Many forum users have invested a lot of time into the forum, so why not turn this time-equity into tradeable commodities? You can now trade forum NFTs (fNFTs):
https://bitcointalk.org/fnft.php

We are using a state-of-the-art blockless-blockchain-database to avoid any annoying fees or wait times. Everything is done using a convenient Web interface. We have also automatically detected how many bitcoins you have to trade with, so no need to worry about deposits or withdrawals.

Features:
 - You automatically get the full set of fNFTs in your own series, from lowest rarity (I) to highest rarity (up to XI). The number of fNFTs in your series depends on your activity. Note that more than one copy of a particular fNFT can exist in the system: they're like trading cards, with rarities.
 - You can get a random fNFT for 50 BTC. A great deal, no? How could you not make money long-term?
 - You can list any of your fNFTs for sale.
 - You can buy fNFTs listed for sale by others.

I've been thinking that these auctions happen unnecessarily frequently, so note that I am changing the way that ad-round and auction durations work:

So your ads will now be up for 29 days instead of ~11 days, and I'm giving more precision about the other times. Future rounds will (according to my current thinking, at least) not always be 29 days long exactly, but will be 30 days plus or minus a few days. The end time for the auction is still arbitrary, but I'm giving a "rough target time": sort of like the center of a probability density function.

Let me know if you have strong feelings one way or another about these changes.

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration/timing

 - Ad slots won in this auction will run from noon April 11 (US Eastern time) to noon May 10. (29 days.)
 - This auction will end sometime between April 6 and April 9, but April 7 is most likely.
 - You must pay within 48 hours of the auction ending. Only Bitcoin is accepted. If you fail to pay in time, your ad slots may be resold, and in cases where I feel that you're acting in bad faith, I may even give you a negative trust rating.
 - You must send me a valid ad (ie. one not breaking any of the styling or other rules) before noon April 10. If you fail to send a valid ad in time, then the ad round will start without you, and you will be "burning time". You can still send an ad after the deadline, and usually this ad will be put up fairly quickly, but no particular timeline is guaranteed after the deadline.
 - If extended downtime or similar issues cause your ad not to be displayed for a long time, we generally give prorated refunds (USD-denominated) for the lost time, but this is not guaranteed.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 2 mBTC.
- The auction ends at an arbitrary time between April 6 and April 9. Times closer to 8:00AM April 7 (US Eastern time) are more likely.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 48 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

---

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
5 4 DogecoinMachine
4 2 lightlord

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 12 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 14 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 2 mBTC.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

---

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).

Note that the minimum increment has been reduced from 5 mBTC to 2 mBTC.

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 12 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 14 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 2 mBTC.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

---

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).

This month 144 users were eligible.

Old:

New:

I've increasingly realized over the years that the limiting factor for any project, and especially for big "dream projects" like this, is time/effort/skill/ambition, not money. I'd be willing to throw money at a realistic project to create a seastead (or a land-based increased-autonomy region), but do I want to spend hundreds of hours working on it? Not really. It's something I'd like to see exist and maybe someday live in, but it's not my passion.

Elwar spent massive amounts of time and money to actually create a seastead, and in the end it was stolen from him and he almost died... I admire the effort he went through the first time, and I admire even more the fact that he's still working on it. But while I wouldn't require nightly cocktails and endless buffets, unlike true pioneers like Elwar, I'd like to at least be pretty confident in the safety and stability of a seastead before I'd consider moving to one. For people like me, I suppose the best thing to do would be to donate to https://www.seasteading.org (accepts BTC!) and wait for the space to mature.

I don't have any special way of verifying this, but if true it's very sad. Tecshare and I had some disagreements, but he was definitely a good person, and we were able to have a constructive relationship despite our disagreements. His feedback influenced a lot of the adjustments to the trust system over the years, for example.

One fairly-recent thing which is maybe not widely-known was that in order to help Elwar escape Thailand, TECSHARE was posting false information about Elwar's activities in order to hopefully lead Thai officials on the wrong track. He did what he could to help someone in need!

Rest in peace.

My explanation was massively simplifying how it works. There's a phase-in and phase-out curve to avoid exactly those incentive problems, it's actually implemented as a refundable credit based on annual income, not as an hourly payment boost, and there are other rules such as disallowing EITC if your unearned income is too high.


