Some people said that if racism has to end then USA has to stop electing people like Donald Trump. Election of Donald Trump was a direct result of a majority of Americans choosing to embrace the very qualities that define a base nature of human beings. There are certain blessed souls that by very nature turn out to be decent human beings. The majority, on the other hand, needs to be shaped by parents and society. Left to their own accord, people very quickly choose to be degenerate and depraved. Especially with the western philosophy of "My life, my rules" etc.

People hate being told that their stupid gut feeling that wants to make fun of someone less privileged is a bad thing. Everyone wants to grab'em pussies. There was this fatfuck, redneck on one of Trevor Noah's videos saying in front of his daughter "Ohh, yes, i want to grab some pussy". So while everyone hates being preached or virtue-signalled, this very attitude is used to browbeat those who ask society and people to be better than themselves.

Americans were tired of two terms of being told by a decent man to be better. So they elected this abomination. Sure there were legitimate reasons too but those could as well have been represented by a honest-to-god, born and bred conservative. Yet, after Obama, Trump sounded like a liberating waft of fresh air with his misogynistic, racist, bullying remarks. This is a guy who publicly makes fun of people's disabilities and his followers laugh along. Frankly, America is a cesspool of such people. Racism is just another expression of their inherent belief that the black man used to be his slave.

Another reason why they come down so heavily on those black people seems to be the sheer intimidation the American whites live in from those black, physically powerful, sculpted bags of muscles. The genetics make the black man predisposed to better physical endowments than the caucasians despite generations of black surviving on crumbs while these white, fat fucks gulping red meat and wine. The eugenics-prone American establishment fears that what happens if the blacks become prosperous and have access to every opportunity for power. This fear is also one of the reasons that the white man is afraid to see black men as equals. Deep down he realizes that they are better than him.

"The Watchmen's" all-powerful protagonist Mr. Manhattan is the very embodiment of this fear. Its just that he is blue and not black.

The push for domestic manufacturing and domestic products is one small silver lining of this disaster. The loan package for MSME's is not half bad. Yet, all depends on the sector. For example, companies in pharmaceutical sector are seeing their share prices skyrocketing. This is because of the huge capacity for pharma production. Companies like Glenmark, Cipla are going to produce generic versions which will have worldwide demand in the coming times. Just like India ended up being HCQ supplier.

The other manufacturing sectors will need to put their act together by innovation and alternate sources of raw material. There has been a lot of bravado about boycotting the Chinese but a lot of India's industries are presently captive to chinese sources. This will take time to change but there is no doubt that it has lead to several opportunities.

Lastly, the reverse migration of population is being seen as a positive change. A lot of these people are no longer uneducated, unaware individuals. Thanks to the digital revolution, people are pretty much aware of their rights pertaining to the employment guarantee schemes of government, the loan/ insurance schemes for farmers, education schemes etc. There is ardent hope that the homecoming of these better informed and better connected citizens into the village economy will lead to greater entrepreneurship and innovation.

Millions of chinese died due to famines in earlier failed attempts of people's revolution. Communism is inevitably built upon deaths and a generational memory amongst people of a time of hopelessness and destitution. That is why when the govt comes around and throws you crumbs, you cower down on their boots and thank the stars. China did the same with its citizens. Yet, it cleverly adopted free market where it mattered and has put all the state resources into stealing and developing the latest technology. It brought prosperity too but when people taste democracy, they won't want anything from that suffocating police state. Hong Kong is a prime example. Humans love their freedom in a very instinctual, animalist sort of way. The Chinese have mastered the art of propaganda and are coming for the rest of the world too now. I hope we all realize and don't fall prey to the allure of cheap consumerism.

There is proximity but not much people to people exchange with China. The spread of virus in India is inevitable. The Govt and the people though have taken a "come what may" attitude now. Taking precautions and trying to be as safe as possible. Yet, it is kind of accepted that the Govt isn't willing to do anything now. Partly out of incompetence and partly due to the sheer enormity of the issue.

Hehe..I guess tiktok recognizes me as a boob catcher. I couldn't find any of those meaningful videos. All had women with number of followers directly proportional to the cup size..

I imagined and i shuddered. If that is the level of movie direction we may see in the future, i don't want that future. We reached epic levels with stuff like LOTR/ Avatar. Now it is just amateur videos and poor jokes.

Taken out of context..Sorry..LOL

Age notwithstanding, the IQ-burning capacity of tiktok ensures that those people will never be able to use a bitcoin wallet. But yeah, i agree, they are a potential market. TikTok bitcoiners would be a good idea.

