This book will change your life; I know it changed mine.

No but honestly, my entire collection is on my Kindle, so I can't say I've actually "had" them; if I can include that, I'd pick "As I Lay Dying" by Faulkner.

I've heard good things about this little piece of software: https://lastpass.com/

Because it doesn't kill you any faster

also pizza

You'll have an honest economy amongst a society of secular, rational actors, as they understand why honesty is always the most efficient, productive and humane approach.  We do not currently have this, and likely won't for a while (but not much longer compared to the history of humankind); to achieve this, children must be raised properly and by the secular, rational actors, who become themselves secular and rational and continue such a cycle of parenting until they're a majority; at this point, it's a downhill ride, with no point of return to superstition and millennia-old institutions.

This is the only way you can achieve an honest economy: through its participants.  No system which relies on threats of violence can ever impart reason or intelligence upon its recipients; otherwise, those reasonable and intelligent people would decide to no longer take part, and the ones who choose to subject themselves and others anyway are not following any sort of rational method.  In other words, you must look at it from a bottom-up position--as economies are heavily influenced, and by a degree comparable to a speck of dust with a bowling ball, by the individuals, not the regulators--to see a plausible method of changing this, rather than the usual top-down position through passing laws to curb behavior.

Thing I hate most about freelancing is never knowing when you're going to have work   But perhaps this is more common for the artist than it is the programmer.

http://freedominthe50states.org/overall/california

My advice is to leave to better places.

AFAIK the developer took it down because he was receiving death threats and other such abuse for using old-school Nintendo assets.

Not from Nintendo, just rabid fanboyism:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.841885-Update-Flappy-Bird-Creator-Is-Removing-The-Game-From-Stores?page=1

The general logic is of consequentialism: "It's violation of copyright, therefore wrong.  If you disagree with the law, you are wrong."  We cannot blame corporations for this one; people willingly follow along with this.  Budding indie developers use other game's assets often, as they typically do not have access to competent artists to assist them; however, it's important to note that there is no problem with these games using these assets, until they become successful; i.e., only when money is involved.  Naturally, people don't actually care about upholding the law--they break it several times a day, and I can guarantee the majority of people screaming law violation have themselves illegally listened to a copyrighted song on YouTube without paying, if not having downloaded them in any other format--for they are given no incentive from Nintendo to attack this developer; rather, the incentive, as is always the case with the successful vs. the unsuccessful, is in the unsuccessful's hatred toward success, as it kills their excuse as to why they are so, and will willingly drag down anyone who is successful in any way possible: in this case, pathetically, with a beginner's game which happened to find its way to the #1 spot on the mobile platform.

The developer could easily, by now, replace the graphics with something else--spriting is not a complicated art by any means--but this does not change the chilling effect that copyright has on people trying to get into any creative field, and the actions taken against Nguyen by his fellow man will serve to discourage others to take up game development, which is the very point.  Another case of our self-defeating society favoring victimless crimes at our own detriment.

RT is not only biased toward Russia (is eastern propaganda okay for you?), but this video didn't report anything, it just pointed out politics for what it is: ugly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-E0EZRbZbg

I don't see why the state would use Bitcoin to enslave the people, when they've already got the vast majority under their spell (even most libertarians, the supposed liberty lovers, still strongly believe in the state and are willing to vote for a libertarian president); if all you've got is speculation and confirmation bias by a few select authors, then I encourage you to do your own thinking.

Money is just a tool; it cannot be used for anything you don't approve of, unless you're a follower of the state, in which case the game of life is rigged from day one: it is the inevitable effect of a compulsory entity, where you have no choice what happens to your money and often no choice as to what money you use.  Bitcoin cannot enslave you any more than a car or a camera or a computer can; rather, you are enslaved once you give the right to your person up to a higher being (citizen to state relationship), in which case you cannot complain if they abuse you.  See here for more info on what it means to have a right to the self; I implore you attack the root of the issue, rather than attacking potential symptoms, such as technology.  You cannot hide behind gold to solve your issues; we've seen already how gold leads to liberty, they simply take it from you and make you use something else.  And if there is no central entity to make attempts to control bitcoin and turn it against people, then it's a moot point to assert that it's an enslaving technology, when all technology is enslaving with the state and not so without.

Because their government has a monopoly over the educational system.  I'm sure you can draw valid conclusions from that as to what kind of people monopolized education produces: i.e., whatever the owner of the monopoly--the state--desires, and it does not desire you to be free, for this would threaten its existence.

You simply don't forget 12-14 years of propaganda in a heartbeat.

Point is, so long as there is a crowd for pedophilia, there will be CP; the only way to stop this is to cure pedophilia, not attack those who look at it after the crime has occurred.  The only effect of persecuting people who look at CP is an easy way to put anyone in jail if you can get the CP on their PC without their knowing; the fact that CP is still around on the dark web is enough to show us that the law is ineffective, reducing the belief that making the viewing of CP against the law will put our minds at ease that less pedophilia is occurring in the world to mere superstition, as the evidence, per usual of crime, shows us that the threat of punishment is a very ineffective way of curbing poor behavior.  We have two options then: we assert that the state is run by stupid people, or face the notion that there is more than one intent.

It's important to understand about modern government that there are spoken intentions and unspoken intentions.  If the spoken intention of restricting individual rights on the Interwebs to get rid of undesirable behavior is unsuccessful, and yet they proceed to do this despite the failure, then they are enacting the unspoken intention, whatever it may be; otherwise, after understanding that criminalizing the ownership of CP does not deter pedophiles or the creation of CP, the law would be lifted, and we would explore other means of solving the problem of there existing CP in a way hopefully not involving stonings.

