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May 2, 2019 |Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Liberalism
Hijacking Liberalism: Spencer's The Man Versus the State
by Alberto Mingardi|4 Comments
W.P. Frith, A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881
Liberalism was once about repealing laws, now it is about making laws. That the way in which we use the word "liberalism" mutated with time, is beyond question. In the 20th century, "liberalism," particularly in the U.S., overcame the idea of the sanctity of contracts between freely agreeing parties. Joseph Schumpeter once observed that that the enemies of the system of free enterprise paid it an unintended compliment as they hijacked the very word "liberal" to apply it to their own views. Old-fashioned liberalism therefore became "classical liberalism" with modern liberalism being what perhaps may be more appropriately called social democracy.
This shift in the meaning of liberalism, however, predates the great depression and the New Deal. Herbert Spencer's The Man Versus the State (1884, reprinted by the Liberty Fund in 1982) is an illuminating treatment of the subject. After Richard Hofstadter invented the ominous label "Social Darwinist," Spencer has become an author that even his own tribe of classical liberals and libertarians is hesitant to endorse.
At best, scholars often view Spencer as a magnificent dinosaur, at worst a grumpy phantom of Christmas past. His vigorous and unapologetic style, his referring to deserving and undeserving poor, unsurprising for his times but uncongenial to posterity, his personal oddities (he was never the life and soul of any party): all of these conspired against his popularity.
Yet his works were filled with examples from contemporary sources in anthropology and sociology, he was far more compassionate than he is acknowledged to be (though he thought the social ecosystem was made less fragile by individual failures), he played a key role in understanding and popularizing the very idea of "evolution," and he anticipated themes and sensibilities that were to be later echoed by authors such as F.A. Hayek.
The State Keeps Growing
The Man Versus the State is one of Spencer's works that aged better: more than others, it can speak to the modern reader. Reviewing the book from our present vantage point, the word that best describes it is probably "prophetic."
Spencer is dealing with a political context rather different than ours: Victorian England. He was writing in the aftermath of the strong 1880 victory of the liberals in the general election —and out of disappointment for their clear inability to steer the wheel in a direction opposite to the Zeitgeist. Liberalism, Spencer wrote, couldn't stop the march of ever bigger government and actually cheered for it: it became the "New Toryism," or so declared the title of the first of the four essays collected in the book.
Was Spencer right? Was government really getting bigger and bigger? In the 1860s the United Kingdom's Factories Acts created a basic framework of regulation of the growing industrial system. Spencer mercilessly enumerates the extensions of the Acts, from "regulation for cleansing and ventilation" to the "enforcement of vaccinations." He witnesses with horror the establishment of State-telegraphy, the Beerhouse Regulations Act and the Sea-birds Preservation Act, the first steps taken in compulsory education, the ever growing industry of granting licenses, et cetera. For those of us that are used to living in a period when the appetite for regulation seems to be never quenched, Spencer's times hardly look grim: after all, it takes him but a few pages to enumerate the highlights of some twenty years of legislation. Try do that today.
Yet Spencer's point is not that easy to dismiss. The great reforms of the early 1800s, the emancipation of Catholics, the dismantling of combination laws that made it impossible for artisans to organize, up to free trade won by Richard Cobden and John Bright, "diminished compulsory cooperation throughout social life and increased voluntary cooperation… they diminished the range of governmental authority, and increased the area within which each citizen may act unchecked." They allowed for people pursuing their own good, by limiting the extent to which government stood in the way. The liberal triumphs of the past "were abolition of grievances suffered by the people."
At a certain moment, however, things shifted and liberalism changed. Hence the administrations led by Palmerston and Gladstone, no soulmates by any means, moved from the business of repealing laws to the business of making new laws openly aimed at improving people's welfare. Progress in living standards was the result of the liberal triumphs of the past, but an indirect one: the old liberals focused on removing barriers. Now the "popular good" was no longer "an end to be indirectly gained by the relaxation of restrains" but "the end to be directly gained" by government action.
This interventionist state came about with the widening of the franchise. But wasn't the extension of the franchise one of the great liberal battles, together with the national expenditure, a more equitable adjustment of our fiscal burdens, and freedom of trade?
It was. But Spencer noticed that popular government was making people, and liberals in particular, more tolerant towards encroachments on their own liberty. Before the franchise was widened, laws made by Parliament often appeared like "class legislation": class-wise, electors and elected tended to coincide, thus it was apparent whose interests Parliament was pursuing. Democracy blurred the lines. This is perhaps best understood thinking of the issue of public finance: before universal franchise democracy triumphed in the West, people could never be tricked to believe that public debt was not a problem, on the flimsy rationale that it is a debt we owe ourselves. Sovereigns, though inclined to be profligate, were careful to rein in the debt before it got out of control. With universal franchise democracy comes the idea that the state is not a parasite of society, but rather society itself. Why should the people care about limiting it, if power is something that belong to the people and the people itself wields it?
Defining Liberty
To assess the degree of liberty individuals do enjoy, Spencer argued, what matters is "whether the lives of citizens are more interfered with than they were; not the nature of the agency which interferes with them." That we elect our rulers does not necessarily mean that they rule us well, nor that they respect our liberties. The "divine rights of majorities," he cautioned, are no less a superstition than the divine rights of kings. We are here at the core of a problem political theorists are still struggling with: how to strike a balance between individual rights and majority rule?
In an era of populist insurgencies, this unresolved question brings a gloomy mood. On the contrary, Spencer's own evolutionary theory, applied to social matters, was understood as an exercise in optimism. Societies tend to move, he reasoned, from a "militant" towards an "industrial" state. Militant types of societies are hierarchical, top down, simpler: they struggle to survive and expand, and warlike needs and commands trump all others. Industrial types of society are horizontal, networked, complex, they are governed by a web of voluntary contracts and see people pursuing a cornucopia of different goals, in a complex division of labour. Like all organisms, societies move from simpler forms to more articulated ones, in which the parties multiply and better divide labour among themselves. Borrowing a catchphrase from Henry Maine, Spencer thought societies moved "from status to contract": from stages in which everyone had their place in society set, to stages where people could enter all the voluntary deals they wished for and could accommodate.
Yet he knew well that societies tend to be hybrid, with elements of both types. If there are strong tendencies driving society in the direction of liberty and freedom of contracts, so there are opposite tendencies too. For Spencer, this is a complex interaction of culture and institutions, the latter depending on the first.
