Real currencies are far more stable and are unlikely to suddenly disappear. It can occasionally happen, but it's rare. Cryptocurrencies are a ponzi scheme.
Because it would be nice to have a card number that looked plausible that could be used in movies. Imagine if every phone number in a movie had to be (555) 555-5555. It would break your suspension of disbelief.
There's an actual silver lining here: "will ask Congress".
Holy shit, they're admitting there are other branches of the government, and that they have to be asked for something, instead of simply ordered or ignored.
Funding for NPR comes from dues and fees paid by member stations, underwriting from corporate sponsors, and annual grants from the publicly funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The big NPR stations in major cities get almost no money from CPB, but it's a critical source of funding for rural stations. Sometimes the NPR station is the only source of news available in rural areas.
If the government cuts funding to CPB, big city NPR stations will be fine, but rural listeners might go from 1 radio station in range to 0 radio stations.
It doesn't seem to be the case, but it would be interesting if there were CC numbers that were meant to be used in movies, similar to how 555-XXXX phone numbers are never real.
Best thing I can think of is to verify licenses for digital products/games. Buy a game, verify you own it like you would with a CD using an NFT, and then you can sell it again when you're done.
You could do that today without NFTs or anything blockchainish if the game companies wanted it. The hurdle isn't technological, it's monetary. There's no reason that a game company would want to allow you to resell your game.
You don't need an NFT to see that a file is unique. All that requires is a hash function. Many download sites provide signed cryptographic hashes so that you know that the file you've downloaded is the one that they released. None of that requires blockchains or crypto.
While it's often maintained that the word doozy derives from the "Duesenberg" in the name of the famed Duesenberg Motor Company, this is impossible on chronological grounds. Doozy was first recorded (in the form dozy) in eastern Ohio in 1916, four years before the Duesenberg Motor Company began to manufacture passenger cars; the related adjective doozy, meaning "stylish" or "splendid," is attested considerably earlier, in 1903. So where did doozy come from? Etymologists believe that it's an altered form of the word daisy, which was used especially in the late 1800s as a slang term for someone or something considered the best.
I don't think Americans are going to know what they'll miss until it's gone.
I'm assuming you're American. If so, have you ever lived outside the USA? I've lived in multiple countries on a few continents, including some time in the US, so I know what it's like to be in the "hub of the world" vs somewhere else.
Yeah, the US has social problems, there's too much materialism, produce is widely available, but often shipped from very far away, public transit sucks, and so-on. I get you. But, the US is also the place where things happen first. For example, most new gadgets are available first in the US. Most new Internet services are available in the US first. Other parts of the world might have to wait years for things to show up, sometimes they never do. I remember how absolutely shocking it was when Spotify was available outside the US before it was available inside the US, because 99.9% of everything else shows up in the US first.
And yeah, the exercise machine that you never use was $99 at a Black Friday sale. But, the cheapest that machine will ever be in say Spain is the equivalent of $200 or so, because it's "made" in the US (or at least that's where the company that owns the IP is based) and it has to be imported into other countries and there are additional fees, etc.
This isn't just about gadgets though. The US healthcare system is awful, but many medicines are available in the US years before they show up other places. Part of this is that drug companies can make so much more money in the US. But, another important part is that often the best scientists and engineers migrate to the US and they're the ones inventing and patenting these things. If you're someone who needs a certain medicine, it can be frustrating to watch people in the US getting treated years before it's available to you.
Then there's media. Everyone knows how Hollywood is the main source of movies for the entire world, and most other media is similar. But, it's not just that. For example, Americans don't really care about football / futbol / soccer. But, the US market is so important that European clubs mostly travel to the US in the summer for events and tours. Every other continent would love to have these teams visit because almost every other country is nuts about football, but year after year it's a trip to the US because that's where the money is. It's gotten so bad that the Copa America, the South American football championship has twice been hosted in the US in the last decade, despite it being the championship for an entirely different continent.
And, yeah, Hollywood. It's where all the best performers go. Shitt's Creek was a massive hit in multiple countries, and it was a Canadian production using a Canadian cast. But, Eugene Levy was the honorary mayor of Pacific Palisades, he mostly lives in LA. Catherine O'Hara was named honorary mayor of Brentwood, Los Angeles where she mostly lives. It's the same with most of the cast (not that they're all honorary mayors of their adopted home towns, just that they live in the US). Virtually every major Canadian director (Cronenberg, Cameron, Villeneuve) is based out of LA. It's the same with most prominent actors and directors from most other countries. If they don't live full time in the US, they at least maintain a home in LA and live there part time.
Even American sports, despite only being played in the US, tend to pull in the best athletes from other countries. There are NBA players from Germany, NFL players from Cameroon, MLB players from Australia. These are countries where the sport doesn't even exist, and yet they're drawn to the big paydays in the US.
The best analogy I can make is that the US currently has a gravitational field that attracts things there. It's sometimes mild, but often it's strong (especially with singers and actors). Once things end up in that gravitational field, the main audience or main market becomes the US. Americans tend not to notice this because they're at the center of that gravitational field, and it just looks like everything happens to be near them. You have to live outside the US to watch things constantly flowing to the US, and to see how sometimes you have to fight against gravity to get them back.
merc @ merc @sh.itjust.works Posts 10Comments 3,012Joined 2 yr. ago
Real currencies are far more stable and are unlikely to suddenly disappear. It can occasionally happen, but it's rare. Cryptocurrencies are a ponzi scheme.