Mayor Pete is the best overall option IMO, but he will not win. Joe Biden is going to win, but has absolutely no chance at beating Trump (He's a creepy old man with dinosaur politics. Ex- not wanting to legalize marijuana which would be an obviously powerful tool for him to use).
I agree about pete, he would be the most difficult for Trump to attack. What's he going to do, call him a homo? Petes biggest hurdle is that Black people don't like him. Pete with an Obama endorsement and Booker or Kamala as VP would be very solid - but not much of a chance of that happening unless Biden drops out for some reason. Promising future for 2024 or later though, unless he fucks up in the next few months. This isn't mean to sound rude or anything along those lines, but I don't think that the country is ready yet to elect a gay person. I've heard of some polls in some podcast that I listen to that were saying that most black men aren't ready to even support a black women for president, let alone a gay guy. Pete has no real values imo. His campaign will not last too long, but how long will HIGHLY depend on how he does in Iowa, NH. If he had good policies no one would care how much he likes wieners. This identity politics crap is trash. It is not about being a woman, black, or gay, it is because they are shit candidates. Sadly you are mistaken. For example, Pete will get 0 votes from Christian evangelicals and many other religious people won't vote for him simply because he's gay. I think the country is progressive enough that he could overcome it, but it's possible squatz is right. I think this is a pretty big issue for a good deal of voting groups, and I think it's fair to say that conservative / religious groups are one of those groups of people. But at the end of the day I think the best thing to look at is the polls here - https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/30/pete-buttigieg-gay-president-poll-061350 |
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Mayor Pete is the best overall option IMO, but he will not win. Joe Biden is going to win, but has absolutely no chance at beating Trump (He's a creepy old man with dinosaur politics. Ex- not wanting to legalize marijuana which would be an obviously powerful tool for him to use).
I agree about pete, he would be the most difficult for Trump to attack. What's he going to do, call him a homo? Petes biggest hurdle is that Black people don't like him. Pete with an Obama endorsement and Booker or Kamala as VP would be very solid - but not much of a chance of that happening unless Biden drops out for some reason. Promising future for 2024 or later though, unless he fucks up in the next few months. This isn't mean to sound rude or anything along those lines, but I don't think that the country is ready yet to elect a gay person. I've heard of some polls in some podcast that I listen to that were saying that most black men aren't ready to even support a black women for president, let alone a gay guy. Pete has no real values imo. His campaign will not last too long, but how long will HIGHLY depend on how he does in Iowa, NH. |
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1. Administer entrance exams to each school and each program. Accept only the top 100 students per program. Offer full scholarships to the top 10 students in each program.
2. Eliminate non-academic scholarships.
3. Eliminate all other bullshit/noise: recommendation letters, volunteer work letters, high-school averages, essays, participation in sports and other hobbies, racial and social profiles, etc.
Good ideas. All leaning towards what American Post-Grad school is like today. Eh -- I do think there is immense value in a school seeing your essay (just in a different way then it is done now) and participating in sports / other hobbies as it does show what kinds of interests you have. Volunteering would fit into the same sort of thing. It would also make sense for colleges to have the school verify that all of these are actually being done -- you wouldn't want someone saying on their application that they're the president of all these different clubs without actually doing such and only being admitted to a college because he got the leg up from these. Add an essay section on the entrance exam if you want to test one's writing skills. Asking applicants for an essay just adds one more expense for the parents. Most undergrad applicants have prepping companies preparing their applications. So if you ask for an essay, parents will just spend more money to get a professional essay prepared for their precious ones. Real-time, in-person testing is the only way to go. Include an oral exam to test speaking skills if your program requires it. Properly designed entrance exams (that very few applicants can complete in time) will allow you to select the best of the best. That way the university resources will be used for their intended purpose. PS. SATs are a joke. It is like checking if someone has a pulse. The SAT / Act does have a writing section, it's just not about you and most colleges don't really require it because they have their own writing sections. I'd rather have the common app or someone along those lines administer essays for you college, though the prompt would change often and there wouldn't be much guidance. Becuase the current system just promoted people using tutors to help write things. SAT/ACT is just learning how to take a test like anything else. A few thousand dollars in tutors could easily help ya out there, that's how the upper middle class / rich kids do it. |
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1. Administer entrance exams to each school and each program. Accept only the top 100 students per program. Offer full scholarships to the top 10 students in each program.
2. Eliminate non-academic scholarships.
3. Eliminate all other bullshit/noise: recommendation letters, volunteer work letters, high-school averages, essays, participation in sports and other hobbies, racial and social profiles, etc.
