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It's worth noting that doctors can literally prescribe methamphetamine to someone with ADHD. It's brand name is Desoxyn.

That is what I am suspecting as well, several large interconnected nodes managing most of the traffic. Everyone will then start signing up for the top 10 nodes anyways because why not? So everyone will be on that network.

I see, okay that makes sense. So in cases where the traffic always goes in one direction, the fees for using that channel must be high enough to compensate for rebalancing the funds on-chain.

Thanks for the link, is a nice resource, I'll continue reading it. Still not sure if that would reset the channels though, btc can't move from one channel to another, just within a single channel. When they refer to settling they use it to describe both the entire transaction as well as individual hops, so what they mean by settle doesn't necessarily mean that the channels have reverted to their former state, only that everyone in the transaction has been made whole.

Is an interesting topic of discussion, unfortunately, they always seem to attach these things to a specific gender or race and it makes the whole thing sound childish. It's like the concept of micro-aggressions, I like the idea of investigating the subtleties of human behaviour which can have covert but large effects, but they immediately attach it to race and racism.

Yeah I've seen on the reddit Bitcoin sub that people think he goes too far. I find it funny when he shits on people but obviously to those who still see some alts as potential, or at least, something to contribute to the ecosystem (even if say, an element of the project gets adopted elsewhere even if the original alt dies). I can see why it comes off as arrogant and misplaced.

That all being said, let me explain. From my perspective, Ripple is the oldest still active scam coin and it refuses to die because it managed to raise so much money during one of its hype cycles. It has no redeeming qualities and it muddies the waters. It's not even a cryptocurrency. It is a private currency that uses cryptography. For example, your bank is a private institution that uses cryptography to manage your account, but we'd never describe US dollars as cryptocurrency.

When I say it has no redeeming qualities, I'm not kidding. Even the primary use case which it advertises and uses to hype the coin, makes no sense. The SWIFT communication network for payment is more decentralized than the Ripple alternative. Swift does not change because banks are conservative, Swift does innovate and if there were good idea's from Ripple they would simply incorporate them into their system. XRP's function on the network is superfluous, and since the advent of stablecoins, is clearly inferior for interbank transfers on their network. Would you rather trust a company that literally says their coins are worthless (for legal reasons, they must not back the coins, the coins have no value, and they have nothing to do with them), or use a crypto that is backed one-for-one by US treasuries and cash? And in order for Ripple XRP to work, they need liquidity pools in every country in order to facilitate the conversion from XRP to the local currency. No bank would be crazy enough to hold this "legally worth nothing" currency for longer than the time it takes to execute the transaction. Basically for this to work, there would have to be bag holders in every country, and the demand for XRP for the purposes of international transfers is practically nothing, even if a bank transfers $100,000,000, they are only holding the currency for 30 seconds max (the on-ramp, the transfer, and the off-ramp) and I think I am being generous saying 30 seconds. That momentary demand is the equivalent of someone holding $1,000 worth of BTC for about a month. It's the holders of the currency that drive the scarcity and thus value, the international transfers and "demand from the bank" add almost nothing.

Basically, it is a centralized private currency (already loses all it's value for that reason alone), legally speaking they do not back their currency (it is officially worth nothing according to the company), and even in the use cases they claim (which people claim give XRP value) it is completely worthless, or at best, inferior to current products.

Yeah I could totally see some return to a gold standard if things get bad, or at least, a partial backing with a basket of other currencies or something. In the short term, I don't expect gold to go up, nothing seems to cause gold to go up in price. I don't get it. I'm heavily invested in gold as well but I guess there are a lot of people that benefit from the fiat system so there is sufficient selling pressure.

Voting blocks are very successful at getting what they want, but they can only do that if their threat to not vote for the party in question is taken seriously. The NRA doesn't get what it wants because it commits to always vote Republican no matter what.

I get your point of view, and my argument is overly idealized and difficult to implement, but I genuinely don't see it working without the ability to use your vote to negotiate. Besides money, it is the only thing they care about. I'm not American, but from Canada, and I can tell you from an outsider's perspective your two-party system looks completely dysfunctional. We basically have a three/four-party system for our federal gov and I'd take that any day over a two-party system. Granted America controls the reserve currency and the world army, so it was bound to consume itself at some point, maybe it doesn't matter how it is set up.

I actually just made the experience worse and worse without adjusting the nicotine. Switched to unflavored, then switched to freebase, then my vape broke and I started using my shitty old vape. It became a chore to smoke so it was easy to stop.

Although, I've usually been pretty good at controlling my nicotine when needed, so I would not describe myself as some highly addicted even when I was vaping a lot.

Unionization is pitifully low in the US. To suggest they are booming is like someone saying they got a massive raise this year because their boss almost matched it to inflation.