Love GNU software stack, but they’re about 15 years too late on this one.
Bitcoin can:
Transfer internationally or across the room
Confirms in less than one second (with Bitcoin lightning, otherwise can take a few minutes but still much faster than most banks, especially internationally)
Pay less than one cent in fees per transfer (with Bitcoin lightning, otherwise cents to dollars on main chain)
No middlemen
Operate with 24/7 uptime, 365 days a year without single protocol breaking hack because it’s some of the most widely reviewed code on the planet.
Entirely open source software and protocol
Is available to anybody with a network connection and a cell phone regardless of whether or not they have access to safe, stable banking infrastructure, which billions, with a B, do not. No barriers, no credit requirements, no nonsense.
Has been doing this for 15 years running.
Can’t be printed at the whim of politicians and governments. Has a fixed supply which means as the Bitcoin economy grows, all who have Bitcoin benefit, not just those in charge of monetary policy and whomever they decide to pass the benefits onto. Nobody can split your BTC in half and give the other half to somebody else, which is exactly how supply inflation works.
Using <1% of global electricity, often from renewable resources as renewable and over-produced electricity tends to be the cheapest
Each year it gets easier to use, gains more users, increases market cap, and generally adoption continues to grow.
There was some shady stuff on behalf of the DNC but he legitimately lost. He didn’t get the votes. Because his voters didn’t vote in the primaries. A number of reforms have been made to the primary system since then, a bunch of the people who oversaw that primary got fired, and many states are now moving towards ranked choice voting which will eliminate the need for primaries entirely. If half the people who complain about how voting is useless actually participated in the primary process, our political landscape would look a lot different. I used to be one of those people, I get it, the whole damned thing is a bit of a racket, but it doesn’t change that voting takes 5 minutes and has a concrete impact on who runs the government.
Edit: And that’s the presidential race. You can make much more of a difference, and the rules are much less wonky, in local and state elections. Hell, many of those positions are entirely uncontested.
The reason you only get to vote for the “lesser of two evils” is because you don’t participate in primaries (assuming you are talking about the US system here). If MAGA can get a psycho like Trump to be their party nominee, you can get your kind of psycho nominated as well.
Primaries are where you actually get a chance to express what kind of candidate you want. Hell, you can even run for office! Generals are where you hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils because otherwise it’s an automatic vote for the worst of the two evils.
I agree voting seems pointless sometimes. But it’s still important. But it’s a lever of power you have access to and nobody can take it away from you no. And you can spend the 364 other days of the year impacting politics in other ways.
You can do both. You always get the same shitty options to vote for because most people don’t vote, and even fewer of them vote in primaries or participate in the political process in other ways.
Same. Any place asking for donations that supports Bitcoin lightning is an instant donate for me, I always give something even if it’s a small amount. Lightning fees are so low that I’m happy to give small amounts whereas otherwise I’m worried my $3 donation will turn into $0.50 by the time it reaches the organization if it’s through Paypal or whoever.
Every linux enthusiast should try Qubes at least once. The architecture is totally different, vastly more secure in many ways than most Linux distros. It’s definitely not for everybody, but if privacy and security rank high on your priority list it’s worth a look. It never ends up in Linux top ten lists for some reason, but it’s an incredible OS.
Personally I’m excited to see Flatpak become more widespread and usable, fixing some “rough around the edges” aspects of it. I’ve been using it quite a bit this past few months and I think it presents a really coherent, simple vision for how to do package distribution that solves a lot of pain points. The sandboxing functionality is critical and easy to use, I don’t need every app to have access to everything in my home directory.
FWIW nobody who is actually knowledgeable about crypto ever thought anything positive about NFTs. It’s all just wallstreetbets types who read one article and think they’re economists now. The tech is interesting and has applications but monkey jpegs are what idiots spent millions on for some reason.