Totally hear you — crypto isn’t perfect, and yeah, hoarding happens just like in any system. But that’s more a human problem than a crypto one.
Crypto is a tool, and how it is used is what matters. It can be used to speculate on ridiculous monkey JPEGs, or scam people or it can be used to send money across borders without middlemen, resist censorship, and invest without being subject to the big banks.
It’s not a silver bullet, but it does open up new possibilities that the current system just doesn’t.
Don't worry about the downvotes bro. Lemmy has a knee jerk aversion to crypto, even though the ideals of the fediverse and the ideals of crypto are very much aligned
I know lemmy is super anti-crypto, but digital dollars are probably inevitable, and stablecoins are vastly preferable to a CBDC
Milei gets compared to the populist right in other countries a lot (Trump, Orban, etc) but he's really a more old school libertarian. In a country as rife with corruption and financial mismanagement as Argentina, it seems like a bit of libertarianism was what they needed
To take the other side (not sure I agree):
Iran is unique in that it is run by a government that claims to be Islamic fundamentalists. This could make mutually assured destruction less effective if the ones launching the nukes truly believe that if they die in the retaliation they will go to heaven with their 72 virgins.
I'm not convinced that the Ayatollah is ok dying in the name of killing infidels, but I do see the merits of this argument.
There are multiple models for teaching that do something similar, let kids approach a subject when they're ready. Yes, they goof off a lot early on, but eventually even STEM and literature call to them, and they pass equivalency exams in their late teens.
Can you link to some more information on this? I'm curious about alternative education models
If you want to use it in place of airlines, you need high-speed rail. Something that the US has basically none of
Something like 30% of the US lives in the strip between Washington DC and Boston. It's absolutely achievable for the richest country on Earth to provide high speed rail in that section.
I know lemmy is quite anti-crypto, but CBDCs seem much more dangerous to me
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This is definitely a scam. I guess it was inevitable these would come to lemmy, but it's still a shame
I don't like it. I might be able to get on board with read-access to my brain (especially if I end up paralyzed or something) if I felt the tech was secure enough, but I'd be very worried about abuse of write access (writing in loyalty to the community party, for example)
There's a story about how Bill Gates plans to give away 99% of his wealth in the next 20 years (on causes like eradicating polio, decreasing child mortality, etc) and all the Lemmy comments are "he'll still have a billion dollars" or "he shouldn't have that money to begin with". Can't we appreciate some good in the world?
president of CPA Nova Scotia, said under the bill, member accountants could flock to whatever regulator charged the lowest dues, threatening the association’s very existence
Good! Competition between regulators will mitigate rent-seeking. Professional licensing is (mostly) a tax on everyone for the good of the priestly class of licensed. IMO there are very few professions where a license makes sense, and it seems like the complainers are those who would stand to lose their political power over their profession
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I tried to hide my identity as much as possible when I made the account. This included using a pseudo-random email address, fake name, fake address, and (unfortunately) fake birthday, as all of those things could be used as foreign keys to try to match my identity
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It asks for your birthday to delete/access your data, but I used a fake one when I signed up...
I'm convinced the guy is literally doing this because of how it would look on a map. He took a look at how big Canada looks (partially due to Mercator) and thought "Wouldn't it be great if the my country was that big?"
The best language learning app IMO is Anki. It's FOSS and very powerful (although the UI isn't great).
Seriously, once you learn how to use it, it's incredible how well it works. However it is also much less forgiving than Duolingo. You really need to use it everyday. If you skip more than 1 day, you'll be so behind that it gets tough to catch up
My apologies, he does make that point. I mis-read into your comment that the poor people using credit cards (who pay interest) pay for the rich person's credit card rewards. But it's worse than that, anyone who doesn't use a credit card (which includes many poor people as you point out) are subsidizing the rich person's rewards
Good video showing how credit card culture basically makes poor people pay for rich people’s luxury.
That's not what the video shows. The real issue is that credit cards are a monopoly which takes ~3% cut on almost all consumer purchases in the economy and adds little value

Content curation in the Fediverse is better!
I just had my first experience blocking an instance, and it made my realize now nice the lemmy content curation experience is vs the centralized model.
Recently I started noticing a lot of posts from that I just found annoying. There was nothing inherently wrong with them, they just came from a culture I don't understand and so I found them cringey. Since they all came from one community, realized most of them come from the same instance. I just added that instance to my blocklist and the problem is solved!
Now think about in the centralized model. I would be forced to either just accept that these posts are in my timeline, or block each community and user individually. The instance gave me an easy way to manage my content.
I also appreciate that instances can manage the blocking for their users. So the most horrible stuff I don't even see. But it also preserves free speech, as those users who want to say horrible things can do so in their own instance, and most people will j

First time GMing advice, is my prep good?
I'm going to run my first DW game soon. I've never GM'd a TTRPG before, but I've played a few. Most players haven't played TTRPGs, so I like DW for it's simplicity to learn. I'm very comfortable improvising, but I have a bit of prep and would like some feedback on it.
My current idea is to start where all the characters are in a large jail cell. I'll ask the following to set up the world.
- Where is this jail cell? What's the city name, vibe, etc?
- Why have each of you been arrested?
- Who else is in the cell with you?
Then we'll set up bonds and then the adventure will begin. Based on how things go, they'll either have to do a prison break, or fight in a gladiator style arena. I'll have some enemies prepared for those scenarios. For anything else, I will just wing it.
Does this feel like good prep for the session?

Dungeon World Wingman (ChatGPT for DW questions)
I created a GPT to answer DW questions. In my testing it's pretty good about not getting confused with DnD rules (which regular ChatGPT does). I'm organizing my first DW game as a GM and I'm planning to use it to help me out.
Some good prompts for it:
- How much XP does a character need to level up?
- How do I resolve damage from multiple NPCs attacking the character?
- Suggest 3 monsters the party might encounter in an evil wizard's castle
- Create some stats for a Giant Chihuahua monster
You do need ChatGPT Plus to use it though

What mantra do you use for mantra meditation?
I was introduced to mantra meditation in a yogic setting, so I began with traditional vedic mantras ("Om", "So Ham", "Om Namo Narayanaya", etc)
Recently I've been experimenting with different mantras. Some of my favourites have been: "Be here now" and "Love, Truth"
What mantras do you use?

TIL that the Pont Jacques Cartier light shows are generated by weather, traffic and social media activity

This ambitious, innovative luminous signature is a tribute to an iconic feature of Montreal’s urban landscape.


Staked deposit to ensure good behaviour
EDIT: I know many people have a knee-jerk aversion to anything crypto, but this is not a scheme to make money. I would be happy to see this done with fiat as well, but IMO this is much easier to do with smart contracts.
I am very excited about the possibility of the Fediverse, and the potential for many experiments in instance governance. A problem that all instances must content with is trolling and spam. It seems very difficult to impose a cost on these bad actors without harming honest users as well. Either instances have minimal signup friction and are vulnerable to being overwhelmed with bad actors & defederated (see the recent defederation decision from Beehaw), or they present frustrating barriers such as manual approval or waitlists for folks who just want to have fun
A possible solution comes from the blockchain space, which has been dealing with anonymous bad actors since its inception. Many blockchains and blockchain apps require user