Please, be fair to NFTs. An NFT is *not* like owning a jpg. It's like owning a *link* to a jpg that is stored on the cloud server of a financially precarious start-up that may or may not exist tomorrow. The uncertainty is what makes it fun!
— Paul Bernard (@PaulRBernard) March 20, 2021
My laptop chose today to go blank. Praise goddess, Technical Support (aka, the Spousal Unit) has diagnosed a dead battery, ordered a new replacement, and gotten the machine creaking along again — for the moment. But if you don’t hear from me for a while, if there’s no Coronavirus Update tonight, DON’T PANIC.
(I’ll be doing enough panicking all on my lonesome.)
I would be #5: The Existentialist. "Money is what money does, and whatever Bitcoin is doing right now, it's not being money." https://t.co/nMDecM2SeH
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) March 20, 2021
Proponents will say Bitcoin is in price-seeking mode. And that's possible. But it's been in price-seeking mode for several years now, with no end in sight. And like I say, this "price-seeking" behavior has become its main attraction, as opposed to more money-like features.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) March 20, 2021
Bitcoin could become money – there's nothing inherently stopping it from doing so, and more than seashells. But it has to be used as money, and that is proving difficult for a number of reasons.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) March 20, 2021
Alison Rose
Good lord, I can’t wait for this play money shit to be over with.
Stuff I care more about:
VP Harris calls NASA astronauts Shannon Walker and Kate Rubins aboard the International Space Station
Virginia Gov Northam signs bill abolishing the death penalty
First Southern state to do so. I don’t love his reasoning–IMO the DP is barbaric and cruel even if we got it “100% right” and whatnot–but I’m still very glad to see this.
Mike in NC
RIP George Segal, who passed yesterday at 87.
Kristine
What I don’t like about Bitcoin etc is their high energy usage. I’ve read they’re trying to make mining more green, but the usage still outstrips that of some countries.
smedley the uncertain
Good evening
RSA
You might be an exception, but virtually all people who denigrate others as “statists” can be safely ignored.
Keith P.
Documentary evening. Tonight’s offering “Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies”, the first film from Todd Phillips. And after that, I’m gonna watch “GG Allin: All in the Family”. They sound gross as hell (and they are), but they’re both supremely entertaining.
Walker
There are some people talking about non-crazy applications of NFTs. That is using them for collectible video games with a secondary market like Magic the Gathering. Because in that case ownership (and verification of ownership) is necessary for using it in competitive play. The problem is that the energy costs for doing this on the standard coins makes this wildly irresponsible. Though there are emerging crypto platforms that use a lot less energy (and are designed to remain that way).
Princess Leia
Got Moderna #1 in the parking lot of a big homeless shelter (along with my homeless house guests.) Eight of us in and out in 1 hour, and happy to see many of the big shelter residents ready to receive their shot as well. There is a lot of vaccine hesitancy among unhoused folks, so this was a bright bit of hope for me!!!
Walker
@Kristine: Bitcoin is hopeless. The design makes it impossible. It is only new and emerging coins that can be green(er).
Brachiator
@Alison Rose:
I think it great that Virginia has abolished the death penalty. From BBC News:
There is a reference here to a stirring dissent by Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun:
The entire dissent is worth a read.
aliasofwestgate
I made an appointment to get my shot in Milwaukee on the 30th in the afternoon. 1st dose, so YAY. I had ot cancel the other one because of circumstances. But i’m glad it got it rescheduled. For now its just the waiting.
smith
@Alison Rose:
First Confederate state to do so. However, many people think of WV as Southern, and it abolished the death penalty in 1965. I know a lot about it because my dad was one of the main activists who made it happen.
HumboldtBlue
I’m gonna stick with the underpants gnomes.
Kent
When you can get a 30-year mortgage or 10-year bond denominated in Bitcoin then it will be a real currency. Until then it is just a speculative commodity like pork belly futures or digital art
Major Major Major Major
@Alison Rose:
I agree—back to the gold standard immediately!
Major Major Major Major
@Walker:
This is actually a great example of a problem that could be managed by a Wizards of the Coast-owned spreadsheet or SQL database, but people just love shoehorning blockchain solutions into everything.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!
dmsilev
Got Pfizer #2 yesterday. Good news: Can now shoot laser beams from my eyes. Bad news: My colleagues want to strap me to an optical table and force me to stare unblinkingly into a mode-lock cavity so that they can perform obscure quantum entanglement experiments.
