Kind of not the point my friend.
Some people want to disconnect from all the digital distractions and just use their phone as a phone.
They intentionally want to disconnect. I get it, that's not you. You still want the social media connection, and there's nothing wrong with that. Other people, mainly, those who want "dumb" phones, don't.
I'm pretty sure that dumb phones, aka feature phones, are still a thing.
It's just that nobody talks about that stuff.
Sometimes they're marketed as a "senior phone".... Because you know old people. I guess?
It's fun that you need an app to keep all your apps in check.
There's a whole discussion that can be had here about the merits of most fiat currencies. My viewpoint is that the currency is essentially a "stock" note for the country. The same way stocks are a representation of the value a business has. The value of that note goes up and down (relative to other countries) as they prosper or falter financially across their entire economy.
The fact that most currency is compared to the US dollar doesn't and shouldn't imply that USD is stable, instead, when they falter, all other currencies gain value, and when USD prospers, all others fall by an appropriate amount.
There's still some sort of backing on it, something to weigh the confidence in that currency against. It's easier to draw that comparison between stocks because it doesn't take as much creative thought to work out how the numbers change compared to a single fiat currency. However, I would argue that the same principles apply.
From there we could get into the weeds with fiat currencies and national debts and whatnot; the whole global banking industry, but we get pretty far from the main topic of cryptocurrencies pretty significantly, and into the realm of whether money exists and what the concept of money actually is. That discussion would circle back to cryptocurrencies eventually in the fact that they are currencies, the many of the same ways, and in the end we wouldn't really prove anything.
Though, I'd like to point out that this is by far one of the best comments I've seen in reply to my post so far. Not that others lack merit or any reasonable discussion points, or that they are somehow not worthy of further discussion. There is a lot to say about the idea, and I don't think anything I've said thus far is inherently false, nor do I think any of the replies don't have merit, they do; but by far, this is the best discussion point so far. I commend you for your time and effort in furthering the discussion.
My hot take is this:
Crypto currency, when in its infancy, had a halfway decent concept.... now? It's a shitshow.
Crypto bros tend to argue about the main currencies, Bitcoin, etherium, etc. Meanwhile, there's about 1000 currencies that aren't talked about for every currency with any weight behind it.
The main problem with CC's is that it's all hype and confidence based. There's nothing tangible attached to it. I often equate it, for non-cryptocurrency people, to stocks trading. Often, stock is trading above what the actual value of the stock is. Most of the time in IPOs the price of the stock immediately jumps after the stock is released, then trends along some impression of how the company is doing. If there's a loss in confidence in the company the value of the stock drops, etc. It's pretty simple supply and demand beyond that. If investors have high confidence in the company to profit, demand for their stock will increase, and since supply is pretty much fixed (aside from shenanigans like stock splits and whatnot), price goes up. Same goes for the inverse, low confidence leads to low demand, price goes down.
It's similar with so-called crypto. Confidence goes up but supply is fairly stagnant, so the price goes up. Same with the inverse.
The primary difference between the two as investments, is that stocks get repaid (depending on a few factors) if the company goes under. The stock represents a monetary value for assets owned by the company, both liquid and physical assets. Crypto, however, has no such backing. If Bitcoin goes away for some reason, all you're left with is essentially digital trash.
This is mainly true for all of the talked about cryptocurrencies. The majority of currencies are not really following the same trends. After the initial golden era of CC's, it became a breeding ground for pump and dump schemes. Since it's entirely unregulated, borderline impossible to regulate, and AFAIK, no such regulation exists to govern it, there's no law against pump and dump schemes in the CC world. So it became a huge problem. We see this a lot with NFTs. Touching on NFTs for a second: if you own an NFT, all you actually own is a receipt that is an attestation or receipt that you paid for whatever the NFT is. That's it. The content behind the NFT, whether it's artwork or whatever, isn't locked. It's actually the opposite of locked, it's publically available on the blockchain, by design. The only thing you "own" is a tag in the blockchain that says you paid for it.
