Bitcoin does have some small intrinsic value. But it would be around the value of a ticket to the 1933 world's fair. Or an old newspaper with the headline "Dewey Wins".

Communism is not a workable system for more than Dunbar's number of people, and no country on earth uses it.
I really don't think it would work as an economic system, either, for the same reasons.

For groups smaller than Dunbar's number, that also have a charismatic leader, it can work quite well. But when that leader fails or retires, they tend to adopt a different system...or just fall apart.

That's not quite true. Occasionally some people in government do want to reduce the power of the government. For some reason they never end up making the decisions. This is because "power" is an instrumental goal that even an anarchist would desire if they wished to further their belief.

Every one dimensional metric oversimplifies things. But "fascism" is not well defined enough to use as a metric. And "statism" is the wrong term, if you're going to contrast against "individual freedom" the opposite pole should be "authoritarianism". E.g. many small communities traditionally didn't have any central government (i.e. no state), but they insisted on strict conformance to their rules via social pressure. (In that case the "authority" wouldn't be a person, but a set of social rules.)

Gyre is a more official name for the Pacific Garbage patch, as there are presumably few kids in it

Not really IMO, moderation is broken by design at best

There are already first-level companies that no longer require a degree for entry-level positions... Google among them. This is only going to accelerate. There will be more things like 3rd party certification programs that to some extent replace traditional degrees. Colleges can either adapt to this change, or be wiped out by it.

I don't see a rash of bans, but I do see the same abusers of moderation given all the mod points they can use every day.

You can thank student loans for that. Earlier generations got their schooling subsidized, but now people have to get loans to pay for it themselves instead. Colleges therefore could raise tuition. Then a bipartisan effort in Congress was launched to make sure we couldn't discharge those loans through bankruptcy like you can gambling or other personal debts, which was led by Joseph R Biden. I think we know how that turned out, forgiveness for a few of the worst abused players, and blaming inability to keep his campaign promises related to partial forgiveness for all buyers blamed on Congress while he went around them to fund genocide in Gaza.

You get two stories a week because the current model of education we have is broken beyond repair, and to some extent, obsolete, and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. You don't need to go away to a campus at a debt of six figures (or a cost of six figures to taxpayers) to get an education anymore. If anything, the Internet has revolutionized and democratized education to an extent undreamed of in human history. From the freely available works of the greatest minds in history to real time or recorded remote instruction, people now have everything they need for a first class education at their fingertips. It's all about personal motivation at this point. The resources are there, often at little or no cost. How hard is one willing to work to get the education? That's what it comes down to now.

The old model is going to have to either adapt to this reality, or die out and be replaced. I think some of both will happen. You already have 100+ colleges a year closing in the United States. That will only accelerate with AI now in the mix.

Perhaps they could establish a payment network for them or otherwise make them actually useful. File and pay your taxes for you.

The USPS is also pretty crap about it. They regularly just don't bother to add new addresses to their databases for months or sometimes even years. At work we're having to use an alternate address for a multi story residence with dozens of units because of this. It's really quite irritating. Their address validation system is also shit. They will tell you for example that an address has an invalid secondary (unit number type, e.g. suite/apartment/whatever) but then won't tell you what the correct one is even though they have to know in order to tell you that the one you used is invalid. And this is when you PAY for validation! I don't know how much of this is due to DeJoy but it's shit.

We don't need more military. In fact we need less.

The reason for the existence of the second amendment was to not need a standing militia. We DEFINITELY don't need both things.

Did they actually get it? I only saw it was proposed.

Will farmers actually get it? Farm subsidies are mostly claimed by large corporations.

They are understaffing on purpose not only despite the requirements, but because of their desire to not meet them.