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I don't have any special way of verifying this, but if true it's very sad. Tecshare and I had some disagreements, but he was definitely a good person, and we were able to have a constructive relationship despite our disagreements. His feedback influenced a lot of the adjustments to the trust system over the years, for example.
One fairly-recent thing which is maybe not widely-known was that in order to help Elwar escape Thailand, TECSHARE was posting false information about Elwar's activities in order to hopefully lead Thai officials on the wrong track. He did what he could to help someone in need!
Rest in peace.
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This would not be a good idea. It would effectively put anyone making less than $x/hr at a 100% marginal tax bracket until they make more than $x/hr. The EITC also does not discriminate based on how much a person works, so it would also mean that after a person earns $1 from their employer, they are in a 100% tax bracket, until they make more than the threshold so that they are no longer eligible for the EITC. This would result in people choosing to not look for work if they are fired or laid off early in the year until late in the year or the following year if their earned income is below the EITC limits.
My explanation was massively simplifying how it works. There's a phase-in and phase-out curve to avoid exactly those incentive problems, it's actually implemented as a refundable credit based on annual income, not as an hourly payment boost, and there are other rules such as disallowing EITC if your unearned income is too high. If the government were to take action on the minimum wage, IMO the best solution would be that anyone making less than $x/hr is eligible for free/low-cost skills training that will help them become qualified for higher-paying jobs that tend to pay above $x/hr. (teach them to fish).
I'm much more wary about stuff like that compared to just giving people money, since it increases the size/scope of government bureaucracy, and the #1 objective of bureaucracy always ends up being growing/perpetuating itself. How many times have you heard someone in a government agency saying, "My agency is doing just just fine: no need for more resources or employees or powers. In fact, we could handle a budget cut just fine." ? If welfare programs have to exist, then it's best to do them with the absolute minimum number of government employees possible, even if it might make the overall program somewhat less targeted. |
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The rule disallows inclusion if any of the following are true: 1. If it does not produce a change in outlays or revenues;
2. If it produces an outlay increase or revenue decrease when the instructed committee is not in compliance with its instructions;
3. If it is outside the jurisdiction of the committee that submitted the title or provision for inclusion in the reconciliation measure;
4. If it produces a change in outlays or revenues which is merely incidental to the non-budgetary components of the provision;
5. If it would increase the deficit for a fiscal year beyond those covered by the reconciliation measure (usually a period of ten years); or
6. If it recommends changes in Social Security. A minimum wage increase clearly fails #4. The point of the $15 minimum wage is not to save/collect/spend money, but to add a regulation. That the CBO says it'll have knock-on effects which will increase the deficit is clearly incidental. The majority can always overrule the parlimentarian, so it's not ultimately up to her, though overruling her would be seen as a sort of "nuclear option", so it'd be difficult to get centrist Democrats to go along with it.
Minimum wage laws are completely nonsensical. It's banning employers from paying people below a certain rate, but you can equally look at it as banning employees from voluntarily selling their services "too cheaply". You'd also generally expect it to increase unemployment; if your work only produces $10/hr for the company, then there's no way in hell they're going to pay you $15/hr: they're just going to fire you. Only people who are already being paid an amount slightly above or below the new minimum wage have a chance of seeing a small actual raise. If you want to guarantee that people actually receive a "living wage" and don't just get fired, the proper solution would be to increase/expand the earned income tax credit (EITC). The EITC more-or-less says, "If you make less than $x/hr, then the government will pay the difference between this wage and $x/hr." So instead of increasing the minimum wage to $15/hr, structure the EITC such that everyone is guaranteed to actually make $15/hr from work, no matter what their employer actually pays them. The EITC already exists in the tax code, but it's small and the "EITC minimum wage" weirdly depends heavily on the number of dependents you have: | # of dependents | Current "EITC minimum wage" (rough idea - it's complex) | | 0 | $3.64/hr | | 1 | $6.79/hr | | 2 | $9.96/hr | | 3 | $10.81/hr |
I don't actually actively support any sort of welfare like this, but I don't understand why almost all leftists cling to the counterproductive and contentious minimum wage idea instead of the much more reasonable EITC idea. (Changing the EITC involves just changing some numbers in the tax code, so it'd clearly be allowed by reconciliation, as well.) |
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The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem. There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads. Design & ad restrictionsAd text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs [1], loggable mixers [2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted. See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads. When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising. Duration- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days. - I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 12 days. - Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 14 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads. StatsExact historical impression counts per slot: https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstatsInfo about the current ad slots: https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfoAuction rulesNew members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM. Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled. So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot. The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50". - All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 5 mBTC. - The bidding starts at 5 mBTC. - I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start. - If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first. If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done. I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made. Price flatteningAt the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example: This:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
6 200 A
1 160 B
1 80 C
1 80 D
Becomes:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
6 90 A [step 4: reduced to 85+5=90]
1 85 B [step 3: reduced to 80+5=85]
1 80 C [step 2: same as the next-lowest, unchanged]
1 80 D [step 1: the lowest bid is always unchanged] You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.
