Then challenge it instead of ignoring him.  I'm strongly against banning people's speech just because it is in fact, or is considered to be, misinformation.  The same drama is happening in the mainstream media, Youtube, and on social media platforms regarding COVID and I hate to say it:  The type of speech that needs to be protected the most strongly is the type the majority of people disagree with. 

Let people think for themselves, even if they're newbies being exposed to franky1's posts.  You (or the forum) don't need to be the gatekeeper of the truth.

I don't know why franky1's posts have been deleted or what that says about this situation.  It'd be nice if a moderator chimed in here.  Some of franky's posts I've seen in the past were well-written and informative (though not on the subject of the lightning network).

I don't know a whole lot about lightning nodes (though I did try to understand them a while back until my eyes glazed over), but that doesn't matter.  Franky1 could be arguing about bitcoin itself, my mom, or COVID--I don't support this forum banning anyone based on their opinions of things unless they're absolutely trolling, which I don't think franky1 is.  He might be wrong, his opinions might be loud and in-your-face, but the only thing I'd support is people shunning him if they don't like what he has to say.

The best way to do that is to use the ignore button.  That way we can preserve freedom of speech and at the same time you don't have to see posts you know you're not going to want to see.

That's true, but Holmes and Theranos went well beyond outrageous promises which are standard fare in the Valley.  Theranos actually partnered with Walgreens and was doing clinical tests on actual patients with a testing system that didn't produce accurate results.  Doctors can and do prescribe treatment and/or further (expensive) testing based on bloodwork, so she was putting the patients that Theranos tested blood for at risk of receiving whatever unnecessary drugs/procedures/etc.  

I read Bad Blood a while back, but I can't remember if there was actually any harm done to patients (and I haven't read all of this thread yet or the details of the verdict).  By the way, it's a very good read.  I think Holmes really thought she could do what she promised everyone Theranos was capable of.  I don't think she ever had any intentions to pull off a typical cash-grab scam.  There was some serious research going on at Theranos, and I think Holmes thought they could catch up in time as far as their testing system went before anyone noticed that what they had wasn't working properly.

Spot on.  I remember seeing a whole bunch of ICO projects aimed at revolutionizing....everything.  Some of them were medicine-related, but none of them caught on.  If businesses were going to start using blockchain tech, they'd have done it by now--and it wouldn't involve some 3rd party ICO dev.

Good, thank you.  Done and done.  Vispilio has been tilda'ed on my trust list for good and for all.  And not on a whim either, because I reviewed his sent feedback and it is full of lunacy to put it mildly, as are his posts.

Anything else I can help you with?  Have a nice day and thank you for shopping with Get The Fuck Off DT.

Ah, I was wondering who the clique was, because while I recognize his username I haven't seen any of Vispilio's posts in I don't know how long--maybe never, unless he was ranting in Meta or Reputation about discrimination against Turkish members.  That happened once or twice and I could swear it was him.  I should probably check his post history, but I'm just too goddamn lazy.

Fuck, I've got a spine made out of titanium.  Vispilio needs to be excluded?  Do I have enough pull on DT to make any difference?  I profess that I have no way of knowing, since I stopped paying attention to DT matters a long time ago.

Well I for one don't doubt that hard work can only take you so far in certain regions in the world.  I don't know much about Sri Lanka and how capitalistic and developed they are, but if opportunities to advance in a career or to start your own business are limited, you're basically screwed from birth.  And if your government has a lousy leader or is corrupt to the core, that only makes things infinitely harder.

About this article, I was struck by the title, which clearly insinuates that COVID has something to do with what's happening to Sri Lanka's economic situation:


But the gist of the article is broken down in this single paragraph, and the only thing I can see that has anything to do with the pandemic is the decrease in tourism:


High government spending, tax cuts, foreign debt, and irresponsible money printing don't have anything to do with a virus.  It amazes me how COVID-19 just grabs headlines even when it's not warranted, like in this case.  Unless there were Sri Lankans dropping dead on the street by the thousands, any negative effects on the economy are likely due to overblown government policies in reaction to the pandemic--just like in the US and other countries.

