Honestly it's not a bad idea as a hail mary strategy. Trump already had only a small chance of pulling this off, he didn't do well enough in the debate, and now he won't be able to campaign effectively. We've all gotten trained from our experience with 2016 to think that Trump is somehow going to pull this off, but it's looking almost impossible now, so something utterly crazy like that might be in order. A lot of people are holding their noses to vote for Biden just because they despise Trump. Biden is such a terrible candidate that even a boring Republican like Romney or Pence would in ordinary times wipe the floor with him. If they switch to Ivanka, some of Trump's die-hard base will stick with her, and some people who are only reluctantly voting for Biden would switch or at least not vote.

This month 134 users were eligible.

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I tend to visualize the price of Bitcoin as being composed of two components: a "digital gold" component which will behave similarly to gold, and a "risk asset" component which will behave like leveraged exposure to the S&P 500. (Neither with 100% correlation, of course, since Bitcoin is its own thing.) The gold component is maybe 20% of the price currently, while the risk-asset component is maybe 80% of the price, so the risk-asset component usually dominates.

I think that any clear resolution to the election will boost risk assets significantly in the medium-term, Bitcoin included, since one of the biggest risks will be taken out of the picture. A chaotic, disputed election outcome will probably cause risk assets including Bitcoin to crash. If chaos lasts a long time, the "digital gold" component of the Bitcoin price may start to dominate more, and this may allow its price to recover more quickly than some other assets. Long-term, a Biden presidency is probably somewhat worse for Bitcoin, since his administration will be more anti-Bitcoin and will be much more likely to put forward harmful regulations. (Not that Trump is super pro-Bitcoin or anything...) I wouldn't expect these sorts of long-term predicted effects to cause much shorter-term price action, though, other than maybe a very-short-term panic crash.

The second presidential debate is likely to be the exact opposite of the first. It's moderated by Steve Scully, "the most patient man on television". Most people are probably imagining that Scully will be even weaker than Wallace, but as someone who's watched hundreds of hours of C-SPAN's Washington Journal over the years, let me assure you that he won't be, by far. Scully has decades of experience in moderating, he's the most active of the C-SPAN hosts at pushing back at callers, and he's the most willing to insert his own bias. His bias is that of someone who's lived in the DC bubble for so long that it's all he can conceive. He's someone who actually thinks that MSNBC journalists are unbiased, that the national security state is staffed entirely with honest actors, that the system made sense and was basically working pre-Trump, etc. While I'm sure that Scully will honestly try to be fair, he is fundamentally biased against everything that Trump stands for, and he will feel duty-bound to moderate him very harshly.

I predict that the second debate will end up breaking into two disjointed pieces: the first will be a raucous debate between Trump and Steve Scully, and the second will be a peaceful, boring townhall between Biden and some citizens, with Trump muted.

Not a boring debate, though very messy. Trump was interrupting so much that a lot of people might've just lost interest and turned off the channel. If you did watch, then Trump was clearly dominating; Biden looked very weak. Biden supporters will be even more irritated at Trump than usual for rudely steamrolling over Biden, though I don't think that their enthusiasm (=likeliness to vote) will be increased. Trump's supporters will be pretty excited. The most important factor was whether anyone was convinced that Biden is not the safe pick, and I think that there may have been a bit of this due to how incoherent/distractable/weak he was, but there was so much interruption from Trump that this effect may have been reduced. In many cases Trump's first inturruption clearly threw off Biden's train of thought and probably would've caused him to falter for the next 60 seconds if left alone, but Trump kept interrupting him, which ruins the effect. Trump would've been better-served by cutting his interruptions by 75% IMO (though definitely not eliminating them).

I think that it was a good night for Trump overall. Better than I expected, though far from perfect for him, and probably not enough to really shake up the race.

There were a lot of controversial things Trump said, but most of it will slide off of Teflon Don like usual. The only huge flub I saw from him was his refusal to denounce white nationalists. He handed that exchange very poorly for no apparent reason, and if the media makes a big deal out of this, I could see this actually hurting him a bit.

