The wrinkle being most of the current generation cashiers appear stymied when they are required to make change despite the machine tells them the value. Cash perplexes those cats.
Out here in the PNW we have Dutch Bros. coffee. They equip the cashiers with screens that tell them how to make the change: $.63/two quarters, one dime and three pennies. I crap you not.
There's not knowing how to calculate change (my god, though, its not hard, my HS educated mom taught me in grade school) but not knowing what coins to use is impossible for me to imagine. Yet there it is.
It's the same in Australia - especially evident in the younger generation. The check-out operators REALLY struggle with doing maths in their head!!! Sometimes they're even really slow collecting the change from the till (like they've never seen cash before!). I think they're trying to add it up in their head and it's hurting them. When I eventually tell them how much change they need to hand me back they give me this combination look of "is she trying to cheat me here?" and "thank god she did the maths for me!".
Yeah, I tried to make change using head math and it can be overwhelming when put with all the other crap you have to deal with as a cashier and he need for speed, plus if you screw up you get in trouble. I had to remember my mom,who is far worse than me at all math, showed me as a kid you don't have to know math to make change. Just count up from the purchase total to the amount they gave you. The purchase was $7.46, they gave you $10, so four pennies, two quarters, and two bucks! Bring it up to the nearest tenth, then quarter, then dollar, and so on. No math necessary!
A lot of things are nowhere near as complicated as most of us think they are, and in my exoerience, us "highly educated" folk tend to overcomplicate the most and have no business looking down on people with less education and dismissing their every point on those grounds. Education is valuable but can have the side effect of making you over think everything, and sometimes someone without that background can offer some grounding advice a colleague in educational achievement can't. And sometimes they have tricks you never even thought of that make things much easier.
I withdraw cash and promptly use it to buy gift debit cards. The fee is neglible. Anonymous protonmail if an email is requested to monitor the gift debit account remotely from a quasi-secure environment. Easy-peasy where I live, and it should make them hafta work for my identity.
Haha, you're right. I once got change from man who could not speak English very well. He was out of singles and asked if I would take dollar coins. I said sure but didn't check until I got home. I found a weird coin that looked like it came from Chucky Cheese or something. I was upset until I looked closer and discovered it was a one troy ounce .999 silver coin, worth about $20!
I worked as a cashier casually for 7 years at a fruit market when I was a teenager, and NOT ONCE in my employment there did I get taught how to count back cash! Luckily I'm good at maths so it wasn't an issue, but I honestly just never figured it out how to count back cash until I was an adult! So sad, I know, but I DID learn ;-)
In the region of Californicated in which I reside, the "hip" and "enlightened" thing to is for retail businesses to go "cashless". More and more shops and restaurants don't take cash. It is a trend - only dinosaurs use cash. An excuse often given...wait for it...money spreads viruses. But the trend began before 2020.
I've also seen the most clever marketing ploy: use their app to earn rewards. My 20 y.o. uses the Starbucks app, pays with her Apple wallet (or whatever it's called). I have bigger fish to catch (keeping her from getting the clot shot). It's a daily juggling of priorities and keeping them open enough to hear me. I have joined the Walk Out (paying cash) and did share the original article with my family. Hoping it will trigger their curiosity. It's more of a challenge when they're young adults who think they know it all.
Cash is king. On this “walk-out” week, I’ve stopped using cards. A cashier-in-training was dumbfounded when I handed her a $100 bill for a $60+ purchase. Her supervisor had to show her how to access the cash. And how to count. I asked her if it was her first cash transaction. She nodded. I said “ welcome to team humanity”.
1) How many of the gun crimes are done with illegal guns!
2) Social credit scores you only need to look at the Ethereum goings on yesterday because that is ALL IN with social credit scores. It's the cliff we may have just fallen off of
3) The Patriot Act was the middle but this all started a LONG LONG time ago.
4) And for chuckles (NOT) Kamala just flew a special trip to NY on Air Force something to talk about climate change. For THEE not ME!
It's a freaking rabbit hole and this will not end well.
Great piece. Many rightfully worry about a future CBDC, but you could easily make the case that USDC just became the CBDC following PoS merge/Tornado Cash asset freezing. Wild stuff. And it feels like things are starting to happen fairly quickly after years of speculating on what global order would try to do to combat crypto
oof, that's your article, so I'll do my best to be nice. I'll start with kudos on you for putting your ideas out there. I'm too much a coward to be so public so I snipe comments. At least I'm honest about it.
POS does NOT necessarily mean who has the money rules the network. I'm a hardcore Cardano advocate despite the hate it gets (institutions mad they can't control) and it boasts 95% decentralization due to the saturation structure of stakepools. There is some consolidation of power around multiple pool entities, but it's not even the same universe as Solano, Ethereum, or even Bitcoin.
I also challenge that Bitcoin is bad for the environment and there are a couple takes here. If comparing it to the current transactional currency backed by the full military might of the US, it is but a drop in the bucket in energy, pollution, and basic human rights and in terms of a store of value, it is far more efficient than gold mining, real estate, or any other asset/commodity that could rival it. Even without that comparison, the energy used by Bitcoin is 95+% the cost of minting which places extreme pressure to facilitate the shift to alternative sources as current carbon based prices increase. Plus, energy companies have begun mining to balance the load on the electric grid caused by both demand differentials and inconsistent renewables.
I'll also take aim at munger and sherman who are globalists. If we are being honest, CB debt based currency enslaves us all. The "international power" they refer to is not helping average americans, it is helping financialize our economy to their detriment. This power is for globalists for globalist purposes. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but when Jackson has an attempted assassination after revoking the 1st CB, Lincoln getting assassinate after revoking 2nd CB and creating the greenback (a treasury created currency as our constitution provides), JFK getting assassinated after passing executive order to create the silver note (also a treasury backed currency) is just to coincidental for my tastes, especially considering global bankers being on record seeking the destruction of our republic since before the declaration of independence... then when including foreign events such as deposing all leaders not selling oil in USD, like beheading Saddam for attempting to sell in euros and killing khadafi for backing denari with gold, a clear pattern appears.
Bitcoin is fighting for the soul of humanity. That's energy well spent.
I think you may have misread my tone. I’m not in agreement with the Bitcoin = bad for the environment narrative but I don’t think there is much doubt that narrative is going to be the main attack vector. And I think Sherman/Munger are afraid of BTC precisely because it takes their power away. That’s a good thing. I’m not on their side.
Tell me more about why you like Cardano. It is one of the few chains I’ve seen that has fierce supporters and also those who claim it’s an outright scam. (A bit Tesla-like from where I sit). Yet it has a top 10 MC. I’m finding myself more in the middle but I’ve had difficulty finding a popular application that is building on it and it seems like the network is forked fairly often. So what should I look at to sway me to bullish ADA?
cardano gets a lot of hate. charles is a mess when it comes to likability. the guy is literally a genius and wants so badly to be validated as such that he oozes self-righteousness. it really isn't uncommon for people that smart to act that way. his parting from the founding team of ethereum wasn't a good one and it's taken years for him and vitalik to even be able to talk about each other positively... but the personality isn't the product... so there is the issue where he started cardano and pulled the plug on it in 2016. This upset a lot of investors and started the fud he got.
the reason he pulled the plug is because he realized he didn't have enough academic research behind it and wanted to build it right so he teamed with MIT and other universities to knock out over 100 white papers which became the foundation for Cardano. Because of is academic approach, it has taken cardano many more years than other chains, but it invented pos and many other technologies that other chains simply copied because he wanted everything to be open source.
So you hone in one one big issue average people have with cardano, there hasn't been much developed on top of it. Smart contracts only became live at the end of last year, just before the big dump so that took a lot of the wind out of the sails... but truth of the matter is, projects are seeking cardano developers in increasing numbers for a few reasons.