[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log). |
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korvd's bid is not accepted.
Auction ended, final result:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
1 15 lightlord
3 10 sportsbet.io
3 10 lightlord
2 10 DogecoinMachine
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Yeah, the Republican party looks like it'll have a rough 5-10 years. It seems to be splitting into a Trump half and a neocon half, and honestly I'm not sure that either is politically all that viable. If Trump still had 95% approval within the Republican party, I doubt he'd win against Biden in 2024. If everyone including Trump got behind Mitt Romney for 2024, Romney would probably lose even worse than Trump would. Disunited, it's even more hopeless, and they might even lose ground in the House and Senate in 2022 despite the Republicans' structural advantages. Most politicians actually want to win, and they actually care at least a little bit about beating the opposing party for ideological reasons, so they wouldn't do a lot of what Trump is doing. But Trump just cares about being the center of attention, so he's perfectly happy burning the Republican party to the ground. A lot can change in 2-4 years, though. Maybe Trump won't be able to regain enough support, or maybe he'll work out a truce with establishment Republicans. (Hell, maybe he'll be in prison due to eg. the NY investigations, or dead/disabled due to old age.) One thing to keep in mind is that Trump's coalition includes a lot of working-class people who were either picked off from the Democrats or were previously non-voters, and Biden's coalition includes a lot of Republicans/ex-Republicans. If you split the country up into three segments of Democrat-leaning, pro-Trump Republican-leaning, and anti-Trump Republican-leaning, it's very possible that the pro-Trump Republican-leaning segment would be a distant third, though the Democrat-leaning segment would probably have a comfortable plurality among the three. Another thing that's important to realize is that even if the Republican party is crippled by infighting for 10 years (which is very possible), those ex-Republicans will now be Democrats. This means that they will eventually change the Democratic party to bring it closer to the ideology of the Republican defectors. It's not as if the Democrats have won the game now, and so now they have free reign to roll out eg. AOC's vision of the country. We're seeing the coalitions shift, not the final conclusion of the game where one side wins it all. (It's interesting to compare my thoughts on shifting coalitions from a year ago to what's actually happening.) Although I've tended to prefer the Republican party in the past, unfortunately the result of the Democrats partially absorbing the Republicans will probably be a worse Democratic party from my perspective, with the Democrats taking the worst aspects of the Republican party. The median between Joe Biden and Mitt Romney is worse than either Obama or Trump IMO. |
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6 @ 10mBTC
ideaology's bids will not be accepted. Current auction status: Slots mBTC/Slot Person
3 10 sportsbet.io
1 5 Bitcoin Gambling
5 5 DogecoinMachineThe auction continues. |
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They voted to acquit. 7 Republicans flipped, which is surprisingly high IMO; I'd expected it to stay at the 5 who voted to table Rand Paul's motion from a while ago. It's especially odd that Richard Burr voted to convict when he previously voted that the whole thing was unconstitutional. With such a high number, maybe there's some small chance that they could bar Trump from running again via Kaine's censure resolution, though I doubt it. I don't think that this will have much political effect compared to just not having a trial at all. Maybe if the Democrats had not freaked out about every little thing that Trump did, people would take them more seriously here, and would be less forgiving of the Republicans who voted to acquit. I find myself more-or-less agreeing with many of the House managers' arguments in this case, but they've been baselessly using the same language for years, such as in the last impeachment. All politicians lie so constantly that everyone just rolls their eyes when they speak unless they already agree, so any attempt at real argument is wasted. If I were a senator looking at this as an impartial juror: Trump's conduct was definitely not criminal incitement. He didn't tell his supporters to go break into the capitol, and he was careful to always use words like "peaceful". The specific language he used covered his ass enough to avoid criminal incitement, and a private citizen could definitely have used the same language and be protected by the first amendment. Impeachment is another matter, though, and maybe there's also some separate "abuse of office" civil/criminal law which could be used against him. Trump's conduct was really beyond the pale for a president. He was clearly spreading misinformation and ginning up his supporters in a dangerous way which any idiot could've seen would lead to this sort of outcome. I don't think that he had some sort of premeditated coup in mind, but I think that he was rather happy with the riot, at least initially, and it's quite possible that when he was making his speeches and spreading his misinformation, he was hoping that his supporters would burn down everything and somehow manage to keep him in office, even if he wasn't actually explicitly planning what would happen. It was a months-long childish outburst based on narcissism, not a real, rational plan to stay in office. "If this sort of reckless disregard for his office and the country isn't impeachable, what is?" is a compelling argument IMO. The best arguments I've heard against impeachment come from this line in the Constitution: