"Cryptocurrency is dying, repost this to make it die faster" No. No, I want cryptocurrency to die slowly, by attrition. I want it to stop being popular among rich people to have NFTs that harm the earth and start being popular to grow your own garden, I want crypto bros to scramble to find a real job or go back to school, I want the glaring blue light of their overloaded computer's screen to bore into their skulls as they watch that number get closer and closer and closer to zero. Cryptocurrency is a rabid animal, and as it grows out of the aggression stage, the seizures will get worse and more painful. I want everyone to refuse shooting this animal. I want cryptocurrency see the Earth staring coldly at its failing body and know that there is no mercy in this world or the next.

Want to hear another stupid cryptobro story? Of course you do.

Trader Joe’s, the American grocery store chain, is again trying to shut down the popular DeFi platform Trader Joe for trademark infringement, after unsuccessfully attempting to do so last year, according to a recently filed federal lawsuit.

Last year, Trader Joe's (the grocery store) sued Trader Joe (the cryptocurrency exchange) for name infringement and lost.

Why'd they lose? Because the defense explained that "Trader Joe" was actually a nickname used by the cofounder's brother, Trader Joe Liu. Nothing to do with Trader Joe's, the supermarket chain. And the court bought it.

But then they published the news of the win in a company newsletter, loling about how they'd lied in court and gotten away with it:

“With no name for the DEX yet, [we] just named it Trader Joe, after the supermarket,”

they wrote.

When Trader Joe's (the supermarket) prevails this time, which they surely will, they intend to take all profits made by the usurping business plus a hefty cash penalty.

See? Crypto can be profitable!

I Sacrificed My Writing To A.I So You Don't Have To

I was thinking about how people often say "Oh, Chat GPT can't write stories, but it can help you edit things!" I am staunchly anti-A.I, and I've never agreed with this position. But I wouldn't have much integrity to stand on if I didn't see for myself how this "editing" worked. So, I sacrificed part of a monologue from one of my fanfictions to Chat GPT to see what it had to say. Here is the initial query I made:

Chat GPT then gave me a list of revisions to make, most of which would be solved if it was a human and had read the preceding 150k words of story. I won't bore you with the list it made. I don't have to, as it incorporated those revisions into the monologue and gave me an edited sample back. Here is what it said I should turn the monologue into:

The revision erases speech patterns. Ben/the General speaks in stilted, short sentences in the original monologue because he is distinctly uncomfortable—only moving into longer, more complex structures when he is either caught up in an idea or struggling to elaborate on an idea. The Chat GPT version wants me to write dialogue like regular narrative prose, something that you'd use to describe a room. It also nullified the concept of theme. "A purity that implied personhood" simply says the quiet(ish) part out loud, literally in dialogue. It erases subtlety and erases how people actually talk in favor of more obvious prose. Then I got a terrible idea. What if I kept running the monologue through the algorithm? Feeding it its own revised versions over and over, like a demented Google Translate until it just became gibberish? So that's what I did. Surprisingly enough, from original writing sample to the end, it only took six turnarounds until it pretty much stopped altering the monologue. This was the final result:

This piece of writing is florid, overly descriptive, unnatural, and unsubtle. It makes the speaking character literally give voice to the themes through his dialogue, erasing all chances at subtext and subtlety. It uses unnecessary descriptors ("Once innocuous," "gleaming," "receded like a fading echo," "someone worth acknowledging,") and can't comprehend implication—because it is an algorithm, not a human that processes thoughts. The resulting writing is bland, stupid, lacks depth, and seemingly uses large words for large word's sake, not because it actually triggers an emotion in the reader or furthers the reader's understanding of the protagonist's mindset.

There you have it. Chat GPT, on top of being an algorithm run by callous, cruel people that steals artist's work and trains on it without compensation or permission, is also a terrible editor. Don't use it to edit, because it will quite literally make your writing worse. It erases authorial intention and replaces it with machine-generated generic slop. It is ridiculous that given the writer's strike right now, studios truly believe they can use A.I to produce a story of marginal quality that someone may pay to see. The belief that A.I can generate art is an insult to the writing profession and artists as a whole—I speak as a visual artist as well. I wouldn't trust Chat GPT to critique a cover letter, much less a novel or poem.

How it started / how it’s going.

Interesting day for Cryptocurrency as some of the houses of cards topple over.  Bad news, it’s cards all the way down.  There is no foundation.

Okay, I need everyone to stop and look at this paragraph, and then I am going to need to absolutely shred it to pieces. This is from the cryptocurrency cruise ship fuckery article from The Guardian.

