[...] failing to compete on the active stackers field. Gotta break into that 1000+ comments per month region[...] love the highest signal area!

If I had $50 million to drop for a house, and [...]

Honestly, I think I need to set aside my criticisms of this website footers included, puns unavoidably intended, and tell a little about my journey of "woah, I actually didn't understand Bitcoin before, and now I do; it's all about ________".

Don't worry, I'm commenting on the correct post!

2015 was not the first time I spoke openly about digital currency and analog skepticism, although it was the year I began losing friends. I'd already acquired the fundamental skills of navigating ideological space for making and keeping a life-well-spent's worth of friends, although I'd not been applying them particularly carefully; for example, I had no plans to do anything particularly social in Florida that week of January 2015, beyond visiting Miami for "The North American Bitcoin Conference" at the invitation of a friend.

first person that should like the writing is...you. Let the public choose if the story is interesting

Five years down the road, I'd begun forgetting her existence.

It was not the blissful ignorance of a scorned lover that turns into a bitter regret when recognised; I'd forgotten her almost immediately once she wasn't there every day. Even when she was there, she'd been growing distant by the day, increasingly busy and worried by whatever great importance had become her responsibility. She lived on in gossip, rarely fearful, despite her rising rank; anyone who dared spread it was either close enough a friend to gossip freely, or so derisive of her haughty climb through the ranks, not to mention her every commanding word, that only resentment remained. I was somehow neither of those, and thus heard both.

I wouldn't remember the last time we met, nor the last thing she said to me, for almost a decade. I probably still don't. She faded out of my story, chasing her own, driven by her own belief in mission, purpose, and sense of both that sustains the young officer in the face of that inevitable cognitive dissonance that drives so many people away from military service. Her face never had hope of haunting me; I'd stopped wearing glasses after the recoiling ironsights had shifted them too many times, and I'd realised how distant from practicality was the resolving power that they might have allowed, if I'd ever had the time to aim, while also needing it. She never needed glasses; a cellphone was enough.

Praise would be wasted, anyways. I was first of her problems and last of her concerns, some junior too good at working alone for the work's good, who needed only to learn the cant of command and habits of its use. I couldn't have imagined, fifteen years ago, the panic of recognizing her after having realised I was dreaming, knowing that nothing anyone could say or do would make any difference after I awoke. The character in the dream was fiction, less relevant than what she'd forgotten about me.

I could care less what her rank is today, for she's the one who needs it.

CHAPTER XV ~~~ THE PILOTS' MONOPOLY

One day, on board the Aleck Scott, my chief, Mr. Bixby, was crawling carefully through a close place at Cat Island, both leads going, and everybody holding his breath. The captain, a nervous, apprehensive man, kept still as long as he could, but finally broke down and shouted from the hurricane deck ---

"For gracious' sake, give her steam, Mr. Bixby! Give her steam! She'll never raise the reef on this headway!"

For all the effect that was produced upon Mr. Bixby, one would have supposed that no remark had been made. But five minutes later, when the danger was past and the leads laid in, he burst instantly into a consuming fury, and gave the captain the most admirable cursing I ever listened to. No bloodshed ensued; but that was because the captain's cause was weak; for ordinarily he was not a man to take correction quietly.

Having now set forth in detail the nature of the science of piloting, and likewise described the rank which the pilot held among the fraternity of steamboatmen, this seems a fitting place to say a few words about an organization which the pilots once formed for the protection of their guild. It was curious and noteworthy in this, that it was perhaps the compactest, the completest, and the strongest commercial organization ever formed among men.

For a long time the wages had been two hundred and fifty dollars a month; but curiously enough, as steamboats multiplied and business increased, the wages began to fall little by little. It was easy to discover the reason of this. Too many pilots were being "made." It was nice to have a "cub," a steersman, to do all the hard work for a couple of years, gratis, while his master sat on a high bench and smoked; all pilots and captains had sons or nephews who wanted to be pilots. By and by it came to pass that nearly every pilot on the river had a steersman. When a steersman had made an amount of progress that was satisfactory to any two pilots in the trade, they could get a pilot's license for him by signing an application directed to the United States Inspector. Nothing further was needed; usually no questions were asked, no proofs of capacity required.