Random notes I made while watching:
 - Reasonable realpolitik answer from Trump on the court nomination. Best to drop any pretense of consistency, since everyone knows that's BS.
 - Trump was effective at prodding Biden about packing the court
 - Biden's prepared "look at your empty chair [from people who died from coronavirus]" response came off to me as an incredibly distasteful obvious political heart-strings-pull. Not sure how it will be viewed generally.
 - Interesting for Trump to note his CDC's lying on masks
 - Even Wallace laughed at Trump's joke about nobody showing up to Biden events
 - Trump was strong on the tax story. Directly denied it, changed the subject, distracted Biden when he was talking about it. It's really effective to blame Biden for creating the tax loopholes that Trump exploited.
 - It was very bad moderating for Wallace to ask a question about Critical Race Theory in a debate. Most viewers will have never heard of this, and will think that it's just some generic anti-racism sensitivity training, but this specific program has many critics on both the right and left. You could debate its merits, but you can't expect someone to even properly explain the issue in 2 minutes. (Trump should've dodged it more directly rather than actually trying to half-explain it.)
 - Biden had some good prepared remarks on suburbs and community policing, and Trump's prodding on this doesn't seem effective to me
 - One moment Trump is accusing Biden of writing a too-harsh, racist crime bill, the next he's saying that he's weak on law & order...
 - Trump's "name one police group supporting you", and Biden's failure to do so, was super effective.
 - Biden should've been able to fire back more strongly at Trump's refusal to commit to accepting the election outcome.

The first presidential debate is tonight. Unlike the conventions, the debates do get quite a bit of viewership. The first 2016 debate had an average viewership of 84 million; for comparison, the Super Bowl a few months later had 111 million average viewers -- not that much higher. Most viewers are "cheering for their team", and are not particularly convinceable, though debate performance may affect enthusiasm. If you agree with everything your candidate says in the debate, but you don't see their performance as some kind of slam dunk, and the media is mixed about who actually "won", then you may be less enthusiastic and therefore less likely to vote. If you see your candidate as totally destroying the other guy, then this may really fire you up to vote.

Trump is pretty far behind Biden in the polls, so he could really use some excellent debates. It's not good enough for Trump to come out of the debates looking like the person who best made his points. It's not really helpful for Trump to come out ahead on any debates of actual issues (abortion, taxes, etc.); rather, Trump needs to make Biden not look like the safe choice. Most people who are going to vote for Biden are doing it because they don't like Trump (to varying degrees), and they view Biden as a "safe enough" return to the pre-Trump status quo. Even if Biden looks a bit weak in the debate, or he communicates his policy ideas worse, or in many cases even if viewers disagree with most of Biden's policies: if voters don't like Trump and they come out of these debates thinking that Biden looks like a normal, boring politician, then they're likely to vote for him.

The best case for Trump would be for Biden to get visibly angry and incoherent, as he has a few times on the campaign trail and in a few interviews. Maybe Trump can goad him into this, but surely Biden's campaign will have anticipated this strategy and taken every possible step to prevent it. Biden's performance in the primary debates was boring, but he didn't fall apart, and that would probably be a good enough performance here. Trump will attack Biden much more strongly than any of the Democratic candidates did, though.

If Trump can't make Biden completely fall apart, then his goals will be:
 - Have a lot of good attack lines that will fire up his base.
 - Avoid looking like a crazy, dangerous person, as this could fire up Biden's base and put off swing voters.
 - Paint Biden as dangerously radical. (Though I think it's difficult to credibly do this, since it's not how Biden comes off whatsoever.)
 - Point to the fact that Biden in many ways created the problems which caused people to resort to voting Trump in 2016
(Some of these are contradictory, so it'd be difficult to do all of them.)

A boring/ordinary debate is a Biden win, even if Trump is ultimately seen as a slight "debate winner". Trump needs to turn every policy/issue into a way of attacking Biden, and these attacks have to be really effective. I think that Trump probably won't be able to do well enough to move the needle. While Biden isn't all there mentally, IMO Trump's mental faculties have also degraded since 2016, he's in a worse political position, and Biden is more likeable than Hillary. But if Trump does pull it off, then it'll be a very interesting debate!