The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. First, Donald Trump is neither President, Vice President, nor a Civil Officer of the US. However, that sentence in the Constitution is in Article II, whereas a lot of the other stuff about impeachment is some distance away in Article I, such as the now-famous sentence, "Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States." Because these things are in completely different sections of the Constitution, it seems to me that the Senate has the power to impeach someone and disqualify them from office in a context disconnected from Article II. And in fact when the Senate has impeached judges, they are dealing with an Article III official, and that Article II excerpt doesn't apply at all. So I think that it's constitutional to impeach a former President, or anyone in fact. Second, "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" in that first Constitution excerpt above is meant to be read in context as "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors on the same sort of level as Treason or Bribery, which we mentioned explicitly." The Framers explicitly did not want Presidents impeached for "mal-administration". So I think that the argument really comes down to whether you think that Trump's extremely irresponsible conduct reaches about the same level as treason or bribery, in which case he can be impeached, or whether you think that it's more a case of him being a really terrible President, in which case impeachment is not constitutionally appropriate. It's a close one, but I think I'd vote to impeach if I was in the mindset of being an impartial juror. The level of recklessness and selfishness brings it roughly to the level of bribery IMO, and not merely a type of "mal-administration". (If I were actually a senator, I wouldn't look at it as an impartial juror, though. I'd be making utilitarian calculations, and it's difficult to say what I'd do, especially since I would never agree to be a senator in the first place, or ever be elected if I ran.) |
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The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem. There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads. Design & ad restrictionsAd text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs [1], loggable mixers [2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted. See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads. When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising. Duration- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days. - I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 12 days. - Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 14 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads. StatsExact historical impression counts per slot: https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstatsInfo about the current ad slots: https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfoAuction rulesNew members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM. Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled. So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot. The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50". - All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 5 mBTC. - The bidding starts at 5 mBTC. - I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start. - If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first. If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done. I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made. Price flatteningAt the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example: This:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
6 200 A
1 160 B
1 80 C
1 80 D
Becomes:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
6 90 A [step 4: reduced to 85+5=90]
1 85 B [step 3: reduced to 80+5=85]
1 80 C [step 2: same as the next-lowest, unchanged]
1 80 D [step 1: the lowest bid is always unchanged] You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.
[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log). |
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Auction ended, final result:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
2 20 AliceMoore
4 15 lightlord
1 15 Murat
2 10 DogecoinMachine
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Current auction status:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
5 10 DogecoinMachine
2 10 AliceMoore
1 5 Bitcoin Gambling
1 5 lightlord
The auction continues.
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I've had at least 50% of my net worth in BTC continuously for 8+ years. Bitcointalk.org has always existed as much as possible purely in the crypto economy, with 100% of the forum's income being from cryptocurrencies over all of its history. I think that there is a decent chance that Bitcoin will be the next world reserve currency. So I'm nothing if not a Bitcoin true believer. But all that being said, if I was a Tesla shareholder, I would be annoyed.
Tesla is a car company, not a hedge fund or some ideological tool of its executives. To the extent that it does any speculation, it should be in the realm of car production. It should be using excess cash to build factories, hire more people, and stuff like that. If they think that they have more cash than they can usefully spend on that kind of business investment, then they should return it to shareholders through dividends or buybacks. But in the second half of of 2020, Tesla issued at least $10 billion in new TSLA shares. This basically means that they took $10 billion from existing investors by reducing the value of their shares, and now they're using a big chunk of this money to speculate on a very volatile asset. If TSLA shareholders wanted to invest in BTC, they could've done that themselves: they don't need Elon Musk to take money out of their pockets and do it for them.
