Angola turned out to be the smartest and made a logical decision - it is illogical to participate in manipulations for the sake of satisfying the morbid fantasies of some participants, to the detriment of its economy !

"Angola quits OPEC
Angola does not agree with its oil production quotas and leaves OPEC
Such a decision the authorities of the country explained the "lack of results" from participation in the organization and disagreement with the quotas for oil production.
Angola is leaving the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) starting from January 1 next year. The country's authorities have already sent a document to the organization, which formalizes its voluntary withdrawal from this economic bloc. This was reported by Angop on Friday, December 22.

It is noted that the sending of this message to OPEC took place a few hours after the Minister of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas Diamantino Azevedo publicly announced the withdrawal.

He attributed this decision to the "lack of results" from participation in the organization and disagreement with oil production quotas.

"Until now, quotas have not affected us, but if we had stayed in OPEC, we would have suffered the consequences of the decision to honor production quotas," Azevedo told TPA TV. Angola would then have been forced to cut production, he added.

"We want to participate in organizations not to enter quietly and leave silently, but to be active and contribute. When we see that our contribution does not produce any tangible results, it means we are not doing anything in that organization," the minister said.""

PS And a little negative, but as it is - given that this clearly affects Russia's desires to destabilize the oil market, terrorist attacks and other classic Kremlin staging like "military coup" are possible in Angola in the near future....

I would say he is probably the only player who feels that way or has that approach.

Over say the last 2 years for example I would have the impression that he doesnt overall
enjoy his tennis. I'm basing this purely on his on court antics and general "bad behaviour",
or is it that he gets a kick out of acting like that and "going against the grain" to make a point
that tennis doesnt have to be so serious all the time or something like that?

Yes great memories:



Merry Xmas @boblawblaw

No, not concerning at all.
Because of two reasons:
- first is that OPEC cuts, the US pump records:
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/19/business/us-production-oil-reserves-crude/index.html
- two the major loss in demand is because of China
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/biz/2023/12/602_364682.html

So yeah, unless the person looking at this is on the morons side that was laughing and cheering at Europe freezing and driving donkey carts:


No reason for concern!

One or the Most significant reasons for the creation of Bitcoin was,to create a currency easy and suitable to be used for peer-to-peer transactions.
During the first eight to nine years of its launch, Bitcoin actually achieved this goal, With fees considerably low as just a few cents. However things began to change at about early 2016 when fees began to increase noticably, and during late 2017 when the mempool started having congestions, which influenced transaction fees directly.

Of course, One can say the reason for the very low fees during its earliest stages was a result of low adoption and a less congested mempool. We can also confirm that due to the problems of competition for block spaces which led to high fees, Bitcoin's block size was increased on August 24, 2017 by the application of the SEGWIT protocol upgrade known as "Segregated witness" in full. This definitely helped in malleability of transactions by separating the signature data (withness data) from the transaction data to free up block space.

Other solutions like the layer 2 that became popular during 2018,also helped reduce congestions and fees by conducting majority of transactions off the Blockchain making transactions more scalable and faster.

However, upon these upgrades and solutions, as Bitcoin grew the congestion problem has  become more and more prominent especially due to the effects of ordinals in recent times.These congestion and fee problems are gradually exempting the need to make simple day to day transactions with Bitcoin thereby bring the need for people to make small transactions with other stable altcoins like Tron and Doge.

Take for example this post made by Hhampuz who is one of the most reputable campaign managers on Bitcoin talk.
In that post Hhampuz made mention of spending roughly $200 /week on fees for each campaign. Now assuming Hhampuz managess 5 campaigns for 15 weeks, taking the math he would have spent an enormous amount of about $15,000 (~0.34BTC) on fees only. Considering these enormous fees P2P transactions would become  uneconomical.

I'm confused and looking for answers

If you are lonely, can you have interest in gambling simply because of your loneliness?

How would you judge someone who says they don't gamble because it's fun, is that a sign of a gambling addiction?

If you are making $600 a day, that's $20000 in a month, and because you are only you start having interest to gamble, what do you think this is?

All these questions is been asked because someone close said all these and I think he are losing money and losing himself too, of all the discussions we had, these are the points I held unto.

Later he open up to have been using $500 for gambling per day, he said all these started when his wife left him, that he isn't into gambling at all, but I can't ask why his wife left him in the first place, but does loneliness make people become addicted to gambling or it's something else.

Ukraine will be able to defend its freedom and independence, and Russia will face a sad end.

