Here is an interesting piece on inflation published back in 2011.


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A debate could be had over where current day inflation would legitimately be tallied. Governments around the world normally sugar coat and polish statistics to paint a prettier picture of current events.

The real question is: do people want inflation and supply chain disruptions to improve. Enough to be informed and support the right steps necessary to fix them. Delegating the decision making process to complete strangers can sometimes be a forfeiture of all decisions affecting ones future.

Residents fleeing california and new york for texas and florida has been a trend for awhile now.


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Texas passing laws against abortion. May have been intended to deter residents immigrating into the state. Negative news trends involving florida could also serve a similar goal. To deter those who support policies which led to the destruction of california and new york from negatively influencing the region.

If they demand 64% taxes, they need better transparency, better accountability and better management of tax revenues. I think its fair to say most americans are not happy with the current status quo.

 If I make future threads, I'll try to include odds.

Usually, I avoid looking at odds when making picks. Conflict of interest.

Odds and potential profit influence decision making, usually for the worse. The most profitable format is to delete odds and profit from the equation, to prevent emotions and greed from clouding judgement.

In practice the way this works is...  If one bet profits $50 and another $100. People naturally gravitate towards what they view as bigger money, even if its a bad play. This is the most difficult part of gambling IMO.

The most obvious solution is to create a stablecoin designed to cater to the needs of retailers. Which can easily, affordably and conveniently be pegged to the dollar and held to mitigate volatility. Retailers can exchange their bitcoin and crypto for the stablecoin seamlessly as the transaction occurs. To prevent volatility from having an impact.

I'm very surprised someone hasn't already done it.

If I remember right, portugal and spain have had success decriminalizing drugs. There is documented real world application for that policy being effective.

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Sorry the above link is paywalled. There are still many good sources of information with keyword search: portugal, spain, drug decriminalization.

One of the big issues with substance abuse is the lack of good information relating to it.

Meth amphetamines could be a leading cause of erectile dysfunction & male impotence. There are x-ray scans of long term meth abusers brains, which show they have lost approximately 30% of their functional brain matter as a result of the corrosive affects of meth. I think that's the type of information people need if they're to make good decisions on drug abuse.

There are many inaccurate perspectives in public circulation. Many say its only possible to become addicted if someone has a weak will or a weak spirit. Untrue. Drugs tap into the part of the brain that tell the body it needs to eat and breathe. Quitting drugs can be like resisting the natural urge to eat / breathe. Which is part of what makes it so hard to overcome. For some its just a part of their natural environment and lifestyle. Its hard to escape unless their environment and social circle shifts.

Its very common for people to post picks and plays ahead of time on a gambling forum.

If someone can predict 80% of games, and still have a losing record.

It might be fair to say, their approach is flawed on a fundamental level.

Most correlate high accuracy with low betting odds. But some of the winning teams I picked were betting underdogs.





There are definitely underdogs in my picks.

In week 6, I had the underdog raiders winning over the betting favorite broncos.

I also had the underdog chargers beating the ravens, which turned out to be incorrect.

Like I said I'm a beginner as far as NFL goes, so I won't be posting specific plays. But I'll try to be more detailed on things for sake of discussion / fun.

"Conditions of degeneration in the organic world are approximately known. These conditions are often of two distinct kinds, deprivation of food, light, etc. so leading to imperfect nutrition and enervation; the other, a life of repose, with abundant supply of food and decreased exposure to the dangers of the environment. It is noteworthy that while the former only depresses, or at most distinguishes the specific type, the latter, through the disuse of the nervous and other structures etc. which such a simplification of life involves, brings about that far more insidious and through degeneration seen in the life history of myriads of parasites."

-Patrick Geddes

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Always loved this quotation as an outline for defining societal trends.

There are many examples in biology and nature to support this. Domesticated pigs develop differently from wild feral pigs. The degree to which the environment, threats and perceived dangers can affect human development could easily be under recognized. As could negative developmental trends associated with a perceived lack of danger / threat.

To some degree this could be defined by storytelling within a "whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" paradigm. Bruce Wayne being exposed to trauma at a young age may be partially credited with him developing into Batman. The world is always changing and people are changing with it in an effort to adapt to shifting circumstances.

If there's anything that defines a parasitic existence, it could be remaining static and unchanging under a guise of there being no threat or danger to necessitate change.

A case could be made for bitcoin currently being the #1 inflation protected asset, in the world.

