Closer to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy tradition. All they need are the words "Don't Panic" on the front cover.

If it doesn't, it has no real value.

Almost nothing on Wikipedia is true, but all of it is "verifiable" in that there's at least one published source making the claim. Even if 99.9% of all other sources say the opposite.

(The Haka is not, for example, a war chant. Which is attested to, but because it's claimed to be online, it is "verifiable".)

The number of errors is huge, the number of "official editors" who know anything about the subject is extremely small, and this has always been the case. This is why nobody reputable cites Wikipedia. Wikipedia is where you go to find out what is potentially interesting, but you ALWAYS obtain the facts from elsewhere, if you've any sense.

Your best engineers will be AuDHD, and AuDHD folk don't do well in these sorts of synthetic tests.

I can code in 20+ languages for over 12 different OS', write code that's good enough for CERN to run for particle accelerator data collection for a decade, have accelerated systems by an order of magnitude by understanding the poem space better than their previous engineers, but I am abysmal at exam style settings.

The software industry is riddled with SEs who write abysmal code but can pass a coding test easily. They're the folk that you have always needed to reject but didn't because they ticked a box.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of the complaints are from ai bots and not real people.

There's nothing wrong with having a community were AI content is prohibited. In the future, such areas will probably be significantly more valuable anyway.

Some social media site is going to restrict all AI and find that many people would prefer such a community.

This doesn't mean you can't find AI slop online - there's tons of places. Why not have a few that are more selective?

The DOD/DOW have been working on this for a while. They discovered, early on, that the device had a propensity to cause permanent nerve damage.

It's very unlikely the US have fixed that, as they'd largely sidelined the work as a failure. However, at 36%, Trump needs something he can call a win, no matter what the long-term consequences.

Always been a big fan of the Cringe and met him several times. Always an interesting character. His book, "Accidental Empires" is a must read for anybody wanting to understand how we got to where we are today. He will be missed.

Most computer/tech hardware at least can have a second life after it's fulfilled its primary purpose.

The exception to that is Apple.

You can routinely find their iPads but if they aren't "unregistered" from whoever had the main account, they're utterly useless.

It doesn't make sense to buy products from a company that locks down its hardware like that. I can understand that for a phone, but not some old tablet.

...Modern ejector seats cause spinal injuries from which full recovery is "unusual". Smashing the spines of pilots might not be the most effective way to boost morale.

$22,000 per hour. The F35 will be nearer $42,000 per hour. These are under-estimates, as they do not include price hikes, crashes that close businesses, crashing into businesses, crashing into heavily-populated sports centres, etc.

Yes, it contains numerous exceptions for crypto to basically not have to adhere to traditional fraud law.

Correct. Assuming BTC holds any real world value is quite presumptuous.

The vast majority of the world attributes no value whatsoever to such digital abstractions backed by nothing but a self-interested temporary network of nodes that waste obscene amounts of energy in a negative-sum, decentralized Ponzi scheme.

#Stupid Crypto Talking Point #9 (arbitrary claims)

"**Bitcoin is.. ['freedom', 'money without masters', 'world's hardest money', 'the future', 'here to stay', 'Hardest asset known to man', 'Pristine collateral', blah..blah]**" / "**Crypto Will End War**"

  1. Whatever vague, un-qualifiable characteristic you apply to your magic spreadsheet numbers is cute, but just a bunch of marketing buzzwords with no real substance.
  2. That which can be presented without evidence, can also be dismissed without evidence.
  3. Talking in vague abstractions means you can make claims that nobody can actually test to see whether it's TRUE or FALSE. What does it even mean to say "money without masters?" (That's a rhetorical question.. our eyes would roll out of their sockets if you try to answer that.)
  4. Calling something "The future" or "It's here to stay" seems to be more of a prayer or self-help-like affirmation than any statement of fact. The technical term is an *Unstated major premise fallacy*.
  5. The argument that a crypto-based economy will "end war" makes zero sense. No war has ever ended because people ran out of money. Instead they ran out of *resources*. And during times of conflict, it's the use of power to acquire resources, not currency.
  6. George Orwell did it better.

#Stupid Crypto Talking Point #18 (Few Understand)

"**You don't understand**" / "**DYOR**" / Using an insult in lieu of an argument.

1. This is what's known as an "[Ad Hominem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem)" fallacy - aka "attacking the messenger" as a distraction from arguing the core points made.
2. This is what we call, "[Crypto Gaslighting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tspGVbmMmVA&t=571s)." Crypto proponents pretend that we're not smart enough to recognize the value of crypto, therefore there's something wrong with *us* and not the phony reality they're peddling.
3. Almost never does the OP actually explain what it is they understand and we don't. It's merely a way to dismiss any opposing viewpoint without actually addressing it.

