Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

So many bastards, so little time.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

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

This chaos was totally avoidable.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

You are here: Home / Economics / Grifters Gonna Grift / Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: Doctor, My Eyes…

Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: Doctor, My Eyes…

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From what I can find, they’re only temporarily blinded, so IMO that puts the whole thing juuuust inside the ‘okay to mock’ zone…


Late Night Open Thread: <em>Doctor, My Eyes... </em>

Albert Burneko, at Defector:

You remember the Bored Apes. Maybe. These were the dumb ugly worthless JPEGs of, like, dressed-up cartoon apes that various suckers and dolts were buying—or, like, investing in?—very loudly a couple of years ago. This was in 2021, back when NFTs (non-fungible tokens) were only a laughingstock among people capable of critical thinking.

One of the late-night Jimmys had one! And Paris Hilton! And Steph Curry and Neymar! They were very proud of their shitty ugly junk JPEGs of no artistic or functional value whatsoever. Those were crazy times, man. Somebody said Justin Bieber’s crappy digital image of a stupid-ass ape was worth more than a million dollars, despite looking like the sort of thing you would get annoyed at a friend for doodling on the brown paper you’d wrapped around your biology textbook in ninth grade and representing nothing other than its purchaser’s unfitness for scissor privileges.

Anyway it is almost 2024 now; humankind has had more than enough time to reevaluate the value of minimally varying public-restroom-toilet-stall-graffiti-ass digital drawings of monkeys as speculative assets, with the deeply unsurprising result that their prices have cratered…

Nevertheless! The apes have their enthusiasts, even now, more than two years after the roughly 47 seconds they spent as avatars of a pandemic-boomed, giddily nihilistic society’s addled half-belief that you could impart value to virtually anything by calling it an NFT. Some number of these sad deluded HODLers gathered over the weekend in Hong Kong for ApeFest, hosted by Yuga Labs, the company that made enough money to host a festival in Hong Kong by generating F-grade JPEGs of cartoon apes and selling them to nincompoops. The 21st century is going incredibly…

You may find yourself wondering, Just what type of activity goes on at an ApeFest? Well, for one thing, there seems to have been an opportunity to stand there like a goddamn grandfather clock while improper stage lighting fries your eyeballs and face! Many attendees availed themselves of this, and are blind now.…

Listen. I like satire as much as anybody. But this is simply far too on-the-nose. A bunch of Bored Ape dead-enders, holding onto underside-of-a-Walmart-skateboard–grade ape doodles whole entire years after the last of their fluky, illusory, momentary speculative value blew away like a fart in a tornado, now going blind because they traveled across the world to stand in front of a gigantic bank of lasers and blacklights and stare and stare and stare while their eyeballs melted? No! No, I’m sorry, this simply needs reworking…

Late Night Open Thread: <em>Doctor, My Eyes... </em> 1

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  1. 1.

    Rusty

    Buying an NFT really is about buying nothing.  You don’t even get the copyright in the image.  You get nothing. Zip. Nada. That two years later there are still people who don’t get that is astounding.

  2. 2.

    Dangerman

    Too bad instead of temporary blindness it was something useful like permanent impotence. Though something tells me there is not a lot of procreation goingon in this crowd.

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The NFT craze, like the crypto scam before it, was pure stupidity from the git go and only an idiot would fall for it.

    That being said, I am fortunate to have been too tightfisted (read “poor”) to ever indulge my own idiocies.

  8. 8.

    Layer8Problem

    I wasted whole minutes of valuable living time years ago trying to figure out what I was missing about cryptocurrency and NFTs.  I happily realized just now that the neurons that knew what HODL meant were retasked to something else.

  9. 9.

    Lapassionara

    This is tulip bulb mania all over again, except with the tulip bulb craze, you at least got a lovely flower out of the deal.

  10. 10.

    Jonas

    Lemme get this straight. There’s actually an organization for people who’ve paid money to pretend they own a cartoon image *and* they have an international rave-convention or whatever where they can hang out and… what? Reassure each other they’re not the world’s biggest idiots?  Smh

  11. 11.

    Geminid

    @Lapassionara: You can also eat tulip bulbs in a pinch. I read that people in Holland ate plenty of bulbs during the winter 1944-45. There was exceptionally cold weather, plus the German occupation became much harsher after General Montgomery’s ill-conceived Arnheim operation (chronicled by Cornelius Ryan in A Bridge Too Far).

  14. 14.