First is security. Cardano blockchain governance is modular handles many things that must be written in via smart contract like ID and metadata. This allows cleaner contracts with fewer vulerabilities. Also, haskell, the smart contract language for cardano is far more secure. It is a bit more complex and requires more time studying, but since blockchain was designed first for monetary transactions, this is incredibly important.
Next is convenience. All tokens minted on cardano are native and don't require a smart contract to create. This means that all tokens can use Cardano wallets and transactions do not require a gas token to move (ie moving mana requires eth on ethereum)... all exchanges to pay stakepools for minting blocks occur automatically on the back end. Also, all hard forks happen automatically keeping the entire network secure.
Interoperability. Cardano has been designed to integrate with other chains. Decentralization, it boasts 95% decentralization... a level no other chain even comes close. Governance. It is effectively one of the first operating daos as holding ADA gives you voting rights in how the treasury is spent. IOHK no longer controls anything but the prescheduled upgrades. Projects are nominated through the catalyst fund and holders engage and vote the projects to be funded.
TPS is higher than most, but not by too much. they have a hardfork (hydra) that will increase it dramatically, but not without limits. Much like lightening, they are offchain end to end users and not universal. But also like lightening, each node will allow for unlimited users and transactions so a entity that handles numerous transactions will run a hydra node and can have extremely high tps within that node.
I’ve been using cash since these totalitarians began their over reaches. I for one have been sounding the horn for the last few years. Yet here we are with these monsters still trying to take away what little rights and freedoms we have left. I will not go away quietly. I’ve never trusted the government or any elected officials. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to stand up and pushback against the tyranny
It's fascinating (in a horrifc way). No matter how much history shows otherwise, people are convinced that this time is different, or that they are different and of course power will not corrupt this time around.
When the boomercons finally die in enough numbers to kill off the “few bad apples” theory, perhaps the anarchist X gens can bring out the forest rebel of truth. Millennials are a lost generation but Z’s, who seem to be fine with child mutilation, might not like Z bugs? On a national scale I’m black pilled but if enough FR’s can be brought forth the federalism could save (a few of) us - before Ceasear rises from another round of Human Smoke
z's are young being raised by x that are half fuck this system and half, ive already got mine... will be an interesting generation for sure. likely highly polarized.
No love for the donkeys or the elephants either -- especially so the Marxist donkeys.
That said, a few things. First, yes, the R's did give us the Patriot act and all that entails and while the D's briefly put up some ceremonial resistance they quickly joined in. But at least the R's intended it -- at least initially -- to target foreign adversaries. You know, *actual* terrorists. In the immediate wake of 9/11 this was not a wholly absurd approach to what had been (and still is) a security apparatus with lackluster efficacy. How much actual terrorism has the FBI ever prevented?
It was under the reign of their precious Messiah that the Deep State D's (DSDs?) turned these new Stasi-esque powers unconstitutionally inward on U.S. Citizens. Especially any who might oppose or expose the regime. Whether this was a long game goal of the R's at the get go we'll never know, but either way the genie is out of the bottle and the R's are suffering the consequences of their misplaced zeal.
Second, I know Gato that you are on record as a registered Trump hater. But do you see anyone else on the national stage who can guide us out of this collective madness? The GOP shore of the swamp is indistinguishable from the Donkey shore. There is no difference whether they have an (R) or ad (D) after their name, the stench of the swamp is the same. Trump is by far the largest existential threat to their continued rise in mutual domination, which is why they are obsessed with taking him down at any cost along with anyone who dares support him or question a rigged election. Trump's independence derives largely from the fact he is not beholden to the oligarchs in the donor class who are the ultimate power behind any Presidency. No speech Trump ever gave even comes close to what has spewed forth from the most corrupt, incompetent, and downright evil person ever to sit on the throne at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
My intent was certainly not to excuse the Patriot act or its follow on power grabs, merely to highlight how quickly it metastasized into a tool which enables the very fascism and totalitarianism they claim to be using it to fight against.
" But at least the R's intended it -- at least initially -- to target foreign adversaries. You know, *actual* terrorists. In the immediate wake of 9/11 this was not a wholly absurd approach to what had been (and still is) a security apparatus with lackluster efficacy. "
this is the exact sort of trojan framing used to grab the power that then gets used in other places.
once you allow it once, it will always be expanded and used again.
this is why i'm so adamant about this needing to be a binary and not having gray areas.
once you have rendered rights alienable in emergences or "if we have a good reason" they are not rights, only privileged granted by governmental fiat.
Since a "War on [abstract]" cannot be won, only fought, these powers are perpetual. Compare it to when you were last at war, formally. Lots of war-time powers that were suspended after Germany and Japan surrendered (and some, in all probability too many, which were retained for the Cold War).
I think that is one reason it was essential to get rid of Trump, for both parties. Neither (and especially not their backers from the military industries) want the War on Terror declared over. That would make it very hard to argue for retaining these un-american acts (that's what they look like from outside).
Trump seemed to be all for the withdrawing of US troops from as many foreign places a spossible, but in an orderly fashion so that power vacuum wasn't created.
Now imagine a future republican president, with majority in House and Senate, using the Patriot Act domestically...
Agreed, especially with the "it can't be undone" part. Sort of like a government entitlement. The "kill the messenger" response to Edward Snowden's revelations should have been a dead giveaway.
As I had responded in another thread here, many of us fooled at the time. The hope is that we learned our lesson and firmly embrace a "never again" ethos.
edit: the work you are doing here is a key component of that ethos.
I seem to remember someone saying we should never give anyone in government any sort of "temporary" power that we would be uncomfortable with them for keeping ad infinitum. In government as we've all seen, something once created never goes away. The blob just gets bigger.
Gato, about that "coyote's admonition" -- is that a reference to Wiley E. Coyote, who so often would set up an elaborate machine to try to catch the Road Runner, only to end up being ensnared in his own device?
A Web search based on "coyote's admonition" didn't turn up anything.
Make no mistake, W. and the Deep State knew what they were doing when they gave us the so-called "Patriot Act". Some of us were screaming at the time that it was just another way for them to erode our freedoms, while giving the masses the warm fuzzies as they did so. All that "See something, say something" snitch on your neighbor was nothing more than setting the stage for the "Karens" during the plandemic. Do not be deceived into thinking the "Patriot Act" was anything more than a means of allowing the gov't to circumvent the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It was obvious to those who have truly observed over more than a couple of decades. Too many were too busy watching ball games, (the games in the Colosseum), to have been paying any attention though.
"Good times breed weak , (and blind) men. Hard times breed strong men." Too many haven't listened to a parent talk about growing up during the Great Depression, and how the gov't started exploding in interfering of the lives of its subjects. Because of that, all of the masses, globally, are going to get to experience it for themselves. The Great Depression was engineered, and was the International Bankers' first attempt at total world control and enslavement. It's only taken 90+ years to get to repeat the scenario.
I've been called a lot of things, and yes, "crazy", or "insane" have been among those names. And I did vote for Ron Paul. O'Romney was deep state, and very obviously another Obama, just putting an "R" in front of his name to make everyone believe they had a choice. I was all for auditing the Fed, and Ron was going to do it. It's why the international bankers weren't going to let him be on the ballot.
Many of us were fooled. May we not be fooled again.
I see the true hypocrisy lying with those who were so opposed at the time to any measure presented as the "war on terror" (much of which was simply boiler plate anti-Americanism typical of the Left) but who now fully embrace those measures so long as they are directed at their fellow citizens as simply political rivals and not themselves.
Sorry, BradK. I opposed “the war on terror” then and oppose it still. I am pro American. How was the “war on terror” seen as synonymous with American? EGM is correct, power will be used to keep and accrue more power no matter who is in charge. We cannot become distracted. We are obligated to keep government in check.
I always been and always known it. In HS I had a badge on my schoolbag that said "Anarchists Unite!" and there was this one girl, I suspect how she turned out in the end, but anyway she saw that and pursed her lips and shook her head reprovingly.