Now, it could make sense for a company like Tesla to hold BTC, but only for reasons unrelated to speculation. For example:
- If the dollar was at risk of imminent collapse, but Tesla needed to store value to cover short-term, non-dollar-denominated expenses, it might make some sense to move some of their short-term cash to BTC. There are way less risky ways to hedge against inflation, though, such as through derivative contracts on the commodities that they need or on the TIPS breakeven.
- If they were having difficulty transacting via the fiat financial system, they might need to hold BTC. It makes sense for cannabis companies to hold a lot of BTC, for example, since the fiat financial system is useless to them.
- If some of the people they pay would prefer to receive BTC instead of fiat, it might make sense to hold some BTC to cover these expenses.
- If they wanted to do something that only BTC could do, like some sort of smart contract thing, then it would make sense to hold enough BTC to do that.
But I don't think that Tesla actually has anything like those reasons in mind, or at least not significantly. It looks to me like they're sitting on too much cash, Elon likes Bitcoin for mostly ideological reasons (which I agree with!), and so he decided to throw a reckless amount of Tesla's cash at BTC. If Elon wanted to put his personal money into BTC, I'd be all for it, but this just doesn't seem responsible for the company to do. That said, Elon holds the majority of TSLA stock, so in some ways it's not really anyone else's business what he does with the company, though I view this kind of reckless management as unprofessional and outside of the expected behavior for the CEO of a public company. This action (and others) makes it clear that Elon views Tesla as being unlike other public companies, and instead basically an extension of himself to which he's giving other people the opportunity to hitch their wagons, come what may.
It is very bullish for BTC. $100k this year doesn't seem impossible to me anymore. But this is part of a trend of there being way too much money floating around in the system. BTC is getting swept up in the asset bubble of all asset bubbles. There's a high risk IMO that everything (stocks, real estate, BTC, etc.) will come crashing down, though probably not for 6-18 months. It's also possible that this bubble resolves itself through inflation (probably many years of stagflation rather than hyperinflation).
I haven't decided yet whether I think that this asset bubble could possibly be more-or-less maintained without inflation. Could the S&P go up 15% this year and BTC double, but without any subsequent huge crash or substantial CPI inflation? It's difficult for me to believe, but maybe? What would that even mean for the whole concept of assets, wealth, and value?
It's also always possible that BTC will crash. In particular, the higher the price gets, the more likely it is that governments see BTC as a high-priority threat that they need to take out of the picture. It's not easy to make Bitcoin technically unusable, but there are probably actions that the Biden administration could unilaterally take which would crash BTC to sub-$5k, for example
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Myanmar is not a country I know too much about, so I did some research due to the coup. This Al Jazeera documentary from a couple years ago is pretty interesting. It sounds like the military was already mostly in charge, and over the last years they've joined with the Buddhist monks to create something of a Buddhist theocracy, similar to some other countries in the region. Even in 2019 it sounded like Aung San Suu Kyi didn't have all that much influence. In the documentary they partially blamed her for the Rohingya oppression, but in hindsight it seems possible that she was just never in a strong enough position to do much. Is anyone here from Myanmar? I wonder what it's like on the ground there. But it would be very helpful to hit them with a brigade of sanctions on both their country as a whole and top people to try to make them fall from within.
Did that help with Cuba, Iran, or North Korea? Sanctions often just give the regime someone to blame, and it's the poor who are hurt the most from them. Quick Aside before I go into the meat of it - How is pod save the world? Been looking into a new podcast that goes in depth into things and it keeps coming up, but curious on what sort of slant I’ll be getting with it.
They have a heavy neoliberal bias. Similar to FiveThirtyEight, whose podcast I do listen to, but Pod Save the World is much lighter on real info, so I don't find it worth the bias. For in-depth US news, I recommend C-SPAN's podcasts: Washington Today, The Weekly, and After Words. (I don't know of a good one for in-depth world news.) |
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The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem. There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads. Design & ad restrictionsAd text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs [1], loggable mixers [2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted. See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads. When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising. Duration- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days. - I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 12 days. - Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 14 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads. StatsExact historical impression counts per slot: https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstatsInfo about the current ad slots: https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfoAuction rulesNew members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM. Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled. So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot. The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50". - All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 5 mBTC. - The bidding starts at 5 mBTC. - I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start. - If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first. If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done. I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made. Price flatteningAt the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example: This:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
6 200 A
1 160 B
1 80 C
1 80 D
Becomes:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
6 90 A [step 4: reduced to 85+5=90]
1 85 B [step 3: reduced to 80+5=85]
1 80 C [step 2: same as the next-lowest, unchanged]
1 80 D [step 1: the lowest bid is always unchanged] You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.