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.

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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

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- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 11 days.
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Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. 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 @ 0.5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 0.4 BTC and 1 slot @ 0.5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 0.5" means 2 slots for 0.5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 0.5 BTC 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 @ 0.1 and 1 @ 0.5".
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- 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.

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At 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. 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:


Payment, etc.

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).

Loggable mixers are not allowed, see the rules. I also don't understand "or" in this bid.


Sorry, no investments.

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
5 0.09 sportsbet.io
2 0.08 DogecoinMachine
2 0.08 lightlord

Wow, the universe's writers are really going all-out for 2020!

I disagree strongly with RBG's politics in most areas, and I think that her tenure as Supreme Court Justice was very harmful, though I admire her tenacity. If I spend my last decades clinging to life and continuing to fight, with hundreds of thousands of my ideological adverseries hoping for my death and spitting on my grave after I die, then my life will have been an unbelievable success.

---

This probably actually hurts Trump, though it throws even more chaos into what was already likely to be an incredibly chaotic election. If Trump appoints someone before the election, then evangelical/conservative/libertarian Republicans will have less reason to hold their noses and vote for him, since yet another vacancy is no longer particularly likely. If Trump chooses not to appoint someone while he has the chance, then it pisses off these same voters, since Trump definitely can appoint someone. Whoever he appoints will be tarred-and-feathered in the same way that Kavanaugh was, and the Democrats will use the appointment as way of enraging their base and getting them to turn out. IMO Biden's chance of winning goes up several percentage points due to RBG's death.

There are several paths Trump can take when picking someone:
 - It'd be best for Trump if he can find some way of not appointing anyone, but making it look like the Democrats' fault. Not sure if that's possible. Failing that, his best option from the perspective of being reelected will be to pick someone very moderate and/or of absolutely unimpeachable character. Merrick Garland, for example. This isn't Trump's style, though...
 - I'd prefer that he pick another strict constitutionalist like Gorsuch. I've heard that Amy Coney Barrett would be a good choice from this perspective.
 - It's probably most likely that he'll pick another member of the neocon establishment like Kavanaugh, since Trump is still surrounded by a lot of neocons. This will be bad for everyone.
 - If he wants to throw all of his eggs in the "steal the election" basket, he'll pick someone who he's sure will be loyal. I don't know who on Trump's list most meets this criteria.

Unless the presidential election is a landslide, whoever loses is going to try to steal the election. Trump will claim that mail-in ballots are fraudulent, illegals voted, the deep state conspired against him, etc. Biden will claim that Trump was helped by Russia, and he will also dispute the premise of the electoral college. There are multiple ways that this chaos could unfold, but it's likely that the Supreme Court will get involved at some point, and having several loyal justices will give Trump the edge at this stage of the battle.

RBG was a loyal Democrat in the same way that Kavanaugh and Thomas are loyal Republicans, voting in their respective party's favor whenever they can get away with it, regardless of any actual legal considerations. Gorsuch is actually committed to textualism. John Roberts is not a loyal Republican, and in controversial cases he will always cast his vote in whichever way defers to the executive or legislative branches the most. I'm not familiar enough with the philosophies of the others, though they usually vote along party lines in contentious cases.

If it looks fairly clear that Trump should not win, then IMO he'll get only two or three supreme court votes, including his new appointment. There has to be at least some legitimate lack of clarity. But if for example it all comes down to a few states which can't decide internally who should get their electors, I could definitely see a 6-3 or 5-4 decision either picking the more Republican-favorable slates of electors or throwing out enough of the contested electoral votes to give the decision to a Republican-advantaged House/Senate. (Note: in the "House decides" scenario, the House votes weirdly, and Republicans would currently have it, though this could change, since it's the incoming House/Senate.) With such a strong Court majority, it makes it much more difficult for Biden to steal the election if he loses, which he otherwise might've been able to do with Roberts' help.