I fear this won’t end well.
Alison Rose
@smith: As a lifelong Californian, I know nothing about what “Southern” includes, I was just quoting the article.
dmsilev
With regards to Bitcoin, that “4 types of critics” tweet is pretty inane. Even putting aside the ludicrous energy usage, how about “a currency designed from the outset to be deflationary is an idea so stupid only a libertarian would propose it”?
raven
@Alison Rose: There are books about it. :)
Falling Diphthong
*Ponders whether NFTs are all an elaborate hoax everyone is playing on me.
There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)
@Mike in NC: King Rat, damnit.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
Wonderful actor, great range. RIP, sir.
Falling Diphthong
I am trying to get my head around believing that the only reason people roll their eyes at your Bitcoins is that they invested in pretend cabbages instead. Like, it seems with a little massaging this could be the premise of a new sitcom about block chains.
Redshift
@Major Major Major Major:
Exactly. The one feature, as I understand it, that makes blockchain more useful than that kind of mechanism is that it can be verified without trusting a particular authority. There’s no reason why loot in a game run by a company could not to be verified just as well by an opaque service operated by that company.
There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)
So “it” actually “is” about what I thought it was. More of a “notion” than a “thing”. Well, then. Tell me, are there sofa-size?
Major Major Major Major
@Redshift: yep. If your use case doesn’t include a zero-trust environment you probably don’t need a blockchain.
CaseyL
I wouldn’t care about Bitcoin (other than to feel some schadenfreude when the places holding them go belly up) except for the energy usage. That pisses me off: the libertarians, contrarians, and oh-isn’t-this-so-transgressive cool kids don’t give a single thought to the environmental damage they’re doing.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Jen Psaki get’s an assistant press secretary (photo)
Chetan Murthy
@Major Major Major Major:
And if your use-case *does* include a zero-trust environment, be aware that blockchain doesn’t work there, either (Google “DAO hack ethereum”). If your use-case includes a zero-trust environment, then consider investing in a well-paid militia, I guess. Maybe Los Zetas.
Bitcoin and all its variants are a congeries of contradictions, all scotch-taped together with wishes and dried-on bullshit, masquerading as concrete. People who “invest” in bitcoin are buying futures in fraud, capital flight, espionage, and Russian/Chinese/NorK bad actors. Literally, you can take *any* use-case for Bitcoin/Ethereum and demonstrate that it doesn’t hang together when deployed to the “real” mass public.
It’s all bullshit, and those who peddle it should be pelted with rotten eggs.
Mike in NC
@There are those who call me…tim… (Still posh): Need to order from Netflix tomorrow. Classic POW film. Also a fine comic actor in film and TV.
raven
@Chetan Murthy: Without having a fucking clue what everyone is talking about I came to the same conclusion!
Ken
Whew. Usually when someone starts off a post talking about NFTs or other crypto, then says “My laptop chose today to go blank,” the next thing you hear is that they’ve lost the tokens for their digital wallet and there’s no way to recover their $80 million in bitcoins.
schrodingers_cat
In other news Google’s translator is sexist.
Obvious Russian Troll
@Chetan Murthy:
With some shame I have to confess that at times I have wished I had done some bitcoin mining–so I could sell the fucking things now.
It passes quickly, though. I’m really happy not to be supporting fraud, capital flight, espionage and the rest, and I’m really happy I never contributed to the environmental damage this bullshit has caused.
trollhattan
Kiddo at a spring break track meet won her 1,500 heat and her team swept the top three places. All while visiting the California Central Coast.
Somebody please tell me why I’m stuck at home doing work things–it’s spring, dangit.
NotMax
@Ken
Laying out millions for something which can be irretrievably corrupted or erased with a five buck magnet makes no sense at all.
VeniceRiley
@smith: A legacy to be proud of indeed!
Maddow is on fire tonight. Watch the whole thing.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Major Major Major Major: Oh, so you want to crucify this country on a cross of gold. :-)
ETA: Omnes Omnibus already went there.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Omnes Omnibus: Great minds think alike. I see you got there way before me :-). Plus you got the quote right, unlike me, who was too lazy to look it up.