Social evolution isn't linear. As Spencer clarified in The Study of Sociology,
in a society living, growing, changing, every new factor becomes a permanent force; modifying more or less the direction of movement determined by the aggregate of forces. Never simple and direct, but, by the co-operation of so many causes, made irregular, involved, and always rhythmical, the course of social change cannot be judged of its general direction by inspecting any small portion of it. Each action will be inevitably be followed, by some direct or indirect reaction, and this again by a re-reaction.
Precisely for this reason, as social phenomena are the result of a complex web of causes not necessarily easy to disentangle, the legislator should be prudent. This is often not the case, and he considers society "as a plastic mass instead of as an organized body." The legislator, in his capacity as a single individual readily gives up "the thought of managing his wife"; he sees that
children on whom he has tried now reprimand, now punishment, now suasion, now reward, do not respond satisfactorily to any method. . . . Yet, difficult as he finds it to deal with humanity in detail, he is confident of his ability to deal with embodied humanity. Citizens, not one-thousandth of whom he knows, not one-hundredth of whom he ever saw, and the great mass of whom belong to classes having habits and modes of thought of which he has but dim notions, he feels sure will act in ways he foresees, and fulfill ends he wishes.
The great argument for non-interventionism is a cognitive one: we cannot apprehend all the knowledge which would be required to shape society according to whatever plan.
Indeed, the problem is not only that we don't master such knowledge: it is that we do not think we should need it. One of the reasons why interventionism wins heart and minds, even in complex societies like the one we live in, is that we do not grasp its complexity. Here comes a sort of "atavism": we are born in families, where benefits are not distributed according to merits or to our contribution to the family itself. Market forces are oblivious to one's needs and consider as one's merits only one's contributions to others via economic transactions:
were the principle of family life to be adopted and fully carried out in social life—were reward always great in proportion as desert was small, fatal results to the society would quickly follow; and if so, then even a partial intrusion of the family régime into the régime of the State, will be slowly followed by fatal results.
Family-ethics should therefore not applied to society at large.
Expanded Franchise, Diluted Responsibility
Blaming all of this on the expansion of franchise would be quite ungenerous. But this lack of harmony between a society's complex organization, and our simple-mindedness in thinking about it, is something worth pondering.
Paradoxically, as economic progress became more of a reality for a larger number of people, in the second half of the 19th century, the demand for redistribution became stronger and stronger. In part, this may well have been a result of the successes of the workers' movement, who agitated against harsh labor conditions. But, as David Schmidtz reminded us in a recent paper, something changed also in the world of ideas. In particular, John Stuart Mill "foresaw a day when there would be relatively little news on the production side; human progress and human welfare would have more to do with better distribution than with rising productivity." At some point, the production and distribution of wealth became separate topics. The philosophical discussion, Schmidtz argues, started to turn towards how to cut a static pie, rather than focusing on how make a society more productive and richer. The same happened, we may add, with the public discussion at large. At the very same time progress became a feature of human life, after centuries of stagnation, how to keep it going was a question excluded from the menu of political reflection.
In early 20th century, Spencer's prophecy came to be vindicated, even though very few people noticed. Universal franchise democracies may be more reluctant to enter wars, but once public opinion became a factor, the public could demand the enemy's annihilation with unprecedented fury. War demanded socialism and vice versa. New distinctively "militant" societies emerged, doing away with individual liberty as economic decision making grew more centralized.
In recent years, however, things seem to have changed. Government intrusions in the boardroom proved to be compatible with laissez-faire in the bedroom. Is that enough to let us dismiss Spencer's anti-interventionism as a kind of paranoia? If we do it means that we came to consider the right of property, freedom of contract, the constellations of liberties that empower free enterprise as second-rate freedom. The hijacking of "liberalism" was a triumph. Perhaps this makes it all the more important to understand how it happened.
Alberto Mingardi
Alberto Mingardi is Director General of the Italian free-market think tank, Istituto Bruno Leoni. He is also assistant professor of the history of political thought at IULM University in Milan and a Presidential Scholar in Political Theory at Chapman University. He is also an adjunct fellow at the Cato Institute. He blogs at EconLog.
Revisiting De Jouvenel's Ethics of Redistribution: Seventy Years On
OH Anarcho-Capitalist says
Great piece that illustrates my belief that no government can ever be accepted in a moral society; a society which values the individual and his right to dispose peacefully, voluntarily of his justly acquired property.
It's an exercise in futility to argue how much government is too much because the answer is "any"…
Alan Kahan says
Neither Spencer nor Alberto are quite right on the timing of when state intervention begins. First of all it never left – nineteenth-century England always had a Poor Law. Taxpayer money made sure no one need starve to death. Spencer did not approve. Second, the Factory Acts regulating child and female labor predate the repeal of the Corn Laws. The first effective one is in 1833. Bright opposed it, but many Liberals supported it. For hos own purposes, Spencer, like many others opposed to the "New Liberalism" of the 1880s, exaggerated the laissez-faire virtues of previous generations of liberals out of his horror at what really was new, as Alberto rightly points out: the tendency to concentrate on redistributing the pie, not growing it, in fin-de-siecle Europe – UK included..
That said, the question of whether the pie had grown for the average poor person in England between 1830 and 1880 is not an easy one to answer. What historians say depends largely on their methodologies, which produce divergent answers.
Helena Rosenblatt says
Alan Kahan is right. There was never a time when government didn't intervene. The question was more about for whom it intervened and who had the right and capacity to make that decision.
Helena Rosenblatt
Guido Cacciari says
Lo scritto di Spencer può essere interessante, ma la premessa di Mingardi secodo cui "li liberalismo era contro la legge, ora è per la legge" mi sembra sbagliata e fonte di confusione.
Il Liberalismo ritiene, ieri come oggi, il Diritto necessario a difendere l'individuo, ma al contempo diffida dell'autorità pubbica nel rispettarlo e difenderlo (da cui la necessità di separazione dei poteri, della responsabilità personale del funzionario, della decadenza delle cariche etc).
Passa poi a citare il rammarico di Schumpeter in relazione all'evoluzione dell'aggettivo "liberale". Fonte di casino: in realtà tale aggettivo non è mai stato applicabile al liberalismo, né nel XX secolo né prima quando il liberalismo si chiamava "dottrina Whig". Anzi, quando il partito "liberal" nacque in Inghilterra nell'800, la distinzione con il "vecchio partito whigh" fu ben netta. Furono Hobhose e poi Von Mises ad associare il sostantivo "liberalism" (non l'aggettivo "liberale") alla tradizionale dottrina whigh settecentesca.
Giusto invece l'aggettivo "liberale classico", ed ancora meglio "liberalista", già diffuso sia in inglese che in francese.