Have a lifelong friend, our love language is arguing loudly about everything, and I hate whenever she's right. She doesn't have a credit card, pays everything by check, been warning me for years of that gates-of-hell thingy opened by all this online banking.
If she used the internet I'd email her this post so she could bust my eardrums with the "I told you so!" shriek of triumph.
Gato, I literally just wrote an article yesterday about how this is beyond politics. Politics is dead as we once knew it. Emergency powers, lobbyists, and other special interests have combined to hijack the system. The Patriot Act took only 45 days after 9/11, and you're right, at the time, so many applauded it because it made us feel "safe".
"Through emergency powers, much of the world was - and continues to be - locked down or severely restricted. Even after it was clear there was no longer an emergency, politicians and bureaucrats re-upped their powers, because, why not? That power is like main veining the most intoxicating of drugs, so why not take another hit of it? It just skirts so many of the pesky problems that come with, you know, traditional Constitutional governance.
Relying on these magical emergency powers, President Biden’s meat suit pressured the entire nation to adopt and enact vaccine mandates that destroyed countless lives and companies. The US Military Industrial Complex continues to enforce this mandate as of today.
The Patriot Act, which has become possibly the greatest power grab of privacy and individual rights for the common citizen in US history, was passed just 45 days after 9/11."
It's not just the D's anymore though. It's the entire Hydra. That is one of their main tenants in their ethos, for sure, but thinking it's just one political part that is embracing that simply isn't reality. With a few notable exceptions, they're ALL fiends who hate everything and anyone that isn't in their predetermined club, and they will protect and grow that club at all and any cost. The Hydra is a hungry, hungry beast.
I think we're way beyond "seeds" - more like "essentially-in-place". Those women swimmers at U of Penn? There were hints that they furious that that guy was prancing around naked in their locker room, but not one said a word about it publicly. Why? Because "words" would necessarily be on a social media platform and all future employers would meticulously review social media presence. Any dissent from the trans agenda would have close to completely blocked future employment with any corporate, big bucks employer; and before that, acceptance by top tier professional schools. Add in the quarter mil$ investment their parents have invested in their education and that equals: silence - the good kind, i.e. not the silence that equals violence.
Oh, I’m not saying that it’s right or proper, just that I was suspicious from the beginning. People were very quick to use these platforms.....without checking the fine print. And now the Government/DNC have absorbed them into what’s rapidly becoming a ‘semi-fascist’ Democrat Security State.
Part of the problem is that you can't prevent verbal bullying and exclusion by cliques without enacting measures that infringe on basic liberty.
Since things put up on computer systems never go away until the people maintaining those systems lose interest in keeping them, and since they can be perfectly copied and distributed so long as computer systems exist, eternal persecution for any offense of wrongspeak is a hazard that all of us posting opinions must reckon with.
I don't like it either, but it is a fact of the technology times human malice.
This: "there is zero evidence or even plausible inference behind the idea that “tracking gun and ammo purchases will alleviate gun violence” in any fashion whatsoever."
And that is why we should all be afraid.
Wonder what they will start "tracking" with credit cards next? Will they have to separate out charges for "alternative" media? Unapproved books on Amazon? People who buy more than a one-pack of toilet paper?
Imagine believing that the U.S. Government, which has slaughtered millions of people, including its own subjects, just in the last thirty years or so with every manner of weapon imaginable, wants to disarm us to Keep Us Safe™.
Especially after Comrade Brandon and his band of not-so-merry neo-Bolsheviks just declared open lawfare on some 50% of the electorate, which coincidentally are almost certainly far more heavily armed than the bolshies.
"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - when the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.
However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."
~ Judge Alex Kozinski, dissenting in Silveira v. Lockyer, 328 F.3d 567 (9th Circuit 2003)
We live in perilous times.
Judge for yourself how many of Kozinski's "exceptionally rare circumstances" have occurred.
True that they would love to get rid of cash but this nonsense in particular they want to use as evidence against people under red flag laws. SCOTUS has ruled against such laws but some states keep pushing them. I don't know how that's even possible.
Anything blatantly unconstitutional is possible to enact at both the State and Federal level. Only unless or until it is challenged in court, an oftentimes lengthy and expensive process, can it be stopped. Even if it overturned, any damage that law may have caused is never ever accounted for.
A 2300 word essay examining the unfortunate trend of the government and big business working towards the elimination of cash in our society.
Even though the “cash” circulating in society is fiat money rather than Constitutionally mandated gold and silver, its use by citizens still affords them an out from constant tracking of their economic activities. Cash offers anonymity. It provides privacy and individual control. Its one of the few walls holding back the flood tide of government domination that threatens our last tattered shreds of liberty.
Those benefits, of course, are what condemn cash in the eyes of the State. Only when cash is fully eliminated will the politicians be satisfied.
Never forget, however, that when these Orwellian monsters come marching to seize your cash, what they really want to take is your freedom.
Good post! Here's another good book, that came along a few years later, in 2009. The info has been out there for decades. Most were just not interested in learning it. This book doesn't require an electronic device to read it.
Gato, Bitcoin was made for this. Sanction-proof monetary asset. Decentralized censorship-resistant networks will emasculate the technofascists who are planning these forms of tyrannical control.
BTC is a version 1.0 product. it is not anonymous, private, or scalable.
and no, layer 2 like "lightning" will not fix it.
and the network as a whole is too susceptible to being taken down entirely by a state scale operator like the US.
i am a huge believe in crypto and think it's going to be the most important innovation of this century and will do more to reshape the relationship between the people and the state than anything since the invention of the republic. it will take of from being subjects to citizens.
but it has not yet matured.
we're in in the "AOL" phase of the internet, maybe even earlier.
nothing today has crossed the minimum viable product threshold.
but it will. and when it does, it'll be obvious because it will suddenly be everywhere (and preferably built in to packet level encrypted peer to peer internet and social media protocols to add massive steganographic protection).
the harder they try to force "surveillance settlement" into systems, the more energy this system gathers to break out.
Agree. My concern is how proactive we are as libertarians/patriots/constitutionalist to effectuate the change from "dial-up" to distributive modern day bandwidth to counter the "surveillance settlement" into the systems.
For FEAR is an emotion. Bravery is ACTION.
My hope is that we awaken prior to the ships sailing. Sometimes that requires "burning" the ships.
As I've said before the time has never been so ripe. IMO we perilously close to losing that opportunity.
I don't seen any other platform (besides here and a few other Stacks') to effectuate this revolutionary transformation. We have the ability to leverage against what is nothing else but a top down encroachment of our very liberties.
If not us; than who?
I'm willing to do what ever is necessary to meet those ends. At times I feel like a Board created to enact these first principles is necessary to overcome the Leviathan that is a clear threat to what, I believe, is manufactured inertia on our behalf.
How many times have you and I (and others) said this back and forth to one another? :)
My fear as always is that we a are self-reinforcing echo chamber with little recognition -- let alone power -- outside this litter box and other similar venues. Both parties, the MSM, the wretched poseuers in Hollywood, and it would seem the majority of our fellow citizens are either incapable or unwilling to even consider thinking outside the box. Brainwashed doesn't even come close to describing the level of slovenly mutual conformity.
The fear-mongering, endless crises, and constant pitting one against the other for the most petty of our differences has proven so ruthlessly effective in distracting the frogs as the water comes to a boil. The alarms are sounding -- it is *we* who are sounding them -- but who is listening?
In other words, we need more than the Bad Cats direction. We need to bring in other stakeholders with the same interest.
All great causes and disruptive tech/products have been a result of not the masses but a few who truly believe in the benefits of said disruptive measures.
Ryan, You are correct. But I find that most of the echo chamber (present company included) are scouring the Stacks looking for what the "plan" is. I have been pointing this out for months, now. And, human nature being what it is, every plan requires a leader that can draw people and keep them on point/plan.
But we have neither a plan nor a leader. We do have lots of angst, hand wringing, and Brownian motion and plenty of memes and platitudes. But the community (Sorry Chick-Fil-A) is getting increasingly desperate for something more.
