I'm genuinely interested in your 'just horrible' interpretation if you care to elaborate.

From probably back in my early time on this board I'd advocated for simply having as little interaction as possible with any official governing body.  I think that was part of my argument against TBF...they had the potential to become a point of attack, and boy was that prescient (IMHO.)

I did not use the term 'ignore' since I've felt from day one that keeping a close eye on the attack modes possible from governments was critical.  And, of course, a development focus on not allowing the system to fall into traps which they could set.  I don't even mind cooperating with government bodies when it makes sense and does not pose a threat since governments do plenty of OK things, but always with a very wary eye toward attacks which I've felt are certain to come eventually (assuming Bitcoin didn't self-destruct on it's own.)

From day one (of mine) I've felt that Gavin wished to bend over backward to mollify TPTB and hope that they were nice to us as a result.  This has always struck me as complete folly.  This is the basis for my repeated assertions that Gavin is (at least) a foolish and nieve guy who to his core 'loves big brother.'  At this point I think there is an argument to be made that he is likely worse than that, or has at least evolved to such a state.

No matter what I've always considered it simple common sense and good strategy to understand the enemy and at least set up to leverage his weaknesses if it comes to hot warfare that cannot be avoided.  It's good engineering as well.  If that means organizing under a particular structure which has some meaning in the real world, that is fine with me.  I live in the real world and don't ask anyone else to do otherwise.

I'm at least as sensitive as most people to organizational structures.  When I heard of Blockstream organized under a corporate structure I had to put a little thought into how I felt about it.  After doing so, I concluded that it probably would be the most workable and effective way to achieve a result.

When I heard about Blockstream and their focus,  and especially to who the participants were,  I was overcome with delight.  I would not give a shit if it were organized under any structure as long as there was good transparency.  When Linked-in was a new thing I was somewhat negative about it due to the potential for abuse.  Social media generally was in a much less well developed state but the threats were obvious and troubling.  Having the participation of whats-his-name Linked-in guy was a mild pinkish flag to me, but I will always be watching them with a wary eye no matter what.  I cannot say that I am keenly aware of any gross negligence on the part of Linked-in observed over the last decade and a half.

For historical reference, I put the same level of thought into the Bitcoin Foundation when it was under consideration.  I concluded that the risks were greater than the potential rewards (and said so.)  I made a point of calling transparency into the picture and that is one of the areas where TBF failed miserably in actual practice.

Back to Blockstream and it's corporate structure, I would note that it might have some potential benefits.  Under TPP (and surely the upcoming TAP) corporate structures have access to adjudication in international cases and Bitcoin is certainly international.  Of course the judicial tribunals report under the U.N. security council so it is unlikely that a monetary solution which competes with whatever the bankster class favors will get much of a fair shake, but a corporate structure might provide some relief from certain kinds of action-packed nation-state abuse (of the type which Kim Dotcom got bothered by.)

I can only wish that I had the skills and accomplishments that either of these two have in their little finger.


Really?  So you think that I spent the time to create all of my posts going back to 2011 and Thermos gave me access to insert the body of work into the database?  OK.

BTW, I remember being so worried about Hearn achieving his long-term dream of killing Bitcoin through unlimited growth that I thought up some way to deal with the threat and bought a domain name in...whois...04/2013.  One of my first posts on this board back in 2011 proposed subordinate chains as a the most tangible and workable solution to the obvious scaling issues.


Oh that hurts.  I think I might start to cry.

The funny thing is that you and your apparent clone 'smooth' showed up in a timeframe when a lot of likely shills did pushing for Hearndresen style growth which is certain to push Bitcoin fully into corporate datacenter hands.  And maybe even shilling for the new protocol implementation 'btcd' if I remember right (and I may not but it's not important enough for me to look back.)

The good news is that there do seem to be some people who started out chumped by you folk's propaganda but wised up when your true colors came to the fore.  CIYAM and lauda-whatever come to mind.

What is the basis for your apparently rock solid belief that you know with certainty the chemical composition of the persistent and spreading trails which are common these days?  If I might ask.

