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+1s In Heaven Mr. Toad

+1s In Heaven Mr. Toad

It's time to scrub the crabs.

Former Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin died today, despite nearly a decade of Chinese shitposters determinedly adding seconds to his life. I learned the news from Intern Linda this morning:

Regrettably, the Henry Kissinger death tontine is still open.

Here’s a funny crypto/media story from Semafor:

CoinDesk, the online news site whose story on cracks in Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire sparked an industry-wide meltdown, has attracted takeover interest as its owner tries to reassure investors, people familiar with the matter said…

It is part of Barry Silbert’s privately held Digital Currency Group, a conglomerate that includes Grayscale Investments, which manages funds that own bitcoin, ether, and other coins, and Genesis, which lends against customers’ crypto holdings. That business is under pressure, as the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange spreads chaos and contagion through cryptoland.

CoinDesk could have just been a pure shill site to pump the investments of its crypto fund owner, but in fact it has consistently been one of the best-informed and most accurate sources of crypto news, good or bad. And now the repercussions of the story that CoinDesk first broke about FTX and Alameda Research’s mutual insolvency have ramified to the point of threatening the crypto fund that owns it. As the “apes” say: lol, hfsp. Semafor reports that CoinDesk is shopping for a better offer than $300 million,1 so good luck with that! 🫡

San Francisco approved giving the police killer robots. “San Francisco police clarified that it would not arm robots with guns. Instead, they would be equipped with explosives,” reports KRON4 News. Ok sounds good. “Like many places around the U.S., San Francisco is trying to balance public safety with treasured civilian rights such as privacy and [not getting blown up by robots].” Personally, I’m ready to start a new life in the off-world colonies.

It’s the day when Spotify makes up nonsense music genres to irritate us into promoting it, but Instafest is more fun. Sabrina Imbler returned to the Times with a guessay about how much you remind them of the Blue Sea Blob. Also a few days ago in Sabrina Imbler: “An Oral History Of The Time Six Doctors Swallowed Lego Heads To See How Long They’d Take To Poo.” The first one was much faster than I expected! In tomorrow’s Whippet2 I learned that neither Interpol nor sharks are real. In yesterday’s Ed Zitron I learned that Elon Musk is crumbling before our eyes, along with the rest of the tech/VC narrative.

Musk has gotten away with a mixture of half-truths and outright lies enough times that he believed that he had the popularity to do anything, another condition afflicted upon those with billions of dollars.

And “Goodbye to All That: A Writer on Leaving Twitter:”

I remember once, and by now I no longer knew what seasons or even weather was, suggesting to an offline friend that he join Twitter to help offset the impact of my being ratioed by a pack of trolls. He laughed literally until he choked, and then suggested I get therapy. I laughed with him, but it would be a long while before I would come to understand the moral of the story, or why SpaghettiOs sent that Pearl Harbor tweet.

Finally: The Try Guys are back, with a new season of content3 to promote, but the same incredibly uncomfortable tone of three people trapped by money and circumstance in a career they genuinely hate.

[A publicist intervenes to request the conversation move away from existential despair.]

Today’s Song: Lolahol, “Giovanni’s Room”

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