I'll second this. Again, I'm wearing the Futuur signature, but again, you can check my posts and see that I've already been betting a lot on the bitcoin markets. It really is an excellent site - and I'm not being paid to say that! It's early days and some of the markets are quite thin, but it offers a lot more than traditional sports betting, with markets across business, science, entertainment and politics - as well as the facility to suggest your own betting market. And if you're unsure about putting bitcoin on the line, there's also play money markets so you can test the site out.

As with most other conspiracies, I don't understand the reasoning behind this one. It seems illogical. Rate of population increase has been falling rapidly for the last half century, and is approaching zero. As with many things, rate of change gives you a better picture than total change.


_source

In many developed countries, birth rate is already well below the level to maintain current population level, and is projected to fall further.


_source

Certainly the climate crisis could mean problems given current population levels, or given any population levels, but the point is there is no population explosion anyway. Population is stabilising. Couple this with advances in genetic engineering, and drought-resistant crops, particularly some of the absolute miracles that are being achieved with CRISPR, and we already have some tools to help us somewhat against the worst ravages of climate change. Yes, if the worst case climate scenario does come to pass we may see some parts of the globe becoming uninhabitable, we would likely see large-scale population migration, and huge suffering and economic cost... but there's no need for management of a population increase that isn't even happening. That does nothing to address the problem or indeed any problem.

I take the fact that it's hovering in the 49s rather than bouncing sharply down from 50 as evidence of general bullishness in the market. As you say though, there will certainly be profit-taking near the round number of 50k.

There's a joke in here somewhere about holders getting excited about price rises, and traders liquidating their shorts.*


*If that doesn't deserve a merit to get me to 800, then humour is dead.

I think I'm probably derailing my own thread a bit here. Let's leave the Gates Foundation out of the discussion for the moment.

Certain mental characteristics have helped BG to amass his prodigious fortune. Through his history with Microsoft and the way he turned it into a world-beating behemoth, I think it's clear that he is able to see patterns and identify trends, and to accurately predict the future where others are not so insightful.

Plenty of people have warned about the consequences of climate change, and plenty of them have been dismissed by establishment players with vested interests in the status quo. However Gates has a proven record of understanding data, patterns, trends, consequences. He was prescient in warning the world about the Covid pandemic in terms of both a) the likelihood of a viral pandemic, and b) the consequences of our unpreparedness.

Now he is doing the same thing with climate. And I strongly suspect that no-one will listen. Governments will make token gestures and offer short-term sticking plaster solutions, but nothing of any substance will be done until the consequences are upon us.

Yes, I agree completely. I've placed bets on a lot of the markets, but I'm staying well clear of this one. I have absolutely no idea whether it will fall below $20k again. I find that crypto is far less predictable than politics, business, science, sports etc.

It looks promising, yes, for my bet, but much more importantly for the people of America.

But if we're talking about sure bets, then I think this one is even surer TBH I'm surprised it's only at 94%. Certainly anything can happen, but still... it seems as close to a guaranteed outcome as you would get.

$50k is a huge psychological threshold. If we can clear $50k and hold above it — holding obviously being more important than just breaking through — then you wouldn't imagine that there would be any significant resistance until the $100k mark.

The obvious concern as always being that a very rapid rise is often followed by an even more rapid pullback. Slow, steady increases interspersed with periods of consolidation and the establishing of support are much more preferable from a long-term perspective.

And there's me thinking he made his money from Microsoft

It can't be, no. Because he's pledged to give away 95% of his wealth, and is actively encouraging other ultra-rich individuals to do the same. The Gates Foundation has paid out $55 billion so far (as of 2019).

Bit of a tangent, but you will almost certainly have been offered the covid vaccine by now - can we assume you refused?

I'd argue that he gained control of personal computers through a combination of talent, hard work, and utter ruthlessness in business. Since amassing silly levels of wealth, and achieving all that he realistically could in business, he has now turned his laser-focus onto solving world problems such as health.

You mention 'the "deplorables" in the world populations' - he created the non-profit entity GAVI in 2000, set it up with seed funding and around $4 billion in total, and worked hard to get NGOs and nations involved, and:
_{https://www.who.int/life-course/news/article_bmj_lidija.pdf}

GAVI donors:

_{https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/11/21133298/bill-gates-melinda-gates-money-foundation}

You don't necessarily have to wait for the result, though. You can bet not just on the outcome, but on how you think the betting will swing over time. If your prediction of people's betting patterns is correct then you can close the bet early and take profit.

