Thimerosal is the mercury.  From what I read, it's a highly neuro-toxic compound which is used to keep anything undesirable from growing in the vaccine.  Going from recollection...

Back almost 100 years ago Lilly started using it as a preservative.  To test the safety, they found 20 people who were dying of encephalitis.  All 20 of the test subjects who were shot up with it died of encephalitis.  Thus it was deemed 'safe' and no further official safety studies have been performed.  That came out of congressional hearings a decade ago.  Thank Dan Burton and Bill Posey for their efforts here.  Other kinds of studies of the impacts have.  Here is some interesting footage of what mercury does to brain cells:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHqVDMr9ivo

The processes by which vaccines are manufactured uses ethylmercury in various parts of the process in addition to using it as a primary preservative in the finished product.  After the big stink in congress, vaccine supplies which used thimerosal as the primary preservative were drawn down and not used any longer, but the multi-dose vaccine used in grocery stores still does.  Even the single dose vaccines shot into infants does have some remaining from parts of the manufacturing process as I understand things.  About 1/10th as much as before according to the last thing I read (I had thought it was less until then...the word 'trace' is typically used.)

It is important to note that the digestive system of animals is evolved to separate out a variety of things from the environment and not let them into the bloodstream.  Various processes in the gut (assisted by many bacteria that we host) break ingested material into smaller components.  The good stuff is absorbed and the bad stuff (like aluminum which is very common in soils) is left behind for the most part and flushed down the toilet.  'Mainlining' chemicals straight into the bloodstream short circuits this phase of protection.

Next, the 'blood brain barrier' serves as another ring of protection for the brain which is, obviously, very important to keep functioning well.  Modern vaccines contain detergents such as polysorbate-80.  The function of this is to break down the lipid layers which provide protection and allow the dose of God knows what that was just shot into the bloodstream to more easily penetrate this barrier.

I have a hypothesis that the 0.1% have gambled away people's social security (and kinda mis-calculated on how long people will live.)  These 'unfunded liabilities' cannot really ever be funded.  People who have been brain damaged will be less aware of how badly they are being fucked over and less able to do much about it.  That is why old folks are herded in for their 'flu shots' almost with a cattle prod these days.

Another hypothesis is that one of the ways people are trained is to time certain presentations on broadcast media (TV, radio, etc) with electro-magnetic signals which stimulate the brain in unnoticeable ways.  Having metals of various types infused throughout the brain tissue would make such techniques be more effective.  That hypothesis is a long-shot and I've never seen any compelling evidence for it.  It is simply something I thought up when trying to figure out why it is so important to TPTB that at least one shot (for hep-B which impacts druggies and those who engage in unprotected sex neither of which are risks for babies) on the day of birth.  After that, of course, an ever increasing number of vaccines are being forced upon people with ever increasing vigor.

Using civilian firearms in a manner which would counter government chartered prerogatives would be a big deal and the risks of being killed would be very high.  Only in extreme circumstances is there any realistic possibility that it would be done by a non-trivial percentage of citizens.

Thus leads to a question:  What, exactly, is the government envisioning that there is such a focus on dis-arming the population?  It's hard to ignore that as the focus on civilian dis-armament intensifies, programs to arm police and other agencies such as the EPA are being ratcheted up, and the tactical capabilities they are being supplied with are impressive.

Call these questions crazy paranoia if you like.  To me it seems appropriate to apply the 'precautionary principle' and keep my eyes wide open.

I've felt that way about Hearn's work since pretty near the time I took an interest.  I remember he being active on channel stuff.  At that time I struggled to understand it and was negative about it since I didn't trust him.  I failed to recognize some of the power and utility channels could have.  I still don't know what Hearn's interest in them might have been.  I suppose it's possible that it was one of the few of his interests which was not directed toward the destruction of Bitcoin.

For a long time I considered Gavin to be just a fairly naive clown who's heart was in the right place but who was pushing Bitcoin in the wrong direction and wasting resources, and I was happy that he seemed to be only marginally skilled and effective.  Only after his meeting with the CFR and his secrecy around the event did I decide that he may also be actively working toward the destruction of Bitcoin.  Whether there really was a shift at that point or whether I was mis-reading things earlier is unknown.  But it doesn't matter much at this point.  As you say, the appropriate position is at this point for both of them is 'don't bother'.

When I was first doing software engineering for money, crypto was, under U.S. law, classified as a 'munition.'  That was a giant pain-in-the-ass for the work I was doing.