So if you or EGM or anyone has an actionable plan, I think the Substack base will be "all eyes". Pleas to write your representatives (I actually speak to many, ineffective for sure) or suggestions to stock up on firearms are not doing it.
I have been saying the same for over a decade. I have read many conservative blogs for years that try to alert their readers to the worldwide threats we have been/are facing, and I think to myself: “OK. Now I am informed as to what is going on.” And my next question is always: “Now what do we do about it?” The silence has been deafening. It made me stop reading those blogs for a while because of that very fact: there is no plan and there is no leader. We are on our own in every respect. Trump might be the closest thing we have to a leader of sorts, but he has been stymied at every turn by the Deep State. I am concluding that while his support and input is great, we can’t rely on him exclusively. It’s going to be up to us to find some kind of solution.
Yes, the non existence of plan, which begins with planning, which begins with minds and hearts coming together in functional form is a roadblock. So -
Basics first?
What is the form for bringing together the contributing synergies?
I would suggest that security is a huge issue. How to manage that? I don’t have an answer. In fact, not a one of those! Maybe, perhaps, an idea here that might spawn another idea, etc, à la brainstorming, where no idea is too fantastic at the start. So —
The state of technology presents both opportunities and at worst dire threats, as in no holds barred from TPTB. I won’t elaborate further on either count or everything in between.
There are purportedly more secure platforms for what would be initial communication, though who knows? Not me. I am tech illiterate.
Protonmail might be a place to start? (Swiss: their laws not US re turning over info, end-to-end encrypted for accountholders, email, proton drive, calendar which may be shareable but I’m not sure)
Is Signal a viable option for texting & meeting? There might be limitations on #participants?
My point: substack, while a resource for the harvest of whos, is probably not a viable option for the coalescing.
My offer: I have a space so to speak reserved here for writing but anybody can do that. I am raising my hand to be the initial point of collection. But anybody can do it. By collection I mean gathering contact info / email addresses via “subscription”. But anybody can do it. The issue there is vetting. Anybody that hangs out in certain substack spaces already knows some hearts & minds, regardless of ID / anon handle (yours truly an anon, with reason). At a certain point, questions arise. I’m going to stop here.
If you want to communicate a reply here would be step 1. Up front if a next step materializes: I will place a limitation on email: no google/gmail or other big tech services for communicating. Sorry, not gonna.
Suggestion: a single protonmail account is free. I migrated a before the scamdemic. Paid, which might be why I have other services available (drive, calendar, vpn)? But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Maybe a kitten could lay out its case on why current Bitcoin design isn’t viable? Maybe in Bitcoin Magazine etc? I think the resultant discussion would be dammed interesting.
I'm not sure that dollars would necessarily be worthless. They worked fine long before electrification was more than a gleam in Edison's eye. Just keep up the requirement that we pay our taxes with them, and they will have value.
But the possibility of losing electrical power seems increasingly probable, and, given our utter dependency on it by now, is absolutely terrifying. I think all of us would do well to start looking into nineteenth-century technological solutions as we move further into the twenty-first century.
Bitcoiners in Venezuela dealt with internet and power outages. They were able to maintain local ledgers during the blackout that could be maintained offline in multiple separate devices and then merged to the main chain later when the power or internet returned.
It was a decent patch or workaround. Satellite communications will be a big leap forward in improving this in the future.
Or the power goes out of the internet. The market place of ideas under a political red flag law is begging to take censoring to the next level. Digital ID is a prediction of cancellation and control easily understood as more than a potential risk.
Curtis Yarvin was interviewed recently on this and I’m not smart enough to understand BTC and ETH but it can be taken to zero in day by the State. We are simply an “emergency” away from that happening.
Comments section probably not a great place for a detailed discussion about this, but State will certainly attempt to attack the network. In fact, China has tried to break the Bitcoin proof of work protocol at least a dozen times in the last decade and has failed. US gov't has apparently tried as well, so they are going the softer route - regulated adoption.
ETH different discussion given their EIP history and lack of decentralization.
BTC could be halted (not destroyed, just halted and very expensively so) by the State if they wanted to do it, but they would get nothing for it. The incentive is in place for any would-be attacker to embrace the protocol rather than destroy it. You either get nothing and halt the network or you get something and support the network.
Even if the intent was destruction, there wouldn't be much to destroy, simply to delay. You see, with a decentralized protocol like this, each node has a copy of every transaction that happened up to and including the latest block. So to destroy the network you have to delete all the nodes, which is functionally impossible. If an attack was successful in halting the network (again very expensively with nothing to gain), nodes have options to restart the chain at the latest node in a different form (a fork) and force the actor to do it again (again very expensively).
use cash, cut up your cards, show them what it'll cost
do not let us crawl in to tyrannical totalitarianism
The wrinkle being most of the current generation cashiers appear stymied when they are required to make change despite the machine tells them the value. Cash perplexes those cats.
Out here in the PNW we have Dutch Bros. coffee. They equip the cashiers with screens that tell them how to make the change: $.63/two quarters, one dime and three pennies. I crap you not.
Oh. My. God.
There's not knowing how to calculate change (my god, though, its not hard, my HS educated mom taught me in grade school) but not knowing what coins to use is impossible for me to imagine. Yet there it is.
It's the same in Australia - especially evident in the younger generation. The check-out operators REALLY struggle with doing maths in their head!!! Sometimes they're even really slow collecting the change from the till (like they've never seen cash before!). I think they're trying to add it up in their head and it's hurting them. When I eventually tell them how much change they need to hand me back they give me this combination look of "is she trying to cheat me here?" and "thank god she did the maths for me!".
I worry about their futures. I really do.
Yeah, I tried to make change using head math and it can be overwhelming when put with all the other crap you have to deal with as a cashier and he need for speed, plus if you screw up you get in trouble. I had to remember my mom,who is far worse than me at all math, showed me as a kid you don't have to know math to make change. Just count up from the purchase total to the amount they gave you. The purchase was $7.46, they gave you $10, so four pennies, two quarters, and two bucks! Bring it up to the nearest tenth, then quarter, then dollar, and so on. No math necessary!
A lot of things are nowhere near as complicated as most of us think they are, and in my exoerience, us "highly educated" folk tend to overcomplicate the most and have no business looking down on people with less education and dismissing their every point on those grounds. Education is valuable but can have the side effect of making you over think everything, and sometimes someone without that background can offer some grounding advice a colleague in educational achievement can't. And sometimes they have tricks you never even thought of that make things much easier.
Yeah, but they’re a friendly bunch. Always curious about my day ahead 🤪.
I swear they snort the espresso grinds! 🙀
Holy smokes. I'm no math wiz, but this is a terrible shame :(
😳😳😳
i have found that sometimes works to my advantage, count your change before you leave
I withdraw cash and promptly use it to buy gift debit cards. The fee is neglible. Anonymous protonmail if an email is requested to monitor the gift debit account remotely from a quasi-secure environment. Easy-peasy where I live, and it should make them hafta work for my identity.
I was thinking of using gift cards too, but isn’t that just anonymously supporting digital currency?
Haha, you're right. I once got change from man who could not speak English very well. He was out of singles and asked if I would take dollar coins. I said sure but didn't check until I got home. I found a weird coin that looked like it came from Chucky Cheese or something. I was upset until I looked closer and discovered it was a one troy ounce .999 silver coin, worth about $20!
gun stores wont have this problem. I will buy all my weapons and ammo with cash from here on out. Fuck these tyrants.
Take two minutes out of your day to teach them the 'count back' method - the hamster in their head just needs to run a little faster in that wheel.
I worked as a cashier casually for 7 years at a fruit market when I was a teenager, and NOT ONCE in my employment there did I get taught how to count back cash! Luckily I'm good at maths so it wasn't an issue, but I honestly just never figured it out how to count back cash until I was an adult! So sad, I know, but I DID learn ;-)
They can't count back. They don't know the value of the coins.
hahaha true. bring your calculator.