By the way, I poo-poo'd this 'conspiracy theory' myself, and with some forcefulness, until a few years ago.  Mostly what got me looking around a bit was various oddities that I observed with my own eyes over my head.  I got so interested by some of the stuff I saw that I actually started researched the right kind of camera to to the kinds of monitoring I would need to meet the level of rigor I thought I would wish to make meaningful observations.  Before I finished figuring this out almost all of the oddities stopped and I have seen almost none since.  This would have been in probably June of 2015.  We now have the same kinds of cloud cover I remember as a kid, and the typical shitty winters that I remembered (2012/13 and 2013/14 being amazingly nice and dry.)  It's actually a bit more wet than 'normal', but that is fairly easily explained by an el-nino this year.  I'm in the Southern Pacific NW by the way.

Oh, once you've convinced me that you perform your own spectral analysis to verify that water vapor is now acting in new and interesting ways, you can start to convince me that, ya, the Air Force was interested in 'owning the weather by 2025' and a lot of people obtained patents, but that project was dropped as uninteresting, not useful, unethical, non-profitable, etc.

Or you could try to convince me that the .mil site was defaced.  Or that it is a funny joke by air force folks with a sense of humor.  I would not rule out either of these, but they also do strike me as unlikely.

flat earth:  Laughable psy-op undertaken partially to facilitate posts like yours.

NWO plan:  The null hypothesis (no plan) is kind of absurd.

chemtrails:  'Owning the weather by 2025'...it's now 2016 FYI.  There are a fair number of patents involving releasing material from aircraft to achieve environmental effects.  That it does not yet ever happen is a stretch.

BTW, NOAA recently reported that commercial aircraft are 'accidentally' doing weather modification.  Funny how it took them so long to figure that one out.  They should have asked one of the rapidly growing pool of wacho's like me who would have pointed upward into the sky and suggested opening their eyes.

No, they continue to use him (by the proxy of his family) for more and more ridiculous psy-ops than was the original ranch one.  Well worth the piddly little million dollar debt they forgave of the deadbeat rancher especially with the gun control operation in overdrive.

I was one of the only people I know who called out the Bundy Ranch thing as a psy-op, although some forgotten blogger somewhere did put the bug in my ear.  This time, not so much.  Many many people seem to be displaying a healthy skepticism.  On top of that, I do see a few people who don't seem to be blatant yahoos getting involved.  People who understand the under-the-surface forces, the weaknesses of the adversary, and generally seem to have a clue about how the game can be played.  And hopefully won.  Maybe during Hammond the elder's natural life, and unfortunately for him, maybe not.

I knew a lady once who was a child during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.  She told me that her grandmother had a bamboo stick full of American coins (90% silver at the time.)  The family moved to the country to live with relatives and the bamboo tube got them through the event, which lasted for several years, relatively well.

It's worth note that more 'modern' occupations focus on clearing the countryside of humans as rural areas often act as a breeding ground for insurgency.  That was the main reason for napalming and agent-oranging the shit out of Vietnam, burning down rural villages, and killing the inhabitants as I understand things.  I would expect that the same tactics will be employed in the U.S. and like countries although the excuse will be that it is to comply with the United Nations Earth Charter and the 'wildlands' project.

Even in urban environments under a 'cashless' system, it will be extraordinarily difficult to completely halt black-market operations.  At least over a long duration.  Extreme surveillance will be attempted, and may actually work pretty well, but not completely.  It will be trivial to box out the current implementations of distributed crypto-currencies since they were, for the most part, not evolved to deal with the potential threats.  Silver coins will be much more difficult.  I expect that the technology to locate and identify masses of elemental metals are more advanced than most people realize however.  A silver or gold coin in one's pocket might act as a target beacon.  I don't know this, or course.  It's just a guess based on my observations of related technological progress.

Thanks CIYAM, Lauda, and various others for coming around and seeing what is actually going on here and speaking up about it.  There are a few people who I'd given up hope for and figured where likely shilling (formally) but who have surprised me.  I tend to err on the 'safe' side and hopefully I've been underestimating the community.  Ultimately it is the community will have the greatest impact on how distributed crypto-currencies evolve and how revolutionary they will be for humanity.

