I certainly don't blame Congress. Congress is an elected body. The blame and burden is on voters to elect competent leaders. Of course, disparaging voters isn't a viable campaign strategy and the media would never dare say the quiet part out loud when it comes to ignorant voting populations. Most voters have no idea how their government works and these people will gladly participate in every election voting for the same politicians that drove their country into a ditch.

They're potentially on the way to a monopoly which gets dangerous because they begin to apply too much market on crypto, and of course if they collapse then it will take Bitcoin with it.

Unfortunately it seems centralized exchanges are the only way normal citizens prefer to dabble in crypto. Bitcoin isn't adopted to the point that someone could easily take fiat currency and swap it in a P2P transaction without having intermediary exchanges involved.

Congress never reads any of these bills, whether it's Republicans or Democrats in charge. Yet, seemingly, the U.S. electorate keep electing these people into office.

The way it works is a bunch of lobbyists and attorneys will petition government under their first amendment right which includes a bunch of coincidental campaign super PAC contributions. These people will then generate the actual text of the legislation and submit it to congress, and congress will blindly vote on it without having actually read it or understanding it fully because they prefer the political funding.

It's a rotten system.

It's quite a shame how many people don't understand this -- government is an institution and the people that are part of these institutions have an interest in sustaining them. The interests of government survival outweigh the interest of their constituency, and the constituency will suffer. Bitcoin could solve a lot of problems, but there is no incentive for problems to be solved.

I'm an advocate for limited government for this reason. The predations of governmental power on normal citizens cannot be understated.

I'm not sure of the authenticity of these claims -- I'm skeptical because I keep hearing about this story in right wing circles/commentators but can't find anything indisputable that Hunter Biden was actually paying out that much in rent to Joe Biden. They're also claiming that Hunter Biden owned the property so it wouldn't make sense to pay out 50k/month rent if he owned the property.

Could've been a way for Hunter to funnel money to Joe but surely they could not have made it so obvious. I suppose never trust a crack addict.

When COVID hit and the U.S. government found it prudent to wipe away trillions of dollars in global economic output, they essentially created a social welfare state through supplemental unemployment checks that ranged from 400-600 USD per week. These checks were regardless of what someone made before being laid off due to COVID lockdowns/restrictions, so of course it didn't factor in for cost of living, but nonetheless there were some figures that showed a large portion of U.S. workers making more off unemployment than actually working. You can imagine the labor shortage it would create when the government's welfare state paid people to work zero hours a week.

Those checks lasted from March 2020 (they were retroactively applied if I'm not mistaken so someone could claim unemployment aid from previous weeks) all the way to October 2021. The U.S. was not alone -- Europe dabbled in extremely generous unemployment aid.

Seems like the labor shortage hasn't resolved itself, but we sure know how it started.

Casinos won't cap your winnings -- they'll just ban you from playing if you're located in a jurisdiction that's prohibited from playing. If you circumvent this, they'll just KYC you if you try to withdraw a large amount of funds. That's generally how most of these casinos operate, but instead of legal ramifications, they just want to KYC so they can have an excuse not to pay out a large winning.

Not all casinos are like this, but they've been doing it for years so I consider it fair game at this point. I don't deposit at KYC casinos.

Vitamin C helps strengthen the immune system so it may or may not help with preventing a COVID-19 severe illness. When they were studying whether Vitamin C had any effect on COVID mortality, they would take Vitamin C and intravenously inject patients who were already sick and monitor for improved outcome. Of course by the time someone is severely ill, the efficacy of all treatments goes down.

I would look at Vitamin C the same way as D and use it as preventative care, not just for COVID. Even if you don't need the supplement it's not going to hurt you as long as you don't exceed safe dosage.

Your personal information is at the websites whim. If their system gets hacked, your information is vulnerable. If a corrupt government wants to send a nonsensical subpoena, they will most likely comply. Under no circumstances should you submit to KYC to a provider you do not trust.


There isn't a way around KYC if the platform has your funds as leverage, so I'm not sure what alternative you're looking for here. I wouldn't touch KYC platforms to begin with.

Machines paying out incorrectly happen all the time -- there's a reason for oversight. There usually isn't a trial because they're almost always civil matters and the courts have precedent on ruling in favor of casinos in the case of malfunctioning machines. The civil suits are nonsense and shut down almost immediately.

I don't consider casinos not paying out big winnings to be conflated with electronic malfunctions. They're separate discussions entirely. A malfunction is not a legitimate win therefore there isn't anything to pay out. Any land based casino would have their assets seized immediately if they were rigging machines. Casinos not paying out is almost entirely an online issue.