This could get really crazy. We could see blood in the streets, threats of secession, etc. I think that Trump is too lazy/unambitious to do anything too crazy like trying a coup after he'd already clearly lost, and modern Americans are as a whole too risk-averse to have anything very close to another 1861-style Civil War (c.f. the extreme risk-averseness evidenced in the coronavirus response), but this could shape up to be the biggest internal conflict since The Civil War. (That said, the most likely outcome is something more ordinary, since the vast majority of people want something more ordinary.)

If widespread Democrat vs Republican violence does happen, I urge forum members to stay out of it. There's honestly not that much difference between how Biden or Trump will govern. Their administrations are or would be staffed mainly by the usual establishment types, their policies will be more-or-less the same sort of stuff we've seen over the last decades, neither of them really represents your beliefs very closely, etc. I believe very much in fighting vigorously for what you believe in, but you have much to lose and almost nothing to gain for making this the hill you want to die on. The strong emotions here on both sides is mainly just irrational tribalism.


Everyone knew that that was bullshit which he'd flip on whenever it became politically convenient to do so. For this vacancy, he'll come up with some excuse to "fill it", though I don't know why he even bothers with excuses, since both sides have basically abandoned any pretense of civility, consistency, or fairness at this point. If McConnel came out and said, "We're going to fill it this time because it's politically convenient. That's it.", hardly anyone would think any less of him because if it.


Not sure if Biden would do it, but that is pretty likely at some point.

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 restrictions

Ad 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 11 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 12 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New 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 BTC per slot. 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 @ 0.5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 0.4 BTC and 1 slot @ 0.5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 0.5" means 2 slots for 0.5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 0.5 BTC 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 @ 0.1 and 1 @ 0.5".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.01.
- The bidding starts at 0.01.
- 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 flattening

At 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. 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:


Payment, etc.

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).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
9 0.05 sportsbet.io

This month 139 users were eligible.

Old:

New:

I cringed less than I thought I would at the Republican convention. The average quality of the speakers was higher than the Democratic convention, and there was more substance. The Republican convention aimed for a less fancy production, but because they aimed lower, they had fewer glitches. Without analyzing content at all, I'd say that the Republican convention was slightly better presented.

The Democratic convention mentioned almost no policies, instead going for a vague sense of patriotism, nationalism, unity, etc. I actually think that this is quite an effective message, especially for people in swing states and outside of the Democratic base. I think that a lot of "lifelong Republicans" who supported eg. George W Bush will be very comfortable in Biden's Democratic party. Most voters don't actually care about policy much, but instead vote based on general feelings, and you could see both conventions speaking to this. The Democratic convention was emotionally speaking to people who simply can't see Trump alongside people like Roosevelt or Lincoln, who see Trump as an aberration in the American legacy, whose nationalism does not allow for someone like Trump to be a "legitimate" American president. The Republican convention was emotionally speaking to several different core conservative constituencies: people who can't stand leftist culture, evangelicals, people who despise socialism on an emotional level, etc. I think that the former message is far more likely to attract cross-over voters.

The Republican convention mentioned quite a few more concrete policy goals/achievements than the Democrats, though many were contradictory. Some example policies:
 - Trump didn't start any wars
 - He stood up to many enemies, eg. Iran
 - He rebuilt the military
 - He stands behind Israel
 - He's for an America First foreign policy (including military and trade)
 - He cut taxes
 - He protected the US from coronavirus as well as could be expected
 - He appointed conservative judges
 - He helped small business through deregulation, etc.
 - He promoted law & order, cracking down on riots
 - He promotes free speech, civil liberties, and diversity of thought
 - He's skeptical of Big Tech
 - He actively supports Ambrahamic religions
 - He supports diversity, and is not racist or sexist

The most effective messages IMO are:
 - Attacking Biden from the left on issues such as criminal justice. The convention did this a bit, such as with the Alice Johnson and Daniel Cameron speeches, but they could've done this a lot more and better. Biden is basically a Bush-era Republican, and Trump should be attacking him like he attacked Jeb Bush.
 - Talking about a return to normalcy, not a "new normal". This is what people want, even if you think that it may be unrealistic.
 - Being anti-war.
 - Trying to appear as pro-diversity as possible to try to soften the perception of Trump as racist and sexist. They did a decent job at this.
 - Trying to appear very stable and presidential to try to soften the perception of Trump as unhinged. They did a bit of this with the pardons, citizenship ceremonies, and just using official sites as locations.

