The Edited Latecomer's Guide to Crypto https://www.mollywhite.net/annotations/latecomers-guide-to-crypto#

I’m finding words of wisdom in a wishing well

A frog is croaking at me with a mild truth to tell

“My patience is a rainbow and at the end I find

A delicious golden fuzzy buzzing muncher of a fly

.

It fills me and fixes me and let’s me play again

As I ring around the rosy I wonder what is next. “

I send a bucket down to fill with water and clear my head

My slippery green friend eyes the mark and jumps right in

.

Up and up and up he cries I haul him to the top

I take a nice big swig he cries “this was my dearest hope

Out in nature I will find the rainbow’s start, ahoy!

I am full up out the downspout to seek the sweetest joy.”

.

Along he hops I wipe my brow and take my own sweet time

Then clamber in the bucket waiting for my big muncher fly

Pardon the snark, but sounds like a fancy gift card rather than a revolution in currency.

Last time I used BTC was to buy LSD off the Silk Road 10 years ago. After that the rest I converted into dollars so I could pay the rent in college, made 80 bucks off the price swing.

I’m sorry, I still don’t get it. I don’t dispute blockchain is valuable technology and here to stay, but I set my eyes on Bitcoin specifically as an unknown factor. Is it meant sit in vaults, like gold? Or is it meant to transact regularly, like a currency? I don’t think you can have both at the same time and it be a stable investment vehicle with better returns than real asset classes.

Per the hardware question, the building and energy management systems are valuable, probably more so than the chips. Chips fail, hard drives fail, and like the Argo they are remade, the result of which has been a market created that supports developing these chips for miners, trains professionals in the maintenance of these data centers and chip fabrication, and identifies geographies amenable to cheap high volume data processing. Regardless, to speak of the specific chips, they can serve institutional backed crypto currencies performing similar operations.

I just can’t shake the feeling Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme

I’ve never understood the mechanism behind bitcoin’s rise as an asset. Is it a currency? Then it’s value is in relation to other currencies by arbitrage which means small returns on small scales. Is it a commodity like gold? Then it’s value is when global currencies lose value and the global system slows down, but then it has to compete with gold as a form of exchange and maintain the technological infrastructure it needs to work at all. I don’t see the value and it makes me think it’s just a big Ponzi scheme, which is risky and requires a lot of attention as an investment. Personally I think that Bitcoin has been a successful subsidization for building huge data centers that will power our digital future, but I don’t think it will exist past that purpose.

Simple swimming pulls the cover over me and mine

Another way to say it is to find another dime

Fitting hikes in tubes of clay I stammer out and say

Living tall the mighty fall and simple here to stay

No worries, yeah I don't either, but in my eyes trump supporters aren't typical GOP and I could see the "burn it down" sentiment pointed at the electoral college. There is a difference between political operatives and regular supporters, and its really only the operatives that want to preserve the electoral college. Most democrats and independents are for abolishing it, and about a quarter of republications https://news.gallup.com/poll/320744/americans-support-abolishing-electoral-college.aspx. There are small steps to take like getting rid of the winner take all system, which could be easier than abolishing the whole thing and provide the same benefit.

There was a moment on Election Day when I thought Biden would win the electoral but trump would win the popular. I had hopes for a bipartisan push to abolish the electoral college for about 30 min.

A quick healthy lunch could be pieces of fruit, some crackers with cheese or nut butter, and mixed nuts. Takes minutes to make and with no funky junk inside (unless you love velveeta). Pair it with slices of cured meat and you'll be full with basically no cooking.

I agree America began decaying some time ago, but I don't believe the analogy to death is apt. It is more like a slow descent into schizophrenia. What are the symptoms of schizophrenia?

- Delusion (we are the greatest country in the world)

- Hallucinations (red scare and threat to american nuclear hegemony)

- Disorganized thinking & speech (cold war politics and the pivot to asia)

- Disorganized or abnormal motor behavior (what crisis has america actually solved recently?)

- Negative Symptoms (collapse of the social safety net and a crisis of social mobility and healthcare)

I think it is clear how America will act in its authoritarian period. Any individual pursuit of liberty will be denied unless sanctioned by authority or financed by extreme personal wealth. All others will be marginalized and rendered destitute unless they fit in the corporate picture.

Young people don't see much hope. A lack of hope turns into fear. Fear leads to anger, and we all know where that will end up.

I like Hubski. I check it every day. I frequently encounter interesting ideas and thoughtful discussion here. Can people be aggressive and confrontational here? Yeah, but that’s part of the nature of the discussion and I think a large proportion of people invite a battle of ideas if it is good natured, productive, and fair. Do I think people can be kind, inclusive and supportive here? Yes, I’ve seen It many times even though text conversation over the internet makes that difficult. Do I post often on Hubski? No, primarily for personal reasons so perhaps I have a different perspective from contributors.

I really enjoy hearing from people with different perspectives and being introduced to new ideas, and I find that at Hubski. It would be a shame if the new site mechanics made that harder for me. Imagine making a comment but no one sees it until 6 hrs later when someone shares but by then the convo died out? Or making a new tag so no one notices the content until a share from global? The new user experience would be like walking into a ghost town, where there is an energy to the air of which you catch whispers, but it is all hidden to you.