Chetan Murthy
@NotMax: I suspect that in the end, we’ll find out it was all part of the “pump” part of a pump-and-dump. That’s been the case for most of the runups in BTC price. People buying to incite others to buy, to run up the price.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
Much catchier than You shall not crucify mankind upon a coin of bit!
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
J R in WV
@smith:
Congratulations! I am proud of my state AND your dad for making this happen a long time ago.
Still proud it went away long ago.
SiubhanDuinne
@VeniceRiley:
The segment on the new (first black, first female) mayor of Boston — yes, including all the Rachelesque background and set-up — was really good. The entire program tonight, I agree, was worth watching.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@J R in WV: I always think of WV as “semi-Southern”, since they broke away from Virginia to stay with the Union.
debbie
@Mike in NC:
Loved him, whether in King Rat or on The Goldbergs. ? ?
Major Major Major Major
@Chetan Murthy: well I think you’re eliding the distinction between “works” and “works perfectly” here. Might as well say no storage works because sometimes hard drives malfunction.
J R in WV
@VeniceRiley:
She crucified TX Senator Cornyn for declaring a criminal Sheriff deputy as “Lawman of the Year” and then trying to hold up the nomination of Vinata Gupta as #3 person in the DoJ, because she revealed the “Lawman of the Year” was a perjured criminal who put dozens of black law abiding citizens of a small town in jail for up to 300 years for being cocaine dealers… only there was no coke.
Some years later Ms Gupta got all those convicts acquited, pardoned, and “Lawman of the Year” went to jail. Then TX AG Cornyn is now Senator Cornyn, and still a bigoted pig from TX!! And Rachael put him in his proper place. A great presentation by Ms Maddow.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I agree, and the background lead-up and story on Vanita Gupta (and John Cornyn) was the best she’s done in a while. Should be required viewing.
Mike in NC
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Best wishes to Doctor Levine.
J R in WV
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Thanks. Wife is proud that WV never passed a Jim Crow law.
Her Great Uncle was Superintendent of Education in a county (way back in the day) where the elected Board of Education was 50% Black and 50% White, and her Great Uncle sat in the middle for the portrait, which she has a copy of!
Not that there wasn’t segregation by tradition, but it wasn’t by law! The cops weren’t involved with enforcing it.
J R in WV
@Mike in NC:
Yes, Best Wishes to Dr Levine!!! Indeed!
Mike in NC
@SiubhanDuinne: As someone who grew up in Boston, this is great news.
Chetan Murthy
@Major Major Major Major:
Heh. We agree, we’re just debating the viscosity of the turd, right? I’d argue that:
Given that the DAO hack already occurred, and the response was “we’ll basically extrajudicially expropriate somebody’s coin” [the question of whether that coin was legitimate is *settled*, b/c Vitalik (or whatever his name is) and his buddies were all over the net, saying “the code is the law” — it is *settled*], it seems like “it doesn’t work in low-trust environments” is a proven statement
Benw
@Princess Leia: what good news!
VeniceRiley
A friend of mine had a live streaming game show that gave away bitcoin back when it was about $300. Sponsors just don’t have enough vision.
BruceFromOhio
I like to listen to my parents 78’s on a wind-up Edison. The people that built it, recorded it, and danced to it are a century gone. That shit will be around until the next asteroid.
NFT’s? Not so much.
jl
# 6 might be a person who went to a recent bitcoin convention where bitcoin was so slow and cumbersome to use to pay for admission that it had to use cash instead.
Which is a true story. As a medium of transaction, bitcoin can’t even handle a few thousand admission tickets at a convention.
StringOnAStick
Husband and I got our first vaccination today, the Pfizer. Well organized, National Guard EMT’s giving the injections, lots of volunteers keeping things going smoothly. Next one in 3 weeks, immunity achieved in 5 weeks. I’m pretty comfortable wearing a mask so that won’t be changing, especially with living in a tourist town that currently appears to be full of spring break skiers who apparently do not own masks.
BruceFromOhio
Headlines that linger longer.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@J R in WV: That is a very cool fact! Good on WV, and especially your wife’s Great Uncle.
