Best wishes for your father. Seriously very high dosages of concentrated curcumin entirely shrunk tumors of some pancreatic cancers according to a clinical study I read online. It is a long shot, but it can also help sooth the inflammation as well. It is one of the most powerful natural treatments you can reach for and I think it has been tested along with chemo and been beneficial. But I maybe not yet tested for his specific cancer type. If the prognosis (% survival 5 years out, etc) for his cancer at stage 4 is not good, then my stance would be might as well try everything I can. I have been in a desperate but only chronic (i.e. not terminal) health quagmire also related to my gut (not sure if it is a tumor or not), but not so definitively critical as your fathers’.

I see your rewards for this blog just jumped to $600+ because that whale I mentioned has upvoted your post. So you will see that current vote weighting algorithm for Steem is votes x votes, i.e. squared. So if a whale (with 1000 times more SP weight than the minnows) upvotes a post that had 5 times less culmulative SP vote weight, then the post’s rewards (and to some degree site ranking) are boosted approximately 5 x 5 = 25 times. Also the system is still being actively developed and so these algorithms might possibly change. I am not one of the developers of this system. They are for example @dan (@dantheman), @ned, and @theoretical.

Well if you can handle us males fighting and insulting each other (apologies for that), some of the discussions in the Altcoin Discussion forum of Bitcointalk.org provide expert discussion.

I also heard the white paper needs to be updated. But I think the fundamentals will not change significantly. But reading the white paper does not insure we understand it entirely. I read it quickly in June, read it again in July, and still made some mistakes in my understanding of all the implications of the design.

I am going to ask some others if they could reply to suggest to you some learning resources.

I will definitely remember you and your offer to help on testing. I agree on needing more beginner’s information and well organized for them.

Edit: the learning resources I am aware are really not very concise and well organized:

https://medium.com/zapchain-magazine/the-best-places-on-the-internet-to-learn-about-bitcoin-a4733f9f3ac7