The change to the feed requires users to view the feed differently, and puts me in mind of switching from forks and knives to chopsticks. Sure, some meals will be easier to eat with chopsticks and others will slip through but you’re still pulling from the same fridge, so what changed?

I’m all for experimentation maybe this merits a beta test at a new url? implementation invites participation (chat?). The problems this post is trying to address are real but slightly different for each community member. I like that mk’s suggested change creates an incentive for you to participate and use the mechanics of the site, otherwise you will miss out on quite a lot. I fear FOMO and people talking behind each other’s back. I think we just need more people participating and contributing, I will make more of an effort.

A charm is left and let unsaid

The price is paid the piper bled

Lo in time a tune will prick

Your ear and turn your head

Note the banded sky and pick

A chord to hum for them

When Helen Lived - W. B. Yeats

We have cried in our despair

That men desert,

For some trivial affair

Or noisy, insolent sport,

Beauty that we have won

From bitterest hours;

Yet we, had we walked within

Those topless towers

Where Helen walked with her boy,

Had given but as the rest

Of the men and women of Troy,

A word and a jest.

K.O.S. (Determination) - Blackstar

Lost in the Andes!

I believe Ezekiel 1:28 is a description of a coronal mass ejection striking our earth, initiating massive auroras from solar radiation having dumped energy into the atmosphere. The angelic descriptions in Ezekiel correspond to images produced in plasma experiments by Dr. Anthony Perrat, as well as ancient art depictions. Imagine waves of supercharged particles hitting our atmosphere every which way and what that might look like.

Searching for Rock Art Evidence for an Ancient Super Aurora

The so-called “Stickman” is the world’s most prevalent petroglyph. Found everywhere, the stickman can be carved as a stick-like figure with a head, two arms stretched out and up, and two legs stretched out and down. The figure is distinguished by a male anatomy. The stickman has several variations: with a belly, “an inner tube” around the belly, and variations in the arms (such as one or two, up or down). The head is usually bulbous but can also be a cup, a bird, or two horns. A rarer variety of stickman has two dots on either side of the belly. All of these varieties have been produced in a single plasma column, a result of a time-evolving nonlinear evolution of toroids pinched in the column.

More Comprehensive Paper: Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity

This paper directly compares the graphical and radiation data from high-current Z-pinches to these patterns. The paper focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on petroglyphs. It is found that a great many archaic petroglyphs can be classified according to plasma stability and instability data.

Plasma, Solar Outbursts, and the End of the Last Ice Age

Familiar plasma phenomena on Earth today include lightning and auroras, the northern and southern lights, and upper atmospheric phenomena known as sprites. In the past, much more powerful plasma events sometimes took place, due to solar outbursts and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the Sun, or possibly emissions from other celestial objects. Powerful plasma phenomena could cause strong electrical discharges to hit Earth, burning and incinerating materials on our planet's surface.

Solar Activity Could Cause Lightning Storms On Earth

The arrival of bursts of particles trigger the aurora borealis and australis, but Scott has found a correlation with lightning strikes as well, revealed in Environmental Research Letters. The connection may not been spotted before because electrical activity can last for more than a month after the arrival of a large dose of particles.

Image of "The Squatter Man"

Found some curious articles. Seems like cooking at moderate temperatures releases compounds from cell material without degrading them.

Key takeaways are:

1) don't heat fats/oils to smoking point (150+C/302+°F) while cooking vegetables

2) if you're making soup, add acid (vinegar, tomato/tomato paste, lemon, yogurt, creme fraiche, etc.) to preserve phenolic compounds (particularly fisetin).

Temperature-dependent studies on the total phenolics, flavonoids, antioxidant activities, and sugar content in six onion varieties

In general, heating had a positive effect on all four flavonoids. For instance, the total flavonoid content in the red onion variety (Q + QMG + QDG + IMG) increased from 9.34 μmol/g DW to 9.70 μmol/g DW on heating at 120°C for 30 minutes and then decreased to 5.40 μmol/g DW at 150°C. In all the studied onion varieties, the total flavonoid content increased up to 120°C, and then decreased at 150°C...

Table 2

The total phenolic content was significantly increased after heating at 80°C, 100°C, and 120°C for 30 minutes each...

Heating at 150°C for 30 minutes decreased the total phenolic content for all of these onion varieties. Different processing steps such as boiling, sauteing, frying, and roasting can be used to liberate phenolic compounds from various plants...

However, simple heating reportedly cannot cleave covalently bound phenolic compounds; however, far-infrared treatment can cleave the bond;

Degradation kinetics of fisetin and quercetin in solutions affected by medium pH, temperature and co-existing proteins

Some results were obtained based on the changes in the k values under different pH values and temperatures. The first is that fisetin was more stable than quercetin, giving smaller k values in all cases. The second is that the degradations of fisetin and quercetin were sensitive to medium pH, especially at alkaline pH values.

Flavonoids in aqueous solutions show instability, resulting in concentration loss (i.e., degradation)....These mentioned studies shared similar conclusion to the present data, supporting that fisetin and quercetin were more stable (but instable) under acidic (and alkaline) conditions.

Are these heat-stable compounds? Do you have any idea what proportion decomposes after cooking at high temperatures?