Write down your guesses before peeking.

• How many unarmed black people were killed by cops in 2019?

• How many unarmed white people were killed by cops in 2019?

Additional data point.

BTW, Amy, dial the machine to about Sunday morning for best results.

(Amusing to think that there are expert "analysts" for Bitcoin "fundamentals" who opine on whether a rally might be "overdone"… Compared to what, exactly?)

Hey, Crid?

How is a bitcoin negotiable, and what sets its value w/r/t consumer goods?

Seriously.

If I handed you a shekel, you'd wonder how to get coffee with it.

> How is a bitcoin negotiable

Offers.

> what sets its value w/r/t
> consumer goods?

Prices.

> you'd wonder how to get coffee

There are solutions for all that stuff: Read up on BTC/Lightning. Nobody's saying BTC's the perfect tool for every job.

Oh no, he said something mean on the internet:

https://twitter.com/meduza_en/status/1364271820912926724

So I'm bopping around the newsholes and I see that Biden has re-opened the "kids in cages" Obama-era holding facilities for undocumented kids, while insisting that putting kids in cages is not the same as when Trump put kids in cages, even though they are kids, and they're put into the same cages.

Orange man bad. No, YOU shut up! Yes, I will take questions regarding the awesomeness of Biden. No, we will not be discussing his hair plugs vs. Trump's combover.

R.I.P. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 101.

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/375206219/lawrence-ferlinghetti-beat-poet-and-small-press-publisher-dies-at-101

R.I.P. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 101. ~ Lenona at February 23, 2021 2:12 PM

City Lights was a very cool bookstore; probably still is.

I think Powell's is doing okay in Portland; Tattered Cover in Denver has moved, as would some apostatic villainy, but it survives; Vroman's is down for the count in Pasadena, and of course Dutton's in LA (Valley & Brentwood) is long gone, expired in the middle Obama years.

It's weird to be this-many years old and not only be unable to take the youngsters to the best places, but to be destined to pester them as the pathetic coot who mumbles "Not so long ago, there was a wondrous [shop/restaurant/bar] on that corner over there...."

Fucking 'rona, man....

Raddy, I don't want to be too short with you.

Here's the thing: Across our lifetimes, we've been swinging international dick because of course smaller, less-stable nations have foregone printing their own money and used the greenback as their currency.

But in recent years, in more ways that can be described in a blog comment, we've done nearly as much as we can to make that option less attractive… Our dick don't swing so pretty anymore. We're the best nation on the planet, but China and India in particular are doing things to strengthen their population which we seem unable to do. And those nations are showing muscle in ways that blahblahblahblah

Again, it's just a blog comment. Here's the thing: People have OPTIONS, and one of them is Bitcoin... Even people without the internet. With BTC you don't really have to care all that much what your government, or the Chinese government, or the Indian government, or Cameroonian treasury has to say about it.

"The United States dollar is a platform," says Srinivasan. (You well remember how TRS-80 replaced by Dos, which was replaced by Mac OS & Windows, replaced by Linux, which now includes Iphone IOS and Android, etc etc etc.)

Listen to this podcast. When anyone besides Balaji is speaking, go forward ten seconds to see if he's started talking again. Seriously, listen to *all* of it. These are complicated matters, but he's as concise (and attuned) as can be.

Raddy, he has a really nice cell phone, nicer than any TV star.

Our daughter recently married a young entrepreneur. He's putting together a decent living selling products on Amazon. A few years ago he sold one of these online businesses and the buyer offered either cash or bitcoin in payment. Laughing at the offer of magic beans, they took the cash. Today, that bitcoin would have been worth over $700,000.

RigelDog — Yeah, but he was selling something, and when he got the cash, he got the price he wanted and did something with the money, probably bought something nice for your daughter. So who knows what would have happened.

Bitcoin is technical and brittle, and when you make a mistake or compromise your security, it goes away and never comes back. There's no one to call.

And then there are weeks like this one, where fifteen percent of the value went away overnight.

I like your son-in-law. He did the right thing. Don't let him think everything would have fallen perfectly into place if only XYZ....

The technology and politics of Bitcoin are fascinating. But don't get into it for personal finance unless you know what you're doing and aren't afraid to juggle reeeeeally sharp knives.

If you care for pro sports in even a casual way, you'll enjoy the pics in the response to this tweet.