MacGyver

Note, “the group says there will be no changes to its operations.”

I’ve read a lot of restructuring statements in my day. The “we’re filing bankruptcy” sure was buried in a lot of fluff. They’ve continued to take in tons of donations via fundraising. It’ll be awfully interesting to see what plans the judge will approve.

I'm locking this topic for three reasons: 1. TGO David just locked the general politics forum 2. A political article by a person with one post is likely designed to spread the reach of the article as opposed to contributing to the community. 3. Politics is a participatory sport. You cannot expect that things will stay the way they've always been - you have to get involved to help create the community you want.

Me either. But, by the same token literally billions of people have been brought out of extreme poverty in the last 2 generations - in your and my lifetime. Some of the post WWII structures that are so popular to hate on right now have largely kept the continent of Europe largely peaceful for the last 75 years. Parts of it had basically been at war for the 500 years previous to that. So many diseases are treatable that would have been deadly or terribly debilitating only 75 years ago. Many of us have traveled farther in a day than our forefathers did in their entire lives. I could go on - but there’s reason for hope, too. The world and the people in it really are quite amazing.

In 50 years, our grandchildren will look at our use of social media and it’s balkanizing effects in the same way we look at our grandparents who smoked 18 hours a day - sort of a “how could you not have known that stuff was terrible for you?” Hopefully its not preceded by “back before the war.”

There are diseases that have been eradicated in our lifetimes that killed millions of people because of vaccines. It’s late, so I won’t try to rank them - but if you were to make a list of scientific achievements that have most improved the human condition in the last 500 years - vaccines are in the top 5.

In which case you can expand that rule past Bitcoin to all sorts of projects that’ll immediately begin to accrue technical debt.

I’m reserving my time. I’ve got a few more I can bring out when needed.

I'd very much file this under, "if I need to call someone when I can't print this funny meme I saw on Facebook from my iPad" - then I probably shouldn't give any real serious thought to maintaining a bitcoin wallet.

It would be interesting - and I don't have time to do it this afternoon - to post a chart of GDP or the S&P500 or whatever metric you want against control of the government. I expect what it would show is that the economy is largely going to economy and doesn't particularly favor unified government. The 4 biggest drops of any of our lifetimes (1929 crash, S&L bust, dotcom bubble, and the 2008 recession) have all officially occurred on Republican watches - but that's kind of disingenuous to make that argument. Just like the economy under Trump has benefited from some of Obama's policies - Bush too took the hit from some of the rails coming off during Clinton. Etc. Standard disclaimer - The stock market is not the economy - please don't take investing advice from me or anyone else on the internet - unless it's about Bitcoin in which case I know what I'm talking about - consult your financial professional.

You should check out the 111th Congress - where both the House and the Senate were under Democratic control for the first part of Obama's first term - including for a short time with a filibuster proof majority. You might also remember the 103rd Congress where Bill Clinton also had Democratic control in both houses. Carter had both houses his whole time in office. Kennedy and Johnson both did too. Roosevelt had a Democratic majority from 1933 that lasted until Truman lost it in 1947. Herbert Hoover was president in 1929. He was a Republican. So too were both chambers of Congress. In fact, from 1921 when Warren Harding had a majority - through Calvin Coolidge - all the way to 1931 when Herbert Hoover lost the Republican majority - that was the longest stretch in which the Republican Party would have unified control until George W. Bush (who had it in part of 2001, then from 2003 through 2007). Eisenhower had unified control from 1953-55. edit: here's the sourcing on that with a nice chart - history is cool.

If the fluctuation of pricing on Bitcoin doesn't scare someone off, the fact that it really only exists at this point to launder money for organized crime should. We deal with a lot of ransomware/cryptolocker cases, and I can say that all the lawyers involved are growing increasingly concerned with RICO/trafficking/money laundering/OFAC stuff - since you basically know that you're sending large sums of money to criminals as a ransom payment. Then, you can add to that the "days since a cryptocurrency exchange lost more than $100M" sign hasn't reached triple digits yet. If you can get past all that, then I might suggest that in any legitimate market, you need both a party and counterparty to transactions. We have a ton of people putting money into the "market." But, when we examine the blockchain registers, we don't really see any of that money moving out. We don't have counterparties. This could legit turn into a case where you have millions on paper, but couldn't cash out if your life depended on it. Stay away from it.

Please - for the love of all that's good - don't "invest" and tell the people you love not to "invest" in Bitcoin. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Your intuition is the right one. We can always open something back up later if we decide to.

I know someone who got it twice. Mild case in March. It killed him the second time.

Will do. Thanks for letting us know.

Go figure, right?

You saying’ you’d turn on us?

One of the fatalities last week literally died of a heart attack after accidentally tasing himself in the nuts. Don’t be that guy that makes your family answer to that for generations to come.

Dave Troy explains a lot of the questions well in this thread if you’re interested:

You know why this is such a common playbook? Because it almost always works. In this particular iteration, her name is Alina Mukhutdinova. Notice a resemblance? I mean, at least she was upfront about it...

If I was only going to own one axe - that would hands down be it. Each of their axes comes with a book detailing the different use cases for each of their axes. It’s an education by itself: https://www.gransforsbruk.com/en/axe-knowledge/using-an-axe/different-axe-models/

I should have also added to the above, there *is* a new administration about to start - and all the tech companies are going to bend over backwards without any prompting to look like they're playing nice for a while to avoid regulation.

There are probably two ways to think about them: 1. It looks like they've gotten a few hundred thousand overall downloads. That's not quite to the point where they need to think about scale like Facebook - but it's quickly approaching where they need an actual business model that lets them make money. To my knowledge they haven't received VC funding, so that cliff is going to come sooner rather than later. Especially now that downloads seem to be slowing - it'll be hard to fundraise if your subscribers aren't going "up and to the right." 2. Probably more relevant right now in that people are looking for a place to go since Parler shut down is the conversation that practically every corporate attorney in America is having today. That is, how do you define "providing material support" to an insurrection? That's what has caused Apple, Google, and Amazon to remove Parler. It's what's caused 14 of the biggest tech companies on the planet to deplatform the most powerful man in the world. It's what's caused companies like DOW and Ford to immediately suspend all donations to members of Congress who supported overturning the results of AZ, GA, and PA - https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2021/01/11/ford-dow-suspend-political-donations-capitol-riot/6623557002/ It's what caused Cumulus Media to tell hosts like Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, and Dan Bongino to stop talking about the election being stolen at risk of having their contracts terminated: https://www.ajc.com/life/radiotvtalk-blog/cumulus-media-tells-its-conservative-talk-show-hosts-to-stop-talking-about-a-stolen-election/PE2VM6SQKBFBZBULQTFZLQUV7A/ Y'all can form your own opinion on whether you think this is justified or not - but I expect you'll see more examples in coming days. This is just to give an idea of the conversations management teams are having with counsel behind the scenes.

In a move that I expect you'll see more of in coming days: The Michigan Capitol Commission voted unanimously (every Republican and Democrat) to ban open carry in the statehouse. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/01/11/michigan-capitol-open-carry-gun-ban/6623331002/