[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log). |
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Auction ended, final result:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
4 10 Stunna
1 5 elianite
1 5 Murat
3 5 DogecoinMachine
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What do you think are the odds that Section 230 is repealed or changed to such an extent that bitcointalk would need to undergo any changes in terms of allowable content?
I think that legal changes in this area which would impact forum operations are pretty likely over the next 10 years, but how big of a problem these changes will be I'm not sure, and it'll probably happen as a very gradual process, not a sudden disaster. A complete repeal isn't too likely anytime soon, though it's not impossible. I think that if you polled Congress right now, 70% would probably support repeal, but there are effective lobbying efforts to prevent this from actually happening. Most Republican lawmakers shouldn't want to repeal it, so lobbyists just have to make them realize this. Most Democrat lawmakers probably wouldn't mind repealing it, but Big Tech is largely located in deep blue states, and their lobbyists carry a lot of weight with Democrats. I could see a complete repeal happening if anger over Big Tech boils over, both sides blame section 230 rather than other more sane targets (such as antitrust, as nullius mentions), and Big Tech decides that they'll be better off lobbying for repeal than against it. A complete repeal would create huge costs and changes for Big Tech, which is why they lobby against it currently, but a repeal would give them an absolutely massive competitive advantage going forward; Facebook and Google would be becoming the Visa and Mastercard of social networks. It'd be similar to how Amazon eventually lobbied for the ability of states to charge sales tax on online sales: Amazon is among the best-positioned to navigate the thousands of sales tax jurisdictions in the US, use its size to overcome the added pricing pressures of tax on top of delivery fees, and be used as a platform for merchants who can't themselves deal with these things effectively. Both sides have ideas for hundred-page-laws they'd like to pass in this area, but this isn't likely unless the filibuster is removed or one party gets a supermajority in the future, since everyone wants the tech companies to deplatform more people who they don't like and to stop deplatforming people who they do like, but everyone likes/dislikes totally different groups of people. Chipping away at the edges (like FOSTA-SESTA) is quite likely, and eventually this could accumulate into effectively repealing section 230 "by a thousand cuts". |
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Without Section 230, for example, theymos would need to delete all of the posts in the argument between OgNasty and Vod. I mean all posts, on both sides. Otherwise, the forum would be legally liable for the factual accuracy of all of their mutual accusations and recriminations. theymos would be liable for defamation for any false, libelous statements made by either of the parties. Neither of you are quite right. The forum would not become the publisher of each user's content even if section 230 disappeared. It would not be the same as bitcointalk.org being a newspaper with each poster as a journalist. Rather, it creates the opportunity for tort and criminal cases in the vein of: "bitcointalk.org should have done more to prevent xyz, and is therefore to some extent liable." It's similar to how people are often sued for things that happen on their property, even if they weren't the direct cause of it. If someone trips over a stair on your property, they can sue you for damages. Companies have been sued after people were murdered on their property, even if the companies and their employees had nothing to do with it. There have been criminal cases against property owners over drug deals conducted by third-parties on their property. Etc. None of these cases are certain to succeed against the property owner, but legal cases like these are common and incredibly expensive to defend against. Section 230 allows for any case like this against Internet service providers to be immediately dismissed instead of proceeding to a full court case in which the parties would spend millions of dollars and years of time arguing about the precise extent to which the service provider is actually at fault for the actions of third-parties. (The extent of moderation would impact these arguments about how much liability the provider has in each individual case, but zero moderation wouldn't guarantee zero liability, and extensive moderation wouldn't guarantee publisher-level liability.) I can tell you what bitcointalk.org would do if section 230 were completely removed overnight: The Marketplace sections would be closed; signatures would be removed; altcoin/token promotion of any kind would probably be banned; and a lot of rules would need to be added. It's not that the forum would clearly be liable for eg. marketplace scammers or libel by forum members -- anyone bringing a case to that effect would have a good chance of losing --, but all of this stuff would create such a huge attack surface for lawsuits that the legal defense costs would end up amounting to tens of millions of dollars, and potentially much more if the forum were to actually lose even one of the hundreds of lawsuits which would be incoming. The scope of the forum would have to be reduced to something that could actually be reasonably defended, rather than the current near-universal scope. If you don't like "big tech censorship", removing section 230 will force them to censor more to limit their liability, and it will give them a huge competitive