Of course CP is bad, but let's not shoot ourselves in the foot; you do not cure a fever by attacking the symptoms, and you can't get rid of CP by banning the product following the crime.  This is ineffective, and always has been: when alcohol was banned, the alcohol didn't go away, it was driven underground.  Weed has been banned, and it didn't go away, it was driven underground.  If weapons are banned, they don't go away, they go underground (look within any country where this has happened.)  We all know this; you simply cannot ban homosexuality and expect the homosexuals to disappear.  You get rid of these things through losing the reason why you have them in the first place, which means people no longer want to get drunk, or people no longer want to get high, or people no longer feel the need for weapons, or people no longer have interest in same sex marriages, or people no longer want relations with prepubescent children.

As I said, the effects of banning CP has not solved the problem of pedophilia, and only makes life worse for all of us, whether getting wrongfully tangled up with the courts over planted CP, or allowing it as an excuse for extended regulation over which sites we can visit or not.  I don't fully understand the appeal of children, but I don't think we should look at pedophiles like the Nazis looked at the Jews; they're people and they know what they do is wrong (or, unfortunately for most people, rather than understanding it to be wrong, they know they'll get in trouble for it) and we would do better to understand the causes of pedophilia, how to ward our children away from potential predators, and help current pedophiles and potential pedophiles overcome their abnormal attraction.  Child abuse is something I cannot forgive, having been abused myself (albeit not sexually), but the blame should rest solely on the abuser; in the same way, watching a video of a man executed by gang members does not make you an accomplice of murder, whether or not you enjoyed it, though I believe those who do should be honest so they can seek help; if viewing this type of material were banned, none would seek help in fear of prosecution, thereby helping the problem to continue.

The root of all evil is dichotomy ethics; examples:

"Group A has the right to steal, but group B does not."
"Group A has the right to murder, but group B does not."
"Group A has the right to kidnap, but group B does not."

The effects of this relationship are outlined very well in the Stanford prison experiment, where people were explicitly divided into these two groups (group A being the prison guards, group B being the prisoners) for a period of time; the experiment had to be called off because the unethical acts of the members of group A became too much for group B to bear.  Essentially, group A views group B as less than human, because they no longer are subject to the same rules, just as a lion cannot empathize with a gazelle, just as a serial killer cannot empathize with his victims, just as the people of Nation A cannot empathize with the people of Nation B (because each believe they're a part of group A and believe the other is a part of group B), just as the Nazis could not empathize with the Jews, just as pedophiles cannot empathize with children, just as the men of Wall Street cannot empathize with the "little people", why gang members A cannot empathize with gang members B et al.  There is still some form of relationship, but the ethical standards for each group are uneven, leading to increasingly negative consequences depending on how powerful group A is over group B and how strongly each group A fights over dominance.

The perpetuation of this evil is in the act of doublethink, e.g., "Stealing/killing/kidnapping is evil and unacceptable, but tax/war/prison is a necessary evil and is acceptable," or the belief that dichotomy ethics is "human nature" and therefore just, whilst simultaneously wishing for a better, more civil society.  Taking the concepts of theft and taxation under a close eye, we can define each of these the same way: "a compulsory financial contribution."  Thus, comparing these two concepts with their meanings: "A compulsory financial contribution is right, but a compulsory financial contribution is wrong."  This is clearly contradictory, but such is the condition of doublethink to an unsuspecting individual.

Once again, killing and war can defined equally: "the taking of human lives."  Compared: "The taking of human lives is wrong, but the taking of human lives is right."  The key difference is, as with the example of theft and taxation, killing is only murder if group B does it without group A's permission, and taking is not theft if group A approves.  Behold, dichotomy ethics.

Therefore, if there was one thing about this world I would remove, I would remove a person's ability to believe in multiple contradictory ideas at once.  Without dichotomy ethics, we are left with this:

"People have no right to steal."
"People have no right to murder."
"People have no right to kidnap."

Consistency and sanity.  Doesn't mean people won't steal, murder or kidnap, but at least they'll be acknowledged as the evil they are and cannot worm their way out of punishment through an equally evil system, which fails to exist without the dichotomy.

It's never safe to keep any amount of money you care about on an exchange.

This is interesting, though I think the odds of bitcoin being related are slim to none.

Cracked never was visited by the brightest of individuals, and this article's comments section solidifies this observation.

Of course the issuers of fiat hate bitcoin, how else will they steal and control?

Interesting, I never knew this existed.  Not sure what to think of it.  Perhaps it'd be most useful to a person who is still trying to find the truth.  Trying to wrap my mind around atheists and agnostics going to church; sounds like an oxymoron at first but there they are.

This is how the state creates criminals out of innocent people; meanwhile, those using bitcoin for illicit activities will continue to do so, as they don't go through legitimate means anyway.

Hopefully we'll see an end of "just orders" someday; I remember a story some time ago about a cop who quit precisely because he did not agree with the laws he was enforcing.  Then again, when a good cop quits, there's always a bad cop waiting to take his place and willing to enforce any law thrown his way, so it seems we'll see a sharp decline in quality of police before seeing an improvement once people choose the voluntary method of funding police which allows improvements through competition over the involuntary method which inevitably leads police to work against the people rather than for.