Friedman called it seasteading: “Homesteading the high seas,” a phrase borrowed from Wayne Gramlich, a software engineer with whom he’d founded the Seasteading Institute in 2008, helped by a $500,000 donation from Thiel. In a four-minute vision-dump, Friedman explained his rationale. Why, he asked, in one of the most advanced countries in the world, were they still using systems of government from 1787? (“If you drove a car from 1787, it would be a horse,” he pointed out.) Government, he believed, needed an upgrade, like a software update for a phone. “Let’s think of government as an industry, where countries are firms and citizens are customers!” he declared.

Okay, stay with me and let's just go one piece at a time:

Friedman called it seasteading: “Homesteading the high seas,” - Everyone I know who lives on a boat just calls it boat life or a houseboat but what do they know; they're not billionaires.

a phrase borrowed from Wayne Gramlich, a software engineer with whom he’d founded the Seasteading Institute in 2008 -- is it "borrowed" if you own half the terrible institute? I think it's nice the writer tried to make it sound like he didn't maybe want to use it.

helped by a $500,000 donation from Thiel -- Peter fucking Thiel, best known to me as the guy who gets blamed for Gawker going under when it was actually Gawker ignoring a court order about not sharing Hulk Hogan's sex tape, but enough of my personal vendettas...

In a four-minute vision-dump -- [a gif of that scene from Pink Flamingos; if you know, you know]

Why, he asked, in one of the most advanced countries in the world, were they still using systems of government from 1787? -- I mean, we're not, though. Yes, still majority voting, but there have been SEVERAL updates to the original documents (the 14th and 19th amendments come to mind), but when you're third-generation too rich to think, I can see how you think nothing's ever changed.

“If you drove a car from 1787, it would be a horse,” he pointed out. -- And if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its ass.

Government, he believed, needed an upgrade, like a software update for a phone -- Ah, yes, the perfect software upgrade for your phone. The one everyone wants, is ready to switch to at a moment's notice, never puts off, and certainly never fucking bitches about. Not like any government at all. Nope. fuckboi.exe is running perfectly, unfortunately.

“Let’s think of government as an industry, where countries are firms and citizens are customers!” he declared. -- When you bitch about the system of government not being good enough, and then pitch the system of government they overthrew to be the current government.

This is the SECOND paragraph of this story, y'all.

I finally caved in and made a wallet for both Ethereum and Avalanche, for donations

Just a temporary solution until I can digitally use fiat

It'll probably help in the long run, because I do plan on doing free software in the future, and crypto donations are pretty common in open-source. Though, FOSSbros seem more interested in Monero (for the Privacy™, which I honestly understand). And, tbh, I wouldn't use Monero unless it transitioned to PoS or something. PoW currencies consume too much energy, and it's bad for the environment.

Also, look; feature I would never need:

The problem with environmental impact (with PoS chains like Ethereum anyway) seems to largely a thing of the past, so the real problem with NFTs today mostly lies with commodified media (usually mass-produced, generated garbage), used by scam artists.

I would never want to engage with this technological mistake, unless:

-It's dirt-cheap, and it's mocking NFTs.

-It's an April Fools joke, mocking NFTs.

-Some loser sent me one involuntarily (I don't know if NFT transfers are a mutually-consented thing or not; correct me if I'm wrong), and I need to sell to another loser to get it the fuck off of me

Just imagine my OC, kicking and screaming as an ugly, randomly-generated jpeg of a monkey is suck to their body and wouldn't come off.

(The blockchain should be used to verify media authorship, not ownership, while executing a smart contract to make sure the media is preserved, via IPFS. But no, cryptobros want to trade ugly, randomly generated picrews)

(My wallet address here)

(found on my Twitter feed.)

“...each note has an expiration date. After that time only your user key can access funds.”

So, these notes basically all have one-time usages in the unlikely event that you will actually find a storefront that takes bitcoin bucks before they become fucking useless for everyone except you. At that point, if someone else wants to actually spend these notes they’d need to ask for your specific user key or else they’re glorified toilet tissue.

Seriously...

Never got around to drawing that horny crypt0bro comic in the end so why not give them a happy ending

“Hard working, self made man” my Black ass. But we already knew this.

👉🏿 https://futurism.com/elon-musk-dad-emerald-mine

The best roast we will see all year.

gotta say, getting the creepy crawlies down my spine 🧐 (saw a bitcoin fan across the street)

*adds to vocabulary*

I love how the belief that "Girls only like dudes with money" has been completely debunked at this point purely because cryptobros get no bitches.

Lmao.

Get fucked