TikTok is a fucking waste of time. It is "literally" 15 seconds of fame. There is all sort of cringey videos about people's "talent" but also those that purportedly give a message on love, friendship, family values etc etc. Every idiot can make a video with abysmal acting, stolen dialogues. The "trends" are the worst with multiple people dancing or acting to the exact same music, the exact same choreography and the exact same story.
Majority of the "famous creators" are women willing to dress up in tights and show cleavage/ boobs with a taut t-shirt covering them, while also pretending to say some meaningful shit about human behavior. It seems personalized with the amateur video sort of look, which probably makes it all the more alluring to some. I had it installed and watched some videos and could only wonder, "How the fuck do these people have so much time to waste?"

Ohh, and watching all those boobs in the thumbnail view makes it boring after a while. I mean boobs are god's gift to the race of men. Go get some for real. Don't waste your fucking time gawking at them on a phone screen. Beauty is to be pursued and appreciated in person.

Bangladesh has been such a mixed bag. From the horrifying news about bloggers being hacked to the great strides being made in trading and garments industry, it is hard to judge how exactly you guys are doing. Pardon me, but then there is also this big-ass MMS factory that used to churn out amateur porn videos non-stop. One thing that can be certain is Bangladesh has all it takes to become an awesome country. Only if you can keep in check the worst of our social tendencies like religious fundamentalism. India has been facing the same problems off late.

Let us all keep the world and its people in our prayers at present. Keep taking safety precautions and social distancing seriously.

I love your statement about the "feeling of solidarity". Indeed, we are all facing the same enemy and it is affecting us all in one way or another. I have read a lot about the problems in Venezuela. It is just sad that countries with so much potential fall prey to a combination of shitty internal politics and external interference (The USA??). I wish and pray that you guys can set your country on the correct path and get out of this abject poverty and breakdown. I hope we have more people from Venezuela on the forum and bitcoin and the forum is helping you in one way or another.

I am not saying that the govt will take a negative view of bitcoin because of money laundering issues. They will take a negative view because bitcoin allows people to have the choice to earn money and keep it for themselves. They want to control those channels themselves and not let the common public have them. Its similar to how high-level corruption flourishes while normal public is forced to account for every single penny.
The so called politicians who are taking up these laws in parliament are fed by bureaucrats. The same bureaucrats that continue to earn millions in kickbacks on defence deals, infrastructure projects, educational/ healthcare spending. Corruption is so institutionalized in our country, that these people can only see bitcoin from their colored lenses. There is a idiom in hindi which roughly translates to "The thief worries the most about theft in his house". So even though the general public will be involved through regulated exchanges, these bureaucrat and political nexus is hell-bent on painting it as "black money". This gives them the justification. Why else would there be talk of potentially making it illegal to own cryptocurrencies??

If people are relying more on P2P, then they are actually using bitcoin the way it is actually supposed to be used. Even on localbitcoin, its not like it is completely untraceable. It just allows a person to have his privacy. The authorities don't want to do their real job and blame everything on p2p trading. It is kindda pathetic and regressive.

I dont' say "blockchain technology" is too early. "Bitcoin" with its concept of financial freedom and privacy, maybe too early for most of the population. Most people still prefer to tow the official govt line rather than take a constitutional stand.

Agree. If they just ban it, this is going to be another reasons to leave this country ASAP. Yeah but i am sure we'll all try to oppose it in our own ways first.

Complimentary services are always an advantage but we wouldn't be here if the physical world was sufficient for all of us. It is a fact that people like to spend 'some' part of their time in the virtual world. The next promising technologies in how we inhabit the virtual world haven't yet matured. Both AR and VR are at a level where it is just a novelty and not so much an enjoyable experience. Why not a VR casino then?

Who can say that one day we won't have a truly enjoyable virtual online world where you can step-in using some sort of physical 'room' with all the necessary contraptions to make the virtual experience whole for a user. A dream like utopia where you may well have "online" casinos you can actually walk into and be offered complimentaries. One big issue is that off late, the contemporary culture has moved on to a very narcissistic, anarchist portrayal of the online world. Especially the RPG's portray a world of conflict and freedom to what you cannot in the real world. Rather than becoming a safe place for anonymous interaction, these have gone on a negative path.

That is a novel idea. One that may very well is being used to fool the people there while the state takes over more and more of their liberties with constant surveillance, Face identification, point system for accessing public facilities. This is not a compromise. People there were not given an option to trade their basic human nature in return for GDP growth. Nor will the entrenched elite in the CCP give up their positions and bring democracy suddenly saying that "Ok, we have developed enough".

