this at least has real links to tangible asset worth,

Well, kind of. But the worth of those assets is largely due to perception, rather than real utility value. Like, real estate is stupidly expensive in many places, but it’s expensive because people believe that it’s expensive. When real estate bubble burst, you see the ‘worth’ of that real estate drop sharply. The utility value is having a place to sleep, but it’s often treated as an investment. So you would still see currency value fluctuations. Currency issue by gov’ts largely has worth because the gov’t says that it has worth; it’s not tied to anything. (BTW - tying currency to a tangible asset limits your ability to add currency when necessary. It will tend to lead to depreciation–the value of the currency rising–which is usually a bad thing.)

The other problem is that corporations and banks go bust; if they were issuing currency, that would mean all your money would instantly be worthless.

I guess that I would have thought that you could isolate those individual compounds, and then reproduce them, rather than hoping that you can find a lucky ball of whale puke.

I dunno, I’m pretty sure I’m not their target audience.

For sound reproduction, I prefer my wired Shure SE-315 with sound-isolating ear tips. But Shokz ar much more comfortable for all-day wear.

So, I tried wearing earplugs with my Shokz. Disappointingly, the sound became very, very muffled. I don’t think that it’s true bone conduction, because if it was, then earplugs shouldn’t have had a significant impact on the sound. They’re still nice, just… Not as cool.

Firefly is solidly decent. It’s not great, it’s not terrible. It had real potential, and then got cancelled after 12 (?) episodes. Babylon 5 was arguably a better show overall, but I can see why Firefly still has a solid fandom 20 years later.

Makes me wonder why whale puke still gets used in cosmetics…

I believe that he also invented the first silencers.

Ideally, no one controls it. It’s just exists as a medium for exchange.

There are both good and bad points to currency have value that can be adjusted by gov’ts; crypto currency solves one set of problems, but has it’s own, inherent issues.

Define “cheating”.

I looked up an online answer key for the last test I took. The test was take-home and open book, and the teacher repeatedly said that we could use ANY resource to complete the test. I spent hours scouring the course material trying to find some of the answers, and they just weren’t there; the course simply didn’t cover some areas of the test at all. Or even mention them. It turned out that there were several version of the course that I took, and the teach taught one version, but used the test for a different version.

Is that “cheating”? I don’t know. I did all the parts that I could without looking online, but I’m still not happy that I needed to look online in order to complete a course ‘successfully’.

I’ve been wearing VFFs for, uh, fifteen years or so? Something like that? I think it might be a little more, I’m not sure now. I’ve also got a pair of VivoBarefoot hiking boots, and the Bellville MiniMil rough-out boots that end up being my utility shoes. The only times I don’t wear minimalist footwear is on a bicycle (I used SPD pedals), and on a motorcycle (I have Sidi Vortice and Mag-1 boots). I always wear socks with my boots, and always Injinji socks with my VFFs.

I’ve gotten so used to them that regular shoes feel very weird and uncomfortable.

Yeah, but a lot of insurance plans also have coverage maximums.

You’d be fine, aside from the attorney’s fees for declaring bankruptcy.

…Oh, and probably losing your housing.

I say, it’s your money, make the choice yourself. I’d rather donate time and money to an org like Food Not Bombs where they can use the same amount of money to help more people. But, let’s face it, I’m too busy these days to find the time to volunteer. So for me, if I have money–and I usually don’t–I’ll give them what I feel like I can.

You don’t have to listen to it loud…

Kind of. It’s still not nearly as effective as Firefox with uBlock and a few other extensions. The downside is that some sites are just broken on Firefox, and blocking ads, etc. makes a relative few sites unusable. Which, yeah, 99.999% of the time I’m fine with. Until it’s something I need to do for my day job.

Just 1" PTFE domes. Nothing super weird.

I mean, more weird than subdermal implants.

I had to get up and walk down the hallway within an hour of waking up from a major spine surgery. I swear I could feel the muscles that they’d stitched back together trying to tear themselves apart through the stitches

That was 20-odd years ago; I look forward to never repeating that.

Uh. Shit.

And I’m going to have to get a tractor to power a snowblower pretty soon here…

It was definitely unpleasant, but not the worst I’ve had. The worst was sternum implants; even though they used a shit ton of xylocaine, it was def. wearing off by the time they were pushing the implants in, and suturing me back up was… Ow. Definitely not fun.

As far as I can tell, there is nothing in chiropractic practice that is not quackery.

Think about it this way: the basic practice is the idea that you have misalignments causing problems, and that you can manually manipulate the body back into alignment. But then what keeps you from getting unaligned again as soon as you stand up? (Nothing, of course! That’s why you have to keep going back!) Take, for example, the common inguinal hernia. You can manually manipulate it so that you’re forcing the intestines back through the abdominal wall. And it absolutely relieves the immediate discomfort. But you’re not actually fixing anything; you need surgery to stitch the tear up. If you have weak support structures causing a problem, then physical therapy is going to create a permanent solution. If you have a herniated disc that’s not healing and causing referred pain, then you need to surgically fix the herniation.

Assuming that your backup isn’t also infected.