The Beginner reader is not expected to have fully explored the Harry Potter storyline. A Beginner reader is assumed to have read perhaps one or two of the books (maybe even none at all). Pages marked for Beginners include some short synopses of the book plots, brief introductions to some of the key characters in the series, and overviews of several important locations where many important events happen in the series.
Much of the Harry Potter series has yet to be explored. A great majority of the character list as well as all of the chapter summaries are beyond the Beginner level.
Once the reader has completed more of the Harry Potter series, the next step is the Intermediate level. The Intermediate level details much more of the storyline and is suited for a reader who has nearly completed reading the series.


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Tarantino's Manson Movie Gets a Title; Pitt, DiCaprio Set to Star
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
byLucy O'Brien
Posted March 1, 2018, 9:28 a.m.
Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio are joining forces with Quentin Tarantino once again for his movie based around the Manson Family murders, officially titled Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Tarantino has described the movie as "a story that takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, at the height of hippy Hollywood" (via THR). "The two lead characters are Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), former star of a western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don't recognize anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbor...Sharon Tate."
DiCaprio's casting was officially announced in January, alongside rumblings that Tarantino wanted Margot Robbie to play Sharon Tate and Tom Cruise and Samuel L. Jackson in lead roles.
Tarantino's ninth feature will open in theaters on August 9, 2019, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Manson family murdering Tate and committing the LaBianca murders.
Tarantino last worked with DiCaprio on Django Unchained, and Pitt on Inglorious Basterds. "I've been working on this script for five years, as well as living in Los Angeles County most of my life, including in 1969, when I was seven years old," said Tarantino in a statement. "I'm very excited to tell this story of an LA and a Hollywood that don't exist anymore. And I couldn't be happier about the dynamic teaming of DiCaprio & Pitt as Rick & Cliff."
Lucy O'Brien is Games & Entertainment Editor at IGN's Sydney office. Follow her on Twitter.
Quentin Tarantino Will Write and Direct Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Spin-Off TV Series Bounty Law
Quentin Tarantino Confirms He Probably Won't Direct a New Star Trek Movie
2 weeks Comments
Tarantino: A Four-Hour Cut of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Might Happen a Year From Now
William Shatner Would Reprise the Role of Captain Kirk for Quentin Tarantino's Star Trek Movie

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: How can i run docker commands inside a docker file? I have this docker file:
# Use the official image as a parent image
FROM mysql/mysql-server:8.0

# Set the working directory
RUN mkdir -p /usr/src/app
WORKDIR /usr/src/app

# Copy the file from your host to your current location
COPY customers.sql .
COPY entrypoint.sh .

# Inform Docker that the container is listening on the specified port at runtime.
EXPOSE 1433:1433

# Run the command inside your image filesystem
RUN chmod +x entrypoint.sh

# Run the specified command within the container.
RUN /bin/bash ./entrypoint.sh

And entypoint.sh:
mysql --host=localhost --protocol=tcp -u root -pMypassword -e "create database customersDatabase; use customersDatabase; source customers.sql;"

but i get the following error message:
ERROR 2003 (HY000): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (99)
when i run docker build
what is the correct way to build entrypoint.sh in order to run docker commands?

A: BEFORE OP EDIT:
problem:
./entrypoint.sh: line 2: docker: command not found

You are trying to run docker inside docker.
Possible solutions
1) Mount host's docker sock

or
2) Install docker inside docker before you run your
-> apt install docker.io
--> expect super size of your image

entrypoint
Difference between 1) and 2)
in 1) your docker's docker is the host's docker
while in 2) installed docker in the docker is independent and thus isolated from host
AFTER OP EDIT
problem:
ERROR 2003 (HY000): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (99)

EDIT: And since you edit your question, which now doesnt correspond with your title, I will provide you with your second problem
You cannot connect to your localhost, because insider docker, localhost is docker itself, not your host.

*

*This can be solved by using host network driver.

*Or preferably, put your db in docker too, have in the same docker network,expose port, name your db container as mysql_database, and connect to it as mysql_database:port

*Or dont try to connect to db which is in your container from within your container. Thats I think antipattern. Usually it should be possible to get into db's CLI where you can run commands

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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https://www.the-american-interest.com/2020/06/03/how-to-shield-investigative-journalism/
The Fix Is In
How to Shield Investigative Journalism
Casey Michel & Michael Weiss
Deep-pocketed actors have been leveraging the American legal system to stymie investigative journalists from looking into their affairs. Fixes are necessary—and within reach.
They own sports teams and newspapers. They travel in Gulfstreams and mega-yachts. They buy Renoirs and Matisses and entire buildings in New York, London, and Miami. They give endowments to museums, think tanks, and universities. Most came from nothing in the collapsing Soviet Union and now they have everything, including their own definitional category: oligarchs. More than mere billionaires, they are the plenipotentiaries of illiberal or autocratic governments, and their fortunes, empires, and freedoms depend entirely on their willingness to carry out the bidding of those governments.
And for decades, they have been waging a not-so-quiet assault on the First Amendment, using litigation threats and public relations teams to stifle or silence critical journalism on their activities. As our report "Kill the Messenger," published last month by the Free Russia Foundation, explains, oligarchs are even more thin-skinned than Donald Trump when it comes to media scrutiny.
Where these men don't manage to get a story killed, retroactively "edited," or wholly taken offline, they still create a deterrent against newsgatherers who would sooner not pursue an investigation than be forced to go the rounds with someone with far greater resources. As our report makes clear, outdated civil litigation rules have become a playground for the foreign-born super-rich to smother stories that are squarely in the American interest to be published.
"Kill the Messenger" features anecdotes from prominent American reporters (who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity) detailing just how vitiating writing and publishing an expose on an oligarch can be. One said that a PR team bombarded them with emails and phone calls which, in their words, "literally verged on harassment"—all of it because the oligarch they'd written about couldn't stand being described as an "oligarch." Another journalist confided that up to "50 percent" of their reporting on Russian oligarchs' networks in the West had been cut owing to their editor's and publishers' fears of poking these deep-pocketed beasts. Just this year, lawyers for the former first family in a former Soviet Central Asian country demanded that one of my articles, published an American outlet, be deleted wholesale, simply for reporting on details of their alleged use of shell companies to move millions.
It's no longer just threats. Oligarchs have begun taking to American courts in order to make sure their escapades never make it into the American press. In 2017, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska enlisted a white-shoe law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, to file a lawsuit against the Associated Press for what he claimed were "defamatory statements" about his relationship with his former business partner, the now-imprisoned lobbyist Paul Manafort. This was no ordinary suit. Deripaska had been sanctioned by the United States for his outsized role in the Kremlin's kleptocracy and widely known as a member of Vladimir Putin's inner circle. Moreover, he'd been implicated in the Russian interference campaign in the United States, as detailed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
In his judgment against the plaintiff, the American judge found that Deripaska didn't even bother to dispute any of the facts laid out about his past dealings with Manafort. "[T]here can be no doubt a public controversy exists relating to Russian oligarchs acting on behalf of the Russian government," wrote U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle. Even though Deripaska lost his case (he filed another one still pending in Russian court), the AP reporters he targeted nonetheless sacrificed time, energy, and their organization's resources to fight the allegations. All this just to uphold their substantiated and painstaking work.
Lawfare isn't the only arrow in the oligarch's quiver. Yevgeny Prigozhin, known colloquially as "Putin's chef," was sanctioned and indicted by the U.S. government for financing a social media operation designed to sway the 2016 U.S. election. But it wasn't just tawdry memes and fake rallies that he and his network pushed on Americans. Some of the accounts cultivated at his notorious "troll farm" in St. Petersburg masqueraded as American journalists, claiming to be publishing stories in cities from Seattle to El Paso, not only providing actual "fake news" to unsuspecting American users, but further eroding broader trust in American media, a theme now happily pushed from the White House.
Some oligarchs, though, prefer to wield First Amendment protections to their own ends, effectively subverting American mechanisms for their own illiberal campaigns. Konstantin Malofeev and Vladimir Yakunin, both sanctioned for their role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine—and both of whom are worth billions—have repeatedly bankrolled far-right Christian fundamentalist groups in this country, all of it, apparently, perfectly legally. Apart from sharing a common reactionary worldview, they also use their deep-pocketed "charities" as a means to skirt foreign lobbying restrictions and gain a powerful beachhead in the U.S. political establishment.
The good news is there are a number of solutions on the horizon.
First, Congress must pass legislation—known colloquially as "anti-strategic lawsuit against public participation," or "anti-SLAPP," bills—which would discourage oligarchs from filing frivolous and costly libel suits against American reporters and news organizations. Numerous states have passed similar laws, although the scattershot jurisdictional approach allows for easy workarounds, such as filing in another state, which bad faith actors can exploit.
Even those states that have such legislation on the books can see their provisions, which help protect American journalists from the encroaching threats of these malign foreign forces, can be whittled down. Just last year, for instance, Texas placed limits on the kinds of statements protected by its anti-SLAPP regulations, and dropped protections for coverage of things like non-compete agreements, effectively making it easier for companies, including those connected to foreign oligarchs, to intimidate whistleblowers. Courts have also struck down state-level anti-SLAPP provisions (on, ironically, constitutional grounds), including most recently in 2016 in Minnesota.
Rather than take such a piecemeal approach to the issue, the only solution is federal anti-SLAPP legislation covering all American states, territories, and jurisdictions simultaneously. And all the better if it specifically targets those working on behalf of hostile foreign governments or who have been sanctioned by the Treasury Department or even indicted by the Justice Department for doing so.
Congress has clearly expressed interest in the issue, going so far as to hold hearings on the topic just a few years ago. And state anti-SLAPP laws can be used for conceptualizing a national law. California goes as far as any to protect all speech connected to issues of public interest from inane lawsuits. But a host of lobby groups—including and especially trial lawyers who profit off the bloated old system—have stalled momentum at the federal level, preferring to allow American media organizations to remain open to such costly litigation, including from malign foreign oligarchs.
The second necessary reform the U.S. should also pass is a federal shield law to protect journalists' confidential sources. A rather obvious goal of an oligarch's taking a reporter to court is to try to chivvy out via discovery who's talked him anonymously or on background, the better to then retaliate and deter others from going to the press. The Atlantic Council's Anders Aslund found in 2019 that numerous Russian entities filed suit in U.S. jurisdictions for the express purpose of abusing discovery, with some judges apparently unaware that libel was simply a pretext at ferreting out information.
Whistleblower protection, either bundled into an anti-SLAAP bill or introduced on its own, wouldn't just indemnify a beleaguered Fourth Estate; it would also bolster U.S. national security, and continue to patch holes in the U.S.'s broader anti-money laundering regime.
Casey Michel is a New York-based writer and journalist. Michael Weiss is editor-at-large at The Daily Beast.