If the coercive measures, propaganda military videos, and extreme nationalism is any indication, the CCP is only making itself more along the lines of former USSR with their dreams of world domination. There has already been sufficient evidence to show the Chinese state has been spreading its soft propaganda while trying to exploit the faultlines in other societies (Often in the name of humanity and equality). Then there is the aspect of IP theft and espionage that they have indulged in.

Be assured that the CCP has no intention to give people any form of relaxation in terms of freedom to have an alternate thought process. All they want is for the rest of the world to accept their bullying and hegemony so they can spread their zombifying ideas and paint more of the world red. Fortunately, the world is waking up to the slow red poison.

I assume you are responding to me. Chinese have a very strictly controlled society where the cost of non-compliance or criticism of the CCP can easily be disappearance or punishment of some sort. I can't imagine how it must be to live in a society like that where people don't have the choice or intellectual freedom to comment on governance or have a say in their policies.
The thing with the Chinese though is that they have mastered survival through collectivism and propaganda. There is a generational memory amongst the people about the hardships they have suffered in past decades. Thanks to the strategic embracing of open-market and thanks to becoming the world's factory through its offer of cheap human labor, China has now reached a level where its people have sort of been "bribed" into believing that they are living in a state-controlled utopia and there is no better way to do it. As long as the majority believes this, the minority of smart, original thinkers who abhor "control" by their very nature, will always end up in exile or in custody.

I wouldn't say that the govt has regressive thinking just judging from cryptocurrencies. You can very well expect the govt to embrace blockchain based solutions and simultaneously reject the idea of crypto-"currencies" altogether. The policymakers and the power-holders in India take the concept of "black money" pretty strongly. The "concept" is that real, coercive power flows from "untraceable money" and only they should have it while the public shouldn't.

The Indian public is far from being mature enough to have a debate on a hedge against inflation. People are mostly content if they are making some money. They couldn't care less about the concept of banking cartels and individual privacy.

The basic problem is that bitcoin is 50 years too early for a country like India.

I am hoping someone would counter this view. Not many benevolent OGs around to do that i guess. Apart from libertarians, i was putting my bet on those geeks and cypherpunks. People into software and high-end technology are generally kind. At least to begin with. The "take it and use it" deal isn't too bad either if they were actually building something. One thing i do understand from your in-your-face explanation though, is that one should stop being emotional about it all.

Misconception or not, this debate about "getting rich by hodling" sees a lot of virtue signalling by people who get salty that they weren't there earlier. Heck, I bet everyone from 2017 onwards has felt that once. It is hard to accept the someone like the MtGox scammer should be sitting on a billion dollar stash.

I wish that the wealthy elites who once frequented the forum much more than they do now were here to assuage the newcomers that they are actually getting together to build a seastead, end poverty, find a cure to cancer and give employment opportunities to the poorest. (Although, Thanks for the Sig campaigns fellas..LOL) I hope they have a secret society of the sorts that geeks and cypherpunks have always accused the "powers that be" to have. I would be very surprised if an early group of cypherpunks haven't formed such a secret society of super-rich bitcoiners.

Although, now that i think of it, i doubt if they are up to any good. We hit the ATH in 2018. Those guys supposedly got rich. and then 2 years later, you give us fucking 2020??!!

There is a fair bit of sarcasm in there @stompix. I am talking about India. Our PM comes on television and he is known for making emotive appeals. For a hardcore section of followers, he can do no wrong. Lighting earthen lamps is considered an auspicious thing in our society. So the PM did this "let us all come together" and light lamps thing. So people started forwarding whatsapp messages about metaphysical stuff explaining benefits of earthen lamps or the holy vibrations produced by conch shells. This was of course not an official stance. Just a kind of message from the leadership. The fan club gives it these twists to increase the popularity and demonstrate to people that how our PM is connected to his roots or how brilliant he is. While, we all appreciate the stress on conservative values and cultural revival, a lot of it is demagoguery pandering to the hardcore base.

The relation between Pakistan and China is an exploitative an opportunist one. Pakistan ceded them territory in Kashmir (Aksai Chin) and in return China has always helped arm Pakistan. China's main motive is to keep India busy by just nudging Pakistan while keeping their own 3000+ KM of border conflict free. In recent times, India has been making headway with world powers. The G-7 temporary meeting, India extending relationships with ASEAN nations are all irritants to China.
So they have taken these coercive measures. China is a shrewd one. They will say one thing and do something else. All of this is basically being done to take the sail out of India's wind of resurgence amid backlash against China. They don't want it to be an easy decision for corporations. Corporations look for stable countries with a stable governance. To me, this is a major reason that China has been trying hard to put everyone on their toes, including SEA nations and India.