In the region of Californicated in which I reside, the "hip" and "enlightened" thing to is for retail businesses to go "cashless". More and more shops and restaurants don't take cash. It is a trend - only dinosaurs use cash. An excuse often given...wait for it...money spreads viruses. But the trend began before 2020.
I've also seen the most clever marketing ploy: use their app to earn rewards. My 20 y.o. uses the Starbucks app, pays with her Apple wallet (or whatever it's called). I have bigger fish to catch (keeping her from getting the clot shot). It's a daily juggling of priorities and keeping them open enough to hear me. I have joined the Walk Out (paying cash) and did share the original article with my family. Hoping it will trigger their curiosity. It's more of a challenge when they're young adults who think they know it all.
ah i remember those days of thinking i knew it all, how naïve i was.
thank goodness i know it all now!
LOL
then they can go join the bankrupt
I got a notice from my bank that if I pay with credit card for gas, I can get $50 off my gas. I say FY.
I use cash often. Have to chuckle at the store employees who make a face and have to figure out the change. :)
As lawyer once said ‘Never in writing, always in cash!’ 💯
Barnes and Alex Jones are always right!
Good Good
Cash is king. On this “walk-out” week, I’ve stopped using cards. A cashier-in-training was dumbfounded when I handed her a $100 bill for a $60+ purchase. Her supervisor had to show her how to access the cash. And how to count. I asked her if it was her first cash transaction. She nodded. I said “ welcome to team humanity”.
wonderful first step!!
😮
A few things!
1) How many of the gun crimes are done with illegal guns!
2) Social credit scores you only need to look at the Ethereum goings on yesterday because that is ALL IN with social credit scores. It's the cliff we may have just fallen off of
3) The Patriot Act was the middle but this all started a LONG LONG time ago.
4) And for chuckles (NOT) Kamala just flew a special trip to NY on Air Force something to talk about climate change. For THEE not ME!
It's a freaking rabbit hole and this will not end well.
I don’t think most crypto enthusiasts realize what just happened overnight. But the target is on BTC now. https://faybomb.substack.com/p/post-ethereum-merge-the-fight-for
Schachtel wrote a good substack on this.. but it's the way down the rabbit hole for sure.
https://dossier.substack.com/p/ethereum-becomes-wef-coin-and-a-global?utm_source=email
Great piece. Many rightfully worry about a future CBDC, but you could easily make the case that USDC just became the CBDC following PoS merge/Tornado Cash asset freezing. Wild stuff. And it feels like things are starting to happen fairly quickly after years of speculating on what global order would try to do to combat crypto
And NOT a good thing.
Not at all. Especially because of the chain footprint. It's on roughly a dozen I believe.
Well one coming up that has no chain that anyone can see. It's really proof of contribution. Take a look at Qortal and also check into Pirate.
https://qortal.org/
oof, that's your article, so I'll do my best to be nice. I'll start with kudos on you for putting your ideas out there. I'm too much a coward to be so public so I snipe comments. At least I'm honest about it.
POS does NOT necessarily mean who has the money rules the network. I'm a hardcore Cardano advocate despite the hate it gets (institutions mad they can't control) and it boasts 95% decentralization due to the saturation structure of stakepools. There is some consolidation of power around multiple pool entities, but it's not even the same universe as Solano, Ethereum, or even Bitcoin.
I also challenge that Bitcoin is bad for the environment and there are a couple takes here. If comparing it to the current transactional currency backed by the full military might of the US, it is but a drop in the bucket in energy, pollution, and basic human rights and in terms of a store of value, it is far more efficient than gold mining, real estate, or any other asset/commodity that could rival it. Even without that comparison, the energy used by Bitcoin is 95+% the cost of minting which places extreme pressure to facilitate the shift to alternative sources as current carbon based prices increase. Plus, energy companies have begun mining to balance the load on the electric grid caused by both demand differentials and inconsistent renewables.
I'll also take aim at munger and sherman who are globalists. If we are being honest, CB debt based currency enslaves us all. The "international power" they refer to is not helping average americans, it is helping financialize our economy to their detriment. This power is for globalists for globalist purposes. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but when Jackson has an attempted assassination after revoking the 1st CB, Lincoln getting assassinate after revoking 2nd CB and creating the greenback (a treasury created currency as our constitution provides), JFK getting assassinated after passing executive order to create the silver note (also a treasury backed currency) is just to coincidental for my tastes, especially considering global bankers being on record seeking the destruction of our republic since before the declaration of independence... then when including foreign events such as deposing all leaders not selling oil in USD, like beheading Saddam for attempting to sell in euros and killing khadafi for backing denari with gold, a clear pattern appears.
Bitcoin is fighting for the soul of humanity. That's energy well spent.
I think you may have misread my tone. I’m not in agreement with the Bitcoin = bad for the environment narrative but I don’t think there is much doubt that narrative is going to be the main attack vector. And I think Sherman/Munger are afraid of BTC precisely because it takes their power away. That’s a good thing. I’m not on their side.
Tell me more about why you like Cardano. It is one of the few chains I’ve seen that has fierce supporters and also those who claim it’s an outright scam. (A bit Tesla-like from where I sit). Yet it has a top 10 MC. I’m finding myself more in the middle but I’ve had difficulty finding a popular application that is building on it and it seems like the network is forked fairly often. So what should I look at to sway me to bullish ADA?
appreciate your response.
cardano gets a lot of hate. charles is a mess when it comes to likability. the guy is literally a genius and wants so badly to be validated as such that he oozes self-righteousness. it really isn't uncommon for people that smart to act that way. his parting from the founding team of ethereum wasn't a good one and it's taken years for him and vitalik to even be able to talk about each other positively... but the personality isn't the product... so there is the issue where he started cardano and pulled the plug on it in 2016. This upset a lot of investors and started the fud he got.
the reason he pulled the plug is because he realized he didn't have enough academic research behind it and wanted to build it right so he teamed with MIT and other universities to knock out over 100 white papers which became the foundation for Cardano. Because of is academic approach, it has taken cardano many more years than other chains, but it invented pos and many other technologies that other chains simply copied because he wanted everything to be open source.
So you hone in one one big issue average people have with cardano, there hasn't been much developed on top of it. Smart contracts only became live at the end of last year, just before the big dump so that took a lot of the wind out of the sails... but truth of the matter is, projects are seeking cardano developers in increasing numbers for a few reasons.
First is security. Cardano blockchain governance is modular handles many things that must be written in via smart contract like ID and metadata. This allows cleaner contracts with fewer vulerabilities. Also, haskell, the smart contract language for cardano is far more secure. It is a bit more complex and requires more time studying, but since blockchain was designed first for monetary transactions, this is incredibly important.
Next is convenience. All tokens minted on cardano are native and don't require a smart contract to create. This means that all tokens can use Cardano wallets and transactions do not require a gas token to move (ie moving mana requires eth on ethereum)... all exchanges to pay stakepools for minting blocks occur automatically on the back end. Also, all hard forks happen automatically keeping the entire network secure.
Interoperability. Cardano has been designed to integrate with other chains. Decentralization, it boasts 95% decentralization... a level no other chain even comes close. Governance. It is effectively one of the first operating daos as holding ADA gives you voting rights in how the treasury is spent. IOHK no longer controls anything but the prescheduled upgrades. Projects are nominated through the catalyst fund and holders engage and vote the projects to be funded.
TPS is higher than most, but not by too much. they have a hardfork (hydra) that will increase it dramatically, but not without limits. Much like lightening, they are offchain end to end users and not universal. But also like lightening, each node will allow for unlimited users and transactions so a entity that handles numerous transactions will run a hydra node and can have extremely high tps within that node.
I think I've covered most.