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4977 BCE
(4977 BCE) Universe allegedly comes into being
German astronomer Johannes Kepler pegs the year everything started. Although a pioneer in his field, and responsible for great leaps of learning during the 17th-century's scientific revolution, his calculations won't stand the test of time.
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th-century scientific revolution, he is best known for his laws of planetary motion, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. These works also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation.
Lived: Dec 27, 1571 – Nov 15, 1630 (age 58)
Spouse: Susanna Reuttinger (m. 1613) · Barbara Müller (m. 1597 – 1611)
Education: Tübinger Stift (1587 – 1591)
Children: Sebald Kepler (Son) · Heinrich Kepler (Son) · Ludwig Kepler (Son) · Friedrich Kepler (Son) · Hildebert Kepler (Son) · Fridmar Kepler (Son) · Cordula Kepler (Daughter) · Susanna Kepler (Daughter) · Margareta Regina Kepler (Daughter)
Siblings: Katharina Kepler (Sister)
Parents: Katharina Kepler (Mother) · Heinrich Kepler (Father)
1600: On February 4, 1600, Kepler met Tycho Brahe and his assistants Franz Tengnagel and Longomontanus at Benátky nad Jizerou (35 km from Prague), the site where Tycho's new observatory was being constructed.
1601: Two days after Tycho's unexpected death on October 24, 1601, Kepler was appointed his successor as imperial mathematician with the responsibility to complete his unfinished work.
1609: By the end of the year, he completed the manuscript for Astronomia nova, though it would not be published until 1609 due to legal disputes over the use of Tycho's observations, the property of his heirs.
1613: On October 30, 1613, Kepler married the 24-year-old Susanna Reuttinger.
1623: In 1623, Kepler at last completed the Rudolphine Tables, which at the time was considered his major work.
1630: He died on November 15, 1630, and was buried there; his burial site was lost after the Swedish army destroyed the churchyard.
wiki/Johannes_Kepler
(1865) Steamboat Sultana explodes on the Mississippi
Burdened with six times the passengers considered safe to carry, and routine maintenance overdue, tragedy inevitably finds the steamship Sultana when a boiler blows. The vessel catches fire and sinks, killing 1,800 Union vets newly freed from Andersonville Prison.
Sultana was a Mississippi River side-wheel steamboat. On April 27, 1865, the boat exploded in the worst maritime disaster in United States history. She was designed with a capacity of only 376 passengers, but she was carrying 2,155 when three of the boat's four boilers exploded and she burned to the waterline and sank near Memphis, Tennessee, killing 1,196 passengers. This disaster was overshadowed in the press by other events, most particularly the killing on the previous day of President Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth.
Launched: Jan 03, 1863
wiki/Sultana_(steamboat)
(1961) Sierra Leone gains independence
A century and a half after Britain took Sierra Leone as its own, the West African nation becomes an independent country under Prime Minister Milton Margai. The transfer of power is peaceful, and the sun sets earlier on the once globe-spanning British Colonial Empire.
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north-east, Liberia to the south-east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south-west. Sierra Leone has a tropical climate, with a diverse environment ranging from savannah to rainforests. Sierra Leone has a total area of 71,740 km² and a population of 7,075,641.
Founded: Apr 27, 1961
GDP: $4.21 billion USD (2015)
Calling code: 232
Capital: Freetown
President: Ernest Bai Koroma
Currency: Sierra Leonean leone
wiki/Sierra_Leone
(1986) Captain Midnight hacks HBO signal
Satellite TV dealer John MacDougall, under the pseudonym 'Captain Midnight,' jams the broadcast signal of cable network HBO for a few minutes, replacing its programming with a protest message. The protest? HBO has scrambled its signal, forcing satellite TV customers to pay for HBO. MacDougall will receive a $5,000 fine and a year of probation.
On April 27, 1986, American electrical engineer and business owner John R. MacDougall, using the pseudonym Captain Midnight, jammed HBO's satellite signal to broadcast a message protesting their rates for satellite dish owners, which he considered too expensive.
wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_signal_intrusion
4.0.a17
Posted in: History	Tagged: 1865, 1961, 1986, 4977 BCE, history
German astronomer Johannes Kepler pegs the year everything started. Although a pioneer in his field, and responsible for great leaps of learning during the 17th-century's scientific revolution, his calculations won't stand the test of time. .
Burdened with six times the passengers considered safe to carry, and routine maintenance overdue, tragedy inevitably finds the steamship Sultana when a boiler blows. The vessel catches fire and sinks, killing 1,800 Union vets newly freed from Andersonville Prison..
(1934) Peterson's 'Guide to the Birds' first published
26-year-old ornithologist, illustrator, and writer Roger Tory Peterson sees his field guide to the birds of North America published. It will be an immediate sensation, and its author will go on to be a pioneer in the US environmental movement. .
A century and a half after Britain took Sierra Leone as its own, the West African nation becomes an independent country under Prime Minister Milton Margai. The transfer of power is peaceful, and the sun sets earlier on the once globe-spanning British Colonial Empire..
1961 1776 1991 1986 1952 1846 1937 1982 1983 1978 1963 1917 1957 daily pic 1962 1940 1970 1960 has_video 1959 1916 1984 1859 1898 1958 1889 1981 1967 Germany England 1948 1919 1934 1902 1938 1974 1995 1915 1945 1955 1949 1911 1971 New York national park Soviet Union 1863 1977 1950 1969 1953 1989 1922 1914 1994 1933 code 1956 1966 1964 1812 1976 1993 1954 1939 1901 annual 1965 has_audio 1998 vocabulary 1865 1870 1972 holiday 1941 United States 1968 2000 event 1908 1979 1944 1980 NASA 1990 1951 1973 1985 1918 1947 1851 1935 1942 1789 history 1943 1975 memorial 1946