Major Major Major Major
@Chetan Murthy: I mean sure, there are known exploits, but in the DAO case a bunch of humans had to make poor engineering decisions first. I’m not saying this is a great way to manage the worldwide financial system, but you shouldn’t just throw out a whole database paradigm.
cckids
Got my first dose of Pfizer yesterday. I’ve had, so far, 30 hours of really grinding nausea and heartburn, plus a very sore arm and swollen & painful lymph nodes in that armpit.
Still worth it.
HumboldtBlue
How many of youse can do 10 push-ups?
Chetan Murthy
@Major Major Major Major:
This is what makes the DAO hack story so troubling: Vitalik and a band of his cronies decided to change the ledger. It doesn’t matter that they were probably right in some moral sense: they did so without any court of law weighing in. They call this “censorship-resistance”. I call it “lawlessness”. And that lawlessness is intrinsic to the way blockchain works, from A to Z, baked into everything about blockchain.
debbie
@cckids:
You must have an awesome immune system!
Chetan Murthy
@cckids:
The actual shot this morning was so …. inconsequential that I barely noticed it happening. I’ve scratched myself and caused more pain. In a way, if I had some symptoms, it’d be good, b/c I’d know that the shot was real …..
JWR
And again, but this time without a body count.
Benw
@StringOnAStick: huzzah! Awesome
There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)
@Mike in NC: there always was a place for him. From Just Shoot Me to Goldbergs. Dude was eternal.
Benw
@cckids: damn that sucks. Still, so happy you got it
Elizabelle
@cckids: I’m sorry it’s been such a rough ride for you. BUT: halfway to protection against COVID.
And you can retain your sense of taste and smell. You will not want to read this right now, feeling a bit under the weather, but this was chilling. And several jackals have mentioned the problem with taste, especially with coffee and cheese.
NY Times:
If Everything Smells Bad, You’re Not Alone
Parosmia, a condition that causes phantom odors and a lingering symptom of Covid-19 for some people, has been affecting relationships.
STOP READING HERE, CCKIDS. You need to feel better first, and this will not help. Albeit, talk about motivating us to stay masked up and distanced.
There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)
@JWR: because you can’t be too careful nowadays.
barbequebob
@Ken:
This is almost exactly the premise of the Movie, “the Wallet” by Comedian Tim Dillon.
The Trailer is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbLENQGcnGM
But, it is important to know that although the trailer is real, there is actually no movie, just the trailer. It is however, according an anonymous, fictitious reviewer on Reddit, “A time capsule into the 2021 Crypto Bubble”.
I love this non-existent movie because of its multiple layers of sillyness. Maybe those of you who understand the culture it is satirizing will too.
Bill Arnold
@dmsilev:
Sweet!!! Insist on eye-drops and threshold doses of LSD or DMT.
(There might be a backstory involving quantum computers and mysterious flip error rate changes, or not. :-)
TheOtherHank
@Chetan Murthy:
As the old Unix fortune said:
dmsilev
@Bill Arnold: More seriously, dizziness and general lack of energy for the last 30 or so hours since the dose. This morning was fine, but I’m fading fast and will go to bed early again tonight. Muscle soreness for about 24 hours, basically gone now. No fever.
So, not too bad and definitely worth it.
Elizabelle
Watching MSNBC online. Brian Williams just quipped (snarked, actually) about “the infectious charm of Ted Cruz.”
Jackass junior senator from Texas refused to wear a mask at a press availability, even with the reporter asking him to. Told press all the Senators are vaccinated, and the reporter could move away if (s)he liked.
Texas’s jackass US senators get some attention from MSNBC tonight.
cckids
@debbie: That’s what growing up as one of seven kids will do for you!
cckids
@Elizabelle: That would probably do me in. I can’t handle strong odors anyway (since my second pregnancy ) Can’t wear scented deodorant, or even lipstick, because the smell makes me sick.
HalfAssedHomesteader
@Alison Rose: Some slightly older NASA news:
https://twitter.com/standup/status/1253353024573059073
Bill Arnold
@BruceFromOhio:
OTOH, this is, we can hope, ephemeral:
QAnon Claims Stuck Suez Canal Ship Used by Hillary Clinton to Traffic Children (Ewan Palmer, 3/24/21)
Martin
@Walker: The cypto is the energy expensive bit and is completely independent of the blockchain which does the stuff that is useful there. A standard blockchain or shared database would handle it just fine.
The only reason to have it tied to Etherium is to give Etherium a function.
