What is $40 billion?
In a wonderfully funny article about the idiots who fell for the DAO "constitution" scam, Vice says:

DAO governance tokens are themselves a $40 billion market.

What are governance tokens? Nothing. They say that you have paid money to the scammer. That's all. The scammer can let you "vote" on the subject of the "smart contract" or not, as he wishes.

In 1948, $40 billion was the entire fucking budget of the United Fucking States. Or more precisely it was Truman's proposed budget, and the Repooflicans were bitching that it would drive us into bankruptcy as fucking always.

Granted, inflation since then is about 10, so the figure is really $400 billion.

Even after adjustment, the DAO shit is genuinely equal to the non-defense parts of the entire fucking government in 1948, and it does precisely nothing.

DAO is a super-complicated overload of the simplest scam in history. The simplest scam is a classified ad saying:

Send one dollar to PO Box 123 now! Beat the rush!

It's perfectly legal because it doesn't promise anything at all. It just invites you to send money.

Labels: Entertainment, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 3:33 PM

  The DAO swindlers should have waited a few days....
A unique manuscript written by Einstein is about to be auctioned.

It's 54 pages of equations tried and crossed out, showing his thought process as he worked on relativity. Christie's expects it to bring about $3 million in ancient useless fiat "money".

Much more appropriate for the tech fools than the "constitution". Only a Turing or Tesla manuscript would be cooler.

However: Crossing out equations is dissonant to the DAO doctrine of immutable code. The code written by the swindlers must never be debugged or examined or changed. If you try to fix it, you might notice the built-in scams.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 3:10 PM

  Sucker filter = DAO
Some tech types are pushing a peculiar deal that possibly crosses the line into fraud. One of the few remaining copies of the original printing of the Constitution is up for sale. The techies are putting together a Bitcoin thingamajig that will purchase this copy and then give it to a museum, or build a museum, or burn it, or eat it, or pretty much anything you can think of.

What do you get for your donation? Nothing except the pleasure of knowing that a document, which you will never see or touch, is being transferred to someplace that might or might not be the same place it would have gone if it hadn't been purchased by the Bitcoin thingy.

There's nothing wrong with gathering donations for a specifically named gift. Keeping an important artwork in public view is a worthy goal for people who appreciate the artwork. Many people support museums in this way, without ever visiting the museum.

The potential fraud arises with the Bitcoin NFT shit, which is of course a total fraud from the getgo. This group is claiming that the donators will be able to help control the destination of the document, or maybe not. The donators may be able to choose a director who will make the decision, except that the structure of the NFT excludes a director and doesn't provide a "voting" mechanism.

"Decentralized control" is another name for dictatorship. Ultimately SOMEBODY will have to decide where to put the document, and there's no assurance that your "vote" will make a difference. A museum won't accept a donation from a vague "decentralized collective" that might randomly decide to take back the document. Museums are properly fussy about provenance and chain of possession.

The organizers are free to sell the document to a private collector for a profit, which is the most likely actual outcome.

I think DAO is a modern retread of the "artist rights" movement that started and fizzled in the '70s. Some artists tried to maintain full possession of everything they sold, considering a sale to be more like a rental. The artists tried to control how the work could be used and displayed. Very few collectors and museums want to buy artworks with no control. They do sometimes borrow artworks or collectibles, with an explicit term-limited lease arrangement, but they won't "purchase" without control.

= = = = =

Later: Happened to notice that the auction is live right now, so I'm watching it. Auctions are always fascinating. The alleged million-dollar "artworks" are vastly less competent than anything I see in low-cost places like Etsy.

ONLY ONE THING MATTERS IN THIS PICTURE. NYC IS DONE WITH MUZZLES. THE AUCTION IS A CROWDED ROOM IN NYC. ONLY ABOUT 10% OF THE AUDIENCE IS MUZZLED. THEY'RE SHOWING A 'SATELLITE' ROOM IN LONDON, WHICH IS ALSO BREATHING. WHY THE FUCK CAN'T WE BE ALLOWED TO BREATHE? GODS, GET YOUR FUCKING ASSES IN GEAR. IF NYC AND LONDON CAN BREATHE, WHY CAN'T WE BREATHE?

= = = = =

Next day: The DAO didn't win the bidding. They announced in advance that they had raised $40 million, so the other bidders knew in advance that the price of the item was $41 million. It wasn't really an auction. The 'organization' says it will now refund all the contributions, and will go on to bigger and better Sucker Filters.

What was the purpose? Was the DAO sponsored by an enemy of the winning bidder, in order to make him spend more money than he would otherwise? That's a common tactic at auctions.

Labels: endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 2:46 PM

  More on high-status hippies
Wolf is graphing the dot-com weirdness and cultishness of WeWork. Cults are running strong now, from Elon to Elizabeth Holmes to Adam Neumann. A business with an obviously stupid and impossible goal sucks in all the investment, leaving no money available for real business.

One commenter brings up a historical parallel:

This prolonged departure from fundamentals is so weird. I recall in the dotcom years, Silicon Valley started off with promising (if speculative) companies and ideas, and drifted over time into pure marketing. Sensing free money on the table, free lunch, a zero sum transfer, the rats moved in (as they did into the hippie movement, which has interesting Bay area cultural parallels). No need to provide value, just have a charming superficial story, build a facade, and the “investors” will come. I am not sure of the relative numbers (I don’t have Wolf’s skills) but things now seem far down that path. Cults of personality abound in today’s society, not unlike the grotesque scenes in the post-hippie Bay area.