I'm much more wary about stuff like that compared to just giving people money, since it increases the size/scope of government bureaucracy, and the #1 objective of bureaucracy always ends up being growing/perpetuating itself. How many times have you heard someone in a government agency saying, "My agency is doing just just fine: no need for more resources or employees or powers. In fact, we could handle a budget cut just fine." ? If welfare programs have to exist, then it's best to do them with the absolute minimum number of government employees possible, even if it might make the overall program somewhat less targeted.

The rule disallows inclusion if any of the following are true:
A minimum wage increase clearly fails #4. The point of the $15 minimum wage is not to save/collect/spend money, but to add a regulation. That the CBO says it'll have knock-on effects which will increase the deficit is clearly incidental.

The majority can always overrule the parlimentarian, so it's not ultimately up to her, though overruling her would be seen as a sort of "nuclear option", so it'd be difficult to get centrist Democrats to go along with it.

---

Minimum wage laws are completely nonsensical. It's banning employers from paying people below a certain rate, but you can equally look at it as banning employees from voluntarily selling their services "too cheaply". You'd also generally expect it to increase unemployment; if your work only produces $10/hr for the company, then there's no way in hell they're going to pay you $15/hr: they're just going to fire you. Only people who are already being paid an amount slightly above or below the new minimum wage have a chance of seeing a small actual raise.

If you want to guarantee that people actually receive a "living wage" and don't just get fired, the proper solution would be to increase/expand the earned income tax credit (EITC). The EITC more-or-less says, "If you make less than $x/hr, then the government will pay the difference between this wage and $x/hr." So instead of increasing the minimum wage to $15/hr, structure the EITC such that everyone is guaranteed to actually make $15/hr from work, no matter what their employer actually pays them. The EITC already exists in the tax code, but it's small and the "EITC minimum wage" weirdly depends heavily on the number of dependents you have:

# of dependents	Current "EITC minimum wage" (rough idea - it's complex)
0	$3.64/hr
1	$6.79/hr
2	$9.96/hr
3	$10.81/hr

I don't actually actively support any sort of welfare like this, but I don't understand why almost all leftists cling to the counterproductive and contentious minimum wage idea instead of the much more reasonable EITC idea. (Changing the EITC involves just changing some numbers in the tax code, so it'd clearly be allowed by reconciliation, as well.)

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 12 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 14 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 5 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 5 mBTC.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

---

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).

korvd's bid is not accepted.

Auction ended, final result:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
1 15 lightlord
3 10 sportsbet.io
3 10 lightlord
2 10 DogecoinMachine

Yeah, the Republican party looks like it'll have a rough 5-10 years. It seems to be splitting into a Trump half and a neocon half, and honestly I'm not sure that either is politically all that viable. If Trump still had 95% approval within the Republican party, I doubt he'd win against Biden in 2024. If everyone including Trump got behind Mitt Romney for 2024, Romney would probably lose even worse than Trump would. Disunited, it's even more hopeless, and they might even lose ground in the House and Senate in 2022 despite the Republicans' structural advantages.

Most politicians actually want to win, and they actually care at least a little bit about beating the opposing party for ideological reasons, so they wouldn't do a lot of what Trump is doing. But Trump just cares about being the center of attention, so he's perfectly happy burning the Republican party to the ground.

A lot can change in 2-4 years, though. Maybe Trump won't be able to regain enough support, or maybe he'll work out a truce with establishment Republicans. (Hell, maybe he'll be in prison due to eg. the NY investigations, or dead/disabled due to old age.) One thing to keep in mind is that Trump's coalition includes a lot of working-class people who were either picked off from the Democrats or were previously non-voters, and Biden's coalition includes a lot of Republicans/ex-Republicans. If you split the country up into three segments of Democrat-leaning, pro-Trump Republican-leaning, and anti-Trump Republican-leaning, it's very possible that the pro-Trump Republican-leaning segment would be a distant third, though the Democrat-leaning segment would probably have a comfortable plurality among the three.