Anoniminous
@Omnes Omnibus:
Of course not. A complete waste of time. Gold is a very soft metal. The weight of a person would drag the nails through the crosspieces and the crucified would end up going splaton the ground.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Anoniminous: Dead’s dead.
sdhays
@Kristine: This is what makes me gag whenever I hear about BitCoin or “the blockchain”: the incredible waste of resources directed at generating the “scarcity”. Whatever value it might have (which, at this point, is pretty sketchy) cannot possibly justify the extravagant waste in resources.
Major Major Major Major
Well I for one just learned a lot about the immune system from an episode of Cells At Work!, an anime where all of the characters are cells.
Dopey-o
@Martin:
So BitCoin converts electricity into a ‘financial’ asset with fluctuating value? I sense an opportunity here to sequester carbon AND fleece blockheads!
Alison Rose
@HalfAssedHomesteader: Oh I remember! I mean……….at least they knew she might need some? But it’s adorable how little they (I assume all cis men at the time) understood about periods.
But then some dudes think bra-wearers change them every day. Ell Oh Ell.
JWR
WTF? Just heard on local TV news that TFG’s Twitter ban doesn’t sit very well with St. Bernard of Vermont. Jeebus, dude. Maybe he’s trying for the coveted first guest spot on TFG’s new social medium platform?
ETA, the link
Chetan Murthy
@JWR:
He’s old, and forgot his high school classes where they taught about The Big Lie in Nazy Germany. That’s all.
rikyrah
@Princess Leia:
Yes????
rikyrah
@aliasofwestgate:
Yess???
rikyrah
@dmsilev:
I love writing this..
Yeah???
rikyrah
@trollhattan:
Congrats??
rikyrah
@StringOnAStick:
Yeah????
rikyrah
@cckids:
Yesss???
rikyrah
@Chetan Murthy:
Yesss???
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JWR:
different-church-lady
I wish I could invent something nobody needs and then get everyone to talk about it.
mrmoshpotato
@JWR:
Cool! So I can create a Twitter account and start telling people they should be murdered because I have “a very different point of view” about them continuing to be alive?
Bernie still needs to fuck off to the forest and take up knitting 4+ years later.
ETA – did this asshat who renames post offices vote to convict the Kremlin’s orange shitstain either time?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Bernie thought HRC giving a paid speech to Goldman Sachs was disqualifying. But trump using twitter to incite a lethally seditious insurrection meant to overturn a presidential election was just an oopsy-daisy we should all move on from.
JWR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thank you. One of the replies to that tweet said:
1000% agree.
Redshift
@Chetan Murthy:
I always get a chuckle out of the vaccine explanations that say “it’s okay if you get side effects, that’s because your immune system is responding like it’s supposed to – but don’t work is you don’t get them, it’s still working!” I can’t help but think that’s just a way to make people feel better about suffering side effects.
JWR
Also happening on local TV news, the LAPD’s staging at Echo Park Lake:, probably waiting for the live news shows to go off the air before they start cracking homeless heads. Fuckers.
ETA, Geez, check out the chyron: “LAPD Joins Encampment Battle”
smike
@Redshift:
Hey, works for me. I had a couple of crappy days after my 2nd shot. Seems like that was a direct result of the shots. And I’m okay with that.
ETA: Oh yeah… and sign me up for the booster, annual shots, etc.
prostratedragon
@BruceFromOhio:
Looking for a ship?
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
That’s a superhero origin story, if I ever heard one. I trust you look good in tights?
NotMax
Woo-hoo! Bluetooth dongle for the PC arrived today. Now have the option not to be tethered by the cord when using headphones.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid:
I’ve met dmsilev, eh, no.
Origuy
Samantha Bee’s show tonight was about hackers capturing hospital IT systems and holding them for ransom. It’s a big problem and guess what currency they want to get paid in? Bitcoin, of course.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Bernie must not personally use twitter. If he did he would know that twitter suspends accounts all the time, especially if you say something bad about a republican.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s bad if you want to use it for complex things like legal or diplomatic negotiations, or to translate literary work.
Is it bad enough that one should not use it to find something in a store where you have no common language with the store keeper? Or to find a hotel/restaurant in eastern Europe? \
I have done that in Spain and France to great enjoyment on the part of the host nationals. And I got the needed adapter in order to be able to use the outlets in the Hotels around Basque country!