Good ideas. All leaning towards what American Post-Grad school is like today. Eh -- I do think there is immense value in a school seeing your essay (just in a different way then it is done now) and participating in sports / other hobbies as it does show what kinds of interests you have. Volunteering would fit into the same sort of thing. It would also make sense for colleges to have the school verify that all of these are actually being done -- you wouldn't want someone saying on their application that they're the president of all these different clubs without actually doing such and only being admitted to a college because he got the leg up from these. |
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How can anyone state this while providing intelligent examples of why they believe this to be true? I would love to hear them...
I think the answer is simple - Trump has managed to convince people to give him blind, unconditional loyalty. They will attack whoever attacks him or whoever he signals for them to attack. Doesn't matter why or who. They will agree with and defend whatever he says, even when he contradicts himself. And they will always pick Trump on a "who do you think is better" poll. The other options are irrelevant. Of course, these people aren't really Republicans. They are part of the Trump party and Trump just happened to run as a Republican. I think we have to remember that the Republican party is now the party of Trump. People within the party know that if they dont give him loyalty, they're going to be forced out of power one way or another. I use this example a lot on the boards, but if you are to look at Matt Gaetz -- the only reason he is relevant is because of Trumps endorsement and he knows that. He lost to a politically connected guy who wasn't trusted by Trump enough. There's also the fact that most people don't know about Lincoln or history anyway. But that's another story. |
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Hopefully they don't figure out the vapers are killing themselves faster than the smokers, that would suck. I'd still want to know though.
supposedly, the amount of nicotine you ingest can be higher when using vapes. And nicotine isn't so healthy even without all the other toxic substances you're exposed to through smoking. But if you can get some assurance that certain producers of nicotine solutions for vaping are at a given (low) concentration, you could probably get what's actually promoted with vaping, instead of swapping low nicotine product for a high nicotine product.
The whole thing seems a little ridiculous to me overall. Smoking is that embodiment of "I just don't give a fuck, watch me prove it by inhaling addictive toxic smoke". Vaping is saying "I'm an addict, and I don't have the willpower to give up, and don't get that it looks a bit desperate" Smoke or give up. Anything in between comes across as psychological weakness. Either you give zero fucks and can control yourself and your will, or you can't. Yes, anything you ingest while smoking isn't going to be healthy. Obviously nicotine is bad for you. But is nicotine as bad for you as all the tars and all that horrible shit in that are in cigarettes? No. It's not. Vaping for people that have cigarettes right now is a way to either ease off of cigarettes or to at least get a healthier way of ingesting nicotine. I don't understand the hatred towards vapes when people are literally dying every year because of cigarettes. |
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Are you guys saying the federal government makes private lenders offer loans without any sort of discrimination? I was always under the impression that when it came to loans they (the private companies) could pick and choose however they liked.
(Hey Squatz you just got your legendary)
Yep, just got it earlier today. Very excited about that. But I'm unsure of if private lenders are forced into not discriminating. Though I don't think they do discriminate based on the degree or anything along those lines because people can't discharge the loans anyway. Which is because the US government wants more and more people to go to college because (even if you pick some random degree) statistically it gives people the best shot at success compared to just going to high school. Obviously, there's an argument here for people to go to trade school, and I do agree with that, though I'm going to be leaving that one out of this conversation. |
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Thanks for the catch, and I have edited it to include it. I hope that you do trust the fact that this was a legitimate oversight.
I am not interested in ruining anyone's income or ability to post here, especially for a single possible mistake. I also am not interested in judging others, and am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. But back onto the point here:
Oh yes, the biggest issue with college in general is that the government has the faucet open to give money to everyone and then people are going and getting random degrees like underwater basket-weaving and getting nothing out of it and then having the audacity to say that the colleges are the problem or that the government isn't doing enough.
It is not just the government that does this, private lenders also lend without regard to the value of the degrees they are financing. This is largely because of special rules (written into law) regarding collecting defaulted student debt makes it difficult to ever 'get rid' of student debt, and private lenders not even asking about the type of program students are enrolled in. I am not sure if lenders are prohibited from asking about this, but I think it would probably be a safe bet that they are. I appreciate extending the benefit of the doubt. Would never compromise my standing here for one post. But: I do understand the special regulations when it comes to this sort of loan though. Because without these built in discharge protections, there is no way that lenders would ever lend to people that have no income yet, no assets, and no ability to prove that they will have income. You're a college kid going to school, getting a loan for the entire cost of school is a massive benefit that is extended to you because it is backed by the US government and you cant discharge it. This isn't like any other loan, if you were to stop paying the bank can't just take your degree and say -- you're clear. The paper is not worth anything. This isn't like a car loan / house mortgage where the bank can seize the asset to pay off what is owed. That's why these special protections are built in. End federal subsidies and loans. For every dollar a school accepts of federal funds they are required to maintain a certain percentage of private funding. Since a very big portion of this funding ends up coming from federal sources, the end result is they are constantly required to jack up tuition prices to meet the minimal private funding level. Once this is changed so many other issues will begin solving themselves.
