#time is a precious commodity atm D:

[thevioletcaptain]

Hey, I agree with you that it's important to support canon couples, but I'm also worried that you seem to imply being rude and insulting people is okay. Natalie was completely out of bounds, and she could have said she disagreed in a thousand different ways - for instance, like you did in your tags. Just - so many people read your blog and respect what you have to say - maybe let's make it clear it's never okay to be so aggressive and mean? Let's keep it civil.

Reply under the cut :)

First off, sorry for the delayed response--I was at work all day yesterday, and then immediately went to visit a friend until the wee hours of the morning. I had no idea that anyone would be so upset by anything that I’d added to the discussion, so opening tumblr this morning has basically been like

Yes, I agree that the wording of Nat’s original reblog was harsher than necessary. I’ve since spoken to her, and she too admits that she could have worded it less aggressively.

It didn’t ping as particularly offensive to me at the time I hit reblog, most likely because I am good friends with Nat and understood her frustration and her meaning. I’m sorry that I didn’t realize the potential for hurt when I agreed with the reblog.

Had it registered to me as something that could cause this much grief for anyone, I would have made my own post separate from the original to give my thoughts on the topic.

For related reasons, I won’t link to the post or to the OP anywhere in this post as I can see from my dash that they are really upset about the whole thing, and I’m not about to bring any further unwanted discussion to their notifications. I regret that I added to the hurt that they’re feeling, but from a post of theirs it seems that they don’t want any contact with anyone who agreed with the reblog at all, so I’m going to respect that.

That said, I feel it’s important to clear up some apparent misconceptions that I’ve seen floating around in my few minutes online. 

The point of my tags was that rallying to beat a ship whose potential win of this otherwise meaningless annual poll could actually mean positive things for the continuation of the show they’re on doesn’t sit well with me personally. That’s all. I sure as hell didn’t mean that I think anyone who voted for Dean/Cas is a terrible person, and I truly hope nobody thought that’s what I was saying.

Obviously if someone has never heard of or seen an episode of One Day at a Time, they wouldn’t have known about the particular reasons why rallying to squash Syd/Elena might have been different than rallying to squash, say... Eleanor and Tahani from The Good Place. 

That’s why I felt it was worth sharing the post, and why I listed a bunch of the positive aspects of the show in my tags. 

The “crush the competition, we’re better than them” attitude that I’d seen spread over multiple platforms during this particular round of March Madness was bothering me BECAUSE half the people sharing the message had no idea what they were rallying against, and I thought it was important for people to know better before they just blindly jumped on the bandwagon.

I had a similar gut reaction the year we were up against Clexa from The 100, though as that show wasn’t in a precarious position, I ignored the discomfort and simply didn’t vote at all, rather than speak up about it. I could not stomach doing that again this year, because as mentioned, One Day at a Time is in dire need of attention and support.

This was never about shaming people who saw their OTP in the bracket and merrily clicked on them. 

It was about pointing out the actual negative effects of actively campaigning to obliterate the competition through multiple votes* that a fledgling ship could not reasonably compete with, even if there were a handful of bronlies or anti-Misha people trying to boost their numbers out of pure spite.

(*The multiple votes thing is just...  ugh. Don’t even get me started on the way Zimbio run this thing, because it’s been making me grind my teeth for years.)

Anyway. I’m sure this has all been hashed out ad infinitum by multiple people over the past twenty-something hours since it all went down. For all I know, discussion has already stopped and the only reason I saw any of it was because of Tumblr’s terrible out-of-order dashboard algorithms.

I just wanted to address my own part in the whole mess, and apologize for offending the OP. It certainly was not my intention, though I know that means little when they felt hurt anyway.

[legit-scam-review]

Think Crypto’s Challenges Are Unique? It’s Just History Repeating Itself

From bartering to blockchain, the world of money – and the way we transfer it – has never stood still. Indeed, even the assets we prize have changed. Although it might be nice to have some vegetables in your fridge, using it as a form of currency has probably never crossed your mind.

It’s easy to take financial systems for granted. But every advancement over the centuries has caused some major disruption and a lot of getting used to. With each new system came imperfections and pitfalls – and in some ways, this is good. Cryptocurrencies hold a lot of promise but still face teething problems and challenges. History tells us that this is to be expected, and things can be fixed with patience and a few bright sparks.

Buckle yourselves in. Together, we’re going to take a journey exploring where money transfers began, and how we got to where we are today. Surprisingly, the issues facing crypto right now have been seen throughout the centuries.