As for 'bear arms' (and I apologize for the typo), my read of history related to the second amendment is that it is pretty clear that what was being considered by 'bear arms' was to bring them to use in conflict and in support of and under the direction of an individual state.

I also read the 'a well regulated militia' as being something which was a theoretical (and necessary and proper) thing but it was impossible without an armed population.  That is to say, it did not exist perpetually but it must be possible in times of need...and again, an armed citizenry was necessary for that to occur.

All kinds of arguments about how the 2nd is obsolete or wacko or whatever exist.  Or that it doesn't mean what it seems to mean.  I personally have not found these arguments to be compelling.  On the contrary, a government's founding documents containing the the explicit concept and mechanism of it's own demise should things go wrong seems to be a pretty unique thing in history.  These ideas and others like them have proven (to me) to have been powerful and proven given the success we've had over the last few centuries.

It is as clear as day that the U.S. 2nd amendment is a massive thorn in the side of the 'globalists' and 'new world order' crowd.  That is all the advertising I need to make me believe that it is something worth holding on to.

Yes, that is a factor (I think.)  Another is that many of the participants were drawn to Bitcoin for specific reasons, and those reasons are correlated with the ability of the state to put them under pressures of various sorts.  Other's were probably just to stupid and greedy (aka, 'principled') to keep their noses clean wrt taxes and their testes retreated into their abdominal cavity when the finally recognized the potential ramification at rubber-meets-the-road time.

Distributed crypto-currency.  One of the big draws of Bitcoin for me years ago was my sense of hopelessness about the utility of guns as being useful under a situation where it was appropriate to 'bare arms' as envisioned by the authors of the 2nd amendment.  'We the people' are increasingly dis-advantaged in such a contest as technology moves exponentially forward.

It occurs to me that the main thing the proverbial 'powers that be' have is more money.  All of the rest of their power and influence derives from that, and this asymmetry is the basis for what amounts to a form slavery under which more and more citizens live even here in the 'land of the free.'  Wresting monopoly control of nation's (or world's) monetary system from TPTB is a far more powerful weapon than civilian firearms.  The latter certainly has it's place both tactically and strategically however.  And they are an indispensable tool for other more mundane things as well.

It occurred to me the other day that the males of many higher vertebrates are characterized by being especially aggressive in protection of a social group.  This makes biological sense.  Consider lions who form teams of two males.  If they are run off by a different team, the new leader set kills the cubs sired by the old ones and mate with the lionesses.  The best strategy for the female is to 'go along to get along' whereas the vanquished males are quite possibly at a dead end.

Were I engineering a new (world order) I might be wary of this particular difference between male and female behavior and as a precursor seek to 'feminize' the males so they created less resistance when the time came to let the hammer drop.  And disarm them as much as possible of course.

When I said (somewhat, at but not totally, as a joke) 'the end is near' when the males have become 'sitzpinklers', I didn't mean that Germany itself would be devoid of people...just devoid of what was historically considered to be 'German' people.  The population will be proud 'global citizens' as will be the case in many other geographic areas which have been similarly molded socially, culturally, and biologically.

I, for one, am sitting on my BTC in anticipation of sidechains.  Were it not for that I very well may have sold a few the other day though Coinbase since the price got within striking distance of what I wanted before doing any more adjustments.  As it is I have not made a Bitcoin transaction for about a year and a half now.

I don't even want to use use blockchain.info any more since Ver has been such a disappointing sellout.  Sometime before Coinbase has a chance to XTaint the BTC of mine that they control (and keep the real BTC for themselves) I'll pull off what I have at risk with them and, again, hopefully I can send them straight to someone who has a realistic sidechain prototype going (and some semblance of ethics which align with my own.)  My only use for Coinbase going forward will be to dump my XTainted coins after *I* split them.

I think that some nation could do fairly well by saying something like:

"You know what?  The founders of the United States had some really good basic ideas about 'life, liberty, etc' and it served them well for a long time.  Now that the U.S. has abandoned most of these ideas and is adopting a position as just another part of the totalitarian one-world govt, we are going to adopt some of these good ideas and try to make our nation move in the direction envisioned by giants like Thomas Jefferson."

I bet that a lot of capable people would make tracks to their doorstep if they were demonstrably serious about such a strategy.  Russia with it's defensive capabilities and lack of significant carrying capacity issues would seem like the most promising of nations to try such a track.  I'm not holding my breath though.

Oh goodie, Free Money!  What's not to love?