Too many people who don't belong in college are burning vast resources to get degrees in underwater lesbian basket weaving and then doing nothing with the degree and ending up in massive debt. The current educational system is one big lesson in inflation.
I really don't think the federal loan program is that big of a factor, and isn't it a profitable program overall anyway? The loans aren't that big, and even if the student gets buried in private loans they can't make payments on the government loans will still get paid. I think the max an undergrad student can get in subsidized loans is $5k a year for 4 years and they have to be enrolled as a full time student. If the kid ends up making even 10% more over the period of an average life with an average income, that's a great return when you add up all the extra income tax. The government plays a role in all the loans though, even disregarding the 5k given out. They've ensured that all people are allowed to get loans, regardless of assets, income, and so on and so forth. The only thing that the people must agree to to get this loan is that there is no way to discharge this loan. And not being able to discharge this loan makes sense. As I said up above, discharging other loans can come with the ability of the bank to seize assets. A loan for school, with value that we determine to be knowledge, isn't something that can be seized and sold off to ensure that the lender isn't hurt. |
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Not yet dude,
You still have a long ride, according to your earned merits in the last 120 days. I think you will not reach Hero Member before 2020, you should earn 60-70 merits each month before 2019 was ended. Since your activity merits earned in the last 120 days was really small, that's why i said its kinda hard for you to reach hero member before 2020.
I've kinda shaken this up  That's all the smerits I can give to ya for the month, you'll without a doubt get to it by 2020. <3 |
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I think Melissa Korn would agree with a lot of this 
The underlying root cause problem with college is the government is willing to subsidize the cost of college for all students, regardless of their ability to repay, or the value of the program they are taking, in nearly unlimited amounts. This leads to tuition becoming inelastic, and colleges rising tuition at much higher rates than what a free market would support. It also results in colleges hiring a bunch of 6 and 7 figure salary administrators who do nearly nothing, and facilitate the indoctrination of far left ideology within campus. This also gives colleges little incentive to grow their capacity for a larger student body because they are already overwhelmed with money simply by rising tuitions. A lot of yours Melissa's suggestions would create regulations and give everyone less information when making a decisions as to which students to accept, and which schools to go to. I would rather both be better informed. Another problem with colleges is the number of worthless degree programs they offer. If colleges were to offer only degree programs with actual value in the workplace, students who were not interested in 'real' degrees would not apply to college, and this would also eliminate the 'degree inflation' that results in employers requiring degrees when the work does not require any skills learned in college. Firstly: I was under the impression that I had posted this at the bottom. I'm not one to steal someone elses work and this was a legitimate mistake by myself to forget to put it at the bottom. If you are to look at my other posts that go into this much of detail, I do post the WSJ article at the bottom. Thanks for the catch, and I have edited it to include it. I hope that you do trust the fact that this was a legitimate oversight. But back onto the point here: Oh yes, the biggest issue with college in general is that the government has the faucet open to give money to everyone and then people are going and getting random degrees like underwater basket-weaving and getting nothing out of it and then having the audacity to say that the colleges are the problem or that the government isn't doing enough. |
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POSTING AGAIN QUICKLY BUT WE'VE DONE IT FOLKS
1000 MERIT GANG
LEGENDARY GANG
THANK YOU SO MUCH TO ALL FOR GETTING ME HERE, I TRULY APPRECIATE IT.
I LOVE YOU ALL AND I WILL NEVER NEVER NEVER STOP POSTING IN THE SECTION THAT I LOVE.
EDIT:
I'd like to say that I will be using my merit from here on out to reward people that are close to moving up (within the confines of the 50 merit per month) Obviously only going to award people the move up if they're a quality poster and all that, but yeah.
Thanks so much again!
