• ‘Chocolate Rain’ at 15: A 4,000-Word Interview With Tay Zonday About… Everything - Racket

    when asked why he was bullish on NFTs/crtypo, etc.

    No, I wouldn’t say I’m “bullish.” That’s over-simplified.

    Why doesn’t anybody accuse me of being “bullish” about the U.S. dollar fiat economy when I post about that ecosystem? I’ve talked about spending American dollars my entire life. The prejudice of this question is that we ought to normalize fiat economics as unremarkable and blockchain economics as noteworthy. On the contrary, we should find the apocalyptic state of global fiat economics to be highly noteworthy on a daily basis. 

    We should look at the poisoning of Flint, Michigan, and ask why we are so “bullish” on fiat economics.

    We should look at the failure to integrate municipal services (including police, fire and social services) into precinct representative government–a failure that contorts these into mechanisms that evacuate generational wealth from the poorest zip codes being served–and ask why we are so “bullish” on fiat economics. 

    We should look at how we still transact paper dollars that have the faces of men who enslaved and eugenically bred Black bodies from the cradle to the grave–and ask why we are so “bullish” on fiat economics. 

    We should look at how the hegemonic global power of the U.S. dollar devalues non-western human bodies to where some American products have raw materials mined through de-facto slavery in Africa, shipped to Asia at high carbon cost and manufactured under often-deplorable conditions, and then shipped to American consumers at high carbon cost–and ask why we are so “bullish” on fiat economics.

    There are ways in which blockchain economics, including Web3 and NFTs, have created avenues for individuals to access generational wealth who were locked out of fiat economy participation. It is not perfect. But if it disrupts the unparalleled environmental and moral disaster of the status quo, we can celebrate its exploration and distributive wins. 

    There’s an intentional and disastrous lack of basic education about economics (thanks Milton Friedman!) that leaves people with good intentions susceptible to disinformation. Framing that erases the most clarifying questions surrounds us like fish in opaque water. This complicates public discourse about policy and the human future. 

    this take on cryptocurrencies as a form of poking the system is pretty interesting. it kind of ignores the fact that crypto requires a continuous infusion of fiat currency to, i would argue, transfer wealth. from suckers to those who are building the game. but the desire to get behind something that moves the game elsewhere is interesting. not that i know what to do with that.

  • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The Atlantic

    there’s so much in this article to unpack. i don’t know that it is right, but the intuitions here certainly feel right.

    much of this was presaged by eli pariser’s “the filter bubble” back in 2011. but the sophistication and effort required to break out of the bubble when all you wanted to do was “find stuff” (search) or share pictures with friends and family (social media) was/is too much to ask of the average user. the move to mobile hasn’t made cross-referencing any easier. we just started to really beam things into our eyeballs back then. and, to be fair we were still pretty ignorant as to the amplifying effects of social media at the time)

    the “hidden tribes” study and the impacts of this behavior are all around us. i loath the term cancel culture and i firmly think that the media is drawing false equivalence here between the dart throwing stupidity that this article outlines on the left and he book banning that seems to have come in vogue on the right.

    anywhoo … definite a saver.