#Stupid Crypto Talking Point #3 (inflation)

**"InFl4ti0n!!!"** / **"The dollar will eventually become worthless"** / **"The dollar has lost 104% of its value since 1900!"** / **"The government prints money out of thin air"**

1. The "OMG iNfLaTiOn!" argument is a common one put forth by crypto bros. In addition to being fallacious (Tu Quoque, Whataboutism) it's an ignorant and shallow attempt to make people not have faith in fiat, and somehow believe bitcoin would be a reasonable alternative because it's supposedly deflationary and a better store of value. All of those premises are false.

2. Beyond that, crypto bros pretend there's one principal type of "inflation" and that is "monetary inflation" which by contrast makes Bitcoin's scarcity some type of reasonable alternative. In reality, there are [different types of inflation.](https://mises.org/understanding-money-mechanics/monetary-inflation-and-price-inflation) The most common one is "[price inflation](https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2025/july/differences-prices-inflation-explained)" which has nothing to do with how much money is in circulation. "Monetary inflation" is the least significant type of inflation in modern times, but crypto bros single out this element because it's the best scenario where they can argue their deflationary currency helps, but that's false. The causes of inflation are **many**, and the amount of money in circulation is one of the least significant factors in causing the prices of things to rise. More prominent inflationary causes are things like: [corporate greed & price gouging](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/11/companies-inflation-price-gouging), [fuel prices](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140988322000895), [supply chain issues](https://www.usbank.com/investing/financial-perspectives/market-news/supply-chain-issues-contribution-to-inflation.html), [war](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/the-effect-of-the-war-in-ukraine-on-global-activity-and-inflation-20220527.html), environmental disasters, [one-time COVID mitigations](https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/economic-letter/2022/03/why-is-us-inflation-higher-than-in-other-countries/), pandemics, and even [car dealerships](https://www.wsj.com/articles/car-dealer-markups-helped-drive-inflation-study-finds-7c1d5a2d).

3. The government does **not** "print money out of thin air"... all money in circulation is [tightly regulated and regularly audited and publicly transparent](https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/audited-annual-financial-statements.htm). The organization that manages the money in circulation is the Federal Reserve and contrary to what crypto bros claim, they're not a private cabal - they [are overseen and regulated by Congress](https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/structure-federal-reserve-system.htm). It's a delicate balance between money issuance and the status of the economy. And any attempt to increase debt [requires an Act of Congress to increase the debt ceiling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt_ceiling) - it's neither arbitrary, nor easy to do.

4. Crypto bros use "cash" as an example of wealth storage, but most people do not store their wealth in fiat. [Currency is meant to be *spent*, not hoarded](https://medium.com/change-your-mind/money-is-meant-to-be-spent-not-saved-9618edec676f). A dollar today will buy what it buys. If you hold a dollar for 90 years, of course it won't buy the same thing decades later (although it might actually be worth significantly more as antique money). Crypto creates no value and makes a lousy "investment."

5. If you are looking to "invest" you don't keep your value in cash/currency/fiat. You put it into something that can *create value* like stocks that pay dividends, real estate, interesting bearing accounts, and other personal property that allows you to be more productive (thereby creating additional value) as well as helps stimulate the economy. Crypto does none of that.

6. Bitcoin also [hasn't proven to be a hedge](http://prasad.dyson.cornell.edu/doc/WSJ.08Oct23.pdf) against anything, least of all monetary inflation. There are more and more studies that show [Bitcoin is not a hedge against inflation](https://www.bitget.com/news/detail/12560605033512) . Some argue [bitcoin is a liquidity barometer](https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/10/26/bitcoin-shines-as-a-liquidity-barometer-not-an-inflation-hedge-nydig-says) and not a hedge.

7. Some inflation is a by-product of a healthy economy: Over time more money is put in circulation - some pretend this is a bad thing, but it's not done in a vacuum. The average annual wage in 1900 was less than $4000. In 2023 [it's more than $70,000](https://www.statista.com/statistics/200838/median-household-income-in-the-united-states/)! There's more people out there and the monetary supply grows appropriately, as does wages. You can't take one element of the monetary system completely out of context and ignore everything else.

8. Sure there may be some nations that have caused out of control inflation as a result of their monetary policy (such as Zimbabwe, Argentina, Venezuela, Sudan, etc) but comparing modern nations to third-world dictatorships is absurd. The real problems these countries face are a more complex function of poor leadership + other political/environmental factors, not monetary systems, and crypto doesn't fix any of that.

9. If bitcoin and crypto was an actually disruptive, stable, useful technology, you wouldn't need to promote lies and scare people over the existing system. The *real* reason you do this is [because nobody can find any legitimate reason to use crypto in the first place](https://ioradio.org/i/blockchain-claims/).

10. Crypto ironically has more inflation in its ecosystem that is even more out of control, than in any traditional fiat system. At least with the US Dollar, money is accounted for and fully audited and it takes an Act of Congress to increase the debt. In crypto, all it takes is a dude printing USDT, USDC, BUSD or any of the other unsecured stablecoins to just print more out of thin air, and crypto-morons assume they're worth $1 of value.