Why would a malicious malware botnet dev choose to mine a more difficult to mine, and thus less profitable crypto currency, when their botnet could instead be mining a much more profitable coin with their botnet?

I won’t argue that ransomware often asks for payment in monero, because monero is actually difficult to track and deanonymize, but ransomware and a distributed mining botnet are not the same thing.

Don’t forget secured cards, which require an upfront deposit, and cards with regular monthly or annual fees, simply for having them, regardless of whether you use them or not.

Thats the kind of credit cards you get offered if you are bad with credit cards (cough most Americans are cough thats kinda the whole business model cough), or, if someone steals your identity and you either don’t have enough time or money or otherwise can’t sufficiently prove to credit reporting agencies / banks that that is what happened.

Debit cards typically have PIN numbers.

I know these can be defeated in various ways, but its not usually as simple as, just steal someone’s card.

Also, you can just go to your bank or credit union, call them, report online or w/e: Hey, my card got stolen, these txns are fraud.

Might not be as streamlined or as fast as a payment challenge with a credit card, but its not that much worse.

If you’re gonna pick a cryptocurrency, go with the one that actually keeps your identity encrypted, and is intentionally designed to make it unfeasible to farm with a huge crypto mining operation:

Monero.

“Mmm, munch, mmm, I love this popcorn!”

What does nth grade reading level even mean?

Very broadly, a lower grade of reading level means:

Less broad vocabularly,

Less ability to use and comprehend more complex grammar and sentence structure,

Less critical analysis capability,

Less ability to understand context and domain specific, different meanings of words,

More reliance on nebulouy defined, vague slang vocabulary.

In the context of adults I can understand, but I think I’ve heard things like Xrh graders having an average reading level as Yth graders.

This means that say, a typical 8th grader now has reading/writing abilities on par with a 6th grader.

In other words, kids keep failing classes and getting passed onto the next grade anyway, instead of being held back, or sent into some kind of ‘catch-up’ or ‘remedial’ classes to get them up to standard.

…

Teachers and the education system broadly have, you know, rubrics, standards, lists of concepts that a kid is supposed to be taught in each class and grade.

This is how ‘grading’ works, the idea is that your test is supposed to evaluate how successful the student was at learning, how succesful the course was at actually teaching the student new concepts.

The main problem is that we underfund teachers and schools, and also punish teachers and schools when they actually do the right thing and refuse to pretend a kid has learned things they haven’t.

So, the result is, kids don’t learn.

…

In American schools?

Normal public schools?

Economics is an elective, only available at fairly good schools, usually only taken by overachievers.

Most US Public schools don’t even teach the basics of taxes or finances as it applies to an average person who is going to like, work a job that is taxed, buy a car with a loan.

Our education system has been intentionally destroyed by Republican s for decades, the result is that roughly within +/- 2 years of when I graduated college… US average adult literacy rate has been plummeting.

The average US adult now reads at a 6th grade level, average math skills are also terrible.

Uneducated people are easier to lie to and trick.

The SP500 hitting highs is a lot less good news when you realize most of that is simply due to the dollar devaluing against other international currencies.

That isn’t asset appreciation, it’s currency devaluation.

EDIT:

I m on mobile and don’t have the ability to make my own chart with DXY and SP500 normalized to each other, but uh…

https://portfolioslab.com/tools/stock-comparison/^DXY/SPY

Look at this in YTD, then in 1Y, then 5Y.

Normally, these two things move in the same dirrction, though the SP500 tends to grow much more when the DXY grows a little.

Well, now, basicslly since Trump took office, they’re moving in the opposite direction.

So, yeah, this is now what is called a ‘melt up’, where stocks climb higher, but not because of any kind of underlying fundamental strength of the US economy but because the USD has lost about 10% of its value compared to the currencies it most often is traded against.