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I appreciate the love from everyone here, about 4 merits away from moving up. Thank you so much to all for supporting me during this. I'll continue to grind out amazing posts for this forum. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 squatz1, I challenge you to a race to 1000 merits(though I know it's unfair as I'm ahead by like 40). Best of luck! 😈😈
Congrats on the win boss, I've dropped you 10 merits to celebrate. You can only send 50 merit to a given user per 30 days. Welp, I'm sure someone else can get you the remaining 4 merits. I may have accidentally handed the victory to mjglqw, sorry about that. Nevertheless, it's a great achievement considering how polarizing P&S is and it's not exactly brimming with merits. I appreciate all the love Suchmoon, it truly does mean a lot to me. ouch on giving the loss to mjglqw, but it was all in good fun anyway! |
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I know that we talk about this so much on here, so I'd love to talk about some concrete ways to fix the college admissions process. This is a process which leads to so many issues and is typically plagued by a lack of transparency and corruption. So here's my list: 1. Eliminate Rankings
Most colleges tout that they're the #1 in Forbes for this, or the #5 in US News Rankings for that and so on and so forth. But at the end of the day these rankings are just algorithms parsing through the hundreds of thousands of schools in the US. There's no reason that someone should rely on an atrbitrarily list like this to pick a college. There's also the issue that schools self report a good deal of information to these ranking sites, meaning that a new school is typically outed every year for inflating the reported numbers to the schools. 2. End Preferential Treatment for Legacy Applications
This isn't a problem in most schools, but in the IVY leagues -- you have a much better chance of being accepted to a school if your parent(s) were to have went their. Most schools say that they do this because it helps them with fundraising and alumni donations, but all this is a corrupt and nepotism filled way of not getting the most qualified person into the school. There's nothing that the government should do to end this, but people should be aware that schools are doing this. 3. End Recommendation Letters
Recommendation letters are stupid. I highly doubt that any college is going to pit you against another student and the last thing that they're going to try to see who has the leg up is a recommendation letter for a second. Think about how stupid that is: You've gotten someone that you know is willing to write a good letter about you write one, and that's the last mechanism as to see whos the better student? That's simply not the case, these letters are without a doubt not even read and are useless in the process. Eliminate and let guidance counselors spend more time doing other things. 4. DRASTICALLY CHANGE THE ESSAY
In most schools, your college essay is going to be read by a good deal of people before it goes in front of the college admissions committee. You're going to send it to your English teacher, then a friend, then one of your parents friends, then back to your English teacher, and so on and so forth. Maybe if you're wealthy enough you're going to hire a tutor to write it or edit the essay for you as well. The best way to change this process is to force students to have a set amount of time to write their essay. This isn't going to eliminate coaching and things along those lines, but it limits the amount of abuse and gets closer to hearing the students voice in an essay. 5. Maybe get rid of the ACT/SAT -- CONTROVERSIAL
This is a tough one, and I truly cant wait to see what the people think about this. But I do think that the ACT/SAT isn't a true measure of a persons intelligence, but it might be the best way to measure it and to standardize the process. So I'm unaware of what to fully do with this one. I think that the people that do best on these tests are going to be people from upper class families who have the resources to get tutors and really prepare for the tests. Maybe these students are smarter, yes, but I don't think its fair to pit someone against someone else due to the $$$$ invested in tutors when that knowledge is just going to fly away once the test is done. 6. For Certain Schools Use a Lottery System -- CONTROVERSIAL
So in a good deal of very good schools, there's an issue where theres so many 'perfect' applicants applying that there simply isn't enough spots in the university to fill them. I'm going to go back to Harvard here. They've stated that they have double the amount of applicants with 'perfect' scores then the amount of spots that they need to fill. I think a way to save time and money on this process is to have admission counselors go through their first or second round of looking at applicants past their scores and then using a lottery to pick the rest. 7. Alter the Tuition System
No one is paying the 'sticker price' for schools these days. So why do schools still advertise this price and then scare away potential students from even applying? We don't know. Schools should post the price that most people are going to be paying and then go from their. --------------------------- Obviously a good deal of these may be controversial, though I do want to see what people think on the matter. Self mod because, yeah. I typically don't delete things, but we'll see how this goes. EDIT: I THOUGHT I PUT THIS IN INITIALLY, BUT THESE POINTS ARE FROM - https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-fix-college-admissions-11575042980?mod=hp_featst_pos1 - Thanks for the catch. |
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So yeah, he not only gave the talk but had been formulating plans to facilitate the exchange of crypto between NK and other nations while knowing that this would violate international and US sanctions.
Guy is going to be in a lot of trouble.