Pump and dump, for those unaware, is where you artificially inflate the value of something making it seem like a really good deal so everyone buys it, raising demand and prices, then the people who generated the hype dump their investment, cashing out when the value is high, and making off with the money while the value of the investment tanks.
This is very very frequently the case with NFTs. Since it's unregulated and entirely confidence based, the creators of NFTs will say whatever they have to (aka lie), to increase the confidence in the NFT, then sell it, and let the value freefall afterwards. They've even gone to the point of buying their own NFTs with dummy accounts for top dollar to have records on the blockchain that people can look up, which say it was sold for x amount in whatever cryptocurrency, to inspire others to think they're getting a bargain when they get it for some fraction of that initial transaction. The perpetrators then sell and disappear.
Several other crypto scams like this have also happened, mostly with NFTs but also with lesser known currencies. One that I heard of, required some token to exist to perform any transactions on the blockchain. When the perpetrators were done, they deleted the token, effectively locking the currency to never be traded again. Therefore those with the now digital trash of that crypto/NFC, couldn't sell to anyone else and they were stuck with the digital garbage data that used to represent their investment.
"Big" currencies, especially older currencies, are fairly stable in terms of confidence, but they're still volatile, and backed by nothing more than confidence. Any "new" CCs are a gamble to see whether they're legit at all, or just a pump and dump. The number of currencies that start high, then drop to nil and never recover, is significant.
Here's a controversial one, Elon Musk, for all of his flaws, isn't an idiot. He pump and dumped Dogecoin, by tweeting about it to bolster it, then divesting when it surged from his influence. I think this was pretty obvious, but I think a lot of people missed it. IIRC, he did it twice. I'm speculating, since I don't know which blockchain wallet is his, so I can't verify, but, he likely picked up a crapton of Doge then did his tweet, dumped when it went high, waited for it to drop again, picked up a crapload more, tweeted again, and finally dumped at another high to earn even more. Since then, doge has not been doing superb. He inspired volatility in the currency and profited from the crypto bros getting excited about it.
The evidence is there and when you look past the confidence game, and look at the numbers, it tells a story that most people don't want to see.
Complex, maybe?
Two sides? Sure. There are the people getting killed by genocide, and the side committing genocide.
So they might be half right?
This is why, as a straight dude, I wholeheartedly support everyone in the LGBTQ+ community. They're people, just like everyone else, and I'm sure there's some that are just terrible people, but on the whole, they're just folks trying to find their happiness just like everyone else.
I consider myself an ally, and I'll use any power I have to promote equality for everyone; whether that entails voting against people who would take their rights away, or try to silence them or whatever, speaking out against tyranny or judgemental asshats... It doesn't matter.
IMO, we are people first. Your choice in name, pronouns, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc, are all secondary to the fact that you are a human person deserving of all the same rights and privileges afforded to everyone else.
My favorite (tongue in cheek) comment, specifically about (gay) marriage is that LGBTQ+ people should have the right to be just as unhappy as the rest of us, in marriage.
As stupid as it is, it doesn't stop a creator from simply demonstrating issues, without commentary. Just show people the issues and don't remark on them.
That being said, nobody should sign this. Trying to forbid people from making satirical remarks? What the crap?
I'm surprised that the billboards and stuff in games are not ads already. So many racing a FPS games that have scenery of billboards and stuff, it's all prime real estate for ads.
That's kind of how Trump operates all the time.
I'm no expert on neurotypicals, but I've observed them for a long time as an ADHD neurodivergent. "K" seems to give them the impression of disinterest, like saying "K, can we move on?" Kind of thing, like what was said wasn't interesting, or important; but context is important for them. If you're taking direction eg: "hey, OP. Push that button, would you?"; in that case it's fine to use "K" as a reply, just to confirm you heard the instruction, while you go to do the thing. In contexts where they're telling you something that seems important to them, whether the information is actually important or it is important to the speaker, and you reply with "K" then that's where they get offended by it.
It's nuanced and neurotypicals don't understand themselves well enough to adequately explain these nuances, because they go on feeling more than logic. There is a sort of logic to it, but they don't understand what it is.
See, that seems reasonable.
It doesn't say any more than it has to.