Nice rundown, I appreciate the detail. I’ll give it another look 👍
He mentions that- around 65%
don't get the ethereum bit. the merge? are you saying ethereum is the basis for social credit?
https://dossier.substack.com/p/ethereum-becomes-wef-coin-and-a-global?utm_source=email
NOT the first place I have heard it. Ethereum guy is ALL in with the WEF
I’ve been using cash since these totalitarians began their over reaches. I for one have been sounding the horn for the last few years. Yet here we are with these monsters still trying to take away what little rights and freedoms we have left. I will not go away quietly. I’ve never trusted the government or any elected officials. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to stand up and pushback against the tyranny
How do you hide your cash?
i hide it in my girlfriends purse, never to be seen again!
Right 🤣
You need a GFDKF.
I have a WDKF in my golf bag.
google failed me, what is it?
Girlfriend Don't Know Fund.
Wife Don't Know Fund.
im gonna tell her about the golf bag if you dont give me half
although she probably knows already and is waiting for the day..
I keep it in a fireproof safe and a few other secret locations
Ever see "Papillon" -? Jk
It's fascinating (in a horrifc way). No matter how much history shows otherwise, people are convinced that this time is different, or that they are different and of course power will not corrupt this time around.
When the boomercons finally die in enough numbers to kill off the “few bad apples” theory, perhaps the anarchist X gens can bring out the forest rebel of truth. Millennials are a lost generation but Z’s, who seem to be fine with child mutilation, might not like Z bugs? On a national scale I’m black pilled but if enough FR’s can be brought forth the federalism could save (a few of) us - before Ceasear rises from another round of Human Smoke
z's are young being raised by x that are half fuck this system and half, ive already got mine... will be an interesting generation for sure. likely highly polarized.
That's what your average socialist-wannabe thinks. Whether they are college students or woke suburbanites.
No love for the donkeys or the elephants either -- especially so the Marxist donkeys.
That said, a few things. First, yes, the R's did give us the Patriot act and all that entails and while the D's briefly put up some ceremonial resistance they quickly joined in. But at least the R's intended it -- at least initially -- to target foreign adversaries. You know, *actual* terrorists. In the immediate wake of 9/11 this was not a wholly absurd approach to what had been (and still is) a security apparatus with lackluster efficacy. How much actual terrorism has the FBI ever prevented?
It was under the reign of their precious Messiah that the Deep State D's (DSDs?) turned these new Stasi-esque powers unconstitutionally inward on U.S. Citizens. Especially any who might oppose or expose the regime. Whether this was a long game goal of the R's at the get go we'll never know, but either way the genie is out of the bottle and the R's are suffering the consequences of their misplaced zeal.
Second, I know Gato that you are on record as a registered Trump hater. But do you see anyone else on the national stage who can guide us out of this collective madness? The GOP shore of the swamp is indistinguishable from the Donkey shore. There is no difference whether they have an (R) or ad (D) after their name, the stench of the swamp is the same. Trump is by far the largest existential threat to their continued rise in mutual domination, which is why they are obsessed with taking him down at any cost along with anyone who dares support him or question a rigged election. Trump's independence derives largely from the fact he is not beholden to the oligarchs in the donor class who are the ultimate power behind any Presidency. No speech Trump ever gave even comes close to what has spewed forth from the most corrupt, incompetent, and downright evil person ever to sit on the throne at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
intent is not an excuse for enabling such incredibly dangerous powers.
that is always the trojan framing of "grant awful power for some reason i like and pretend it will always be used wisely by people we like."
that's the whole coyote's law point.
It's always "for the Children (#Demonokraut #kinder!)"
My intent was certainly not to excuse the Patriot act or its follow on power grabs, merely to highlight how quickly it metastasized into a tool which enables the very fascism and totalitarianism they claim to be using it to fight against.
this was the implication that worried me:
" But at least the R's intended it -- at least initially -- to target foreign adversaries. You know, *actual* terrorists. In the immediate wake of 9/11 this was not a wholly absurd approach to what had been (and still is) a security apparatus with lackluster efficacy. "
this is the exact sort of trojan framing used to grab the power that then gets used in other places.
once you allow it once, it will always be expanded and used again.
this is why i'm so adamant about this needing to be a binary and not having gray areas.
once you have rendered rights alienable in emergences or "if we have a good reason" they are not rights, only privileged granted by governmental fiat.
and that means the terrorists have already won.
Since a "War on [abstract]" cannot be won, only fought, these powers are perpetual. Compare it to when you were last at war, formally. Lots of war-time powers that were suspended after Germany and Japan surrendered (and some, in all probability too many, which were retained for the Cold War).
I think that is one reason it was essential to get rid of Trump, for both parties. Neither (and especially not their backers from the military industries) want the War on Terror declared over. That would make it very hard to argue for retaining these un-american acts (that's what they look like from outside).
Trump seemed to be all for the withdrawing of US troops from as many foreign places a spossible, but in an orderly fashion so that power vacuum wasn't created.
Now imagine a future republican president, with majority in House and Senate, using the Patriot Act domestically...
Agreed, especially with the "it can't be undone" part. Sort of like a government entitlement. The "kill the messenger" response to Edward Snowden's revelations should have been a dead giveaway.
As I had responded in another thread here, many of us fooled at the time. The hope is that we learned our lesson and firmly embrace a "never again" ethos.
edit: the work you are doing here is a key component of that ethos.
I seem to remember someone saying we should never give anyone in government any sort of "temporary" power that we would be uncomfortable with them for keeping ad infinitum. In government as we've all seen, something once created never goes away. The blob just gets bigger.
Gato, about that "coyote's admonition" -- is that a reference to Wiley E. Coyote, who so often would set up an elaborate machine to try to catch the Road Runner, only to end up being ensnared in his own device?
A Web search based on "coyote's admonition" didn't turn up anything.
Make no mistake, W. and the Deep State knew what they were doing when they gave us the so-called "Patriot Act". Some of us were screaming at the time that it was just another way for them to erode our freedoms, while giving the masses the warm fuzzies as they did so. All that "See something, say something" snitch on your neighbor was nothing more than setting the stage for the "Karens" during the plandemic. Do not be deceived into thinking the "Patriot Act" was anything more than a means of allowing the gov't to circumvent the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It was obvious to those who have truly observed over more than a couple of decades. Too many were too busy watching ball games, (the games in the Colosseum), to have been paying any attention though.
"Good times breed weak , (and blind) men. Hard times breed strong men." Too many haven't listened to a parent talk about growing up during the Great Depression, and how the gov't started exploding in interfering of the lives of its subjects. Because of that, all of the masses, globally, are going to get to experience it for themselves. The Great Depression was engineered, and was the International Bankers' first attempt at total world control and enslavement. It's only taken 90+ years to get to repeat the scenario.
I see you were also called insane for accurately predicting the future. Ron Pauler?
I've been called a lot of things, and yes, "crazy", or "insane" have been among those names. And I did vote for Ron Paul. O'Romney was deep state, and very obviously another Obama, just putting an "R" in front of his name to make everyone believe they had a choice. I was all for auditing the Fed, and Ron was going to do it. It's why the international bankers weren't going to let him be on the ballot.
"But at least the R's intended it -- at least initially"
Road to hell, meet pavement.
There was no doubt in my mind who that act targeted. I remain shocked over the support W got.
Likewise, I watched & felt sick as Colin Powell lied us to war through his teeth.
And I have an autographed copy of My American Journey in my bookcase. 😟
Many of us were fooled. May we not be fooled again.
I see the true hypocrisy lying with those who were so opposed at the time to any measure presented as the "war on terror" (much of which was simply boiler plate anti-Americanism typical of the Left) but who now fully embrace those measures so long as they are directed at their fellow citizens as simply political rivals and not themselves.
Sorry, BradK. I opposed “the war on terror” then and oppose it still. I am pro American. How was the “war on terror” seen as synonymous with American? EGM is correct, power will be used to keep and accrue more power no matter who is in charge. We cannot become distracted. We are obligated to keep government in check.
