantly increase the payload on the broadcast infrastructure. Only the **message ID** and the **agent’s private key** need to be processed as duplicates, both of which are compact and independent of the actual message size (the length of your address line and the size of your front door key don’t depend on the dimensions of your house).
Below outlines the entire communication process:
1. The sender encrypts their message using the **agent’s one-time public key** and publishes it to Nostr relay(s) via the **agent’s one-time Nostr account**, obtaining the encrypted message’s ID (i.e., **Nostr event ID**).
2. The sender wraps the encrypted message ID along with the **agent’s one-time private key**, encrypts them using the **recipient’s public key**, and broadcasts the resulting encrypted data to the appchain via **their own Dora Vota account**. This process leverages wallet apps/extensions for transaction submission and the smart contract for processing, closely resembling how users typically interact with blockchains and dapps.
3. Once the on-chain transaction is processed, the encrypted data is broadcast on Dora Vota. Both the sender and the recipient can retrieve the data at any time via the **Mailbox Indexer**.
4. The recipient decrypts the broadcast encrypted data using **their own private key**, finding the **Nostr event ID** and the corresponding decryption key (**one-time agent private key**). They then fetch the encrypted message from Nostr relay(s) by the ID and decrypt it with the one-time private key.
5. The sender can follow a nearly identical process to fetch and decrypt their own duplicate, enabling them to review sent messages.
##
**Acknowledgements**
The MACI Mailbox protocol was conceived during a Dora Factory developer meeting in Kyoto, March 2024. Eric Zhang supported its implementation in October as a tool to facilitate communications and campaigns in MACI decentralized governance. Shrey Khater and Divyansh Joshi contributed to an MVP of the Vota-Nostr implementation. The protocol was officially integrated with Dora Vota appchain as well as its frontend with efforts from Zhengyu Qian, Dennis Tang, and Vegebun.
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@ da0b9bc3:4e30a4a9
2025-03-01 08:36:18
Hello Stackers!
Welcome on into the ~Music Corner of the Saloon!
A place where we Talk Music. Share Tracks. Zap Sats.
So stay a while and listen.
🚨Don't forget to check out the pinned items in the territory homepage! You can always find the latest weeklies there!🚨
🚨Subscribe to the territory to ensure you never miss a post! 🚨
originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/900550
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@ 95cb4330:96db706c
2025-03-01 07:38:13
Embracing The Principle of Asymmetric Bets
Embracing the principle of asymmetric bets, as practiced by visionaries like Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel, involves seeking opportunities where the potential gains far outweigh the possible losses. This strategy enables bold decision-making while minimizing exposure to significant failures.
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## Understanding Asymmetric Bets
- **Definition:**
An asymmetric bet is a strategic decision where the potential upside is substantially greater than the downside risk. This approach allows individuals and organizations to pursue high-reward opportunities without jeopardizing overall stability.
---
## Examples in Practice
- **Jeff Bezos and Amazon Web Services (AWS):**
Bezos invested in AWS when cloud computing was still emerging. The potential upside—a trillion-dollar business—vastly outweighed the moderate research and development costs, exemplifying an asymmetric bet.
- **Peter Thiel's Investment in Facebook:**
Thiel's early $500,000 investment in Facebook transformed into a multi-billion-dollar return, showcasing the immense potential of asymmetric bets in venture capital.
---
## Implementing Asymmetric Bets
1. **Identify Opportunities with High Upside and Low Downside:**
Seek situations where the potential benefits are disproportionately higher than the risks involved.
2. **Evaluate the Risk-to-Reward Ratio:**
Assess scenarios where even a small probability of success can lead to substantial rewards, justifying the risk taken.
3. **Diversify Bets:**
Spread resources across multiple asymmetric opportunities to increase the likelihood of significant returns while mitigating individual risks.
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## Action Step
Identify a decision or project where the potential upside is considerable and the downside is limited. Take action on this opportunity today, leveraging the principle of asymmetric bets to maximize success while minimizing risk.
---
By adopting this mindset, you position yourself to capitalize on transformative opportunities that can lead to substantial growth and innovation.
---