Barter

We’re going way back to start off – so imagine everything in black and white. The barter system was the one of the first known forms of trading, pioneered and relied upon by civilizations as far back as 9000 BC. Goods would be exchanged for anything from food and tea leaves to spices, weapons and even human skulls. In every sense, this system is the godfather of money as we know it today.

Cowrie shells

As you can imagine, lugging around cattle and heavy sacks of grain whenever you wanted something from someone would have been a bit of a drag. Thankfully, it only took a few thousand years for traders to get a better idea – create a small and portable replica which symbolizes the goods which are yet to come.

Around 1200 BC, merchants in China started to use cowrie shells, which were commonly found in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. They were later imitated in bronze and copper. Metal knives were also popular as a substitute for the items due to be delivered – but perhaps unsurprisingly, sharp edges were taken away to swerve any nasty accidents. Often, holes would feature in the middle so they could be linked together – and it’s from here the inspiration for coins was born. Fun fact for a dinner party? Cowrie shells were still commonly used as currency in parts of Africa until the early 1900s. Now that’s stamina.

Creating an asset which represents something else is something that hundreds of utility coins in the crypto world do today. Digital tokens are increasingly being used to represent assets in the physical world – bringing a whole new meaning to ownership.

Coins

Fast forward just 700 years (why aren’t all history lessons this fast?) and we finally get to something resembling money – the coins jingling in your pocket. Or not if you’re a diehard crypto nerd, or like the Queen, who doesn’t carry cash.

By the time we arrive at 500 BCE, coins have popped up in Persia, Turkey, Greece and Macedonia – and soon enough, the Roman Empire was getting in on the action. That said, its soldiers appeared to take the revolution with a grain of salt, as many of them appear to have been partly paid in, er, salt. A payment method that’s slow to take off and enjoy mainstream adoption – that rings a bell.

Paper currency

At roughly the same time, paper currency was beginning to come along in leaps and bounds, but they did cause immense amounts of price volatility. In some cases, countries created way too many of these bills – devaluing their currencies and causing rampant price inflation. The story of price volatility sounds familiar, with the price of bitcoin soaring dramatically in 2018 before crashing – sending shock waves through the entire cryptocurrency market and prompting experts to question its suitability for day-to-day use.

Returning to history, banknotes soon emerged which were tied to precious metals like gold and silver – commodities which are still regarded as safe havens today. Further inventions such as checks (16th century) and the telegraph (19th century – yes, still in black and white) helped modernize transactions and speed up transfers. Want another fun fact for that dinner party? The rollout of telegraph systems paved the way for Western Union, which launched in 1851.

Making notes notable

With money changing hands in ever larger quantities, it became important for bank notes to be trusted and recognized internationally. This resulted in nations including England and the US moving away from gold as a value standard – and instead, they established centralized institutions like the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. Many crypto organizations, which do not rely on central banks, are now underwriting their digital currencies with precious metals – and some banks are even making a cautious foray into the world of crypto.

The modern era

Here’s where we start to leave black and white behind and live in technicolor, with the traditional financial systems we’ve all grown up with. The middle of the 20th century brought about the advent of credit cards, and the late 1960s saw the launch of ATMs. By the 1970s, banks teamed together to launch SWIFT – or to give it its longer, catchier name, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Communication. This allowed financial institutions to talk to one another and facilitate transfers globally – but even today, these can still take a few business days to clear.

Transaction speeds started to rev up as we entered the new millennium thanks to eCommerce platforms such as PayPal, but indeed, these were (and are) still tied to old-fashioned banks. The huge global downturn 10 years ago, which saw several financial institutions collapse, could be regarded as the straw that broke the camel’s back – with high fees, slow speeds, a lack of transparency and the exclusion of hundreds of millions of people without a bank account leading some to realize that a new approach was needed.

The future?

Just like cowrie shells had to gain traction all those millennia ago, cryptocurrencies and blockchain are now hoping to deliver a seismic change in money transfers – and economies as we know them. Their immutable records at every stage of a transaction helps prevent fraud and money laundering – speeding up transfers while driving down costs for consumers. Sure, there are hurdles to overcome, but as we’ve seen, practically every development in the history of money has had endured struggles at one point or another.

Several platforms are working to make cryptocurrencies practical – and minimize currency losses. For example, Piixpay enables users to settle bills and transfer money to friends and family using Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, or Dash – with these payments arriving to recipients in the form of euros.

