You miss the point. Yes spammers can go direct to miners. But it costs them more and requires more effort, as you then admit 'it males it more comfortable for people with these transactions to be part of the network'. I do not want to make it more comfortable for spammers I want the network to be as hostile to them as possible.

The fee estimate point is FUD, even if it were an issue it would be a price well worth paying, but it is simply not an issue. See Mechanics explanation for details, but my understanding is it only affects those using an outdated method of estimating fees anyway.

I do (or should) get to decide what my node relays. The email analogy is not perfect but pretty good, Google, Microsoft, ISPs and anyone that runs an SMTP replay are the 'node operators' of email. They all filter spam, if they didn't no one would use email.

The argument that filters do nothing because determined spammers can just go direct to miners (and pay much more) is nonsense. If that is the case why do they want to remove the filters? Clearly they do do something, they make it harder and more expensive to spam.

'No universal definition of spam' is also complete by gaslighting nonsense. Email marketers (like Lopp in his early career) say the same thing, but everyone knows spam when they see it. Just because we can't agree on a perfect definition doesn't mean allowing all spam is good idea. Hint: JPGs are spam.

I assume you use email with spam filters turned off? I mean those spam emails are valid messages according to the protocol right? Why should they be censored? Some spam will alway get through anyway.

Here is the thing - even if you do turn the filters off, the amount of spam you will get is far less due to the fact that would be spammers know that most others do have the filters on. Email would be completely unusable if spammers knew their activitoes were blessed, even encouraged by the main email providers.

I think JPEGs on the timechain are stupid.

But the idea that they're going to hurt Bitcoin seems so weak to me. Like the US dollar can withstand people scribbling on it but Bitcoin can't?

In fact, the idea of Bitcoin as a glorious digital monument with some graffiti scribbled on it represents humanity pretty well. That's kind of us in a nutshell. Seems on-brand. Perfectionists trying to keep their little gardens tidy while trolls come in and find ways to mess with them anyway.

NFTs and memecoins already had their peak fad moments. People now know that they're non-scarce gambling toys rather than investments. It's just echoes of that peak now. The only thing that concerned me about the ordinals/runes period was the rapid UTXO bloat, not the blockspace usage, since the latter already has a consensus limit on it.

And if Bitcoin transactions can't outprice JPEGs in the long run, then it's just not that valuable. Bitcoin currently does about 1% of the gross settlement volume of Fedwire. That's peanuts. Imagine if it reaches a point where it does even like 10% of Fedwire. What would you pay to move a full bitcoin globally, permissionlessly, in 10 minutes, in a world where it's no longer a niche thing?

Why would no one be able to run their own Monero nodes?

#carnivore

Eating red meat, especially when processed into products like sausages and hamburgers, increases the risk of dementia and cognitive decline. For each daily serving consumed (approximately 85 grams, about the size of a bar of soap), cognitive aging accelerates by roughly 1.6 years. This finding comes from a large-scale study lasting 43 years, conducted by epidemiologists from Mass General Brigham, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University in Boston, recently published in Neurology. The same study shows that consuming legumes, fish, or nuts reduces the risk of dementia by 20%.

The research involved 133,771 individuals with an average baseline age of 49, among whom 11,173 were diagnosed with dementia up to 43 years later. Participants underwent periodic checkups and cognitive function tests, while also completing dietary questionnaires. The study revealed that those consuming a daily average of a quarter or more of a serving of processed red meat (equivalent to about two slices of bacon, one and a half slices of bologna, or one hot dog) had a 13% higher risk of developing dementia compared to those consuming minimal amounts (less than one-tenth of a serving per day). Researchers found that cognitive test scores were lower among individuals who consumed more processed meat, with cognitive aging accelerated by approximately 1.6 years per daily serving.

The study also examined self-reported subjective cognitive decline, which can precede the appearance of cognitive decline detected by standard assessments. A higher risk of subjective cognitive decline was associated with the consumption of both processed and unprocessed meats (such as beef, pork, and hamburgers). The risk of self-reported subjective cognitive decline increased by 14% among individuals consuming a quarter or more servings of processed meat per day compared to those with minimal consumption, and by 16% among those consuming one or more servings of unprocessed meat daily compared to those consuming less than half a serving. The study indicates that replacing processed red meat with protein sources such as nuts, legumes, or fish can reduce the risk of dementia by approximately 20%.