I appreciate your sentiments, but the truth can never be denied. Both countries have adopted their own policies, but I don't think that Ukraine can defeat Russia.

Everyone is resisting, but the weak is always helpless in front of the strong.

I wonder what arguments you have that Ukrainian President Zelensky killed one million people?
Meanwhile, Putin has indeed already killed even more than a million people, both Ukrainians and Russians, unleashing one of the most brutal wars in Ukraine. During the “direct line” on December 14, he admitted that the irretrievable losses of Russian troops in Ukraine amount to more than 300 thousand people. This is how you need to destroy your people for the sake of your imperial ambitions to forcibly recreate the new USSR. But after all, Putin’s efforts lead to the exact opposite result. It is likely that in a few years we will be able to observe how great Russia will disintegrate into separate independent republics, the central power of which was maintained only by the repression of the security forces.

He has the talent, however, is out of the court behavior and theatrics really did a lot of damage on his career. If he has only the mentally of the great players he could really be in the top 5 during his prime years.

But he wasted it, and we all know that even if you have the talent, if you don't know how to bring the best of you and motivate yourself to be the best version of you, talent is not enough. And Nick is the classic example, and see he is should still be in the prime years at 28, but it seems that he will no longer play in the tournament as his body and mind is already giving up.

Hmm... by now the OPEC should have realized this. New technology has helped non-OPEC nations to increase their crude output. Oil production is no longer dominated by the GCC and CIS nations. For example, USA is the top crude oil producer in the world, and they replaced Saudi Arabia from this spot recently. Anyway, global crude oil consumption has peaked due to rising share of EVs. Here in India, almost 10% of the domestic vehicles in my area are EVs and the share is rising steeply with each passing year. If OPEC+ cuts down on their output, it will not have any impact on the global prices. Only result would be that they will lose their market share to other countries such as Guyana and Canada.

The most important part is the no questions asked part. In this sense, you asked about Spain, and I wouldn't recommend that, beside the taxes which will be around 30% + the wealth in most of the country, you are going to be asked all sort of questions.

Alot of people think because a country has lower taxes, it will not ask about things. For instance, Andorra is often cited as a tax haven for people that want to live near the mediterranean, but after the 00's, they ask all sort of questions, there is no bank privacy anymore, they will ask as much as your average EU country.

Im not sure how Switzerland works these days. Back then, if you were VIP client, they would give you a pass and bank your money, nowadays, it's probably harder, they will ask about things, to what extent im not sure.

So it sucks but you may be forced to go to some dodgy place like Dubai, where supposedly, you aren't asked much, but I've heard they are starting to make that difficult as well.

You will also need some sort of income or be forced to do some investment within the country in order to achieve passive tax residence. Some people think it's as easy as hoping in the country and that's it. This may be the case only for super wealthy clients but not for a few $million.

Sauce?
Spanish restaurants to reach 28 billion euros by 2023
In 2023, the UK eating out market is set to witness a value increase of +4.6%,
France is recovering nicely with France tourism growing by 12.3% In Q1 2023.
Christmas: arrivals of foreign tourists in Italy increase by 17 percent

Btw, you know that pizza place that claimed in 2022 it was going to shut down because it got a 500% increase in energy bill?
https://tvmnews.mt/en/news/in-italy-places-energy-bill-of-e4000-in-show-window-has-to-charge-pizza-margherita-at-e10-or-face-closure/
Guess what, is still open and has a Christmas special menu!
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q9M8TmpA75y5J7Vp9

The US sold their reserves at over $90.
They've just bought at $75 and are currently refilling them.
So they made more profit than ever and bought the price down, quite the strategic move compared to the putler fiasco!

While many countries actually support Palestine: Turkey, UAE, Qatar, Jordan and Tunisia, Egypt, India.

Deeply shocked by the news of terrorist attacks in Israel. Our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent victims and their families. We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour.

Which countries have sent aid to Gaza?
At least eight planes carrying aid from Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan and Tunisia have landed at El Arish International Airport in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
India has sent medical and disaster relief to El Arish on Sunday.

Oh definitely he had the potential to be a top 10 player and possibly even a grand slam winner.

As we talked here before about Nick that he has been too volatile and his emotions were
not under control, he was entertaining both talent wise and court personality wise.

Injuries are a massive drawback in an individual sport, we have seen it recently with Rafa,
Raducanu and Nick. These top athletes play on the edge of being at the top of their abilities
and having an injury.