By the way, I wish India and Indonesia had closer interaction like when we had at the time of non-alignment. We do share ancient roots. I have been to Bali once. Its just that the cultural ties get over-colored by the religious differences. Since the coming of the present govt, the Indian RW has been very vocal about the religious issues. Yet, as a majority, India is still a secular country which always deals with other nations on good faith. This is also one of the reasons that the Chinese catch us off-guard time and again.

It is not clear which way the Galwan valley stand-off will go. Its a high-altitude battlefield and the Chinese are planning something big with their constant build-up. It remains to be seen if Indian leadership will take the risk to attack first to free the "no-man's land". Lot of backdoor frantic activity going on. China has been a bully in the region for too long, especially in the South China Sea. It falls on India to stand up to them. Indian armed forces have a history of doing that since Independence.

And who defines what is "as honest as possible"? This will fail not work because the "libertarian" citizen by his very nature will tell you, "What i THINK is right, is right?" In an ideal society of libertarians, there has to be no fear of violence or coercion, hence no use of a jury or court. Unfortunately, even a libertarian society will have its sets of criminals and psychopaths who will need to be put in their place. You need a system there too.

A democracy as well as a kingship can work. We don't have ANY examples of an ideal libertarian state in history. or are there? Enlighten us.

A little addition and update.

Our Govt did not rake up its debt with direct cash transfers. Instead it has provided an option for interest-free, collateral-free, one year loans to small businesses. It is mostly a game of self-management and self-reliance for our people. For the poorest of the poor, they have simply went back to villages with the hopes of subsisting on their land and the village economy. We are yet to see any major unrest or clear affect of these job losses. Alternatively, the Govt has assured that a national job-guarantee program for the poor will continue to provide minimum 100 day wages to poor households.

On the war front, the Chinese bogey has made people forget their political bickering and unite in the face of an imperialistic China. The govt is taking measures to stop giving business to chinese companies while the people are trying to stop their reliance on chinese goods. Let us see how that pans out.

Rust and Haskell as Functional Programming languages are supposed to be free of the potential exploits and bugs that Turing completeness entails. While reading about Simplicity, i came across this paradigm of functional programming, which btw explains the unfamiliar "types" and combinators in simplicity. (Unfamiliar to me who uses programming tools like C and Python for rudimentary tasks and not for building products per se).

I am unable to find the link to a talk being given by a company founder about this who said that with FP, you wouldn't risk things like the parity bug. I am still learning more about it and to me the whole concept currently sounds a bit esoteric with the interesting history behind lamba calculus. Alonzo Church who invented lamba calculus was the doctoral guide to Alan Turing. While Turing's programming paradigm with Turing machine became dominant, Alonzo's FP paradigm remained niche and has only recently begun to get traction.

EDIT1:

I think the other option has no worthy examples in modern history to be valued for its real potential. While there is plenty of academic, media and contemporary culture backing of the so called "Democratic" leadership, the fact is that a true "Military" leadership which actually follows ethos of leadership as described by military texts, such leadership could do so much better.

For example, all the great empires of Ancient India were basically "Military" leaderships with a king at the helm. From the mythical era of "Raghunandan Ram" to the historical age of "Mauryan" empire. Asoka the Great, The Gupta empire, there is plenty of evidence that a military leadership in true terms has also had civilizational success throughout history. To have examples from other empires, What were the Spartans? For most of modern history, we have grown up on really bad examples of military dictatorships. From the junta-generals of Burma to the warlords of Africa. THAT is definitely NOT what a fighting man would necessarily devolve into. A fighting man can be the best kind of man and leader.

As to the OP, you are actually talking about Martial law and yes, it works better in the times of crisis than a democracy in today's sense. Today's democracy with its social media mouthpieces are not democracies anymore. People don't have free opinions anymore. We no longer judge situations based on our very human emotions or responses to tragedy and pain. We base our responses on the insensitized ideology of whichever side you belong to. Depending on your ideology, there are people who will find chinks in George Floyd's character because your "ideological" sources on social media are saying so. At the same time, they will find no fault with a drunk man snatching a Taser from a police officer and firing it as he runs off.