Gold as an inflation protected asset, is more of a boomer trend. Gold can't be exchanged for other assets as conveniently or easily as cryptocurrencies. Gold can't be stored, transported or secured as easily as crypto. BTC may have displaced precious metals as the reigning king of inflation protection.

In this era of inflation concern. Bitcoin's rising value could represent financial institutions, hedge funds, banks and whales around the world voting with their wallets that bitcoin is the best place to store wealth to protect it from rising inflation. It might require that high institutional volume and liquidity to offset bitcoin's historical 4 year boom and bust cycles.

It all comes down to "right to repair". Open source software vs proprietary closed source code. DMCA allowances for reverse engineering software and technology for credible purposes. The degree to which markets are centralized, consolidated and monopolized to influence quality control. And similar topics.

Its easy to say automobiles should be repairable by customers, for purely ideological reasons related to a "circular economy" (would sustainable economy or a right to repair economy be more suitable terms perhaps?). Until one realizes special OBDII computer hardware is often necessary to run diagnostics on modern cars and trucks. Without which, the average person could not interface with electronics to troubleshoot issues.

Farmers have recently had issues with tractors being difficult to repair. Modern manufacturers often place obstructions to their products being field maintainable or repairable.

If consumers support right to repair trends, they may need to do a better job being informed and voting with their wallets. Or negative trends could easily become normalized due to lack of resistance.

I wouldn't bet on the 1st game of a season.

Better to wait until more data and trends can be observed before making calls.

Draft info and last year's stats only get you so far.

The better play IMO is to pick a team to win the championship before the 1st game of the season. There's no advantage to betting on the 1st game. But there is a big boost in odds to pick the championship winner in the same timeframe.

Broncos < Browns
Washington < Packers
Chiefs < Titans
Falcons > Dolphins
Jets < Patriots
Panthers > Giants
Bengals < Ravens
Eagles < Raiders
Lions < Rams
Texans < Cardinals
Bears < Buccaneers
Colts < 49ers
Saints > Seahawks

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Week 5 Predictions:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5364091.msg58108452#msg58108452

12 predictions correct, 4 incorrect:  75% accuracy

Week 6 Predictions:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5365205.msg58158634#msg58158634

10 predictions correct, 4 incorrect:  71.4% accuracy


Overall record:  22 - 8.


Average accuracy after 2 weeks:  73.2%.

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Considering the active number of posters in this section, I thought these threads would receive more replies.

Are most in europe or asia where soccer is the go to sport for gambling?

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Reminder: I'm not a pro at picking winners in NFL.

I only consider myself a beginner.  




The only sport I might be considered pro at picking winners is mixed martial arts.

I get the impression, pressure was put on Mark Zuckenberg and facebook over the last 2 years to abandon the libra coin (diem -- carpe diem?) project. Have to give them credit for not folding under pressure.

There was a news story circulating a few years back about facebook data mining user meta data for profit. Normally I might expect that to reduce consumer confidence in facebook as a platform provider of financial payment options. Considering the recent popularity (?) of china's social credit surveillance system, perhaps such is no longer the case?

Facebook apps and games haven't been mainstream in quite awhile. (Does anyone remember how popular farmville was back in the day?) One natural progression to expect here, could be a facebook merger between their app and gaming sectors with their planned cryptocurrency unveiling. Whether ones opinion of facebook is good or bad. That could be a benefit to helping bitcoin increase mainstream adoption. And that would be my main reason for supporting it.

I laughed when Vettori vs Costa was announced as the main event.

Costa blamed a bottle of wine for his loss to Adesanya. Vettori refuses to acknowledge both losses to Adesanya. Their reaction to losing are similar enough they could be MMA twins.   

Interested to see Jessica Rose Clark fight. She seems to be improving her kickboxing. It will be cool to see how far she has come.

Alex Caceres came to the UFC from florida's street fighting circuit with Kimbo Slice and Jorge Masvidal. Its too bad Caceres couldn't make more of his career in the UFC. He's always had good potential but never been able to fully realize it.

I like Laureano Staropoli's kickboxing technique and stance switching. That's another name who started out strong in the UFC and underperformed IMO. The same may also be said of Khama "Deathstar" Worthy.

Francisco "Massarunduba" Trinaldo is 43 years old. Its crazy how some of these guys continue to compete longer than anyone thought possible.

Grant Dawson is 17-1. A really good record for MMA. Wonder if he can hang on to it.

Week 6 Results

10 calls correct. 4 incorrect. 10 predictions correct out of 14 games = 71.4% accuracy.