text:
Transaction fees for cryptocurrency depend mainly on the supply of network capacity at the time, versus the demand from the currency holder for a faster transaction. The currency holder can choose a specific transaction fee, while network entities process transactions in order of highest offered fee to lowest. Cryptocurrency exchanges can simplify the process for currency holders by offering priority alternatives and thereby determine which fee will likely cause the transaction to be processed in the requested time.
Then, in early 2009, an anonymous programmer or a group of programmers under an alias Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin. Satoshi described it as a 'peer-to-peer electronic cash system.' It is completely decentralized, meaning there are no servers involved and no central controlling authority. The concept closely resembles peer-to-peer networks for file sharing.
The rapid price increase of Ethereum has not only attracted investors but developers too. Ethereum has tens of thousands of developers in its open source community, each contributing to the many layers of the "Ethereum stack". This includes code contributions to the core Ethereum clients, second layer scaling tech and the "decentralized applications" (dApps) that are built on top of the platform. The appeal of Ethereum to developers is unique in that it was the first platform to allow anyone in the world to write and deploy code that would run without the risk of censorship. The community of developers which have formed around these core principles have led to the creation of technologies that could not have existed without the inception of Ethereum, many of which were never predicted. Some of the major use-cases of Ethereum so far have been:
The bitcoin blockchain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions.[79] It is implemented as a chain of blocks, each block containing a hash of the previous block up to the genesis block[d] of the chain. A network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software maintains the blockchain.[36]:215–219 Transactions of the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available software applications.
A lot of people have made fortunes by mining Bitcoins. Back in the days, you could make substantial profits from mining using just your computer, or even a powerful enough laptop. These days, Bitcoin mining can only become profitable if you're willing to invest in an industrial-grade mining hardware. This, of course, incurs huge electricity bills on top of the price of all the necessary equipment.
As with other cryptocurrencies, the validity of each ether is provided by a blockchain, which is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography.[30][31] By design, the blockchain is inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is an open, distributed ledger that records transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.[32] Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum operates using accounts and balances in a manner called state transitions. This does not rely upon unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs). State denotes the current balances of all accounts and extra data. State is not stored on the blockchain, it is stored in a separate Merkle Patricia tree. A cryptocurrency wallet stores the public and private "keys" or "addresses" which can be used to receive or spend ether. These can be generated through BIP 39 style mnemonics for a BIP 32 "HD Wallet". In Ethereum, this is unnecessary as it does not operate in a UTXO scheme. With the private key, it is possible to write in the blockchain, effectively making an ether transaction.
Bloomberg reported that the largest 17 crypto merchant-processing services handled $69 million in June 2018, down from $411 million in September 2017. Bitcoin is "not actually usable" for retail transactions because of high costs and the inability to process chargebacks, according to Nicholas Weaver, a researcher quoted by Bloomberg. High price volatility and transaction fees make paying for small retail purchases with bitcoin impractical, according to economist Kim Grauer. However, bitcoin continues to be used for large-item purchases on sites such as Overstock.com, and for cross-border payments to freelancers and other vendors.[149]
On 25 March 2014, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ruled that bitcoin will be treated as property for tax purposes. This means bitcoin will be subject to capital gains tax.[62] In a paper published by researchers from Oxford and Warwick, it was shown that bitcoin has some characteristics more like the precious metals market than traditional currencies, hence in agreement with the IRS decision even if based on different reasons.[63]
In Charles Stross' 2013 science fiction novel, Neptune's Brood, the universal interstellar payment system is known as "bitcoin" and operates using cryptography.[236] Stross later blogged that the reference was intentional, saying "I wrote Neptune's Brood in 2011. Bitcoin was obscure back then, and I figured had just enough name recognition to be a useful term for an interstellar currency: it'd clue people in that it was a networked digital currency."[237]
Essentially, any cryptocurrency network is based on the absolute consensus of all the participants regarding the legitimacy of balances and transactions. If nodes of the network disagree on a single balance, the system would basically break. However, there are a lot of rules pre-built and programmed into the network that prevents this from happening.
Since prices are based on supply and demand, the rate at which a cryptocurrency can be exchanged for another currency can fluctuate widely. However, plenty of research has been undertaken to identify the fundamental price drivers of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has indeed experienced some rapid surges and collapses in value, reaching as high as $19,000 per bitcoin in December of 2017 before returning to around $7,000 in the following months. Cryptocurrencies are thus considered by some economists to be a short-lived fad or speculative bubble. There is concern especially that the currency units, such as bitcoins, are not rooted in any material goods. Some research has identified that the cost of producing a bitcoin, which takes an increasingly large amount of energy, is directly related to its market price.
Ethereum was announced at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, in January, 2014.[9] During the same time as the conference, a group of people rented a house in Miami: Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, and Anthony Di Iorio, a Torontonian who financed the project.[9] Di Iorio invited friend Joseph Lubin, who invited reporter Morgen Peck, to bear witness.[9] Six months later the founders met again in a house in Zug, Switzerland, where Buterin told the founders that the project would proceed as a non-profit. Hoskinson left the project at that time.[9]
A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security. A cryptocurrency is difficult to counterfeit because of this security feature. Many cryptocurrencies are decentralized systems based on blockchain technology, a distributed ledger enforced by a disparate network of computers. A defining feature of a cryptocurrency, and arguably its biggest allure, is its organic nature; it is not issued by any central authority, rendering it theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation.
Another type of physical wallet called a hardware wallet keeps credentials offline while facilitating transactions.[111] The hardware wallet acts as a computer peripheral and signs transactions as requested by the user, who must press a button on the wallet to confirm that they intended to make the transaction. Hardware wallets never expose their private keys, keeping bitcoins in cold storage even when used with computers that may be compromised by malware.[104]:42–45
Ethereum-based customized software and networks, independent from the public Ethereum chain, are being tested by enterprise software companies.[47] Interested parties include Microsoft, IBM, JPMorgan Chase,[33][48] Deloitte,[49] R3,[50] Innovate UK (cross-border payments prototype).[51] Barclays, UBS and Credit Suisse are experimenting with Ethereum.
Ethereum has recently created a new standard called the ERC721 token for tracking unique digital assets. One of the biggest use cases currently for such tokens is digital collectibles, as the infrastructure allows for people to prove ownership of scarce digital goods. Many games are currently being built using this technology, such as the overnight hit CryptoKitties, a game where you can collect and breed digital cats.
Bitcoin prices were negatively affected by several hacks or thefts from cryptocurrency exchanges, including thefts from Coincheck in January 2018, Coinrail and Bithumb in June, and Bancor in July. For the first six months of 2018, $761 million worth of cryptocurrencies was reported stolen from exchanges.[68] Bitcoin's price was affected even though other cryptocurrencies were stolen at Coinrail and Bancor as investors worried about the security of cryptocurrency exchanges.[69][70][71]