For example, here is one of my open bets. The odds have changed slightly since I made my bet. I don't have to wait for the end of the 100 days, I can sell now and take profit. In this example the odds have only moved a small amount, but it illustrates the point.

A summary of the situation so far:

1. Visionary genius and self-made billionaire warns of the potential for a viral pandemic, and that we are not ready. From his 2015 TED Talk (The next outbreak? We're not ready): "If anything kills over 10 million people over the next few decades, it is likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than war"
2. Several years later a viral pandemic hits. We are not ready. Millions die, economies are trashed.

Ignoring the crazed ranting around the periphery*, his key message here is about learning from past events. Ebola was a wake-up call, and governments didn't wake up.
But we can now extend this by adding a third point:

3. Visionary genius and self-made billionaire who warned of the potential for a viral pandemic, and that we were not ready, warns that the effects of climate change will be far worse, and we are not ready. Again, his key message is about learning from past events. His conclusions are stark: "by 2060, climate change could be just as deadly as COVID-19, and by 2100 it could be five times as deadly." "In the next decade or two, the economic damage caused by climate change will likely be as bad as having a COVID-sized pandemic every ten years. And by the end of the century, it will be much worse"

It's one thing dismissing an idealistic Swedish schoolgirl, quite another dismissing the former richest man in the world who warned us of Covid. But still... who, if anyone, thinks that governments will listen this time?


*Bill Gates was the first one who mentioned this! He must have caused it! Conspiracy! He's a secret vaccine overlord! He's trying to depopulate the world! Microchips! Illuminati!

No, there is no longer any talk of reversed grid (my bold above). The main reason that Mercedes objected to the sprint races when they were raised last season was the reverse grid element... but now F1 are saying there will be no reverse grid, and this has meant that Mercedes have now dropped their opposition to sprint races. Just to be clear: reverse grid is not being considered.

I don't think he's injured. It seems like every tournament there's a time when he suffers an 'injury' that's so bad he's on the verge of quitting the whole tournament, but then he generally recovers... often within the same match, and often within a few minutes, with absolutely no ill effects at all. The play acting is ridiculous because it happens so often. He has no need to do this. His skill and talent mean that he is one of the best in the world, there is absolutely no need for him to fake injuries to try to create some sort of psychological advantage over his opponents. I really hope he gets knocked out soon, because it's basically play-acting and it casts tennis in a bad light. And the thing is, one day he will actually be injured, and no-one will believe him. It's classic boy-who-cried-wolf.

His career is littered with evidence of his fake injury claims. We don't have to look any further than this same tournament last year and his miraculous 'injury' recoveries in the semi-final and final. Absurd.

Whatever reasons were given are irrelevant. Beneath it all, this was simply the usual voting along party lines. Predictable and depressing. Not just because Trump's behaviour in this instance was quite extreme and certainly deserved a genuine hearing, but also the wider issue: if this isn't impeachable behaviour, then what is? The answer is: nothing is. You suspect that even if a president (whether Republican or Democrat) goes on a drug-fuelled killing spree and uploads the evidence to youtube, then senators will still vote along party lines. Clear impeachable behaviour to one side is perfect behaviour with no wrongdoing to the other side. And they make their decisions based not on logic, not on evidence, but purely on which party the accused represents. Absurd. Laughable, were it not so tragic. 'Democracy' is of course nothing of the sort, as evidenced by events like this.

I think the teams are broadly supportive now of trying it, yes. AFAIK the plan was to try it in maybe three races in 2021 (or at least there were three where they thought it might be an option). I think the sticking point when it was last raised as a possibility was Mercedes not liking the 'reverse grid' element of it... but now that's been removed and Mercedes are on board.

Could be interesting, and would create more spectator interest than the normal free practice sessions that it would replace. I think there are financial issues still to resolve, e.g. teams more likely to incur expensive damage during a race format than during a practice format, with the increased money on offer not sufficient to cover any but very minor damage.

But the plan I think is just to test it out this year, not have it at all the races.

Here in the UK there is a lot of pressure to re-open schools, too. I don't really understand it. Kids at schools are probably the primary transmission method for this virus. There is always a huge surge in coughs and colds and other airborne viruses when the kids go back to school after the summer break, I'm sure it's the same in other countries. The data—again, here in the UK—make the case for this. There is an extremely strong correlation between schools opening and R increasing, and again between schools closing and R dropping. Here we've had partial lockdowns where schools remain open, and you just don't get the same correlation.