    Lapassionara

    @Geminid: I traveled through the Market Garden area a few years ago. I had not known the background of that battle until that trip, and learning about it was infuriating.

  17. 17.

    Betty Cracker

    I mentioned in another thread a while back that I was once in a business meeting where a dude was showing off his Bored Ape NFT on his watch and telling the assembled that it was much more than a mere image — he said it was a ticket to a lifestyle, which he implied was a much cooler way of living than the rest of us could possibly imagine. (I smiled politely since it was not my meeting!) Now I’m wondering if he got his peepers singed at the rave! 👀 😂

  18. 18.

    Tony Jay

    @E.:

    High quality glossy images of one of millions of authentic historical scenes.

    See our cutting-edge experts insert your own personal visage into that scene.

    Pay us between $100 and $1000 non-virtual dollars to share exclusive rights to your own slice of Historical Reality.

    That could definitely work. Remember us when you’re on trial for multiple counts of fraud.

  19. 19.

    Geminid

    @Lapassionara: The Market Garden operation was Montgomery’s folly, but the buck stops at General Eisenhower’s desk. Eisenhower could have told Montgomery, “No. Clear out the approaches to Antwerp first. Then we can talk about piecing the German border.”

    The British captured Antwerp on September 5, 1944, with its extensive dockyards intact. But they neglected to push on and clear the 22 mile Scheldt estuary, and the port was useless without it. The Scheldt was not secured until late October (naturally, Montgomery gave that miserable job to the Canadians).

    It ttook 3 weeks to clear the mines, and Antwerp’s port only started operating in late November. Until then, most American supplies were still coming in over the Normandy beaches and had to be hauled by truck across France.

  20. 20.

    satby

    Those eye injuries are exactly why they tell people not to look directly at an eclipse of the sun. What burns skin and eyes are UV A and B, not the visible spectrum of light. Some of those injuries may cause permanent reduction of vision. Waiting to hear about the inevitable lawsuit.

  24. 24.

    🐾BillinGlendaleCA

    @satby: You can view a total eclipse without eye protection, not before totality or after.  Certainly not a partial eclipse or an annular eclipse.

    ETA: This also applies to photographing the Sun with either a telephoto lens or telescope, you’ll end up literally frying your camera sensor(as in setting it on fire).

  26. 26.

    satby

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA: And people are notoriously bad about detailed instructions like “view directly ONLY during the totality phase” which is why the public instructions say use eye protection. By the time you’re realizing it’s out of totality your eyes have already gotten UV exposure. They can fix a lot of stuff with your eyes, but retinal scarring and optic nerve damage are permanent.

  28. 28.

    satby

    @satby: was editing to add: because looking right at the sun’s zenith hurts, most people don’t. An eclipse reduces the pain warning you not to do that enough that people end up in ERs every eclipse.

  30. 30.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The rural Michigan town fighting against rightwing conspiracy theories

    “The [election] next year will be really bad,” said Adams Township clerk Suzy Roberts, who is tasked with running the town’s elections.

    I have a suggestion for all the people who think our elections are rigged: Don’t bother voting, just stay home.

    And more election news: Letters containing fentanyl sent to several US states’ election offices

    “This isn’t anything new – this is just a different tactic,” David Becker, an election administration expert at the Center for Election Innovation & Research, told the Washington Post. “It just represents the difficulty election officials have.”

  35. 35.

    RevRick

    Maybe the “investors” can recoup their losses by suing Yuga Labs for the infliction of damage to their eyeballs. That way they can be made whole… no, wait, I’ll come in again….

  37. 37.

    bbleh

    Just wait ‘til the story hits about all the MAGAts who went to a rally, spent four hours listening to rants by other MAGAts and looking at projections of McNaughton paintings, and then all woke up with COVID.

    Lower-end market, but otherwise tomayto – tomahto.

  38. 38.

    p.a.

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Our original fiber optic inspectors were basically microscopes.  Plug the fiber ferrule in one end, look through the eyepiece at the other end directly at the ferrule.  And be goddamn sure the laser wasn’t on.  Well THAT didn’t last long.  The next gen of testers were handheld b&w TVs: plug the ferrule into the probe and look at the, IIRC about 4″x3″ screen.  Laser still shouldn’t be on, but for eyesight it wouldn’t be dangerous.  Depending on what we were testing and where, we could be dealing with live fios signal, which, in the central office was 17dBm, enough to get 2nd degree burns before your body registered pain.  At the costumer end it was down to 0dBm, bad for eyes but otherwise o.k.

