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> But barring shifting to a European model of college funding, I don't see the US allowing dischargeable loans, nor do I think they should, because the reality of it is that colleges won't reduce their rates nor increase their scholarships, they would just be completely out of reach of poor and middle class students.

The reality is that the they should be out of reach to poor or middle class students TODAY. They are not serving those people and are actively making their lives worse by saddling them with outrageous debt and no prospect of meaningful employment.

If the US changed bankruptcy it would force the colleges to change as well. Lenders are not going to be sending children into the workforce with zero chance to recoup that loan, and they are not going to want to bloat the college stay to ridiculous proportions.

>Some of the clips show in the video referenced in the article actually seem pretty "sane" to me - the one guy saying "I'm not worried about getting this illness", another saying for most people it will seem just like the flu. Those two statements, as far as we know, are not that outlandish, right? I'm certainly not worried about myself, and for many people it does seem to be mild or asymptomatic?

The flu season is 6 months for ~ 40k deaths.

We are at 10k deaths of covid in the USA. Depending on how you measure the 'season' it could be as little as a month in. If we keep with these numbers it will surely pass the flu death toll for the same time period.

Now also consider that unlike flu, we have no vaccine and the virus kills people in the prime of their life just as much as the elderly. We also have no idea on the way this virus works. We are making assumptions that it will work like a normal flu virus. There is anecdotal evidence it resides in people even after they have 'recovered', which isn't the same as a normal flu or cold. It is certainly something to be concerned with.

The key feature of coinbase and gemini is of course that they are following all the regs and are the most trustworthy exchanges out there. The people who want 150x leverage on a shady exchange are not the same customers. I would fathom that they are not even in the 'crypto' space as the history of shady exchanges going belly up (btc-e, cryptsy, bitfinex?) should keep anyone with a half descent memory up at night.

Yeah that is pretty disgusting. By doing this, it steals a label with a 'fairly' clear meaning, agenda, and history to prop up any old complaint. This is beyond disingenuous and actually will end up causing more harm to LGBT issues in the future.

> taken away

Stop right there. He does not want to take away votes. He wants to take away the government entirely. Neither males or females would have anything to vote for because there is no longer a government.

Did you read the entire article you cite, or did you just get stuck on one paragraph?

> "In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.”"

The piece is arguing that ANY government system of politics: democracy, theocracy, communism, or whatever is not compatible in the long term with true 'freedom' as he envisions it, and he is looking towards technology to remedy this problem.

You may not agree with him that a world without a government is a good idea, but make that argument instead of trying to twist what he wrote into some sexist fascist diatribe.

> Thiel is, in fact, literally arguing that democracy is bad because it gives people with critiques of capitalism a say in the way their country is run.

Kind of. He is saying democracy is bad because it inherently leads to limits on 'freedom' imposed by the state. The state being the key point here. I read his views as much more in line with a trend towards anarcho-capitialism than with fascism.

>Why do you bring in the left/right partisan divide into this?

Because the right has been complaining about these specific FBI agents biased conduct in this investigation for years now and trying to turn this into a 'we all know fisa is bad' comes off as epic gaslighting.

>The IG report did not find any evidence of political partisan spying, it only faulted the process of getting the warrant.

This is beyond a white washing. He absolutely found evidence that line agents were biased. He did not find clear 'evidence' that the outcome and leadership was biased. The key part is that confessions and a paper trail were not found to lead him to make that conclusion. He stated he made numerous referrals to the doj/fbi about misconduct. If you actually listen to his hearing statements on the 'evidence' for bias he is walking a fine line.

'we did not have documentary or testimonial evidence that (the mistakes) were intentional, but also make note the lack of satisfactory explanations (for the mistakes), from there i cannot draw any further conclusions' - this is during a line of questions from senator whitehouse, but there are many others like it.

Yes I agree. A 'what is the problem with using sshd?' or similar seems valid to me. It gives them a way to actually explain if there is a problem and if not, oh that might work.

> Nationalism isn't normal, countries are a completely artificial construct.

Compared to what? Being a primitive mammal? Sure you could claim that the 'nation' didn't exist long enough to support this but devotion to a local city or tribe feels the same to me.

How about stop trying to take shortcuts and have an actual rigorous progression? It sure would help out on problems of statistical errors in scientific literature, Sure not everyone might be able to pass these classes, but that is kind of the point. Why do we want to just pass through students with weak to no understanding? Ah yes tuition fees.

This is a really spot on take on this moment in time. I also wrote a bot circa 2016/2017 [1] and the constant exchange error handling killed any profit I would eek out of the arbitrage. I was only doing this part time while a student so wasn't a huge deal to me, but losing to an exchange throwing up an error that I had never seen before and never would again, or my all time least favorite exchange cryptsy having one side of their books 'stuck' for hours was fabulous.

[1] https://github.com/mikem5/arb2

It is a bit infuriating that there is this 'boogeyman' in CA when really if you listen to any interview with Brad Parscale he says pretty clearly it is all due to them actually using everything facebook offered them.

