forkboy

I'd say 6 or 7 years.

Pam Grier

Huh, totally passed me by that Krallice put out a new album. Will have to check it out.

That vid you posted reminds me of an acoustic Cannibal Corpse cover I got quite obsessed listening to last year. Started off just as "this is funny" but I actually enjoy this version a lot more than the original. Won't embed it, but it's on that link if you're vaguely interested.

As for stuff in my Youtube subs, hmmm. Well. The Great War is a channel covering WW1, they have a series of videos covering "this week in the war 100 years ago" that's been going on since July 2014, though obviously we're nearing the home stretch on that stuff. But there's other videos covering notable people in the war, and they go on field trips to places like the Italian Alps and Flanders to see battlefields and talk to people and all that stuff. If you've an interest in that particular conflict they cover it in an accessible way.

Jospeh Winiarski does covers of doom metal and stoner rock tunes on his banjo. I particularly enjoy his cover of Sleep's Dragonaut but he's got some bitchin' Electric Wizard covers too. Red Letter Media I watch mostly for Best of the Worst & it's offshoots, Re:View is also good but I don't really care about their thoughts on this weeks big blockbuster film. I'm also subbed to Global Cycling Network, which is a channel about the sport of cycling. I don't watch everything they do as there's lots of shit about bike maintenance I couldn't care less about but the weekly news show is worth a watch & they often have dumb, funny stuff too. Technically hbomberguy is a video game channel I guess? But I don't give a hoot about his video games criticism, if I want someone to tell me that Dark Souls is actually good then I'll go on literally any video game website ever, I only watch to see him make fun of alt-right dipshits & their 8 hour long Youtube videos. That's about as much as I go into politics on Youtube, Someone ranting into a webcam for 3 hours is not entertainment to me and that's what most Youtube politics people seem to be. At least hbomberguy is putting effort into his stuff, it's generally clips cut together of other peoples more unhinged moments, people like the amazing Davis Aurini and his obsession ess jay double ewws while Harris giggles over them. Anyway, if you enjoy people like Paul Joseph Watson & Davis Aurini & Thunderfoot & Carl of Swindon sincerely then this won't be for you at all. But generally if I want to see a lunatic rant about fringe politics I'll stare into the mirror and talk to myself.

Oh, & there's wrestling stuff. CWF Mid Atlantic has a solid 1 hour weekly show on their Youtube. I dunno what else I watch.

I wasn't suggesting it takes a lot of time to move funds out of Bitcoin & into real money though? There can be other difficulties. Like fees for example. Without even touching upon fraudsters.

As for "it's not unexpected", well that's bubbles, innit? What else is there to say? You either accept that Bitcoin is an unsustainable and get out before it pops, lie and say everything is good to keep the bubble rumbling on a bit longer and then sell when more suckers are roped in, or just be completely to the existence of the bubble, either from pure ignorance, being lied to, or just sticking your head in the sand and decide that despite it being almost 400 years since the first bubble, Tulip Mania, and decide this shit will keep growing forever. Like people said with Dot Com. Like they said with the housing market. But bubbles burst. That's just how it goes. Sooner or later a lot of people are going to be left with a lot of Bitcoins which even if they don't drop lower than $5,000/coin, that's practically worthless if you bought in at $10k.

A) Uhhh, that level of instability is a huge deal. And of course it went up. It's a bubble. In the course of 6 weeks from the start of November the value leaped from $5,500 to $19,000. That's really, really abnormal and unsustainable. Bubbles pop. Sometimes it takes years. Just because the bubble pops doesn't mean Bitcoin will be worthless. If you got in when it was 1BC to $1 then even if it drops back to $5,000 you've done well. The problem is the muggins buying 8 graphics cards for mining, getting themselves into huge amounts of debt which would only have been sustainable if the value stayed over $15,000. For example.

B) As for why it's like a Ponzi scheme. You buy a Bitcoin at $10,000. It is in your interest to convince other people to get into it so your worth goes up. It's a confidence trick. Which is why Bitcoin's most vocal supporters are heavily leveraged in Bitcoin (& all sorts of other cryptocons). Why they are so passionate to tell the naysayers why we are wrong, because their investment goes horribly badly when people stop believing. What's some of the key warnings you could be involved in a Ponzi scheme? Well, promises of guaranteed high returns. A difficult removing your money from the fund. Both of which apply to Bitcoin. It's not a Ponzi scheme but it shares enough major similarities that warning sirens should going in your head.

It's fine. I'm not policing how you use your money, but letting people be aware that things are potentially not as rosey as r/bitcoin likes to paint it out to be is not a huge deal if Bitcoin isn't entirely powered by confidence and belief.

Boy do I have some bad news for you. It's going to keep falling before it starts getting higher again. This is almost certainly dead cat bounce. Plenty room for Bitcoin's value to return to plummeting yet. Dead cat bounces happen to a falling stock when people decide like you that it's reached the low point. And then it turns out it hasn't.

The point of buy low, sell high is also a bit more complex than you seem to imply. Once something is so well known about that it's getting talked about on the nightly news, that shit is a lot closer to the peak than to the trough. It's lost 40% of its value in weeks. 17th December Bitcoin was the peak, with 1 Bitcoin being worth over $19,000. It's around $11,000 today.

Sorry kids, the as much as you want to convince people to keep believing, the bubble has popped and while the balloon doesn't burst immediately, air is constantly leaking out. If you want to keep throwing money at the wall, that's your choice, but it would be irresponsible to not stop others making that same error, not falling for the blatant Ponzi scheme.

I mean if you've never had a drink you can't really compare can you? Countless works of art have been inspired by a good night on the town. And that's without getting into the question of whether games are art or not, since you raised it.

But it's also I drink fairly infrequently but when I do I find it's useful as a social lubricant when I'm feeling shy & reserved and need to pop my head out of my metaphorical shell where as video games tend to encourage turning into a hermit. And there's also just the fact without sinking hundreds upon hundreds of hours into Paradox strategy games I suddenly have less distractions in my free time where I can do things like learn a language, read more, listen to more music, all pass-times that I enjoy but do not really engage with as frequently as I should because "fuck it, I'll just do one more year of Crusader Kings" and then it's 5am. I mean there are quite literally hundreds of books on my digital bookshelf that I want to read. Last year I averaged about one book every fortnight, without gaming I could almost certainly bash through two or three a week simply because telly is so brutally bad most of the time.

Clearly I still enjoy games because I'm not just jettisoning them in actuality, but I don't think the equation is necessarily just as simple as "a drink or games". Instead of playing video games I could get into tabletop games, war games, not to mention subscriptions to WWE Network & NJPW World to watch, there's plenty of other activities that can scratch most of the itches I'd get out of games. You can argue that playing D&D or Pandemic doesn't replicate what you enjoy in games & that's cool, but I play a lot of strategy games and a lot of RPGs and don't really give a hoot about your Dark Souls or games which involve patience and skill. Meanwhile there aren't many legal alternatives to alcohol. Nor is there really any way to adequately replace the taste of a dram of Laphroaig or a nice, sweet, chilled pint of cider.

If they take away booze then I will have to take up new drugs. I don't really fancy weed. Legalise LSD or heroin please.

The only interest I have is in waiting for the inevitable bubble burst and the bloodbath that occurs afterwards but right now it definitely seems like the grifters are doing a good job talking it up to drag in enough normies to keep it going for a while yet. Maybe it'll go pop in 2019 but who knows?