Could he really be so smart that North Korea couldn't figure out whatever it is his talk was about on their own? Maybe that doesn't matter I guess, and it's just the principle. Wonder if any North Korean programmers browse BitcoinTalk to look for new ways to launder money and scam crypto for their Dear Leader. It seems like it was a bit more intricate then that. Seems like they wanted custom coding done for smart contracts and things along those lines to further mask the fact that this was NK attempting to launder money. It does make sense that this has to be more intricate then buying btc on an exchange and then using chipmixer, because we all know that the US government probably pays a large deal of money for chainanalysis. Would probably even pay off Chipmixer (or any mixer) to crack whos coins are whos. |
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I'm going to assume that he also was paid for the talks and had been working directly or indirectly with the North Korean government. Obviously a clear breach of international and US sanctions. Here's a little bit more into it, from one of the sources you've provided. Pursuant to the IEEPA and Executive Order 13466, United States Persons are prohibited from exporting any goods, services, or technology to the DPRK without a license from Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”).
In or about April 2019, GRIFFITH traveled to the DPRK to attend and present at the “Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference” (the “DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference”). Despite that the U.S. Department of State had denied GRIFFITH permission to travel to the DPRK, GRIFFITH presented at the DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference, knowing that doing so violated sanctions against the DPRK. At no time did GRIFFITH obtain permission from OFAC to provide goods, services, or technology to the DPRK.
At the DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference, GRIFFITH and other attendees discussed how the DPRK could use blockchain and cryptocurrency technology to launder money and evade sanctions. GRIFFITH’s presentation at the DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference had been approved by DPRK officials and focused on, among other things, how blockchain technology, including a “smart contract,” could be used to benefit the DPRK. GRIFFITH identified several DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference attendees who appeared to work for the North Korean government, and who, during his presentation, asked GRIFFITH specific questions about blockchain and cryptocurrency and prompted discussions on technical aspects of those technologies.
After the DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference, GRIFFITH began formulating plans to facilitate the exchange of cryptocurrency between the DPRK and South Korea, despite knowing that assisting with such an exchange would violate sanctions against the DPRK. GRIFFITH also encouraged other U.S. citizens to travel to North Korea, including to attend the same DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference the following year. Finally, GRIFFITH announced his intention to renounce his U.S. citizenship and began researching how to purchase citizenship from other countries. So yeah, he not only gave the talk but had been formulating plans to facilitate the exchange of crypto between NK and other nations while knowing that this would violate international and US sanctions. Guy is going to be in a lot of trouble. |
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squatz1, I challenge you to a race to 1000 merits(though I know it's unfair as I'm ahead by like 40). Best of luck! 😈😈
Sounds fun -- I'm without a doubt going to try to get some BIG P&S posts prepared to catch up and hopefully beat ya! <3 May the best poster win. |
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Very cute game. Played it a couple times.
+Merit for you man, hopefully you continue to develop.
Thanks. Currently I only pulled some Javascript so that it looks like a game. That's why I named it as version 0.1. However, I have a plan to develop this into a production game where cards will be on blockchain, something similar to Crypto Kitties (thanks to Vod for the idea) and planning to create a whole new MVC framework in order to build a game. But the response of the members was not convincing. So in order to make sure whether I should continue with the further development or not, I created poll. I request all members here to vote. I wouldn't be discouraged in the least when it comes to members activity around the holiday season. Most of us are from the states, and we're going to be off of most online things for this time as we're travelling and visting family members across the country -- or even staying overnight at places. Without a doubt a great game. What other sorts of web activities / web design / web backend work do ya do? Might inquire about those services. |
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I know this may not seem like a lot to many of you here as my account is pretty old. Though moving up does mean a lot to me, and shows that people truly like my pretty niche opinion and posts in the section that I stay in the most P&S -- that's literally the only section that I post in, and will most likely continue to post in forever. Every so often I move over to Bitcointalk discussion, or economics, or services or something along those lines but I'd say 97 percent or so of my posts stay in that one section.
But back to the point here, I'm going to use this thread as a countdown type of thing for me to get to 1000 and move onto legendary.
I hope no one takes this thread as a begging for merit, that's not what this is at all. If I wanted to peg I would only post in sections that I know get a good deal of merit, but I wouldn't love to post there. Which is why I continue to stay in my section, and reward people there as a merit source for posting within the section.
If you'd like to root for me or something along those lines, I'd love that. I truly love being apart of this community, and I can't wait to be here for the years to come.
Thank you all!
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Very cute game. Played it a couple times.
+Merit for you man, hopefully you continue to develop.
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