Perhaps the most ironic part of the article is the bit about the so called "inflation reduction act" offering an $850 rebate for people to purchase a new electric stove. If 40% of U.S. households use gas stoves, then is the government planning on stepping in and subsidizing millions of electric stoves? I'm sure spending all that money will surely reduce inflation.

Just the newest priority of the Biden administration's, creating culture wars centralized around electric stoves. They aren't even that dangerous.

Modern society is drifting a bit far from religion and replacing it with a dogma that's toxic and politically driven -- that being said, most modern religious interpretations are not the same interpretations as they were even some centuries ago so I'm personally not an advocate for traditionalist values explicitly written in religious books. The values within these books have caused the greatest amounts of violence in human history. Modern interpretations of religion are entirety different.

African countries probably have not had this modernization of thought yet, but realistically that isn't the reason why Africa is lagging behind in the world on social justice.

Doesn't seem likely for inflation to stop in in 2023 for two reason: The central banks has essentially accepted that a recession will happen therefore they haven't tried to ease interest rates to achieve a slow landing. They aggressively hiked interest rates and accept the potential recession as a result. Second -- the state of money printing nearly every country participated in back in 2020 saw the creation of more money than the world has ever seen. This does not solve itself within just a few years.

Telomere lengthening is promising as well. Seems like that technology is a few generations ahead of us. I've kept up with stem cell research and some countries with less medical oversight are already experimenting with stem cell injections to treat pain with some level of success. Europe and North America are a bit behind but you can travel to South America to stem cell clinics that will give out robust treatment.

Only downside are that some of the stem cells are sourced from embryos/fetal tissue. There aren't many other options for undifferentiated stem cells unfortunately -- extracting stem cells from adults comes with some level of differentiation which make them less useful for treatment, whereas embryos have less differentiation.

A lot of biotech firms are looking into stem cell therapies because stem cells are the closest humans will ever get to being immortal. And interestingly enough, we already see immortal organisms that exist: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120227152612.htm

Planarian worms can literally regenerate itself despite being cut into a 1/279 piece of itself. Imagine this sort of stem cell technology being applied to humans who might be able to regenerate limbs or dead neural cells? This sort of tech isn't just limited to billionaires. Humans have the opportunity to transcend nature.

Nobody is owed a "minimum wage." Every single time a minimum wage has been implemented it's caused higher unemployment because businesses are unable to keep up with an artificial minimum wage that is contrary to what the market would allow.

The easiest way to increase your wage is diversify your skillset and go in the open market for a job that pays you for what you're worth. Government isn't there to guarantee what a private business should pay its employees.

If there was a malfunction on the digital display of a slot machine that took a 10 USD payout and turned it into 10e12, would anyone argue the casino is liable for trillions to be paid out to the player because of a mere digital glitch? Malfunctions happen on slot machines -- if it's a land based casino on U.S. jurisdiction then it's going to be tightly regulated.

I would understand skepticism if this was a non-reputable platform but slot machines on land based casinos are mathematically supposed to have set RTP. This isn't the first time someone has "won" a large amount from a slot when the slot had actually malfunctioned. The win was not legitimate.

It's quite ironic to see Powell so against people finding newer and higher paying jobs because wage growth isn't keeping up with inflation largely due to federal reserve fiscal policy. It's on him for causing the issue in the first place. Retail sectors saw large artificial increases in wages after the government began paying people to stay home. Retail sector is particularly low paying so there were a lot of employees that were benefiting from working zero hours and perhaps even making more money for doing so. Combine stimulus money this as well. Now, fast forward with high interest rates and a recession looming in the background causing inflation to outpace wage growth -- these number should not be unexpected.

Most liberals aren't against self defense, the socialist/communist lefties are against self defense of deadly threats because they think private firearm ownership is inherently evil. Of course, they're only against such use of force if it's being used against their own. If it's the government using "self defense" against right wing protestors, they support it. If it's a private citizen defending himself from deranged rioters, they'll call for life imprisonment.

There is no logic behind it so no one can rationalize it.

The great thing about communism is when millions of people are killed off after governmental/economic collapse, the net resources to sustain the population goes down. It's within China's interest to have the deadweights die off. China, much like Japan, is experiencing a labor issue with not enough young people being born to help subsidize the older generation. When the collapse comes, the first people that start to die are the older folks who can't help themselves.