text:
Providing Radiation Equipment to Developing Countries
Follow Your Flag
Follow your Prayer Flag as our RadiatingHope mountaineers summit some of the highest peaks on Earth.
Mt. Denali 2015 | 21 Days in the Arctic
The summit of Mt Denali stands at 20,320 feet. The Radiating Hope team first climbed Mt Denali in 2014 and successfully reached the summit. We were, however, missing one person on our climbing team, who just recently, in 2015, ventured out to reach the top of North America.
After 21 days of arctic cold, blizzard, and everything else Denali had to throw at the team, Larry and his team (team tenacity) successfully made it to the top of North America.
Radiation Sites
Senegal
Climbing Adventures
Mt. Aconcagua
Mt. Chimborazo
Mt. Orizaba
Mt. Rainier
Mt. McKinley (Denali)
Mt. Elbrus
Mt. Everest Base Camp
Dedicate a Flag
RadiatingHope
PO Box 521344
Salt Lake City, Utah 84106
All donations are tax deductible and used to improve access to radiation oncology services in developing countries.
Nonprofit Status
© 2017 RadiatingHope


text:
Q: Eliminating a potential racing condition I am supposed to measure the latency and bandwidth between two processes. To do this, I wrote a simple program in C using pipe and fork. To see that everything works, I wanted the parent process and the child process to work alternately. So I wanted the parent process to stop after writing and continue after the child process read and printed the string with 'a'.
I used kill() and pause() along with sleep. My problem is that from time to time the program terminates itself and in other cases it works fine because it may not hit the race condition, I suppose.
I would be very grateful for another way to deal with this. If there is any information missing, please tell me and don't just dwonvote.
Up to now I have the following code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <signal.h>

#define DATASIZE 5

int count = 0;

double diff = 0;

void wakeup_handler(int sig)
{
    // Do nothing
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    int pipefd[2];
    pid_t pid;
    int i, n;

    double total_time = 0;
    struct timeval t1, t2;

    if (pipe(pipefd) == -1)
    {
        perror("pipe");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    pid = fork();

    if (pid == -1)
    {
        perror("fork");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    // Child Process
    if (pid == 0)
    {

        close(pipefd[0]);

        char tmp1[DATASIZE];

        // Set tmp to 'a'

        for (i = 0; i < DATASIZE; i++)
        {
            tmp1[i] = 'a';
        }

        gettimeofday(&t1, NULL);

        signal(SIGUSR1, wakeup_handler);

        for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
            write(pipefd[1], tmp1, sizeof(tmp1));
            pause();
            count++;
            printf("CountC: %d\n", count);
        }

        gettimeofday(&t2, NULL);
        diff = (t2.tv_sec - t1.tv_sec);          // sec to ms
        diff += (t2.tv_usec - t1.tv_usec) / 1e6; // us to sec

        //Correction of 10 seconds because of the 10 seconds sleep in the parent process

        // diff+= diff - 10;

        double band = (DATASIZE * 1000) / diff;
        printf("Average latency: %lf seconds\n", diff / 1000);
        printf("Average bandwidth: %lf Mbps\n", band / 1e6);
        close(pipefd[1]);

    }
    // Parent Process
    else
    {
        close(pipefd[1]);

        char tmp2[DATASIZE];

        for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
            // printf("Parent: Iteration %d...\n", i+1);
            read(pipefd[0], tmp2, sizeof(tmp2));
            printf("%s\n", tmp2);
            sleep(0.01);
            kill(pid, SIGUSR1);
        }

        close(pipefd[0]);
    }

    return 0;
}

A: To avoid the race condition where a signal may be delivered before pause has executed, instead of "buying more time" by calling sleep in the parent process, sigprocmask may be used to block the delivery of signals in the child process, delaying their arrival until they are later unblocked. A delayed signal is said to be pending.
sigsuspend can be used to temporarily unblock signals (by changing the signal mask) while it waits for a signal to arrive.
To avoid the race condition where the parent process sends the data-request signal before the child process has finished establishing its signal handling, the pipe can be used to transmit some initial data. By executing a blocking read in the parent process, the child process can indicate it is ready with an initial write that unblocks the parent.
When the work is complete, the parent process should wait for the child process to terminate.
For significantly improved portability, prefer sigaction to signal.
Here is a cursory refactoring of your example. However, for the sake of brevity, it has no error handling.
Do note the blocking nature of write and read help create a lockstep here, ensuring the parity of iterations between processes. Otherwise, calling kill N times does not guarantee N writes to the pipe, as a to-be-delivered signal would be dropped if it is already pending. An important part of what makes this synchronization work is that the parent process immediately waits for the data it requests.
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <unistd.h>

struct packet {
    char buffer[32];
};

void wakeup_handler(int sig)
{
    /* Do nothing */
    (void) sig;
}

int main(void)
{
    /* each process receives a copy of the number of tests to run */
    unsigned cycles = 1000;
    int pipefd[2];

    pipe(pipefd);
    pid_t pid = fork();

    if (pid == 0) {
        /* Child process */
        close(pipefd[0]);

        struct sigaction sa = { .sa_handler = wakeup_handler };
        sigaction(SIGUSR1, &sa, NULL);

        sigset_t mask, original;

        sigemptyset(&mask);
        sigaddset(&mask, SIGUSR1);
        /* block (delay) delivery of the SIGUSR1 signal */
        sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, &mask, &original);

        /* write some initial data
         * letting the parent know the child has finished
         * setting up its signal handling
         */
        int ready = 1;
        write(pipefd[1], &ready, sizeof ready);

        struct timeval t1, t2;
        int count = 0;
        double diff = 0;

        gettimeofday(&t1, NULL);

        while (cycles--) {
            struct packet output = { "aaaaa" };