👏👏👍🏼
I always been and always known it. In HS I had a badge on my schoolbag that said "Anarchists Unite!" and there was this one girl, I suspect how she turned out in the end, but anyway she saw that and pursed her lips and shook her head reprovingly.
Have a lifelong friend, our love language is arguing loudly about everything, and I hate whenever she's right. She doesn't have a credit card, pays everything by check, been warning me for years of that gates-of-hell thingy opened by all this online banking.
If she used the internet I'd email her this post so she could bust my eardrums with the "I told you so!" shriek of triumph.
Gato, I literally just wrote an article yesterday about how this is beyond politics. Politics is dead as we once knew it. Emergency powers, lobbyists, and other special interests have combined to hijack the system. The Patriot Act took only 45 days after 9/11, and you're right, at the time, so many applauded it because it made us feel "safe".
https://bherr.substack.com/p/politics-is-dead
"Through emergency powers, much of the world was - and continues to be - locked down or severely restricted. Even after it was clear there was no longer an emergency, politicians and bureaucrats re-upped their powers, because, why not? That power is like main veining the most intoxicating of drugs, so why not take another hit of it? It just skirts so many of the pesky problems that come with, you know, traditional Constitutional governance.
Relying on these magical emergency powers, President Biden’s meat suit pressured the entire nation to adopt and enact vaccine mandates that destroyed countless lives and companies. The US Military Industrial Complex continues to enforce this mandate as of today.
The Patriot Act, which has become possibly the greatest power grab of privacy and individual rights for the common citizen in US history, was passed just 45 days after 9/11."
As so many D's would say, "Never let a crisis go to waste."
It's not just the D's anymore though. It's the entire Hydra. That is one of their main tenants in their ethos, for sure, but thinking it's just one political part that is embracing that simply isn't reality. With a few notable exceptions, they're ALL fiends who hate everything and anyone that isn't in their predetermined club, and they will protect and grow that club at all and any cost. The Hydra is a hungry, hungry beast.
Great callout. Almost like the mRNA vaccine was created before Covid...
All gun purchases and ammo must be made in cash. It's the only way?
At auctions in the country…
I think we're way beyond "seeds" - more like "essentially-in-place". Those women swimmers at U of Penn? There were hints that they furious that that guy was prancing around naked in their locker room, but not one said a word about it publicly. Why? Because "words" would necessarily be on a social media platform and all future employers would meticulously review social media presence. Any dissent from the trans agenda would have close to completely blocked future employment with any corporate, big bucks employer; and before that, acceptance by top tier professional schools. Add in the quarter mil$ investment their parents have invested in their education and that equals: silence - the good kind, i.e. not the silence that equals violence.
The thing about social media is....that you don’t have to use it....
You do so at your own risk.
I’m older, so it’s easier for me. I didn’t grow up with it, and didn’t trust it when it became popular. But no one is making you use it.
this feels like a sort of tyrant's argument, no?
it sets up a hobson's choice of "be barred or self-censoring in the modern agora or risk loss of other rights."
hard to see that as a basis for a sound or free society
Oh, I’m not saying that it’s right or proper, just that I was suspicious from the beginning. People were very quick to use these platforms.....without checking the fine print. And now the Government/DNC have absorbed them into what’s rapidly becoming a ‘semi-fascist’ Democrat Security State.
Also, I’m sort of an outlier.
I’ve never used them, so I don’t miss them.
Part of the problem is that you can't prevent verbal bullying and exclusion by cliques without enacting measures that infringe on basic liberty.
Since things put up on computer systems never go away until the people maintaining those systems lose interest in keeping them, and since they can be perfectly copied and distributed so long as computer systems exist, eternal persecution for any offense of wrongspeak is a hazard that all of us posting opinions must reckon with.
I don't like it either, but it is a fact of the technology times human malice.
This: "there is zero evidence or even plausible inference behind the idea that “tracking gun and ammo purchases will alleviate gun violence” in any fashion whatsoever."
And that is why we should all be afraid.
Wonder what they will start "tracking" with credit cards next? Will they have to separate out charges for "alternative" media? Unapproved books on Amazon? People who buy more than a one-pack of toilet paper?
Imagine believing that the U.S. Government, which has slaughtered millions of people, including its own subjects, just in the last thirty years or so with every manner of weapon imaginable, wants to disarm us to Keep Us Safe™.
Especially after Comrade Brandon and his band of not-so-merry neo-Bolsheviks just declared open lawfare on some 50% of the electorate, which coincidentally are almost certainly far more heavily armed than the bolshies.
"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - when the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.
However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."
~ Judge Alex Kozinski, dissenting in Silveira v. Lockyer, 328 F.3d 567 (9th Circuit 2003)
We live in perilous times.
Judge for yourself how many of Kozinski's "exceptionally rare circumstances" have occurred.
They are always improbable until they have already happened.
True that they would love to get rid of cash but this nonsense in particular they want to use as evidence against people under red flag laws. SCOTUS has ruled against such laws but some states keep pushing them. I don't know how that's even possible.
Anything blatantly unconstitutional is possible to enact at both the State and Federal level. Only unless or until it is challenged in court, an oftentimes lengthy and expensive process, can it be stopped. Even if it overturned, any damage that law may have caused is never ever accounted for.
We have this in Canada. The courts appear so compromised that the unconstitutional diktats will likely be upheld.
With your last sentence, also note that there is no sanction or penalty for those who have imposed the unconstitutional arrangements.
"Cash Out" (a.k.a., "The War on Cash") was published in 2002, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018URJAPU:
A 2300 word essay examining the unfortunate trend of the government and big business working towards the elimination of cash in our society.
Even though the “cash” circulating in society is fiat money rather than Constitutionally mandated gold and silver, its use by citizens still affords them an out from constant tracking of their economic activities. Cash offers anonymity. It provides privacy and individual control. Its one of the few walls holding back the flood tide of government domination that threatens our last tattered shreds of liberty.
Those benefits, of course, are what condemn cash in the eyes of the State. Only when cash is fully eliminated will the politicians be satisfied.
Never forget, however, that when these Orwellian monsters come marching to seize your cash, what they really want to take is your freedom.
###
I hate being right.
Good post! Here's another good book, that came along a few years later, in 2009. The info has been out there for decades. Most were just not interested in learning it. This book doesn't require an electronic device to read it.
https://www.amazon.com/They-Own-All-Including-You/dp/1439233616/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3KRVAR09VB1LG&keywords=they+own+it+all+including+you&qid=1663261416&s=books&sprefix=They+own+it+all%2Cstripbooks%2C271&sr=1-1
Thanks for the info. I'll check it out.
Gato, Bitcoin was made for this. Sanction-proof monetary asset. Decentralized censorship-resistant networks will emasculate the technofascists who are planning these forms of tyrannical control.
alas, no, it wasn't.
BTC is a version 1.0 product. it is not anonymous, private, or scalable.
and no, layer 2 like "lightning" will not fix it.
and the network as a whole is too susceptible to being taken down entirely by a state scale operator like the US.
i am a huge believe in crypto and think it's going to be the most important innovation of this century and will do more to reshape the relationship between the people and the state than anything since the invention of the republic. it will take of from being subjects to citizens.
but it has not yet matured.
we're in in the "AOL" phase of the internet, maybe even earlier.
nothing today has crossed the minimum viable product threshold.
but it will. and when it does, it'll be obvious because it will suddenly be everywhere (and preferably built in to packet level encrypted peer to peer internet and social media protocols to add massive steganographic protection).
the harder they try to force "surveillance settlement" into systems, the more energy this system gathers to break out.
this is not a fight the state can win long run.
but it's early days still.
Agree. My concern is how proactive we are as libertarians/patriots/constitutionalist to effectuate the change from "dial-up" to distributive modern day bandwidth to counter the "surveillance settlement" into the systems.
For FEAR is an emotion. Bravery is ACTION.