There was a strong law & order message. I'm not sure how effective this is. It appeals to some people, but it turns off others, and it also depends heavily on the location of the listener and the mood of the country. The law & order messaging totally backfired on Trump after George Floyd, but Trump made a lot of unforced errors there (eg. the Lafayette Square thing), and the mood of the country was different.

There was a strong message of "Biden is Bernie Sanders in disguise." This is a very ineffective message. Nobody believes this, and even if they did, it wouldn't seriously bother enough people who are not already firmly behind Trump.

I don't think that it's completely ineffective to throw out many contradictory messages and see what sticks. People tend to hear what they want to hear and ignore the rest. Pro-war Trump supporters will be enthusiastic that he's been sticking it to Iran, while anti-war Trump supporters will be enthusiastic that he's avoided starting any major wars, and each will ignore the contradictory messaging. It's probably better at pumping up support from people who already lean toward Trump than attracting cross-over voters, though.

Both Pence's and Trump's speeches sucked, and will not move anyone to Trump. There actually were several good speeches/segments, but they got much less coverage than the bad speeches.

---

As expected, both conventions were mostly boring & shallow infomercials. I don't think that there's much value in diving deep into the content of any speeches or anything like that; the vast majority of voters don't watch these conventions at all, fewer still watch the whole ~8 hours, and only a tiny number are swayed much by the content. Where there's any value at all in analyzing these conventions, it's in how the convention shapes the media narrative for a few weeks, and in indicating how the leaders of the campaign are looking at things.

It seems to me that both campaigns have effective-looking strategies. Neither has a complete disaster of a campaign strategy (which I thought might be the case for Trump). The Biden campaign is more-or-less trying to become the Republican party circa 2012. They want to keep their base of minorities and leftists while drawing a lot of nationalists who can't stand Trump and people longing for stability above all else, though they won't excite anyone. It could work. The Trump campaign wants to keep their base ultra-excited, reduce turnout among potential Biden voters by lowering their already-low excitement below the threshold where they'd actually vote, stem the bleeding in traditional Republicans, and possibly draw in some people who are more hopeful for positive change rather than just hoping for a return to the pre-Trump status quo. That could also work.

After having viewed both conventions, I think that the Biden campaign strategy -- appealing broadly but shallowly using simple emotions -- is slightly superior, especially since I think that economic and virus conditions will likely worsen before election day. Biden is the alternative waiting in the wings for anyone who feels that a change is needed. But I could see the Trump campaign strategy working, especially if Trump holds a gun to the head of the FDA in order to get a vaccine approved before election day and the economy also holds it together until then contrary to my expectations. Then people won't feel such anti-Trump pressure, and the almost nonexistent pro-Biden pressure might result in a Trump victory.

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 restrictions

Ad 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 11 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 12 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New 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 BTC per slot. 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 @ 0.5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 0.4 BTC and 1 slot @ 0.5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 0.5" means 2 slots for 0.5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 0.5 BTC 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 @ 0.1 and 1 @ 0.5".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.01.
- The bidding starts at 0.01.
- 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 flattening

At 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. 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:


Payment, etc.

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).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.07 Exolix
7 0.06 sportsbet.io
1 0.06 lightlord

Removed. A service with this reputation should not have been allowed to advertise, but because the bidder was fairly established and had no negative trust, I didn't do enough research, and I missed the scam accusations and the other account. Apologies.

It's best to PM me high-priority things like this, since I notice PMs more quickly than Meta posts with vague titles.

