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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: ‘Conceptual’ ‘Art’

Late Night Open Thread: ‘Conceptual’ ‘Art’

by Anne Laurie|  April 30, 20211:31 am| 40 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Open Threads, Popular Culture

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"Disaster Girl" has sold her popular meme as an NFT for $500,000 https://t.co/UnrKNWmG3Y pic.twitter.com/UH1xvSGXRo

— The Verge (@verge) April 29, 2021

Good for her, and I hope she’s already converted the ‘Ethereum’ to pay off those loans…

… Zoë Roth, best known as “Disaster Girl” for the popular image macro taken by her father in 2005 of her smirking at the camera while a house burns down in the background, has sold the original copy of the meme as an NFT for 180 Ether, worth almost $500,000.

Roth tells The New York Times that she’ll use the money to pay off her student loans and to donate to charity. And as is the case with many NFT sales, the Roths also retain the copyright to the image and will make 10 percent off any future sales of the NFT…

Interestingly, Roth’s NFT was purchased by 3F Music, a Dubai-based music studio with surprisingly deep pockets that also bought several other big-ticket NFTs, including Overly Attached Girlfriend ($411,000) and The New York Times’ meta NFT-column ($560,000)…

The standard explanations for buying NFTs at this scale seems to be either ‘money laundering’ or ‘conspicuous consumption’. It’s beginning to feel like the real explanation is a hybrid of those two: It’s a form of public advertising where an entity announces We have vast amounts of money to launder; come advise us how to do so, for a percentage.

As for the low-level social-media boosters, well, it’s so much more bleeding edge than hoarding wheat pennies or krugerrand…

has he somehow convince himself that complaints about bitcoin's energy usage are complaints about people's personal electrical bills going up from server mining

— Gorilla Warfare (again) (@MenshevikM) April 29, 2021

The Laffer Curve, but for Bitcoin. https://t.co/tNCCZ4mTSN

— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) April 29, 2021

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Reader Interactions

40Comments

  1. 1.

    mrmoshpotato

    April 30, 2021 at 1:49 am

    Awww….she was a drug kingpin all along, and has finally found something to launder all of her blood money. Adorable.

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    April 30, 2021 at 1:49 am

    Barnum? Mr. Phineas T. Barnum? Please pick up the cotton candy colored courtesy phone.

  3. 3.

    AJ

    April 30, 2021 at 2:02 am

    I assume folks have seen the alleged bombshells tonight re Gaetz, Greenberg, and Roger Stone?

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    April 30, 2021 at 2:04 am

    Meanwhile, in the Scumshine State,

    Unless you’re from a certain slice of Florida—the Gulf Coast side near Tampa—you’ve probably never heard of Gasparilla, the city’s annual and well-attended pirate-themed bacchanal. Unless you’re both from Tampa and are fully into the weeds of post-Trump presidency MAGA minutiae, you also have probably have never heard of Trumparilla—a Gasparilla for people who have decided the 2020 election was a sham and that Donald J. Trump ought to still be president.

    Though the actual Gasparilla was canceled this year because of the coronavirus, MAGA troll Dion Cini and Cliff Gephart held their pro-Trump flotilla earlier this month in Tampa, which dozens of boaters attended. The entrepreneurs have promised to take the event to a city near you, with follow-ups planned for San Diego, Cleveland, and Las Vegas, according to Trumparilla’s Facebook page. Source

  5. 5.

    mrmoshpotato

    April 30, 2021 at 2:36 am

    @NotMax: So Trump trash are a bunch of drunken pirates?  Checks out.

    ETA – Oh, San Diegans will love when this freak/shitshow comes to town.

  6. 6.

    Amir Khalid

    April 30, 2021 at 2:39 am

    She reminds me of Drew Barrymore in Firestarter.

    Oh, a lovely pair of dark brown Red Wing boots arrived for me just a few minutes ago. I got them for a bargain price. They’re size 10, and they fit perfectly!

  7. 7.

    Amir Khalid

    April 30, 2021 at 2:41 am

    @AJ:
    How soon before the FBI comes a-rresting?

  8. 8.

    mrmoshpotato

    April 30, 2021 at 2:47 am

    @Amir Khalid: What’s a bargain price – 70% off?  (Just looked at their prices.)

  9. 9.

    Martin

    April 30, 2021 at 2:54 am

    Mining one bitcoin produces a little over half a ton of CO2. That’s roughly the emissions from a fully loaded tractor trailer over 300 miles.

    Etherium is less efficient because bitcoin is mostly mined using custom ASICs, not unobtanium powered GPUs.

  10. 10.

    Amir Khalid

    April 30, 2021 at 2:55 am

    @mrmoshpotato:

    I paid RM300, including shipping from a vendor in Malaysia. XE currency converter says that’s US$73.

  11. 11.

    Amir Khalid

    April 30, 2021 at 3:02 am

    @Martin:

    Cryptocurrencies come at an enormous cost in energy and leave a huge carbon footprint. They need to be banned.

  12. 12.

    BellyCat

    April 30, 2021 at 3:03 am

    @AJ: Reads like a bad comic book plot. Remarkable. Stone is slippery though. Unclear if he has any exposure here?

  13. 13.

    mrmoshpotato

    April 30, 2021 at 3:07 am

    @Amir Khalid: Nice.

  14. 14.

    mrmoshpotato

    April 30, 2021 at 3:09 am

    @Amir Khalid:

    Cryptocurrencies come at an enormous cost in energy and leave a huge carbon footprint. They need to be banned. 

    The massive amount of number crunching also seems to have no point aside from creating Bitcoins.  No scientific purpose, etc to all those calculations.

  15. 15.

    Amir Khalid

    April 30, 2021 at 3:17 am

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Also, they put a free pair of socks in the box. Which is nice.

  16. 16.

    mrmoshpotato

    April 30, 2021 at 3:24 am

    @Amir Khalid: Thick, comfy, wool socks that would be Cole-approved? ?

  17. 17.

    Amir Khalid

    April 30, 2021 at 3:38 am

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Alas, no: thin cotton Converse-brand ankle socks.

  18. 18.

    HarlequinGnoll

    April 30, 2021 at 4:19 am

    Cryptocurrency could be used for safe, fair and verifiable online elections but that would require people to take their eyes off the possibility of making money.

    Maybe also use them to replace “buying” (really it’s more renting with a 1 time purchase) online music and movies and video games.

  19. 19.

    Morzer

    April 30, 2021 at 5:01 am

    Y’all are going to love the extreme stupidity on display by Matt Gaetz’ wingman Joel Greenberg. The Daily Beast has the confession letter he wrote after approaching Roger Stone (!) to solicit a pardon from the Gibbering Mouther of Mar-A-Lago.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/joel-greenberg-letter-written-for-roger-stone-says-matt-gaetz-paid-for-sex-with-minor

  20. 20.

    Amir Khalid

    April 30, 2021 at 5:16 am

    @Morzer:

    If Greenberg can help bring down Gaetz, Stone and Trump, he deserves a medal to wear in prison.

  21. 21.

    Frankensteinbeck

    April 30, 2021 at 5:20 am

    NFTs are stupid and vile, but I want this girl to have that money so much.

    Hey, did I mention my first publisher torpedoed their business, started stealing from me, and ruined my career chasing a singularly stupid scheme to replace Amazon with blockchain?

    @NotMax:

    ’Dozens’.  BWA HA HA HA.

    @HarlequinGnoll:

    These are clumsy solutions to problems that don’t exist.  Blockchain offers little or no value for voting and especially renting over conventional methods.

  22. 22.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 30, 2021 at 5:21 am

    @AJ:
    @Morzer:

    That reads like a plant to me, too cute by half, possibly from Greenberg himself.

    In those letters, Greenberg detailed his relationship with Gaetz. He confessed to paying young women for sex. And he claimed that he, Gaetz, and others had sex with a minor they believed to be 19 at the time. Greenberg said he learned she was underage on Sept. 4, 2017, from “an anonymous tip” and quickly contacted Gaetz.

    “Immediately I called the congressman and warned him to stay clear of this person and informed him she was underage,” Greenberg wrote. “He was equally shocked and disturbed by this revelation.”

    Greenberg continued in the handwritten draft that he “confronted” the then-17-year-old and explained to her “how serious of a situation this was, how many people she put in danger.”

    “She apologized and recognized that by lying about her age, she endangered many people,” he continued. “There was no further contact with this individual until after her 18th birthday.”

    As scummy as these two are, the letter is saying, “We’re innocent! We did due diligence! It’s all her fault!” and the timing is a little too on.

    Or, maybe it is a legitimate scoop and Greenberg really is that stupid.

  23. 23.

    Morzer

    April 30, 2021 at 5:23 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’d like to see Matt Gaetz trying the ignorance defense in court.

  24. 24.

    Frankensteinbeck

    April 30, 2021 at 5:29 am

    Really, WishKnish was such an insanely stupid idea, and so obviously so, that some of the shafted authors think it was a con.  I have the proposal document for investors somewhere.  It’s just a bunch of buzzwords in pretty colored blocks.  There was no actual coherent product idea, just ‘Blockchain, yay!  Now give me money!’  They pumped all the publishing company’s money into this dumbass scheme and couldn’t pay royalties or staff wages.

  25. 25.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 30, 2021 at 5:39 am

    @Morzer: I’d like to see Gaetz try all the defenses in court.

  26. 26.

    WereBear

    April 30, 2021 at 5:47 am

    @Frankensteinbeck: What a horror story!

  27. 27.

    mrmoshpotato

    April 30, 2021 at 5:49 am

    @Frankensteinbeck: Shit.  I take it you have to find new publishers for all of your books now?

  28. 28.

    Frankensteinbeck

    April 30, 2021 at 5:51 am

    @mrmoshpotato:

    I have one, but rebuilding my fan base is a long, long process with no guarantee it will happen.

  29. 29.

    Morzer

    April 30, 2021 at 5:56 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: I can see him hoping for the Tampa-2 defense to come through this one time.

  30. 30.

    Frankensteinbeck

    April 30, 2021 at 6:05 am

    @Morzer:

    It sounds like he was banking on the ‘presidential pardon’ defense but wasn’t good enough at sucking up.  All the stories that came out about the pardon process have described it as courtiers selling their services fawning at Trump when Trump was depressed and desperate to feel powerful.  He needed that shot of people begging for his royal favor so bad.

    Except Stone, who straight up publicly blackmailed the orange fuck.  They don’t seem to have been friends much since then.

  31. 31.

    SFAW

    April 30, 2021 at 6:51 am

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’d like to see Gaetz try all the defenses in court while appealing his convictions, from jail.

    Fixed

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    April 30, 2021 at 6:56 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: I think Greenberg had a plan A, which was to bring maximum influence to win a pardon. Implicating Gaetz might have gotten the congressman’s influence behind the pardon. Plan B was to use the document and his proffered testimony to win a better plea deal from prosecutors. Apparently, Greenberg is now incriminating Stone as well as Gaetz.    Greenberg will probably appear in court before to long, to accept a plea deal.

  33. 33.

    SFAW

    April 30, 2021 at 6:56 am

    OK, I admit I’m not necessarily the brightest person when it comes to things like blockchain, bitcoin, and so forth. But, given that it’s written in English, I would have thought I would understand Christopher Marshall’s “explanation” tweet better. I can’t tell if he’s channeling Milo Minderbinder, Irwin Corey, the Enron guys, or Paul Krugman.

  34. 34.

    Steeplejack

    April 30, 2021 at 8:05 am

    Difficult to quantify what an ecological disaster Bitcoin is, but this comes close.
    pic.twitter.com/uHeGXUlQO1

    — koush (@koush) April 15, 2021

  35. 35.

    Bupalos

    April 30, 2021 at 8:23 am

    @NotMax: this is a real tester for my so-far-supressed lifelong desire to own a submarine.

  36. 36.

    Pete Mack

    April 30, 2021 at 8:41 am

    So the Disaster Girl photo gets a new moniker: Bonfire of the Vanities.

  37. 37.

    CaseyL

    April 30, 2021 at 10:10 am

    @Amir Khalid:  That’s who I always thought the girl in the meme was! I never looked very closely, and just assumed it was a still of Drew in Firestarter. I was very surprised to learn otherwise.

  38. 38.

    J R in WV

    April 30, 2021 at 11:30 am

    @NotMax:

    a pro-Trump flotilla earlier this month in Tampa, which dozens of boaters attended. The entrepreneurs have promised to take the event to a city near you, with follow-ups planned for San Diego, Cleveland, and Las Vegas, according to Trumparilla

    Excuse me, but which river/bay/ocean do they plan a pirate flotilla on, in Las Vegas? Last I knew Las Vegas was in the middle of a desert!

    Oh, yeh, fountains in front of the big casinos… right? that must be the answer to the question no one is asking…

  39. 39.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    April 30, 2021 at 11:58 am

    @J R in WV: I was thinking the same thing, there is Lake Mead.

  40. 40.

    HarlequinGnoll

    April 30, 2021 at 2:49 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck: i don’t WANT to rent I want to buy to own and some distributed archive that says I own a digital product and can still download it would be better then “oh we released a higher pixel version and don’t recognize your previous, sorry if you hard drive crashed”

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