advantage over smaller players because they'll have the resources to get as close to the line as possible. Facebook has the cash to endure thousands of incoming lawsuits and win 99.9% of them; your-niche-forum.org does not have these resources. Removing section 230 would move the Internet in the direction of TV as it existed decades ago, where there were only 3 channels and the content on these channels was highly regulated by the government. (Many establishment politicians would be quite pleased with this outcome, and may be intentionally aiming for this.) If you think that big tech companies should be doing more to protect the public, and you want the government to get involved, you have to consider what happens when the government is controlled by people you don't like. Remember when the Trump administration subpoenaed Dreamhost to get a list of everyone who visited some anti-Trump website? Remember "free speech zones" under Bush? The government could in theory always do everything exactly as you want from now until the end of time, and this is how most people tend to think about the government, but in practice there are always hundreds of things that the government is doing right now that you disagree with, and there will almost certainly be periods in the future where it'll be even much, much worse from your perspective. The only good solution is to refuse to use sites that have policies you don't like, and use/create alternatives. Keep the government out of it. For example, Parler is one alternative to Twitter, and they're using one alternative to AWS. Decentralized alternatives would be even better. If more people use these alternatives, then the alternatives will get more resources and grow, as long as this growth isn't prevented through eg. regulation. Bitcoin can help with this, in fact, since a lot of stuff throughout the economy is prevented through barriers within the fiat financial system, which is an oligopoly thanks to the same sort of regulatory capture I worry about with Internet regulations. (Eg. Pornhub, marijuana companies, etc. can't use the fiat financial system. I won't be at all surprised if the same happens with Parler and their service providers eventually.) |
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For pro sports, I've long thought that they should split it into several divisions depending on your levels of certain hormones, similar to how fighting sports have weight divisions. Natural hormone levels are a huge determining factor in sports even among people of the same birth sex. Maybe they should even allow people to supplement hormones to bring them up to some standard levels for the division. The vast majority of people are basically excluded at birth from ever competing in eg. the Olympics because no matter how high their personal drive/spirit, they just don't have good enough body chemistry, and is that really fair?
If I was in charge of a school and I was required to preserve exactly two divisions for men and women respectively, I'd probably allow transgender athletes to compete where they want, since it's a school, not a pro sports league, and the risk/cost of emotionally harming a transgender student through ostracism seems higher than the risk of a transgender student intentionally cheating the system and completely ruining everyone else's fun. Owners of schools/leagues/property should have the right to set their own policies, though, including dividing it purely along birth-sex lines if they wish. No need for a one-size-fits-all policy, and I oppose government restrictions on private property owners.
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This means that he can pass budgets through the senate with a simple majority, instead of needing 60 votes.
Not exactly... Once per fiscal year (two this calendar year due to delays) the Senate can pass a budget reconciliation bill with a simple majority. This is limited only to budgetary things, so increasing the minimum wage for example wouldn't be allowed. As chairman of the budget committee, Sanders will have a lot of say in constructing any budget reconciliation bills, but he won't completely control the process or anything. Senate and House chairmen are very influential in directing the flow of legislation, and they can also easily create news by conducting hearings on whatever they want and calling whoever they want as witnesses. I suppose that Sanders will use the position to push for much higher taxes and much higher spending, but the chairmanship is just a particularly good lever: he can't single-handedly do anything. Keep in mind as well that Democratic leadership wouldn't have made Sanders a chairman if they didn't think that he'd be at least largely controllable by the Democratic party apparatus, so don't expect him to pull any stunts like refusing to cooperate in passing any budgets through his committee if they don't include Medicare for All. Also, AFAIK the Budget Committee is one of the more minor committees; the appropriations committee is more powerful overall in constructing the budget, I think. Now if the democrats start talking about how the republicans are blocking them on issues like healthcare, stimulus, fighting climate change... They're lying.
True. If all of the Democrats voted as a bloc, then they could get rid of the filibuster and do whatever they want. If anything fails to pass, then it'll ultimately be due to a bipartisan willingness to let it fail. Exactly what agreement McConnell and Schumer reach on the Senate rules for the next 2 years will be telling. They haven't reached a deal yet, but it sounds like Democrats are willing to give Republicans a lot of power, and McConnell is even pushing for guaranteeing that the filibuster is preserved. |
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