Do you know what herd immunity is?  It's not something a government heads toward, but perhaps there's a language barrier here.  In any case, don't expect the media or the government to ever announce that your country has reached herd immunity against COVID, because it'll never happen.  Not if new variants (odd how we used to call them "strains") keep popping up which older vaccines aren't active against.  There's going to be no end to the mask wearing, the lockdowns, physical distancing, etc.  Meanwhile, the CDC keeps publishing statistics on their website that are confusing at best, even to people who know how to interpret data. 

Dude, what is it you're so concerned with--losing access to your Copper membership account?  That's the only thing I can think of that would make you come back two years after you'd been banned and ask for access to your old account.  Most people would just create a new account on the sly and start over, even though it's against the rules.

I'll remind you that you wrote this (in addition to a lot of other nonsense):


Judging from your tone right now, it's obvious you haven't changed one bit.  What is it you're so eager to contribute to the forum?  You can do all the reading you like without even having an account, you know.

OP, did you want a discussion about something specific here or did you just want to tell the community some vague stuff about what you're doing with your money?  If it's the latter, I'm pretty sure no one cares.  If it's the former, why don't you ask a question or tell us what you want to talk about?  Is this about bitcoin at all?

Assuming the topic is "savings and investment plan" for this year and that bitcoin is involved, I'd say that we're probably going to see a new ATH at some point if people remain bullish and bitcoin stays in the news (in a positive way).  And with that said, I'd also say now is probably not a bad time to buy and hold, for 2022 and longer if you've got enough capital that can be tied up for long periods of time.

Most altcoins are shitcoins.  Speaking of that, I recently logged on to my Yobit account that I hadn't touched in well over 1.5 years.  I noticed that I had tons of dust amounts of oddball shitcoins in it, and I'm not even sure what 90% of these coins are or how they ended up in my account.  Here's a couple of screenshots:




So yeah, a lot of these coins that get hyped up big time (especially on social media) end up in the 1-satoshi graveyard of Yobit.  The majority of them in fact, even if they don't actually hit 0.00000001BTC with zero trading volume.  I just watched a YT vid from 2018 yesterday where some guy was extolling the virtues of mining Zelcash, which was over $100 when he made the video.  It sounded familiar to me, so I checked CMC and found it's going for $0.12.  Yep.

OK then, you don't have to twist my arm: Can you please make me a tree?  Thanks in advance (although I'm fairly sure I know what it's going to look like).

I think some members just do it for fun, and others are probably looking for people who might be abusing the system/sniffing out alts/whatever.  There's no harm in it, but as I said I'm not going to hold it against someone if they hoard all their sMerits, because nobody's required to participate in the merit system.

Side note: it's more fun browsing through some members' trust pages, though I haven't done that in quite some time.  It kind of gets old quick, and just like looking through people's merit history there's little point to it.

Gacpoue, I might take your suggestion as being genuine had I not just seen this:



Not trying to go off-topic, but please stop it with the burst posting in order to boost your post count.

That is one hell of a run-on sentence, aysg76.  I'm not even sure what it means, though I'd like to understand what you said about people being misguided if/when the channel gains a foothold on Youtube.  That's a discussion I'd like to see happening in general.

I don't see the most generous list as a competition, and I'm not striving to be in the top 5 or top anything for ego reasons.  I just want to be a good merit source, because I believe in the merit system.  Without merit sources distributing merits generously, the whole thing would just grind to a halt--and I'm not sure what Theymos would do in that case, but I don't want to find out.

And yes, I do give advice when members PM me for post history reviews, because my offer is not just for a handout.  I still have fairly high standards when I get those requests, but I don't tell people that I'm not meriting any of their posts and to just go away.  Members who take the time to contact me are probably the ones who will improve their posting, as opposed to the garden variety shitposter who contributes nothing and then starts a thread in Meta wondering why he hasn't earned any merits.