To me, Bitcoin is a very specialized and high-powered asset.  It is actually even more cumbersome to use that precious metals in some respects, but this is mostly and artifact of the security precautions I choose to take.  And again, I choose to do so because of the high value I place on this asset.

The various lags, costs, and inconvenience of using the system in a autonomous ways which are native to the system are, to me, part of the deal and have never bothered me excessively.  The real problems I've had are on conversion to and from the fiat system, and these are almost exclusively caused by roadblocks which are a specific feature of the fiat solutions.  XT and it's ilk are dead-set on importing these same problems into the Bitcoin system itself.  No thanks.

Only a fraction of the world's souls are inclined to treat Bitcoin as I do personally.  That is fine in my mind because there are 7,000,000,000 or so of us.  If 0.1% of us are in my category, that is still a very large pool, and one which is tipped toward the economically more 'critical' so to speak.  Importantly, anyone can use the amazing power of Bitcoin to build sub-systems which provide the 'PayPal experience' to their less rigorous brethren, but in a way which is much safer than what PayPal/VISA/etc can/does achieve.

XT makes a great deal of sense...if the goal is to ensure that ultimately the last vestiges of infrastructure distribution among the masses are eliminated.

Hearn said semi-famously that 'there is no difference between confiscating someone BTC and keeping them from spending it for 20 years.'  The numbers were just to be an illustration of a principle.  The reason for he '20 years' rather than 'forever' is that some segment of the infrastructure might still be independent of a central blacklisting authority.  Even now it is theoretically possible for a CPU miner to beat the datacenters full of ASIC in finding a block...it would just be really lucky and an exceedingly rare occurrence.

No, I did not know of these people.  Neither of the incidents are ones which I've studied in detail, but if any reasonable amount of attention would have been paid to the people who were involved in resolving the situation I would have remembered it.  So, your point is taken and seems valid.

I do recall the fairly recent shooting in the mall in Oregon (it being the state I live in.)  That case was reported to have been brought to a speedy resolution when the shooter was confronted by a CCL guy and turned his weapon on himself.  This shooting did not get anywhere near the traction of the other more 'useful' events which did see (supposed) mass casualties.  I suspected that the CCL guy and his actions made the event non-useful.  For related reasons I also supposed that this was probably one of the non-hoax events that are prone to happen on rare occasion.

Some people say that the Giffords thing was fake and she is faking her injury.  The event happened before I became suspicious about stuff, but I don't remember anything especially questionable about the various reports, footage, etc.  I also think that it would be difficult and risky to try to fake an injury of this nature for the rest of one's life.  So, I'm not buying the 'conspiracy theory' on that one.  But I've not gone back and looked at the event in detail.  I'm not certain it is not a hoax either.  Just seems unlikely to me.  I'm almost never more than about 99% sure of anything since the world chronically surprises me with it's complexity.

If I were commissioned to formulate a strategy here, I would do something like have the paramilitary (and/or military and/or contractors a-la Blackwater) show up at the doors of anyone who was registered and demand to see the gun.  If the victim was on a Kafka-esque secret list, the gun would be confiscated.  If the party could not produce the weapon, they would have to produce something like, oh, say, $10,000 in cash or be frog-marched off.  Enforcement then could search the rest of the property for anything else which caught their eye (e.g., your daughter)...and take it home as a fringe benefit of the job.  Civil asset forfeiture, bitch.

It's fairly easy for me to think like a left-winger since I was one an embarrassingly long part of my life.

Actually, I was at one point interested in a situation where gun owners needed to hold a bond to be forfeited if a gun were used irresponsibly.  I think that such a bond could be obtained for very reasonable costs on the open market since irresponsible use is nearly a non-problem.  These days I have no interest in anything but having these gun control slime have a high capacity clip shoved up their asses.  All the way.  It is increasingly clear to me that there is a deeper and darker agenda which they have.