    Obviously a dirty ferrule effects the signal, but besides interference the light would burn the dirt into the ferrule, making that particular fiber useless unless splicing a new connector on, which cost $ and time.

  39. 39.

    Suzanne

    It would be incredible hilarious irony if, in demonstrating their anti-regulation bonafides, they became more dependent on the ADA.

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Oh yeah, big time. There’s nothing they hate more than spending money on something that doesn’t directly benefit them.

  45. 45.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Peter Thiel won’t fund any 2024 races after backing Trump in 2016: ‘It was crazier than I thought’

    In an interview with the Atlantic, Thiel said voting for Trump “was like a not very articulate scream for help” and that things had not turned out the way he had hoped when he donated $1.25m to Trump and Trump-affiliated political funds eight years ago.

    Waaah… Somebody put him in time out.

    “There are a lot of things I got wrong,” he said. “It was crazier than I thought. It was more dangerous than I thought. They couldn’t get the most basic pieces of the government to work. So that was – I think that part was maybe worse than even my low expectations.”

    What a f’n idiot. Millions of people could have told him that.

    “If you’re too optimistic, it just shows you’re out of touch,” he said. “‘Make America great again’ was the most pessimistic slogan of any candidate in 100 years, because you were saying that we are no longer a great country. And that was a shocking slogan for a major presidential candidate.”

    If he was really interested in making America better, he’d leave.

    Thiel also sounded off on diversity initiatives – calling them “very evil and it’s very silly” –

    Ah yes, hiring a qualified black woman is obviously the most evil thing in the world because it would make him uncomfortable every time she corrected him.

    and his interest in life-extension, a common theme among tech billionaires. “I should be investing way more money into this stuff,” he said.

    I have this wonderful elixir that cures everything and shaves years off his age. He could have this 2 oz. bottle for the one time low price of $999,999.99.

  48. 48.

    kalakal

    @bbleh: Congratulations! You have identified a vital niche want  for the gullible moron demographic.

    NFTs of McNaughton paintings!

  52. 52.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: It’s all tied up in their hatred of disability in general, which is coded as weak and feminine. And “dependency” on others is also sometimes talked about in ways that almost strike me as un-American. Americans are “independent”, dontcha know.

    I remember seeing some artistic photographs (really beautiful) of soldiers who had lost limbs in war. And many of these veterans were ripped as hell, because they maintained a high level of fitness. And one of the family members of one of the subjects was quoted as saying that they loved the photograph because it reminded them that their family member (husband? Boyfriend? Don’t remember)…. “was still a real man”.

  53. 53.

    lowtechcyclist

    A fair number of us are old enough to remember the story back in the late 1960s about how several college students supposedly burned their retinas by looking into the sun while on LSD.  Unlike the story about the NFTers, the LSD story was a hoax.

    So NFT investors are dumber than 1960s college students on LSD.  Congrats, dudes!

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    Americans are “independent”, dontcha know.

     
    It’s ironic to me. I see liberal policy goals as enhancing individual independence by making it possible for people to depend less on the arbitrary generosity of others.

  56. 56.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: ​ making it possible for people to depend less on the arbitrary generosity of others.

    What an unchristian thing to say.

  59. 59.

    kalakal

    I remember seeing a few years ago a video put up by a bunch of crypto bros who travelled to some country (Panama?) which had just recognized crypto currencies as legal tender. They were buying beers in a bar to celebrate. It took them 20 minutes and a lot of glitches to get a beer. Meanwhile the boring normies/sane people  in the background using real money  with a grasp of reality were getting served and happily wandering off in 30 seconds

    The best bit was these wazzocks put the video up themselves in the belief that anyone watching would applaud their smarts and general coolness instead of laughing like a drain

  63. 63.

    Scout211

    Another tech adjacent news report.  This time about the guy who is determined to ruin Twitter/X:

    Elon Musk told SpaceX workers not to wear safety clothes because he doesn’t like bright colors: report

    Four SpaceX workers told Reuters that Musk discouraged employees from wearing yellow-colored clothes for safety purposes because he does not like bright colors.

    The employees also told the news outlet that Musk would play around with a novelty flamethrower during visits that the billionaire made to SpaceX sites.

    Three former SpaceX supervisors told Reuters that Musk would have machinery painted in industrial safety yellow repainted to black or blue because of he didn’t like how it looked. The ex-supervisors also said that some workers were told not to wear yellow safety vests when Musk was on site.