Plastics are polymerized organic compounds, but for the life of me I can't remember if they're still making plastic from any of the hydrocarbons found in oil.  You'd think scientists would have figured out a cheaper way to synthesize the various forms of plastic without the use of crude oil byproducts.

I don't think a Lego vs. oil price chart would tell you much, because while oil has fluctuated wildly for many years, Legos that you could buy on the shelf of your local department store probably just rose with whatever the inflation rate was at the time.  The article is talking about Legos as a collector's item, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with the price of oil.  I'm not surprised that there's a market for them among collectors, but I don't know how long that's been a thing.

No, that's what I was pointing out in my post above.  It's possible that if the plastic Legos are made of is indeed made out of oil that their price might go up a little if oil were to skyrocket, but I don't think there would be much correlation between the two things if you were to compare prices over at least a few decades.  And as jackg is also pointing out, the high price of Legos only goes for genuine Legos, because for whatever reason people want them, and they want the real thing and not some Chinese counterfeit or knockoff.

I've expressed this sentiment before: People are free to do whatever they like with their sMerits, and it isn't a requirement of forum membership that you have to participate in--or even like--the merit system.  I'd say if it bugs you that someone is hoarding merits, you're probably paying too much attention to other members' sending history. 

OP, this is a pretty cool visual representation of merit flow between selected members, and I'd like to see more (which I'm assuming is the purpose of your reserved posts).  I've seen very complicated merit maps before, and while those are cool I like this more limited display of where merit ends up two members removed from a merit source.  I'm assuming they're merit sources if they're on the most generous list.

Yeah, what's up with that?  I've noticed at least two threads like that in the past couple of days.

Personally I didn't need a reminder of all that stuff, but it was a nice summary of the early days of the merit system.  Newer members here are probably not aware of how lousy the forum was prior to the system rolling out.  We had account farmers all over the place, sometimes with multiple alt accounts talking to each other in the same thread and other very bizarre stuff that could only be accounted for by the presence of account farms. 

Yes, the shitposters kept shitposting after Theymos introduced the merit system, but in an instant the incentive to create dozens of new accounts in order to rank them up and sell them or enroll them in bounties or sig campaigns was eliminated, and I think the effect of that was seen pretty dramatically. 

Newcomers also may not realize what Meta looked like at the end of Jan. 2018 and throughout a good part of 2019.  It was absolutely on fire with people either bitching about or praising the merit system, and there were also tons of shitposters who were obviously creating threads trying to earn merits (and it was kind of comical, because Meta was pretty shitpost-free prior to the merit system).  Total chaos.  And hey, those threads still exist for anyone who cares to go back and read them.

Yeah, I've got to be somewhere near that myself and usually it is indeed hard to send that many merits in a month.  When I was constantly running low on sMerits a while back, I was sure I could use up that many but it was a lot more difficult than I thought.  But I'm not complaining, because I'd rather have a few hundred in reserve at all times in case I need them instead of having to ration my sMerits because I'm running low.

My new year's resolution every year since I've been a merit source has been to be a better one, and I'm going to do my best again this year.  There's no way I'm going to get in to the top 5 most generous list, but if I can at least maintain a steady spot in the top 10 or wherever I was last year, that's cool with me.

Holding on to an investment for the long term is one strategy that's worked for many people--and yeah, you can see that worked out well for people like Warren Buffett and anyone who bought bitcoin when it was under $100 (or $1000 even).  It isn't the only thing that works, though.  If people on sites like Youtube are to be trusted, which is iffy, you can still make a lot of dough by actively trading stocks, crypto, or whatever else.

The problem I see with a lot of people in crypto is that they buy a lot of bitcoin with the intention of holding it for years, but they've overinvested, i.e., bought it with money they ended up needing for expenses before the end of their investment time frame came around.  They may have made a profit when they sold, or they might not have.  My point is that if you're considering buying something as a long-term investment, make sure you're buying it with money that you're not going to need to pay rent or buy groceries with in a couple of months.

