In the twenty first century, flags are obsolete. Any alien species with the FTL travel capability necessary to reach Earth would view flags as barbaric territorial symbols, the sure sign of an infant species dangerous to themselves and others.

"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."
-Albert Einstein

Flags, eternally the heralds of war.





Planetism is nothing more than nationalism hubristically projected into the future. Life is unfathomably scarce and therefore infinitely precious out there in the endless dark, this is a self-evident universal truth. Consider for a moment, that most of the mass of our planet consists of core and mantle, where no life exists. Only a thin layer of crust and a narrow slice of atmosphere - only that little bubble supports life. It is this tiny slice that Homo Sapiens, the singular gods of Earth are destroying and poisoning. At least 10¹⁴ miles (~20 lightyears) of space in every direction is the cold void, darkness, death.

If we continue on our current path, we turn Earth into Venus, in doing so we burn the only known harbor of life within 10¹⁴ miles, and probably farther.

Neither. I recognize that I do not have the requisite technical background necessary to have an opinion on this technical matter. 

Appeal to their rational self-interest.

"Kill me and you get no btc, plus you'll be wanted for murder. Odds are very high that you'll get caught and spend the rest of your days rotting in some rape-dungeon. Have you ever gotten away with murder before? Didn't think so. Now fuck off"

The people robbing you at gunpoint have no intention of firing that weapon, they aren't prepared to commit murder, they don't have the operational security to get away with the crime, and if you call their bluff, they are fucked.

Excerpt:

The Only Way to Freedom is Through Its Practice Here and Now

"Every single transaction that takes place outside the nexus of state control is a victory for those individuals taking part in the transaction"
– The Dread Pirate Roberts, 2012

(...)

The government derives its power to do all the objectionable things it does from the monetary system. Fiat currency can be created in any quantity by the government at any time and at zero cost.

Given the government’s ability to create money instantly at zero cost, tax collection today is mostly about social engineering. Paying taxes maintains the illusion that fiat money is scarce and therefore valuable

(...)

How Change Happens. And Why It Often Doesn’t

Our intuition tells us that technology, social norms, movements and ideas just move forward through time, as if forward progress is a river and those things are on a raft gliding through. We so associate the passage of time with progress that we use the term “the future” to refer to a better, more advanced version of our present world. In reality, if a more advanced future does happen, it’s because that future was willed into our lives by a few brave people.

The present isn’t welcoming of an advanced future because the present is run by a thick canopy made up of the ideas, norms, and technologies of the past. There’ll be incremental tweaks and slight iterations on proven-to-work concepts, which may seem to us like moving into the future, but it’s really just a polishing up of the past.

Source: https://weeklyglobalresearch.wordpress.com/2015/06/09/tuesday-9th-june/

Emphasis mine

What if Satoshi was revealed to be Jibbers Crabst, our barnacled Lord and Savior?



Mmm, I hope he comes with butter.

In other news, bicycle messengers in the early 90s declared email to be a useless nerd tool that would never catch on.



The industry survives today, barely.

Yes please this. Save me from another Satoshi thread.

In capitalism profit finds a way to be made, just as water always finds a way downhill toward sea level. The makers and enforcers of laws can no more deny this reality than they can deny gravity.

Without any doubt, it is. Death is frightening only because it's the unknown, but there is nothing worth fearing in the unknown. There never has been. Men used to fear sailing off the edge of the flat Earth, what came of that?

But lifetime of slow, lonely suffering? That is truly worth fearing my friends. That is worth suicide. If you only remember one thing I've ever said on these forums, let it be this: Don't fear the reaper.

"A fool and his money will soon part."

Isolation is torture for any primate, 23 hours a day of torture will not be good for him. He will slowly go mad. I can imagine few fates worse than that.

Funny how no one seems to give a damn about the law being broken in person in places like that, but do it on the internet it's a major threat. The double standard should concern anyone interested in real justice.

Regarding arms... you can go to a "gun show" just about any southern state and buy whatever weapons you want with cash. Anonymously.

An entity characterized by infinite patience. A monster for some, a savior to others.

You're boring and uncreative. This thread lacks effort, you went for the lowest hanging fruit and it shows.

Comedy is not for the lazy.

The overwhelming majority of both active military and police are not doing it for altruistic reasons, they are doing it because it is reliable career option for terrified young people with no or few other options. There's a reason you always see military recruiters centers near community colleges and high schools in poor neighborhoods.  Like the person jumping from the window of a burning building, for people raised in relative poverty, any way out is good enough. The way they (accurately) see it, at least on the police force they have a future, will have a chance to make friends and get laid.

In most places, being a police officer isn't actually all that dangerous. It's much safer than being a garbageman, for example. Still, if you offered these folks a career with equal pay and similar benefits that didn't involve the risk of being shot, many of them would probably take it. But for most of them such a life is a privilege they will never have. Like nearly all of us do, they're behaving rationally in their own self interest. They're not considering that being paid to violate the non-aggression principle is fundamentally unethical regardless of the circumstances. That sort of thinking is reserved for people who live in a different world, a world of safety and comfort, of couches and laptops and cofeeshops.

When an 18 year old poor kid decides to sign up for the army during wartime, he is essentially saying "I'll try my luck with this new hell, it can't possibly be worse than the hell I'm coming from". And most of them are probably right.



Most of them.

You sure about that? Because even after the government's strategic defamation of Ross, the fourth most popular site on the internet seems to care about him a great deal. Imagine the rage if he hadn't been painted as a murderer.

First time for everything, I guess.

The reason for the (dropped) murder charge was to get Ross in the news as a drug king-pin who had people killed, and to associate cartel level drug trafficking / murder with silkroad in the minds of the public, so that when he eventually got the harshest sentence possible (natural life without possibility of parole) there would be no resistance from the public. This is not about justice, it's the state abusing its power to make a terrifying example which should frighten others who might think to do the same.

Turns out the agents involved in bringing down the Silk Road were actually involved in more criminal activity than DPR himself, but that is ignored - the law is allowed to break the law in order to serve the law.
When those who are charged to uphold the law themselves behave as if they are above the law, then you know there is no real justice to be had.



Just shovel the bullshit under the carpet along with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I wait patiently for the day americans grow a pair and decide to finally hold our government accountable for the travesty they've let this nation become. Bear in mind that when feudal merchants turned against their masters all across Europe some four hundred years ago, they were defying the law, the King, the nobility, and the will of God by Divine Right. They faced the violence of those entrenched institutions head on at a time when torture was socially tolerable, and they did so without the great force equalizer we call the gun. The merchants won, the nobles and kings lost, and capitalism was born. Today the military and police are comprised almost entirely of common folk. We need only win their hearts and minds, and turn them against the corrupt uber-rich who are robbing everyone else blind. The Jamie Dimons, Sepp Blatters, and Michael Bloombergs of this world. Our task is easy, folks.

We the common people have been attacking ourselves long enough. It's time once again to betray and devour our masters, and recreate society anew.