Oh No Crypto Bro

I’ve followed this story with some delight. Apparently Michael Lewis, who wrote The Big Short, has been trailing FTX guy Sam Bankman-Fried around, so we’ll certainly get a kick-ass film out of it someday. Among many, many remarkable facets to the tale is that the crypto market has supposedly lost $2 trillion of valuation this year… and Wall Street has barely flinched.
When Sequoia Capital – allegedly the most intelligent venture capital firm – invested $210 million in FTX last year, it asked to see financial reports and instead was told “we’ll send you a few bullet points.” It’s traditional when investing that much into a firm to have someone on the board, but Bankman-Fried wouldn’t let anyone on the board of directors, which was him, an attorney, and an FTX employee.
For a company “worth” $32 billion at one point.

Zero oversight! What could go wrong?

I’ve followed developing news with Patrick Redford of Defector, who is typically hilarious. But there are several excellent reporters and twitter feeds. Ed Zitron on Twitter is great.

Here, a professor of finance at King’s College splains it to us. He keeps showing photos of Phil Spector for Sam Bankman-Fried, so gotta respect his game:

It’s an exciting time to be in the crypto world.

Satisfaction?


After 40+ years, this still might be the strangest cover version I’ve ever heard of anything. The re-worked lyrics, where I can understand them, are hilarious. I know only two things about the Residents: they were from San Francisco, and they had a guitarist called Snakefinger. Perhaps former Bay area Bastards can add something. According to the comments, the animation is by Ivan Maximov, a Russian. I don’t know anything about him either. As far as I know, the song and animation are unrelated, but they make a perfect match. Beyond that, words fail me on this one.

Mike Love Raps…


…with predictable results. Even the girls can’t save this sad abomination; I couldn’t make it past one minute. According to this guy, the song was conceived as a duo with Bart Simpson for an upcoming Simpsons movie, but the producers declined, feeling that “Bart, after all, has some standards to uphold.” Indeed. Instead, it landed on Baywatch. I might have saved this one for Loathsome Thursday, but this stands in its own category of awfulness. I hesitated to post it at all.

Just Another Loathsome Thursday


For the most accurate description of this foul, embarrassing, overly emotive piece of 70’s “sensitive singer/songwriter” manure, I defer to Dave Barry:

…”Sometimes When We Touch,” sung by Dan Hill, who sounds like he’s having his prostate examined by Captain Hook.

A Better Song

Since I posted an annoying song, here’s a good one.  A women’s prison riot, two-gun Mathilde, and a, um, suggestive arrival of State Troopers.  What, I ask, is not to love here?

Aerial View of Сhernobyl Exclusion Zone, Ukraine

Just what your Monday needs!

Abandoned cities, which were humming with life in the past, enchant with their specific romance and the mesmerizing power of time! Welcome the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone from a bird’s eye view! Watch the spectacle of an urban apocalypse and the nature revival accompanied by dramatic ambient music and the soft patter of rain. The cities of Chernobyl and Pripyat look lost in the woods and get more and more absorbed by nature, which is rapidly dominating the hand-made creations that have fallen out of use. The overcast weather and stunning scarlet sunset give the scenic drone footage a special flavor.

Temperature Timeline

XKCD is great fun. I enjoyed this for the historical perspective, and had no idea that Boston and New York were iced over as recently as 20,000 years ago.

Also: if this pandemic doesn’t get us, liquefied Antarctica surely will.
Have a nice day.