Another thing that's important to realize is that even if the Republican party is crippled by infighting for 10 years (which is very possible), those ex-Republicans will now be Democrats. This means that they will eventually change the Democratic party to bring it closer to the ideology of the Republican defectors. It's not as if the Democrats have won the game now, and so now they have free reign to roll out eg. AOC's vision of the country. We're seeing the coalitions shift, not the final conclusion of the game where one side wins it all. (It's interesting to compare my thoughts on shifting coalitions from a year ago to what's actually happening.)

Although I've tended to prefer the Republican party in the past, unfortunately the result of the Democrats partially absorbing the Republicans will probably be a worse Democratic party from my perspective, with the Democrats taking the worst aspects of the Republican party. The median between Joe Biden and Mitt Romney is worse than either Obama or Trump IMO.

ideaology's bids will not be accepted.

Current auction status:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
3 10 sportsbet.io
1 5 Bitcoin Gambling
5 5 DogecoinMachine

The auction continues.

They voted to acquit. 7 Republicans flipped, which is surprisingly high IMO; I'd expected it to stay at the 5 who voted to table Rand Paul's motion from a while ago. It's especially odd that Richard Burr voted to convict when he previously voted that the whole thing was unconstitutional. With such a high number, maybe there's some small chance that they could bar Trump from running again via Kaine's censure resolution, though I doubt it.

I don't think that this will have much political effect compared to just not having a trial at all. Maybe if the Democrats had not freaked out about every little thing that Trump did, people would take them more seriously here, and would be less forgiving of the Republicans who voted to acquit. I find myself more-or-less agreeing with many of the House managers' arguments in this case, but they've been baselessly using the same language for years, such as in the last impeachment. All politicians lie so constantly that everyone just rolls their eyes when they speak unless they already agree, so any attempt at real argument is wasted.

If I were a senator looking at this as an impartial juror:

Trump's conduct was definitely not criminal incitement. He didn't tell his supporters to go break into the capitol, and he was careful to always use words like "peaceful". The specific language he used covered his ass enough to avoid criminal incitement, and a private citizen could definitely have used the same language and be protected by the first amendment. Impeachment is another matter, though, and maybe there's also some separate "abuse of office" civil/criminal law which could be used against him.

Trump's conduct was really beyond the pale for a president. He was clearly spreading misinformation and ginning up his supporters in a dangerous way which any idiot could've seen would lead to this sort of outcome. I don't think that he had some sort of premeditated coup in mind, but I think that he was rather happy with the riot, at least initially, and it's quite possible that when he was making his speeches and spreading his misinformation, he was hoping that his supporters would burn down everything and somehow manage to keep him in office, even if he wasn't actually explicitly planning what would happen. It was a months-long childish outburst based on narcissism, not a real, rational plan to stay in office. "If this sort of reckless disregard for his office and the country isn't impeachable, what is?" is a compelling argument IMO.

The best arguments I've heard against impeachment come from this line in the Constitution:
First, Donald Trump is neither President, Vice President, nor a Civil Officer of the US. However, that sentence in the Constitution is in Article II, whereas a lot of the other stuff about impeachment is some distance away in Article I, such as the now-famous sentence, "Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States." Because these things are in completely different sections of the Constitution, it seems to me that the Senate has the power to impeach someone and disqualify them from office in a context disconnected from Article II. And in fact when the Senate has impeached judges, they are dealing with an Article III official, and that Article II excerpt doesn't apply at all. So I think that it's constitutional to impeach a former President, or anyone in fact.

Second, "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" in that first Constitution excerpt above is meant to be read in context as "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors on the same sort of level as Treason or Bribery, which we mentioned explicitly." The Framers explicitly did not want Presidents impeached for "mal-administration". So I think that the argument really comes down to whether you think that Trump's extremely irresponsible conduct reaches about the same level as treason or bribery, in which case he can be impeached, or whether you think that it's more a case of him being a really terrible President, in which case impeachment is not constitutionally appropriate.

It's a close one, but I think I'd vote to impeach if I was in the mindset of being an impartial juror. The level of recklessness and selfishness brings it roughly to the level of bribery IMO, and not merely a type of "mal-administration". (If I were actually a senator, I wouldn't look at it as an impartial juror, though. I'd be making utilitarian calculations, and it's difficult to say what I'd do, especially since I would never agree to be a senator in the first place, or ever be elected if I ran.)

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 12 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 14 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 5 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 5 mBTC.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

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[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).