I would be kind of interested in a trade:  Some ostensibly realistic thing (say, gun-show loophole if that even actually exists) for a situation where if more than, say, one percent of guns are confiscated in a 12 month time period, all gun control legislation is null and void.  If these gun-grabbers resisted such a structure (and they would) it would show their true colors.

OMFG!  A guy can get decent work with shitty technique.  Not this dude.  I would not be proud of this weld working on the blind side of a muffler lying on my back under a car and using a torch.  The result was seriously embarrassing, and especially with TIG.  I had problems for a little while since I was habituated to moving the torch in and out to modulate temp from oxy-acetylene welding.  When I got past that I found it fairly easy to get beautiful work on mild steel.  Dirty aluminum castings, not so much.  (It's amazing how most aluminum casting is like a piece of swiss cheese when one starts to melt into it with TIG.)

Not necessarily true.  I only see a robust and defensible system as one which uses a subordinate chains architecture (which seems to be the focus of the Blockstream work last I looked.)  I would welcome a fork of the protocol and blockchain so that those of us who see this as the way forward can work on it without the bloatist baggage and the attack vectors they open up.


Pfft.  That would do exactly nothing toward making Bitcoin some sort of a one-size-fits-all currency (+ dice messaging, doc timestamping, etc, etc.)  Need gigabyte blocks for that, and a lot of the existing corp/gov world would love it.  Again, I say let them have their wish.  I'm confident that ultimately the other path will bear fruit and would actually be something worthwhile.

I don't think that Garzik is an idiot so he has to see the futility.  He must just be providing the rest of the mouthbreathers and handjob in some sort of a mindless go-along-to-get-along strategy to buy some time or something like that.  Whatever the case he is fairly useless in my opinion.

Most of those on the left have no idea what is going on.  They are influenced heavily by the propaganda which targets them just as anyone else.  Most of them feel that they are being good people and getting karma points by supporting things which are peaceful and non-violent.  I suspect that psychologically this  serves to paper over and push down genuine and fully human aspects of their personalities which run counter to who they wish to be.

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You (Spendulus) seem to attempt with reasonable success to take a scientific approach to reality.  You probably reject outright the suggestion that there is an observable genetic drift component to some of the recent health trends afflicting the younger population.  It simply does not make sense scientifically.

I propose that a 6x increase in 'active shooters' during the the term of President Obama similarly does not pass the smell test in social science terms.  Coupled with such things as:

 - the 'modernization' of the Smith-Mundt act
 - the ability for legal advisers working for the executive to make amazing interpretations of law to support policy (e.g.,  John Yoo)
 - the corporate consolidation of mainstream media and the working relationships between corp/gov in this respect,
 - the fairly staggering observations made by independent analysts (aka, 'conspiracy theorists')
 - Obama's admitted focus on gun control which dates back to early in his term (prior to most of the events.)

I suggest that it is perfectly possible that a lot of the 'problems' we've seen in the last few years have been state sponsored psychological operations.  To me it is simply not very unthinkable, especially with an eye toward historical events in the same vein, and is at present time the most rationally coherent read of reality.  In scientific terms, the hypothesis has the highest explanatory power as I read things.

I do believe it most likely that we are seeing a lot of psychological operations permeating our social awareness.  Beyond that, I suspect that more than a few people on the political Left believe this to be going on as well but they consider it to be a means to an end that they agree with.  For my part, I believe that the likely end-point is not at all what they are expecting or will find themselves agreeing with.  These people are being played as much as any other group.  Perhaps more.

Great vid!  Thanks for the link.

IMHO, even though it is quite important for a gun owner to know how to physically operate a gun, it is even more important to know what follows.  This guy did a great no-nonsense job on that topic.

Considering all of the idiocy that people are exposed to in the media I am actually quite surprised at the relatively low levels of irresponsible gun ownership among law abiding citizens.  In fact even the criminal class seems surprisingly 'responsible' in their use of guns.  That I ascribe to the sharp knives of the justice system when guns are involved in a crime, and this was exactly the goal of the current regime when it was formulated as policy.  As far as I'm concerned, gun ownership here in the U.S. is really working remarkably well thanks to common sense and scientifically sound policy developed over the last 3 or 4 decades.