The whole thing leads me to one conclusion. Democracy in its present form where everyone is an expert is fucked. Democracy worked because people based their decisions on the basis of right, wrong, emotions and common norms of what is acceptable human behavior and what is too painful. In today's time, we read insensitive comments from people on Social media wishing death, rape, decapitation to each other just because ideologies don't match. Well, THIS is no Democracy. This is a Dog Eats Dog world and we need some big fucking lions to put the vermin back in place.

No official statement yet. The best you can hope for is information gleaned by the usual suspects on twitter. Those who cite "sources" but don't disclose. This whole thing is of a nature that can not be ascertained even by third party observers. Not until  someone has access to stealthy intercepts within the Chinese military heirarchy. On their part, the commies have completely blocked all news on the vent.

Indian sources have given different versions but both point to the fact that the CO and his men approached the illegal structures built during the earlier intrusion, ones which were agreed to be vacated as part of "de-escalation talks". At the ground level, tempers ran high and the Chinese decided to attack the unarmed and negotiating Indian side. Caught off-guard, the Indian side inflicted sufficient damage for the commies to resort to an information blackout. The Global times mentioned 43 "casualties" and then retracted the statement. Similar information was provided on the basis of intercepts.

The Indian soldiers have always given a tough fight despite all the posturing from the Chinese. 1967 Nathu La incident is testimony to that. This time, they have attempted the same treachery that they did in 1962. At the same Galawan valley area, an indian camp was attacked by an oversized Chinese contingent killing 33 men.

This is an incident which happened during night time in a narrow cliff overlooking a fast flowing Galawan river. Towards the end, both sides were towing bodies. The present intention from both sides would be to de-escalate. Only a joint official statement can shed light on what exactly happened.

In my country, the Govt was busy patting its own back for having put a lockdown in very early days. Our demagogue of a leader was having a gala time addressing the nation in this momentous time and he used every occasion to "cement" his place in history by giving all sort of advice to people in the name of getting together.

Step 1:He told us to light earthen lamps and bulbs. The govt sympathizers circulated that it is our great man's plan to kill Corona by raising the temperature. Apparently, it did not work.

Step 2: Then he said we all should come out of our balconies and make noises using cymbals and plates and drums. The propaganda machinery said that the corona virus cannot survive the sound of the holy conches used in our temples. So on that fateful morning, a lot of my fellow countrymen blew their conches with the full capacity of their lungs. A lot of fuckers thought that taking processions in the street and dancing would be fine too. I guess y'all know we Indians love a good mixture of sound and dance. So yeah, we celebrated. Later on we found that corona does not die by these holy sounds.

Step 3: We were all told to install an app. This was the grand plan. Apparently, the marker on this Govt app will always show you "safe", no matter where you are. Its a great psychological boost.

After all this, around 40 days had passed. The cases were still rising. Everyone was talking corona, corona, corona. District administration came b arguing with ambulances and vehicles if even one suspect was found. Videos were circulated. It was all a few days of great energy. Suddenly, all the poor industrial workers who had lost jobs had no more money and they did not want to survive on govt meals everyday. So, They did what the poor people of my country do best. Took their destiny in their own hands and started walking. And boy, did they walk. There are cases where people walked 100s of kilometers to reach their villages in the hinterlands. Lot of people lost lives. Media was not interested because it looks bad for our Pied Piper of a leader. This was called India's Migrant crisis and many compare it with the "Migrant Mother" scenario of US in the 30s after the Dust bowl incident and great depression. Many a heartbreaking stories remain to come out.

Economically, we have suffered a lot. People have lost jobs. Our governments have always been like this. Leaving people to die. Yet, we are a fucking hardy lot. and there is bloody 1.3 billion of us. Lot of scope for corona. By some miracle of one amongst our millions of gods, somehow the death numbers are still low. The predictions say that we will peak in August. (some say November). People have now started coming out in the streets. We no longer hug or get close. We all wear masks and try to keep our distance while praying that nobody brings corona around our locality. In the most weird of ways, we are surviving as another new front opens up. This time, Its the fucking Chinese with their cold, calculated move to lighten up the borders at a time when their is so much uncertainty. There have been no shots fired but just today, multiple casualties out of violent physical clashes. Yet, this is not 1962 and India is much better prepared. China is too strong economically and militarily but India has never been one to back off from war.

So yeah, that is that. Its all wide open.

Sorry, if this post talked little about economy. We have a public pandemic and a potential war at hands. Pakistan is sitting on the western border probably hoping for another of its hyena attacks now that the tiger is distracted by the dragon. Yet, I can say that this is all good news for the economy. We shall overcome.