My hope is that we awaken prior to the ships sailing. Sometimes that requires "burning" the ships.
As I've said before the time has never been so ripe. IMO we perilously close to losing that opportunity.
I don't seen any other platform (besides here and a few other Stacks') to effectuate this revolutionary transformation. We have the ability to leverage against what is nothing else but a top down encroachment of our very liberties.
If not us; than who?
I'm willing to do what ever is necessary to meet those ends. At times I feel like a Board created to enact these first principles is necessary to overcome the Leviathan that is a clear threat to what, I believe, is manufactured inertia on our behalf.
"If not us; than who?"
How many times have you and I (and others) said this back and forth to one another? :)
My fear as always is that we a are self-reinforcing echo chamber with little recognition -- let alone power -- outside this litter box and other similar venues. Both parties, the MSM, the wretched poseuers in Hollywood, and it would seem the majority of our fellow citizens are either incapable or unwilling to even consider thinking outside the box. Brainwashed doesn't even come close to describing the level of slovenly mutual conformity.
The fear-mongering, endless crises, and constant pitting one against the other for the most petty of our differences has proven so ruthlessly effective in distracting the frogs as the water comes to a boil. The alarms are sounding -- it is *we* who are sounding them -- but who is listening?
On a stinking call. I'll respond when done. I do think there are actions to be taken that can awaken the masses.
Most people know "something" is wrong, but do not have the wherewithal to understand it...or how to change it.
In other words, we need more than the Bad Cats direction. We need to bring in other stakeholders with the same interest.
All great causes and disruptive tech/products have been a result of not the masses but a few who truly believe in the benefits of said disruptive measures.
One last thing, because I don't want to monopolize the conversation. All of this requires resources.
Notwithstanding financial resources, the most important of all resources is human capital.
These individuals reside amongst the stacks.
Such broad experience, skill sets and intellect I have ever witnessed in 30 years of being in business.
All in one platform(s) that exists in such a small sample.
WE HAVE THE POWER.
It can be unleashed with a plan.
Otherwise it is just guidance and philosophy.
Not being critical of Gato; but these are unassailable facts.
Gato has the opportunity to be a leader in this movement. But it is a ground based movement on actionable strategy and necessary tweaks on tactics.
We have to start somewhere.
Ryan, You are correct. But I find that most of the echo chamber (present company included) are scouring the Stacks looking for what the "plan" is. I have been pointing this out for months, now. And, human nature being what it is, every plan requires a leader that can draw people and keep them on point/plan.
But we have neither a plan nor a leader. We do have lots of angst, hand wringing, and Brownian motion and plenty of memes and platitudes. But the community (Sorry Chick-Fil-A) is getting increasingly desperate for something more.
So if you or EGM or anyone has an actionable plan, I think the Substack base will be "all eyes". Pleas to write your representatives (I actually speak to many, ineffective for sure) or suggestions to stock up on firearms are not doing it.
I have been saying the same for over a decade. I have read many conservative blogs for years that try to alert their readers to the worldwide threats we have been/are facing, and I think to myself: “OK. Now I am informed as to what is going on.” And my next question is always: “Now what do we do about it?” The silence has been deafening. It made me stop reading those blogs for a while because of that very fact: there is no plan and there is no leader. We are on our own in every respect. Trump might be the closest thing we have to a leader of sorts, but he has been stymied at every turn by the Deep State. I am concluding that while his support and input is great, we can’t rely on him exclusively. It’s going to be up to us to find some kind of solution.
Took the words right outta….
Yes, the non existence of plan, which begins with planning, which begins with minds and hearts coming together in functional form is a roadblock. So -
Basics first?
What is the form for bringing together the contributing synergies?
I would suggest that security is a huge issue. How to manage that? I don’t have an answer. In fact, not a one of those! Maybe, perhaps, an idea here that might spawn another idea, etc, à la brainstorming, where no idea is too fantastic at the start. So —
The state of technology presents both opportunities and at worst dire threats, as in no holds barred from TPTB. I won’t elaborate further on either count or everything in between.
There are purportedly more secure platforms for what would be initial communication, though who knows? Not me. I am tech illiterate.
Protonmail might be a place to start? (Swiss: their laws not US re turning over info, end-to-end encrypted for accountholders, email, proton drive, calendar which may be shareable but I’m not sure)
Is Signal a viable option for texting & meeting? There might be limitations on #participants?
My point: substack, while a resource for the harvest of whos, is probably not a viable option for the coalescing.
My offer: I have a space so to speak reserved here for writing but anybody can do that. I am raising my hand to be the initial point of collection. But anybody can do it. By collection I mean gathering contact info / email addresses via “subscription”. But anybody can do it. The issue there is vetting. Anybody that hangs out in certain substack spaces already knows some hearts & minds, regardless of ID / anon handle (yours truly an anon, with reason). At a certain point, questions arise. I’m going to stop here.
If you want to communicate a reply here would be step 1. Up front if a next step materializes: I will place a limitation on email: no google/gmail or other big tech services for communicating. Sorry, not gonna.
Suggestion: a single protonmail account is free. I migrated a before the scamdemic. Paid, which might be why I have other services available (drive, calendar, vpn)? But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Over.
Yes!
RG - no need to litter the board with repeat text. See my reply to Dr. K.
All questions, no answers.
😬
Maybe a kitten could lay out its case on why current Bitcoin design isn’t viable? Maybe in Bitcoin Magazine etc? I think the resultant discussion would be dammed interesting.
Agree on all fronts, it is pseudo-anonymous at best.
What happens when the internet goes down? Or the power goes out?
LOL if those things happen we have a lot more to worry about than the value of bitcoin.
Your dollars will be worthless, too.
I'm not sure that dollars would necessarily be worthless. They worked fine long before electrification was more than a gleam in Edison's eye. Just keep up the requirement that we pay our taxes with them, and they will have value.
But the possibility of losing electrical power seems increasingly probable, and, given our utter dependency on it by now, is absolutely terrifying. I think all of us would do well to start looking into nineteenth-century technological solutions as we move further into the twenty-first century.
What percentage of dollars in circulation are actual dollars?
During power outages, 100%
Dollars will be more useful immediately, and temporarily, until peeps realize the power isn't coming back on.
Beans, bullets, and band-aids, the lights-out currencies.
Word 🙂
Bitcoiners in Venezuela dealt with internet and power outages. They were able to maintain local ledgers during the blackout that could be maintained offline in multiple separate devices and then merged to the main chain later when the power or internet returned.
It was a decent patch or workaround. Satellite communications will be a big leap forward in improving this in the future.
Or the power goes out of the internet. The market place of ideas under a political red flag law is begging to take censoring to the next level. Digital ID is a prediction of cancellation and control easily understood as more than a potential risk.
Curtis Yarvin was interviewed recently on this and I’m not smart enough to understand BTC and ETH but it can be taken to zero in day by the State. We are simply an “emergency” away from that happening.
Comments section probably not a great place for a detailed discussion about this, but State will certainly attempt to attack the network. In fact, China has tried to break the Bitcoin proof of work protocol at least a dozen times in the last decade and has failed. US gov't has apparently tried as well, so they are going the softer route - regulated adoption.
ETH different discussion given their EIP history and lack of decentralization.
BTC could be halted (not destroyed, just halted and very expensively so) by the State if they wanted to do it, but they would get nothing for it. The incentive is in place for any would-be attacker to embrace the protocol rather than destroy it. You either get nothing and halt the network or you get something and support the network.
Even if the intent was destruction, there wouldn't be much to destroy, simply to delay. You see, with a decentralized protocol like this, each node has a copy of every transaction that happened up to and including the latest block. So to destroy the network you have to delete all the nodes, which is functionally impossible. If an attack was successful in halting the network (again very expensively with nothing to gain), nodes have options to restart the chain at the latest node in a different form (a fork) and force the actor to do it again (again very expensively).
An intact network with all lenders and no borrowers is the plot twist to zero.