            /* temporary restore the original signal mask
             * and wait for a signal to arrive
             * (including previously delayed signals)
             */
            sigsuspend(&original);

            write(pipefd[1], &output, sizeof output);
            printf("CountC: %d\n", ++count);
        }

        gettimeofday(&t2, NULL);

        diff = (t2.tv_sec - t1.tv_sec);          // sec to ms
        diff += (t2.tv_usec - t1.tv_usec) / 1e6; // us to sec
        double band = (sizeof (struct packet) * 1000) / diff;
        printf("Average latency: %lf seconds\n", diff / 1000);
        printf("Average bandwidth: %lf Mbps\n", band / 1e6);
        close(pipefd[1]);
        /* ensure child does not run off */
        exit(0);
    }

    /* Parent process */
    close(pipefd[1]);

    /* block execution in the parent process until
     * some initial data arrives indicating the child process
     * is ready to receive signals
     */
    int initialized;
    read(pipefd[0], &initialized, sizeof initialized);

    while (cycles--) {
        struct packet input;

        kill(pid, SIGUSR1);
        read(pipefd[0], &input, sizeof input);
        printf("%.*s\n", (int) sizeof input.buffer, input.buffer);
    }

    close(pipefd[0]);

    /* wait for the child process to terminate */
    wait(NULL);
}


This song began in a graveyard. I've loved Bunhill fields for many years. It's a really atmospheric graveyard in the City of London. The English visionary poet and artist William Blake is buried there along with many people who were considered radicals, dissenters or non-conformists. It's also the resting place of over a hundreds thousand of London's poor and forgotten. They don't have graves but their remains lie there. It's been a burial site since at least Roman times and the name Bunhill is a corruption of 'Bone-Hill'.
I lived in London for about 3 years and Bunhill was a favourite place to visit. I try and visit now whenever I'm in town. One day I was sitting quietly in the graveyard when a coachload of American tourists arrived. There were 30 maybe 40 or them, all carrying identical packed lunches in brown paper bags. They proceeded to picnic on and around the graves. I got out my notebook and proceeded to write my thoughts, ideas and feelings about the place. It started with the line 'Pilgrim fathers fill their plates among the greying graves' and went from there.
When I'm in a mood to write and I can switch off my brain, then ideas and words just pour out of me. I like this way of writing. You just let your consciousness stream out onto the page without editing or censoring the thoughts. It's especially good to do it in situ, out in a landscape, place or environment that inspires you. It's not easy though, because I have a tendency to self-censor and criticise. You just have to tell yourself that that part comes later. So as I sat in the graveyard I filled several pages with my scribbles.
Then later on, at home, I sat down with a banjo and began to sculpt and edit the words into a song. This is the tough part because I had so many lyrics and had to cut most of them out in order for the song to be a reasonable length. It's hard to decide what to let go and what to keep. But those decisions are as much a part of the creative process as thinking things up in the first place. I like to think that some of the lines I discarded will find their way back into a song one day. Maybe a sequel to this one?
Eventually a narrative of sorts emerged, in which the poor and long forgotten dead emerge from their graves zombie style. This is also a song about the cold heart of the City of London. The City or Square Mile, is a weird and strange place. It has it's own Police Force. You never see beggars or homeless people. It's fastidiously clean and tidy compared to the rest of London. It's absolutely awash with Masonic symbols and the architecture of power and money. But it is built (literally and metaphorically) on top of the bones of the working poor who built Britain's empire. So that I tried to capture some of that in the song.
you're all just bones to me. And I'm built from stone and bone.