"Parscale said he asked the Facebook “embeds” to teach staffers everything the Clinton campaign would be told about Facebook advertising “and then some”. Parscale told CBS he was told the Clinton campaign did not use Facebook employee embeds. “I had heard that they did not accept any of [Facebook’s] offers,” he said."

So really this is all due to a complete incompetence on one campaigns digital strategy while another actually put in work.

Huh?? Isn't setting up the structure and abusing the US position what has been happening for the past half century?

It actually seems like the recent change has been to let china get away with whatever they want with no struggle and simply accept a nice slow bleed out.

HL3 would have brought attention for sure but you are selling dota a bit short here. Personally I bought in day 1 to artifact based solely on how much I love dota. I have spent hundreds on dota cosmetics, battle passes, etc. Artifact failed because the game just was not fun to play at all. If the pricing scheme was the issue people still would pay money for a game they can't get enough of.

> Isn't the point of limiting the power of government to actually help the general population to survive and prosper though?

It might be a lovely side benefit, but no, I don't think it is the point or outright goal in austrian economics and libertarianism. The freedom itself is the goal, which does carry the potential to succeed and prosper but also the potential of complete and utter failure and misery with it. You are allowed to be a failure completely if you so choose here. I might be wrong on the philosophy here though as I have only really skimmed the surface of mises, hayek, rothbard, etc, but that is my understanding.

> Are there any real world success stories of Austrian economics? It's like the libertarian version of communism's "works perfectly in theory".

It is exactly that. There is no example of pure austrian economics just as there has never been a 'true' communist state since human nature will never allow the extremes they need to work.

> How do civilians escape a depression with no money in an Austrian economy?

The entire point of 'sound money' is not actually to help the general population survive or prosper, it is specifically to limit the power of government. From the link above "It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments."

Of course you might have a depression, but that should be cleared up quickly since the free market allows the fit businesses to buy up weak competitors (since there is no anti-trust in austrian land). If you are unemployed during this time you can always find some labor job to do so will never be truly unemployed (since there is no minimum wage or restrictions to work).

From what I understand this whole 'shortage' is just a result of the US selling off its massive helium reserve over the years. So the prices are artificially low due to this, and now they are going to go up since production will have to meet demand. Nothing really to do with running out of helium or a shortage. This is more like there was a huge artificial surplus and its run out now.

By far a much better write up of the issue.

But that is a really overblown and damaging worry. This study gives us actual facts that we probably need to treat men and women differently to help them both out better in dealing with pain. We need more studies which look at gender differences, not fewer. Justifying that worry because it makes people uneasy is denying reality and pretty unethical in my view.

It is worth pointing out that the study discussed here was done in 2015, prior to the change. Hopefully the NIH change will get more researchers out of their standard patterns though.

Yeah looks like I obviously touched a nerve with some people here I guess?

To consume $100k a month we need a $10-20 million dollar mortgage (50-100k/mo depending on years and rate). I have to assume a few cars, dining, etc would probably end up being $10-20k/mo so the mortgage is probably around $15 mil. So in NY or SF you are looking at something like a 1-2k sq/ft 2 bed 1 bathroom shithole apartment. Not so luxurious after all really.

Isn't it related? Isn't the whole reason that ad sellers like google are censoring porn is to make their platforms palatable for big ad buyers?

I am extremely dubious of most of the stories as well, but I think that they did work as a cable tech probably. The comments on having to piss hit very close to home even though I was a different blue collar worker for many years. I also am really close friends with a couple of cable techs and the cat piss soaked floor was an exact story they told me once. So there is a ring of truth here, but some of the encounters seem too ridiculous.

Although not really what you are talking about I think the issue is that stripe and paypal willccut people off also. subscribestar, a competitor to patreon, was banned from paypal and stripe for being allowing some of the 'banned' people on their platform this week.

> To say that the internet decreased the amount of false information in the 2016 election is misleading and false.

That is not what is being said though, the amount of 'false information' increased for sure. The point is that the internet lets NEW actors manipulate minds outside of the standard 'mass media' channels. The 'mass media gatekeepers' did not have full control on the narrative at all times anymore. IOW 2016 made it clear that mass media is not in absolute control.

Now consider that these standard channels (tv, papers, etc) are used by everyone as the main means of transmitting messages from not only advertisers but also by interest groups pushing a cause and also government actors pushing an agenda (the 'buildup' to the iraq invasion springs immediately to mind). It should be no shock that everyone involved in these media channels is freaked the fuck out by the 2016 election. There is no longer any mass narrative. I think some actors realized this sooner than the actual media, which appears to have just woken up to it this year.

Which won't happen since the 'cost' of mining is electricity and hardware costs which for some miners is probably very close to zero. All this is going to do is shuffle out the miners who have no efficiency.

There is a middle ground, it is rolling back the bankruptcy exceptions. If the burden is too high, let these people bankrupt out of them with the cost of having your credit/name tainted for years. Bankruptcy seems to be a 4 letter word no one dares speak anymore but it is the root of the issue here.