I will donate the 0.08 BTC from this to some charity or charity-like-thing which accepts BTC. Any suggestions for a particular charity? (If there's no consensus in about a week, then I'm just going to donate it to The Water Project.)

Update: 0.0679971 BTC donated to Royse777's Project Covid-19, and 0.0120029 BTC donated to The Water Project.

The whole convention had a real fascist flavor. The core theme could be summed up as "strength through unity." Tammy Duckworth's speech in particular made me think of Starship Troopers...


I was apparently in a masochistic mood, since I watched most of the convention. It was certainly better than past conventions, but only because it was shorter and more focused. Lots of glitches, and the whole thing was very fake-feeling. As I read back through the schedule now, the only things that I can really remember as being well-done were:
 - Several of the professionally-produced "commercials", like the John Lewis biography.
 - The roll call was less painful than usual, though still boring and pointless.
 - Jill Biden's speech was well-delivered, and the content may have struck a chord with some people.
 - Barack Obama's speech. The man is one fine orator, and the content was generic but probably attractive to many people.
 - The short thing with Cory Booker and other Dem candidates near the end. It was super fake, but I still chuckled.
 
The constant weaponizing of Beau Biden's death disgusted me. I'm not sure if most people would notice this, though, since most people wouldn't have sat through the whole convention to see them bring it up literally dozens of times.

While Biden's acceptance speech didn't stick out as a disaster, the content was shallow, and it was delivered rather poorly. Since it was pre-recorded, if that's the best take that they were able to get, then it continues to indicate to me that Biden isn't in great condition.

Policy-wise, it's clear that the Democratic party wants to become the old Bush-era Republican party, but with some identity politics smeared on top. Pro-war, pro-status-quo, supporters of the administrative state, corporatist, blind nationalists, etc. If I was eg. a Bernie supporter, I'd be incredibly disappointed, and I'd feel little reason to support the party.

Maybe it makes some sense electorally, but I don't think that Biden's "strength through unity" message is very attractive to most Americans, who are at their core deeply divided. How are you going to unite a country where a third of people think that a different third of the country are deplorables, and vice-versa? Most people want to crush the opposition, not to unify. Traditionally this'd be "fixed" by starting a war or something, but I'm not even sure that having a big outside enemy to unify against would remove the division very much in today's world.

I'd guess that the convention was mildly effective. Among the handful of people who watched it, it will increase turnout for Biden supporters, and the nationalist message might've attracted some boomers and gen-Xers who were on the fence. It was a particularly effective message for the midwest swing states, which are quite nationalist. Since almost nobody watches these conventions, the effect of this one event is limited, but it shows the direction that the Biden campaign is going in, and this direction is IMO a reasonably intelligent way of playing the cards they have.

I'll be interested to see how the Republican convention compares. On the one hand, the Democrats were preparing for this for longer, though on the other hand Trump's biggest area of expertise is TV production. The Trump campaign really needs to stop making "Biden is a radical socialist" their main line of attack, since this is totally not how Biden is portraying himself, and the argument therefore rings false even to someone who's only barely paying attention. Trump can't win with only a pumped-up base. It's looked to me for a while as though the Trump campaign is actively trying to lose, so I'm not expecting much. If it's a big disaster, I hope that it's at least an amusing disaster.

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 restrictions

Ad 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 11 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 12 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New 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 BTC per slot. 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 @ 0.5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 0.4 BTC and 1 slot @ 0.5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 0.5" means 2 slots for 0.5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 0.5 BTC 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 @ 0.1 and 1 @ 0.5".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.01.
- The bidding starts at 0.01.
- 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 flattening

At 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. 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:


Payment, etc.

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).

Auction ended, final result:
2 0.08 DogecoinMachine
1 0.08 24kcasino
1 0.08 CardCoins
2 0.08 lightlord
3 0.07 sportsbet.io

I changed the way geoip lookups are done to make it more accurate, and I re-did geoip lookups for the last 6 months of logs when the IP was still available. Thanks for mentioning the low accuracy.