Very well, this growing swarm of new pilots presently began to undermine the wages, in order to get berths. Too late --- apparently --- the knights of the tiller perceived their mistake. Plainly, something had to be done, and quickly; but what was to be the needful thing? A close organization. Nothing else would answer. To compass this seemed an impossibility; so it was talked, and talked, and then dropped. It was too likely to ruin whoever ventured to move in the matter. But at last about a dozen of the boldest --- and some of them the best --- pilots on the river launched themselves into the enterprise and took all the chances. They got a special charter from the legislature, with large powers, under the name of the Pilots' Benevolent Association; elected their officers, completed their organization, contributed capital, put "association" wages up to two hundred and fifty dollars at once --- and then retired to their homes, for they were promptly dischanged from employment. But there were two or three unnoticed trifles in their bylaws which had the seeds of propagation in them. For instance, all idle members of the association, in good standing, were entitled to a pension of twenty-five dollars per month. This began to bring in one straggler after another from teh ranks of the new-fledged pilots, in the dull (summer) season. Better have twenty-five dollars than starve; the initiation fee was only twelve dollars, and no dues required from the unemployed.

Also, the widows of deceased mebbers in good standing could draw twenty-five dollars per month, and a certain sum for each of their children. Also, the said deceased would be buried at the association's expense. These things resurrected all the superannuated and forgotten pilots in the Mississippi Valley. They came from farms, they came from interior villages, they came from everywhere. They came on crutches, on drays, in ambulances --- any way, so they all got there. They paid in their twelve dollars, and straightway began to draw out twenty-five dollars a month and calculate their burial bills.

By and by, all the useless, helpless pilots, and a dozen first-class ones, were in the association, and nine tenths of the best pilots out of it and laughing at it. It was the laughing-stock of the whole river. Everybody joked about the bylaw requiring members to pay ten per cent of their wages, every month, into the treasury for the support of the association, whereas all the member were outcast and tabooed and no one would employ them. Everybody was derisively grateful to the association for taking all the worthless pilots out of the way and leaving the whole field to the excellent and the deserving; and everybody was not only jocularly grateful for that, but for a result which naturally followed, namely, the gradual advance of wages as the busy season approached. Wages had gone up from the low figure of one hundred dollars a month to one hundred and twenty-five and in some cases to one hundred and fifty; and it was great fun to enlarge upon the fact that this charming thing had been accomplished by a body of men not one of whom received a particle of benefit from it. Some of the jokers used to call at the association rooms and have a good time chaffing the members and offering them the charity of taking them as steersmen for a trip, so that they could see what the forgotten river looked like. However, the association was content; or at least it gave no sign to the contrary. Now and then it captured a pilot who was "out of luck," and added him to its list; and these later additions were very valuable, for thei were good pilots; the incompetent ones had all been absorbed before. As business freshened, wages climbed gradually up to two hundred and fifty dollars --- the association figure --- and became firmly fixed there; and still without benefiting a member of that body, for no member was hired. The hilarity at the association's expense burst all bounds, now. There was no end to the fun which that poor martyr had to put up with.

whether damage can be done faster than sound

thought he would be really proud of me for being part of a full government shutdown

What's the etiquette on reposting with a link to the original post?

Necromancy zaps/boosts!

Well, his neck explodes and [...]

this argument is useless without coordinates on the agreed map of where it happened

Which coordinates are in doubt? The cell phone locations for the video are placed by their GPS, we know where Kirk was, and there's an official narrative around the shooter's location.

There may well be problems with this kind of analysis (including that it might be complete BS), but I don't understand this issue about an agreed upon map.