    The investigation by Reuters found that SpaceX has had at least 600 previously unreported worker injuries since 2014, including eight accidents that led to amputations.

    SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Insider on Friday.

  68. 68.

    bjacques

    There was a 1720 bubble in the Netherlands that coincided with the South Sea Bubble in the UK (see Tom Levenson’s excellent “Money For Nothing”) and the Mississippi Bubble in France. The South Sea Bubble had a few cartoons by William Hogarth, but the Dutch cartoons (Windhandel) were hilariously rude and over the top and often stole from classical works. Well worth a gander.

  70. 70.

    CaseyL

    I used to see entire hordes of these people at SciFi conventions, back in the 1980s-2000s.

    They were almost always untutored in basic principles, like bathing/personal grooming and common courtesy, and were ardent fans of “hard” sf that emphasized technology and manliness.  Their attitude towards anyone not-white and not-male was exactly what you’d expect.

    The saving grace was that they were generally quite young, and had little previous experience with the real world.  I mean that quite seriously: a SciFi convention was often the first time these guys had ever been far enough from home to stay in a hotel.  Exposure to the more civilized fandom sometimes straightened them out.

    The ones who didn’t get straightened out later went on to become the Sad Puppies.

    HODLers are the same guys, different generation, and with money.

  71. 71.

    Juju

    @p.a.: That comment made me snort coffee on my iPad. I don’t know what that says about me, but thanks for the chuckle.

    My guess is that a lot of those people in the bored ape club wear shoes with Velcro to “save time”.

  74. 74.

    sdhays

    @OzarkHillbilly: Why the fuck can’t he take as a lesson for supporting Trump in 2016 and 2020 that he has incredibly shitty judgement and should just spend his time and money sitting on a beach or on a shitty golf course somewhere?

    Maybe if you were too stupid to see Trump for what he is back in 2016, you’re too stupid to appreciate “diversity initiatives”.

  76. 76.

    jlowe

    You need pretty strong acute UV doses to produce corneal and skin burns. Cataracts and skin cancer are in the futures of a few of those participants. Time to lawyer up.

  77. 77.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @satby: I went with a scientific expedition to VIrginia Beach for the 7 March 1970 total solar eclipse. The expedition organizers gave all of us the lecture about not looking at the sun directly, and then told us that after second contact (i.e., onset of totality, when the moon’s disk completely covers the solar disk) they would blow a whistle at 10 seconds prior to third contact (i.e., end of totality when the moon’s disc starts to uncover the edge of the solar disk) warning us all to look away.

    IIUC the greatest danger to vision in solar eclipses occurs just before second contact and just after third, when the visible part of the sun is just a sliver – at these times the light from the sun is dim enough to cause the iris of the unaided eye to open and permit the UV still pouring down from the remaining sliver to reach the retina and burn it. (The reason we don’t suffer similar damage when our eyes accidentally track across the sun under normal conditions is that bright sunlight causes the irises to close up “tighter than a bull’s arse in horsefly season**” and block out the UV.)​

    **An expression favored by one of my college buddies, which I rarely get to use.

  78. 78.

    Tony G

    @Rusty: Well, that’s astonishing.  Guys (I somehow doubt that any of them were women) who were stupid enough to pay real money for worthless, ugly digital images are also stupid enough to blind themselves by staring into lasers.  I never would have predicted that.

  79. 79.

    JustRuss

    @Geminid: The crazy thing about Market Garden is that despite all the planning and operational flaws, it very nearly succeeded.  Had the Allies grabbed the Nijmegen bridge sooner, they might have pulled it off.

  80. 80.

    Geminid

    @JustRuss: I think the Germans had too much combat power around Arnhem for the Allies to cross the river there. As it turned out, Montgomery’s forces were hard-pressed just holding the salient they created. Normally airborne troops are supposed to be withdrawn after they complete their mission and replaced by regular infantry units. but in this case the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions had to stay in the fighting line for weeks in order to help fend off German counterattacks.

  82. 82.

    JerrytheMacGuy

    I’m shocked, SHOCKED that no one mentioned (remembers) “Trump Digital Trading Cards”! The NFTs were released last year for the “awesome” price of only $99 each. Sadly, I missed out collecting them. They would have made the perfect grift, er gift.

    Former US President Donald Trump sells out NFT trading cards bbc.co.uk/news/business-63995563

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