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At this point, I am fairly confident to say that the anti-gun people with any sort of power (and I specifically exclude the propagandized ankle-biter zombie masses here) are upset about guns for the exact reason that those who formulated the 2nd amendment were envisioning.  That is, as a tool of last resort against tyranny.  A thinking person must ask themselves, 'what, in the future, could be so threatening that people would in any sort of numbers exercise the 'right to bear arms'?'  I can think of a few possibilities, and in all of these cases I would prefer to have the 2nd amendment option than to not.  That's just me, though, and I'm a relative oldster who missed some of the later curriculum taught in schools and don't watch much TV.

From what I've seen out of the Obama admin, I'm surprised that NASA has not replace satellite data feeds with a script that produces whatever readings they want (and protect the program via 'national security' of course.)

Perhaps they have not had the opportunity yet to replace the satalite team with more appropriate personnel.  I suppose that'll be one of Clinton's projects over her eight years.

I wish he would [censor the contributors out of the Bitcoin Core repo as suggested by Rizun.]  It would take about 3 minutes for a replacement (or 15) to pop up. 

It would be funny if the repo utilized by the actual Bitcoin contributors of this time to grant Hearndresen commit privs just for shits-n-giggles.  Also funny, of course, to see the main body of work committed to Hearndresen's repo be merges from the new one.

There either are the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg group, Council on Foreign Relations, United Nations, Club of Rome, etc, etc, or there are not.  The evidence I've seen indicates that such groups do exist, and none of them seem to be completely 'open'.

These groups have either formed and held periodic meetings with no effect whatsoever but the participants don't tire of trying, or they persist in part because they do achieve effects.  I think there is evidence, both direct and tangential, that some of the activities of these groups do achieve some effects.

There may be individuals and entities who participate in and fund these groups multiple of such groups simultaneously or there are not.  I believe that there is evidence that there are.

My belief is that to imagine a single small group or individual at the top of the pyramid controlling everything with precision strains credulity.  My guess is that there is considerable global influence from policies and plans arrived at in meetings of these various groups.  I also believe that there is more than a little tension within these groups with individual participants having somewhat different goals and priorities and ideas about how to obtain a result.  Human nature being what it is (especially among the more successful and powerful individuals of the world) there is probably more than a little jockeying for position.  I suspect that some of the plans which were formulated out of some of these groups have fallen flat while other operations have exceeded their wildest expectations.  These are just things which make intuative sense to me and what I believe I observe from the outside.

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On a slightly related note, do yourself a favor and listen to one of the presentations about 'technocracy' by Patrick Woods if you've not already.  Here's a link:  

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNkDiBOO4H0

As someone who muses about a variety of aspects of our world and someone who has spent a fraction of my life in the high-tech world and in some organizations who have been at the fore, this guy's thesis has huge explanatory power.  My current 'strongest hypothesis' is that some of the most powerful people on the planet have seen 'technocracy' as a hugely useful tool to use in the future.  Many many other people who would/will be the 'technocrats' see it both as a paycheck and in a lot of cases as a utopia which could benefit mankind.  For my part I am quite certain that the latter could not be farther from what we'd eventually see.

As Woods mentions, we are looking at a completely new and novel economic system with Technocracy more than anything.  Suddenly 'smart meters' (which I first ran across deep in the bowels of tech-land) make a great deal of sense.  Similarly 'the internet of things.'  Similarly, when executive secretary of the UNFCCC Christiana_Figueres says "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution," it makes a great deal of sense.

If this guy Woods is on to something even partially, those who have a meaningful stake in Bitcoin (or metals, property, etc) would do well to avail themselves of some of his ideas.  What conclusions to draw are not clear.

It is said that 95% of the weirdness on planet earth comes out of Japan.  I might have read that somewhere on this thread.  Don't recall for sure, but I found it hilariously funny.

...that leaves another 5% to be distributed around the rest of the world.  Example: