Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

He really is that stupid.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

A consequence of cucumbers

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

No one could have predicted…

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

People are weird.

I really should read my own blog.

Books are my comfort food!

It’s the corruption, stupid.

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

Late Night Open Thread: ‘Conceptual’ ‘Art’

by | 40 Comments

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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…

Reader Interactions

40Comments

  1. 1.

    mrmoshpotato

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

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    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

    @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

    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!

  9. 9.

    Martin

    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.

  11. 11.

    Amir Khalid

    @Martin:

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

  12. 12.

    BellyCat

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

  14. 14.

    mrmoshpotato

    @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.

  18. 18.

    HarlequinGnoll

    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.

  21. 21.

    Frankensteinbeck

    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

    @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.

  24. 24.

    Frankensteinbeck

    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.

  30. 30.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @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.

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    @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

    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.

  37. 37.

    CaseyL

    @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

    @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…

  40. 40.

    HarlequinGnoll

    @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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