It seems crazy to me that governments are wanting to open schools just when a) cases are falling to a manageable level, b) vaccine rollout is significant and increasing, and will surely soon start to ease case numbers and reduce the spread, and c) we are just coming out of the worst winter months.

It's almost as if governments are saying "we've got this thing on the back foot now, but let's make one final attempt to get the virus circulating and case numbers back up whilst we still can."

And before anyone suggests that governments are trying to increase the spread because it's all some massive conspiracy/Illuminati/5G towers/Bill Gates, etc... No, it's not. Governments have demonstrated time and again that they are incompetent. They can't carry out simple plans even when they are being open about it. The chances of them being able to successfully run an illicit contagion programme and somehow also succeed in keeping it a secret must be so remote as to be almost non-existent.

I've said it before, and this—as you say, foregone conclusion—casts it into sharp focus: two-party politics is a joke. The overriding objective is always always defend your side and attack the other side. This is the prime motivating factor in the decisions they make. Actual representation of legitimate voter interests comes a distant second.


I would say it's unlikely. He has a huge base of support, and any consideration to prosecute him would have to weight the pros against the cons... it could lead to massive civil unrest on a scale we haven't seen before - I mean, look what happened when he lost a fair election, that was enough to provoke a small-scale coup attempt. Plus if he was convicted, how would a former president serve jail time? The logistical difficulties would seem insurmountable. Would there be secret service protection in adjoining cells? And if jail time was ruled out, then it's difficult to see how a fine would affect him, or how house arrest at Mar-a-Lago would be in any sense a punishment.

As with the impeachment, I would say that regardless of whether he is guilty of any crimes, the chance of a prosecution is extremely low.

I've often wondered whether F1 drivers have brains that are just wired differently to normal people, such that they have no sense of danger (or an extremely diminished sense). I'd agree 100% that when not driving F1 cars they can often be found pursuing other dangerous activities - Michael Schumacher's terrible off-piste skiing accident being the most high profile example.

I'm not saying they're reckless, they're not, you have to be tremendously focused and disciplined, and have phenomenal concentration, to be able to drive an F1 car at full speed for a couple of hours without a break. But this utter absence of fear does seem to be a common characteristic.

Maybe it's just a British thing, then. There's another unit of area measurement I'd forgotten... when football pitches just aren't big enough, things are often compared to the size of Wales.
There's even an article about the phenomenon here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46737277

The words came out wrong, and he quickly corrected himself. 'That are being developed' was corrected to 'that are emerging'. Like any political leader around the world, he is interviewed a lot, and sometimes the words just come out wrong. In this particular instance, I'd imagine, again as with any leader at the moment, that he is constantly fielding questions around vaccines, and is constantly referring to vaccines 'that are being developed'.

What's more likely:
A) A simple statement that came out wrong and was quickly corrected, most likely thinking of vaccines  'that are being developed', or
B) He accidentally revealed the sinister truth of a huge conspiracy that involves Canada and perhaps other nations deliberately cooking up a virus and spreading it in order to destroy their own economy and kill their own people.

I'd go with 'A'.

People misspeak all the time. I had a friend who accidentally hurt someone in a football match. They were lying on the ground hurt, and he ran over to them and said 'Are you sorry?'. He didn't mean that he'd hurt them on purpose, he actually got confused between saying 'I'm sorry' and 'Are you okay?'
These things happen.

Okay, I'm willing to amend my "drove well in a single race but failed to win" and upgrade it to: "drove really well in a single race but failed to win".

I do appreciate that he's a good driver, a great potential talent for the future, but put him in a Merc in circumstances like that Turkey race I used as an example, and you can't say he'd win it as Hamilton did. My point is not that Russell is a bad driver, of course he's not, but rather that he's more potential than finished article. All the speculation around the Hamilton contract with people saying they could just bring Russell in as a straight swap, based on one race, was just ridiculous. He did well, yes, very well, yes, but F1 is littered with instances of drivers who've performed exceptionally from time to time, whereas there are very few who demonstrate the combination of talent, racecraft and utter remorseless consistency that make them multiple world champions.

Sorry, but the 'anyone can win in a Mercedes' argument grates a bit. Mercedes have the best car. Does that mean they think: 'oh well, we've got the best car, let's just stick any random driver in, doesn't matter who they are'... or do they think: 'we've got the best car, we can have any driver we want, let's get the best driver'?