Slow adoption, price volatility, underwriting currencies with gold and banks slow to embrace new technology. To understand cryptocurrency’s challenges today, it really pays to look at the problems of yesterday (and yestercentury.)

  Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor this article can be considered as an investment advice.

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[pkansa]

What are the greatest things in life?  Well, Conan the Barbarian had a set of answers to that question.  For me, I’ll say it varies here and there, but sometimes that itch can be scratched by something a simple as a new watch coming onto the market that has a lot of interesting elements built into it.  One such of those watches, the Valimor Caliburnus, is now up on Kickstarter.

Right from the get-go, you can tell that the Valimor Caliburnus is different from what you may have seen before – this is no “me too” minimalistic piece that is destined for the landfill.  What struck me first was the bezel on the watch.  A closer look reveals that it has a scaly texture to it, engraved in.  Per the PR materials, this is to call to mind dragon scale, but it could also remind one of, say, the overlapping leaves of scale mail. Add in the fact that the hands are actual swords (the overall theme of the watch is pulling from Arthurian legend), and you have, for me, a watch that is basically D&D in horology (and no, no steampunk here).

For me, that’s a good thing. I grew up playing D&D with a close set of friends, and have fond memories of those days.  So, right off the bat, the Valimor Caliburnus is in my good graces.  Then we get to the dial.  Oh, those dials.  There are three options here of various semi-precious stones, but my favorite has to be the lapis lazuli.  Ever since I discovered that lapis lazuli existed many years ago, I have been enamored.  There’s just a depth and variety to the blue that is intriguing to me.  And while I’ve not yet picked up a watch with a lapis lazuli dial, I did managed to get some cufflinks on a trip back from Argentina a while ago, so I know what I would be pairing with this watch.

Safe to say, design-wise, there is a lot going on with the Valimor Caliburnus that I am a fan of.  Hands and indices are filled with SuperLuminova (always appreciated), and they’ve managed to turn a cow leather strap into something that looks like a hornback crocodile strap (much nicer than your normal croc-embossed stuff), which keeps the reptilian feel to things.  The buckle on the strap also has some interesting engraving going on to keep the theme going.

Tucked into the Valimor Caliburnus is a well-known commodity, the Miyota 821A automatic movement.  As always, I like seeing known movement brands showing up in new watch startups, as that gives one a bit more confidence that things can be maintained, and parts will be available for said maintenance.  The presence of the Miyota also helps to keep pricing down.  Speaking of, early bird pricing for the Valimor Caliburnus starts at just $239, which represents about a 50% discount off the future retail price.

As I mentioned at the outset, the campaign for the Valimor Caliburnus is currently underway, with funding sitting at about 65% as of the time of this writing.  The campaign runs through July 31st, and delivery (provided the funding goals are hit) is anticipated for October.  I have seen some other watches be offered in limited runs with stone dials of these nature at this price, but none have had quite this level of detail and adherence to a theme.  Should funding levels be met, and production commence, we’re in talks with the brand to get one in for a hands-on review.  Give us a shout out in the comments (or over in Slack) if you jump in to help pull the sword from the stone.  valimor.com

Watch Overview

Brand & Model: Valimor Caliburnus

Price: early bird pricing starts at $239

Who we think it might be for: You like semi-precious stone and want to sport one in an affordable watch

Would I buy one for myself based on what I’ve seen? I have to admit it is very, very tempting!

If I could make one design suggestion, it would be: Getting that WR bumped up to 100m would be appreciated

What spoke to me the most about this watch: The stone dials and that interesting-looking dragon scale bezel

Tech Specs from Valimor

Name: CALIBURNUS

Reference: VA001A

Certification: EUIPO Design Patent #004742294-0001

Case: Ø42 mm – Aged 316L Stainless Steel

Coating: PVD

Dial: Natural Black Galaxy Granite

Glass: Sapphire Coated Hardness Mineral Crystal

Hands Luminous: Swiss Super-LumiNova BGW9

Crown Crystal: Swarovski

Water Resistant: 5 ATM (50 m)

Strap: Genuine Leather

Caliber: Japan-Made Miyota 821A Automatic

Functions: Hours, Minutes, Seconds and Date

Jewels: 21

Thickness: 12.65mm

Frequency: 21,600 vph

Power-reserve: 42 hours

If you want to train a dragon, why not start with the Valimor Caliburnus? #kickstarter #crowdfunded #under$500 #lapislazuli What are the greatest things in life?  Well, Conan the Barbarian had a set of answers to that question.