Accuracy over the NFL 2021 season, weeks 5 and 6 is: 73.2%.

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Observing more NFL games than normal, gave me a few ideas for angles to work in future wagers.

At the moment, american football is a sad state of affairs with many serious injuries. Its becoming ridiculous to see boatloads of players be carted away in almost every game.

There have been a few recent games, where a quarterback or key player on teams were injured and it became very likely they wouldn't win the game or even score many points. Which made betting the under points total a good option.

Equality is a strange thing.

Those who don't want to work. Who take no risks, make little effort to educate themselves or develop specialized skillsets. Feel they deserve to enjoy the wealth and prosperity which comes from working hard, taking risks and becoming wealthy as a result. They wish to create a society where there are no winners or losers in society. Everyone receives a participation trophy. No matter if they worked hard. Or didn't work at all. No matter if they made good decisions or bad decisions.

One narrative behind abolishing meritocracy. Punishing winners and billionaires. Is to create a society where laziness, ignorance, immorality and bad decision making are rewarded. It could represent a regressive trend.

Certainly the world has never been perfect. Wealth and wage inequality are at all time negative trends. I think what most fail to realize is, there is an underlying blueprint and design to it all. Wealth and wage equality have been systematically targeted and destroyed. In the way a silent war has been waged against the middle class in an effort to erect something vaguely resembling the beginnings of a caste system.

It could take people years to recognize and acknowledge even the most basic and fundamental aspects of current events. The learning curve is against us and against progress in general.

In past years, I've had gambling runs where I've gone 27 and 4.

Having success at gambling gave me confidence. Wanting to have success at gambling, gave me incentive to be more disciplined and honest with myself on whether greed or calculated risk was the motive behind one wager or another. It helped me to cope with winning and losing. To where, I'm more confident and not as afraid to take risks.

Its very popular at the moment, to push agenda wars against gambling and porn. Under a guise of those things being 100% evil and 0% good. For me personally, gambling has been a win/win scenario.

Stocks, bonds, FOREX, ETFs, mutual funds, precious metals. All of these markets carry risks. Gambling is no different. Learning to mitigate risk and grinding to level up experience is a great life skill to have in this area. Its not for everyone but for those whose talents and skills lie along that path. Its a good experience to have.

My take on the P2E (play to earn) blockchain cryptocurrency based game genre.

There is a small minority of P2E games that are legitimately well designed, developed and implemented. Which could succeed as standalone games without blockchain or crypto support. They compliment their existing platform by offering support for open item marketplaces, NFTs, airdrops, and inhouse crypto tokens. Which when done properly can add tremendous value.

The overwhelming majority of P2E games however are blatant cash grabs. Copypasta, autogaming, generic clones of existing games with a small twist to gameplay and different art.

Some of the P2E games with upfront costs (to initially offset player earnings) are legit.

With P2E and blockchain games, what seems to matter most is finding walkthroughs and examples of gameplay on youtube, before spending a dime.

According to news articles from credible sources published in 2021. Billions in COVID relief was lost to fraud.


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Its impossible to address this. Most don't follow current events closely enough to be aware things like this happen.

Once the funds have been misallocated, there usually isn't a method to retrieve them or have them returned.

Fraudsters typically reside in countries which do not extradite criminals to the USA to be prosecuted.

Long story short, it is very hard to address this.

The next recession will be caused by apathy, indifference and people generally not caring about things that are important.

Our culture encourages people to not care about oil prices, inflation, taxes, job markets, the deficit, economy. Under the premise that not caring about these things improves our quality of life.

In reality, not caring about things is a self destructive trend. Perhaps a main cause behind circumstances deteriorating as far as they have over the past 50 years.

If events like recessions are to be avoided, people have to start caring about things.

Some make a conscious effort to separate business and pleasure. Separate money from their personal dealings and daily life. It could be an old school thing. There's a scene in The Godfather where temporary head Sonny discusses business at the dinner table. Some of the family remarks The Godfather never discussed money or business at the dinner table.

In my US state, anything goes. There are none of those formalities involving money, investment and finance.

Its not hard to see why credible businessman might trend towards avoiding discussion of money in their personal life. Those most enthusiastic and loud with money talk, are usually those who know the least about business and finance. Those who lack money and make poor financial and investment decisions the ones who complain the loudest about money, and talk about money, the most. Its not hard to see how that would become unfashionable and bad manners. Incentive behind people trying to separate themselves from those who act that way.