I'll be enjoying your big blocks next year when I split my bitcoins and dump the bloatcoin competent.  Bring it on!

I'm not sure that there is anyone doing anything which is NOT a 'conflict of interest' in some way.  I, for one, tend to get a little bit suspicious when someone is doing something out of the pure goodness of their hearts, or wants to give me free shit.  Also, it is impractical for most people to spend all of their days doing high quality work with no means of support or hope of a reward so when that it happening it itself can be a warning flag.

Some people have an earnest interest in doing things because they feel that doing certain things is interesting and cool.  The best way to gauge that is to pay some attention to their work over a long-ish period of time.  The level of transparency that people are willing to provide is also a meaningful factor to me in trying to make good choices here because, as you say, it is appropriate to 'watch very cautiously' for certain things.

From my perspective, Blockstream is undertaking a track of what I used to call 'subordinate chains' to make Bitcoin scale, and I've been of the opinion that this has the best combination of practicability, safety, and auxiliary advantages for about 4 years now.  This makes me naturally positive to their undertaking of course, and as I've said before, I am delighted to see this particular group of people engaged in this undertaking.  Dr. Back has a very long history in working on empowering technology from back in the cypherpunk days and crypto wars several decades ago.  Maxwell and Wuille or a combination of the two have been doing some highly technical and impressive work on crypto-currency more recently (including being central to getting Bitcoin where it is today.)  They have earned my trust, but I would/will always have my eyes open and would be surprised it that bothered any of them.  If it does, my confidence in them would be severely diminished for that reason alone.

I'm also glad to see that Peter Todd seems to be on the outside of Blockstream.  His value as an outside critic has been very good for Bitcoin and crypto-currency development in my opinion.  My guess is that certain of those who've been on the rough side of his criticism over the years would say the same thing.

Any effort which includes Maxwell, sipa, and Back working together is totally cool with me.  I don't care if it is a private company, corporation, NGO, politburo. or garage workshop rap session.  These people have proven themselves (to me) over the last number of years that I've been paying attention.

Hearn, and to a lesser degree, Andresen and their shitty Bitcoin Foundation have also proven themselves (to me) over this time period.  In that case they have proven themselves to be completely untrustworthy and antithetic to everything I hope for in distributed crypto-currencies.

A few wild-cards have proven themselves to be a surprise.  On the negative side, Ver, and on the positive side (given his involvement with TBF), Matonis.

I sure would not try with a .223 unless I were very desperate and starving.  I don't pretend to be an expert, but given the size of these animals I think you would be dependent on having enough luck to hit an artery or some similar vulnerable spot.  I suspect that a lung shot would kill it, but it would die 10 miles away and you would only find it by following the vultures a few days later.

You make a very good point about getting one shot at an elk though again, I'm hardly a professional.  I do have some experience with a .223 from my days in the military (though I've never been shot of course) and also experience with the densely foliage in my area as well as the behavior and capabilities of the creatures.

It is interesting that the the Federal box of 300 win-mag shells claims that they are suitable for small game like deer and not larger game like elk, and certainly not for dangerous game.  I suspect that they are err'ing on the side of caution.  The ballistics indicate that I should be able to take most shots available in my area.  Lots and lots of elk around here have fallen to 30-06 which is inferior to 300 wm in most respects.

Looks like PubMed and NIH is not entirely entirely bought and useless...or they had an oversight in their 'selection':  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21568886

Wow!  A body which is pretty much owned outright by the pharma industry cannot find 'sufficient evidence' to link a specific vaccine to a specific malady.  How very surprising!  Nothing to see here...move along.

Love your sample selection methods by the way.

I'll not stay up nights waiting for *.gov to do anything substantive regarding the blatant fraud that Merck engaged in vis-a-vis the mumps component in order to maintain their market share.  I'll also not be surprised to see more outbreaks of mumps in highly vaccinated groups, and to see the outbreaks shifted into the post-puberty age range and thus result in (even more) sterility in the male population.  Perhaps 'routine booster shots throughout life' will save the day (and pay Merck back 100x on whatever slap on the wrist they may get for their malfeasance.)

I don't see a real big deal in a transaction not confirming in my normal use-case over the last 4 years.  On-chain transactions for me are nearly always about risk management.  My risk management strategies are years-long and course operations.  Even in my to-date use of Bitcoin, I've not expected a transaction to occur with high reliability because it remains in an experimental state.  What I do expect, however, is that my transaction would time-out eventually rather than be lost which is a vastly different thing.  So far I have been pleasantly surprised that my native Bitcoin transactions have gone through within a few block cycles.  That is perfectly adequate for me.