text:
PR: DAO.Casino Raises 50% of Max Cap During the First Day of Its Ongoing Token Sale Campaign
This is a paid press release, which contains forward looking statements, and should be treated as advertising or promotional material. Bitcoin.com does not endorse nor support this product/service. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the press release.
Press Release: Blockchain-based gambling protocol launched its token sale campaign on June 29, 2017, raises $12 million at the first day
July 3, 2017, Singapore – The DAO.Casino token sale campaign has had a very successful start on June 29, 2017 after it raised over $9 million in under half an hour. The blockchain based betting platform is offering this unique opportunity to investors and cryptocurrency community members who are interested in supporting further development of a decentralized protocol for the gambling industry.
The DAO.Casino protocol is already available as an MVP, and with its official launch, the platform is sure to cause a widespread disruption in the entire online gambling industry. The solution created by the company will introduce fairness, transparency and mutual profitability into online gambling, through blockchain technology.
DAO.Casino has already experienced a very high demand for its native (BET) tokens, almost fulfilling maximum pre-sale token orders in the first four days. Following the increasing demand, the company feels justified in its decision to increase the token sale's maximum cap to $25 million worth of Ether. DAO.Casino believes this figure will free sufficient tokens to give a greater opportunity for all investors to support the protocol. The first day's performance leaves no doubt about the token sale reaching its goal much before the last date.
All other terms of the token crowd sale campaign will remain unchanged. The native BET tokens and the popular ERC20 tokens will act as in-game currency for all contracts integrated with the protocol.
The token sale campaign began at 1:00 pm GMT on June 29th, 2017 and will finish in exactly 28 days, or when the maximum cap is reached (whichever comes first). On the first day of the token sale, participants received 2,000 BET tokens for every 1 ETH, which will fall to 1,800 BET/1 ETH during the following two weeks. After the completion of two weeks, the number of BET tokens received per ETH will reduce by 100 at every three-day interval until the end of ICO.
DAO.Casino has measures in place to ensure rapid development and implementation of the project. In order to bring accountability among the founders, stakeholders, and others involved in the project, their tokens will be vested for two years accompanied by a six-month cliff. Due to this measure; the BET tokens will mature by 25% in value every six months. As a preparation for the token sale, the contract is currently being audited to guarantee complete security and safety.
Ether is the only supported cryptocurrency for the token campaign. Contributions from Ethereum clients such as Metamask, Parity, Mist, or MyEtherWallet are fully supported. DAO.Casino will release the destination address for the token sale campaign on its website few hours before the ICO. Upon receiving the ETH contribution, the platform will convert it to BET tokens and send it back to the participant's wallet.
DAO.Casino encourages token sale participants to confirm the address on Ethereum block explorers like Etherscan before sending the tokens. Also, people should make sure that they don't make ETH contributions from online exchange services like Kraken, Coinbase, Poloniex, etc., as DAO.Casino won't be able to send BET tokens to those addresses. It is advisable for investors to take necessary precautions to safeguard their wallets by encrypting ETH private keys. They are also requested to be wary of third parties who claim to distribute BET tokens on behalf of DAO.Casino as there are no such parties involved in the token sale.
Token Sale Specifics
The token sale started at 1:00 PM (GMT) on June 29, 2017, and go on for the next 28 days or until the maximum cap of $25,000,000 in ETH is achieved. Investors can purchase BET tokens with ETH alone as the token sale contract doesn't accept other cryptocurrencies.
The token sale offered an early bird offer on the day one, where investors received 2000 BTC/ ETH. During the next thirteen days (Day 2- Day 14), every ETH contribution will receive 1800 BET tokens. After that, the number of BET tokens per ETH will progressively reduce by 100 tokens between every three-day interval until the last day (Days 15–17: 1,700 BET/ 1 ETH; Days 18–20: 1,600 BET/ 1 ETH; Days 21–23: 1,500 BET/1 ETH; Days 24–26: 1,400 BET/1 ETH).
Out of all the tokens created, 70% will be issued to the ICO participants, 10% to early adopters and founders, 10% for bounties and another 10% for the creation of legal entity and other expenses. The revenues generated from the token sale will be utilized for Research and Development (60%), Operations (20%), Marketing (15%) and Legal (5%) expenses.
DAO.Casino Protocol
DAO.Casino protocol automates value chain of the gambling industry. The protocol will enable independent game developers to be automatically rewarded for their work when online casinos list their games while rectifying the current status quo where some developers do not retain the rights to their games.
The DAO.Casino protocol also introduces the roles of a bankroll backer and randomness provider. It means, the game developers will no longer rely on casino operators, and the possibility finding a bankroll backer would be sufficient enough for them to roll out a successful product. Casino operators will also be able to guarantee that all online games hosted by them are provably fair.
DAO.Casino platform is built to benefit all parties involved in online gambling business processes. All the contributors — developers, bankroll backers, referrers, and casino operators acting as referrers will be automatically rewarded for their contributions without a need to trust each other.
The DAO.Casino whitepaper offers more in-depth details about the platform's capabilities and plans for the future. The MVP features basic functionalities and several demo games like beta blackjack, dice, and an indie game called "Hack a DAO".
About DAO.Casino
DAO.Casino is an open ecosystem for betting titles that don't require a trusted third party. It is a decentralized governance system built on Ethereum that automatically rewards all developers, auditors and community members for their contributions. Players can discover and play scam-free games by accessing front end platforms with a familiar and straightforward user interface.
Learn more about DAO.Casino at – https://dao.casino
Blog DAO.Casino – https://medium.com/@dao.casino/why-you-need-to-be-gaming-on-blockchain-3f50e74c48f3
DAO.Casino MVP – https://platform.dao.casino
Access DAO.Casino's Repository – https://github.com/daocasino
Whitepaper Here – https://github.com/DaoCasino/Whitepaper/blob/master/DAO.Casino%20WP.md
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< YouTube Video Link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pTZW3Jv5z8 >
DAO Casino is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.
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What if depression is more than a chemical imbalance? What if depression and suicide are about despair?
OK, there's been an awful lot about depression and suicide in the news lately. That's good. Maybe talking about these dark subjects will save some lives.
I know something about depression and suicidal ideation. Here's the thing, though. I don't think I have a disease, and I'm concerned about the "medicalization" of depression. If depression is nothing more than a chemical imbalance, then of course the cure is medical – pop a pill to get those brain chemicals back in sync, right?
But what if depression is about more than a chemical imbalance? Humor me here. What if depression and suicide are about despair?
I've battled spells of depression since my middle teens. I used to wonder whether someone could cut off an appendage, maybe a finger or an arm, and measure the pain. I know what it's like to feel like I'm wading through molasses to get the simplest task done, and to struggle to get out of bed. I know what hopelessness feels like.
I've researched and devised elaborate suicide schemes. I guess I have the cred – and the medical diagnosis, actually. And yes, I'm probably biologically predisposed to depression, just as I'm biologically predisposed to sunburn. I ought to be medicated, I suppose.
But if depression and suicide are about despair, we have the uncomfortable task of looking at this problem in a different way. For one thing, we have to look at conditions in those states where suicide has increased by 30 to 40 percent in the last few years, and we have to look at our own lives and what we can aspire to change. Sometimes, we have to change our own attitudes, ways of looking at the world, and the messages we tell ourselves.
In a shocking recent report on suicides nationwide, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control found that more than half of those who died by suicide did not have a known diagnosed mental health condition. Relationship problems, substance misuse, physical health problems and job, money, legal or housing stresses often contributed, the CDC admitted.
Still, I keep reading personal accounts of people who have suffered from depression, pleading, "I have an illness. Don't tell me to 'cheer up.'" I'm pretty sure the brand of tough love I've imposed on myself is going to get me branded as insensitive, but let me speak my piece.
When I read accounts of depression I say to myself, "But you do have some control." I ask myself if these people may have experienced something different from me, and maybe they have. But any mental health professional would likely reaffirm my diagnosis. Many in my extended family take antidepressant medication. Some have been diagnosed as bipolar. At multiple times in my life, I would have hit all the high points on a checklist for major depressive disorder. It hasn't been easy.
So how can I possibly say I'm not sick, and I have some control? On the "sick" part, I know (and most people would agree) that I'm a lot saner than some people I know. And how can something that is so common really be considered a disease, rather than part of the human condition?
Explaining the "control" part is more difficult. I began grappling with depression at quite a young age, and it was severe. My life was affected, and I'm sure I would be in a different place than I am today if not for my life-or-death struggle with that black dog. The fight took all my energy and destroyed my confidence, and I don't want to minimize the pain or the destructive effect on my life. But I survived, and over time I developed coping strategies.
I learned to look around me and realize there were a lot of people who had lives a lot worse than mine. I learned to put problems in perspective. I learned not to grapple too long with an insoluble problem, but instead move on. I learned not to ruminate, to take one step at a time, and see the positive. I learned not to think in black-and-white terms and not to berate myself with negative pronouncements about myself. I learned to identify what specifically was getting me down, and see whether there were solutions.
Here's an example. At one point in my life my time was completely consumed by a man, and when that relationship ended I was destitute. Anyone would have been devastated, of course; the icing on the cake for a person like me, prone to depression, is that I was convinced I was radioactive, all the fault was mine, and no one would ever want to be my friend, let alone be more.
Then I looked around me and saw that almost everyone, no matter how obnoxious, seemed to have a friend. I realized I probably didn't have to be alone, so the trick was figuring out where to meet people with whom I might have something in common. I put the plan into effect.
That's a very, very simple example, and probably not a very good one. Since I have a tendency to severe depression, perhaps I should have sought pharmaceutical relief. At some point, however, I discovered my approach has a name, and that name is "cognitive behavioral therapy," or CBT.
Briefly, CBT can help to restructure negative thought patterns, to recognize the source of depression, and to change the actions that exacerbate it. Study after study has shown that CBT is about as effective as antidepressants, and somehow, through trial and error, I mapped out my own approach.
Consider this: According to the National Institutes of Health, about 20 to 40 people out of a hundred people noticed improvement in their symptoms within six to eight weeks if they took a placebo. Among those who took an antidepressant, about 40 to 60 out of a hundred people saw improvement in six to eight weeks.
Read that again. If you take a placebo, you've got a 20 to 40 percent chance of improvement. If you take an antidepressant, you've got a 40 to 60 percent of improvement. Them ain't great odds if you're struggling with a demon.
This is not to completely discount medication, but I think of antidepressants as being something like aspirin. Aspirin helps the pain, but doesn't cure the problem (which might not be a "disease"). One friend describes an antidepressant as a way to "take the edge off," and another requires a mood stabilizer. Neither is a miracle cure, and neither is really enough. A will to change is also required.
That's not the whole story, but it's something to think about.
I liked your post. Recently i was facing same problem then i try to motivate myself and fight with mentally chemical situation, which is call depression. Then i start my blog dark night. I want write more and about depression and many thing and i apologized to myself i could not yet but now time has come to talk about that.