I assume this is directed at me, since you quoted my post.  I wouldn't care at all where a member is from even if I had that knowledge, but the fact is that the posts submitted thus far have been in English and we're basically judging members on what they've posted. 

Take this snippet from KingsDen's post:


If you can sit there and tell me with a straight face that what was written above is profound, well written, interesting, and/or is of high value then you ought to be a professional poker player.  All I'm going to say about the above snippet is that it's fluff.  And the part I bolded....what?

Yes, I merited that post.  I couldn't tell you what I was thinking, but it was probably that KingsDen had put some effort into it and therefore deserved some merit.  My opinion at this moment is that it didn't deserve as many merits as it got.

The bottom line is that if you're writing in the English language, having a good command of it (like n0nce does) can enhance the message you're trying to get across.  If you don't, it's like listening to AM radio while driving through New York City--there's a lot of static and the signal-to-noise ratio is very low.

Oh wow--I know I merited him for that post, but I only skimmed through the thread, and now that you brought it back up again I think I'm going to go back and do a more close reading of it.  Ideas like that one are starting to intrigue me these days.  And yeah, I'd agree with you about n0nce's contributions.  

Those other members mentioned in the OP I'm not that familiar with except KingsDen, and frankly if we're voting for Newbie of the year, I wouldn't consider him to be a viable candidate.  Just my opinion.

Having a strong desire to learn doesn't necessarily make a member a good candidate for NoTY, and that post of his you quoted was about 3x what it should have been based on the points he was trying to make--plus it was written in English broken just enough that it was frustrating to read.  

When I see posts like those, I immediately think "merit fisherman", whereas the post LoyceV quoted from n0nce was original and probably took a lot of time and effort to write.

May I suggest that you not try to micromoderate this thread?  You did not specify in the rules that discussion of the candidates wasn't allowed, and I personally think it's entirely appropriate for the community to do so here, since this is where the voting is happening.

TL;DR: Back off.

I just don't know what to think about this article.  It's baffling to me.  Obviously Business Insider's aim was to write an inflammatory article, which you know just by looking at the title, but the relationship between corporate profits and inflation seems like it should be a typical thing that happens during inflationary periods. 

In this case, demand and/or the money supply increases so people are buying more things--and that would drive up the price.  At the same time (and as noted by the Colgate-Palmolive CEO) raw materials are getting more expensive, and there's also the issue of global currency fluctuations.  Why wouldn't corporations hike up the prices of the finished goods?  Why does this warrant an article attempting to stir up outrage?

In addition, I'd really love to see the annual report of Colgate-Palmolive from 60 years ago.  I'm betting their quarterly/annual profits were much less in absolute dollar terms than they are in 2021.  If that's true, it seems kind of like how wages have risen over the years and have more or less adjusted for inflation.  My head isn't quite wrapped around the complexities here, but my gut is telling me that the topic of this article is "The rich get richer!!" and Business Insider ought to know that this is all business as usual.

Uh....let's say this case was taken to court because the prosecutor charged them with some violation of a law having to do with misuse of charitable funds.  I'd think the first piece of evidence would be the blockchain transactions and where the trail leads.  If there are gaps the size of the Grand Canyon in the accounting (which there are), you'd better believe that's going to be used against them--and it'll look really bad to the jury, just like it looks bad to the bitcointalk members following this thread.

Are you a disbarred lawyer, by any chance?

I've lost track of the time frame of when all these things were happening.  So you took out a loan from cabalism13 before or after he received the payout from you?  I'm also wondering if it was before or after he allegedly needed that $500 for his father's medicine.

And crwth was loaning out money on Jan. 14th 2021, which was right around the time of those two payouts from bL4nkcode (though I'm not sure who those went to exactly).  And what's cabalism13 doing making loans if he's pilfering charity funds to pay for meds?