My expectations for a sidecoin will be entirely different.  There I would expect reliable and fast transactions (if that were the design goal of a particular sidechain.)  I would also expect that in an unusual system failure or successful attack, my value would not be lost.  I am willing to take a hit on convenience (say, to have my value tied up for a few weeks) in this case because I expect such events to be rare.

I consider the mainstream news to be fully controlled by about 6 corporations who's owners also have holdings in most other large corporate concerns.  Their messages on important subjects are crafted and coordinated to leave the public with a specific message.

I consider the alternate media (aka, 'crazy freelancers') to be even less reliable.  The difference is that there are nuggets of pure truth contained within.  It's simply labor intensive to pick these out, but the pay-off is that one can formulate a more accurate understanding of reality.

The metric I use in understanding the world is when a hypothesis explains many observations without a lot of strain.  When I don't prejudiced my hypothesis selection by writing off 'crime-think' ideas, certain of these mesh nicely with observations.

I am constantly reminded of Jacobi's advice "Invert, always invert."  When certain things are inverted to what is widely considered a ridiculous state, it is common for a lot of observations to fall into place.  An example of this would be the childhood immunization schedule.  It is widely understood that the purpose of this is to create a healthy population.  The inversion would be that the purpose is to create a profitable population, and a population who had certain health problems fits the model.

An unhealthy population is not only profitable from the perspective of the pharma industry, but is also much more dependent on support making them a controllable population as well.

The Pavlovian response to such an outrageous suggestion is that it is so evil as to be absurd.  Based on a read of history up to and including recent times, I don't personally feel that the idea is especially outrageous or even out-of-character.

If people are considered to be a threat insofar as they create overpopulation problems, then it is easy to invert the idea that 'the powers that be' want healthy and strong people to one where they are not entirely disappointed if policies result in fewer people.  The suggestion also serves to enlist the support and participation of people who are focus on, for instance, the natural environment (aka 'eco-fundamentalists'.)  They can disseminate certain ideas through their information channels, and can feed support back up these channels.

edits: slight

Although the suggestion of a 'genetic epedemic' is laughable absurd to people who have the slightest clue, there does seem to be a genetic component to autism.  It looks to me as though this genetic component is largely in the sensitivity to environmental factors (where 'environment' includes exposures such as having substances contained in vaccine mixtures 'mainlined' into one's bloodstream.)

Dr. Thompson blew the whistle on the CDC saying that a decade ago they did find a 250%+ autism rate increase in African American males who were vaccinated early in life.  Due to this they retro-actively changed the study protocols (a big no-no in 'old school' science) and filled a trash can with hard copies of the mis-behaving data.

I've also heard that Somalian immigrants have an unusually high autism rate when exposed to our Western vaccine goodness where it is pretty much unheard of back in their native land.

Obviously I have thought about this.  It is a very valid conundrum, and a sticking point in many 'consipricy theories.'

I myself have family who are in the industry.  They make good money and I have no indication that they have any awareness of the (proposed) nefarious nature that I am hypothesizing about.  They are aware of their million dollar student loans, and their lack of a 'formal dinning' room in their current house and the consequent need to upgrade for this reason.  They are also proud of their role in serving society though they have a variety of complaints about 'the system.'

I find it quite plausible that a very corrupt and surreptitious system could be operated successfully with perhaps 0.2% of the participants being fully aware of the overall details.  They would just need to be well placed, and the system itself would need to be sufficiently complex (involving, say, media, education, research, and most critically, finance.)  Note that the U.S. maintained an amazing amount of secrecy in the development of the atom bomb.  Were it not for Hiroshima, it probably could be secret until this day (although that total secrecy would defeat the point of it.)

It should be noted that a key element in maintaining a system such as I am describing is gatekeeping (which is why I mentioned it up-thread.)  In this way, even if some participants smell a rat and decide to 'go public', the damage will still be contained and the games can continue.  If one researches this stuff one finds a fair number of medical professional who in fact do bow out and blab.  As long as it is only 'crazy conspiracy theorists' who hear them, the damage is minimal.

Another element is to avoid hurting the 'wrong people'.  We would still be happily injecting babies with significant quantities of mercury were it not for a powerful senator's own grandchild being damaged.  Now we have to dose people at 1/10th the former rate except for the multi-dose flu shot which still delivers a healthy dose through the blood/brain barrier.  With better technology to allow more targeted individual tracking this problem can be minimized.