Like Elon and Elizabeth and Adam, those high-status hippies had government connections and money connections. They turned the drug trade (which has always been a Deepstate specialty) into personality cults, and some of the cults were info feeders for Deepstate.

We're parallel to the early 70s in many ways. Nixon saddled business and citizens with a crazy pile of new mandates, in environmentalism and Die-Versity. Cults were everywhere, and cults were mainly Deepstate operations. Now we're seeing inflation, which Wolf is also graphing expertly.

The only thing in this comment that I hadn't seen in my own experience is the "investors". This commenter had a different set of experiences.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 6:14 AM

  The only UNbroken supply chain
UncommonDescent notes yet another mass retraction of low-quality "science" articles. Most of these are clearly produced by AI and submitted by Chinese grad students who are competing ferociously to get onto the tenure track.

In the real world supply chains are broken because normal people have decided en masse that working for demons is no longer worth the torture and pain.

The only area where we have an OVERsupply is "science" articles. Grad students are eagerly competing to be the next head demon.

Journal editors are in a tough position. The entire tenure system is built to increase raw quantity. More output means more money in a simple linear function. Nobody wants quality. Truth has negative value. Fashionable lies have high value.

But a "reputable" journal may lose its reputation if it's too obviously unreadable. These AI papers are too obvious. Even the titles are nonsense, like

Distribution of earthquake activity in mountain area based on embedded system and physical fitness detection of basketball

Sucker Filter at work. Select the stupidest readers by sending out the most brazenly stupid title. After being the stupidest readers and publishing the shit, the editors at Springer have decided that they don't like the feeling of being the stupidest readers.

If the Chinese authors had been smarter, they would have made nonsensical connections to FASHIONABLE LIES.

Distribution of earthquake activity in mountain area based on embedded system and mental illness detection of Trump voters

Now you've got a high citation count, and you're on the ramp leading to a Nobel.

Labels: Editors, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 9:41 PM

  Sucker selectors
Madman Lincoln advised his Deepstate tyrant successors to fool some of the people etc.

I've been noticing the rule for a long time, and it's especially strong in the current hoax.

I was fooled by 9/11 but not by the "virus". Most of the people who were NOT fooled by 9/11 are fully on board with the "virus".

These two #WholeOfSociety hoaxes are nearly disjunct, mutually exclusive, in their selection of suckers.

Assassinations and shooting wars and 9/11 are conjunct for obvious reasons. People with real experience in war know the difference between real wars and fake wars. I don't have experience in war and guns, so I'm easily fooled in this area.

Gaia and "Virus" are conjunct. People with real experience in science know the difference between real science and fake science. The exact same people buy both of these hoaxes, and many of the worst tyrants smoothly shifted from Gaian genocide to Viran genocide. Same agencies, same methods.

Noam Chomsky is today's example. He was a careful and consistent exposer of Deepstate hoaxes in the area of war and surveillance. Now he says antivaxers should be slaughtered.

So we have two separate classes, war suckers and science suckers, at least partly based on personal experience. But as Lincoln advised, there are also people who will climb on EVERY bandwagon and cheerfully join the slaughter. These people aren't really fooled, they're just demons.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Carver, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 11:40 PM

  It's all Spanish Prisoner
Democracy and meritocracy are variants on the Spanish Prisoner racket.

The classic version of the racket goes like this:

I need to get access to a pile of money.

I can't reach the money without some 'processing', which may be travel or bribing officials or paying taxes.

Will you help me with the 'processing'? If you help me, I'll give you a cut of the money.

And then the scammer simply disappears. You've lost money and received nothing.

= = = = =

Bribing is the most common version of 'processing'. When you believe you're helping to violate a law, you're less likely to call the cops.

The modern scammers, known as the Yahoo Boys, have reduced the pattern to the absolute minimum, and it still works. Sucker Filter.

They don't even bother to promise that you'll get a cut. You're doing it solely for "friendship", or in some cases for "patriotism". The scammers pretend to be US soldiers trapped in Yemen or Syria or Afghanistan.

= = = = =

Elections follow the same pattern, except that the potential windfall is power, not money.

A candidate says:

I need to get access to a pile of power.

I can't reach the power without some 'processing', which may be travel or bribing officials or campaign expenses.

Will you help me with the 'processing'? If you help me, I'll give you a cut of the power.

After you help, the candidate wins and proceeds to implement exactly the same agenda as the other politicians. Or else he stops running and endorses the Deepstate candidate. He now has access to power, but you don't get a cut of the power. Your views are still completely ignored and unrepresented.

= = = = =

Meritocracy follows the same pattern, except that the windfall is status, not money.

You think you're paying to get access to a cut of status. After you pay, the mentor or school or advertiser has more money, but you still don't have any more status.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 8:24 AM

  Two heavvvvvvyyyyyyyyyy assholes farting
Randomly wandering through the latest uploads at American Radio Library. A 1972 issue of a trade newsletter featured two HIGH-STATUS IDIOTS, both speaking at the same convention.

= = = = =

First Bucky Fuller:

To set a tone of purpose and concern for the days that would follow, the opening keynote address was delivered by author/inventor, Buckminster Fuller, who spoke for two hours and 15 minutes about the "dynamics of mass communication in relation to expanding world technology." Fuller urged those present to consider how insignificant the human being is in relation to the universe. Fuller observed great growing concern over the crisis of energy but stated that, "the concern should be for the apparent crisis of ignorance."

I later realized how right Fuller was when I asked about 35 people at random what they thought of Fuller's speech. Some of the comments I received were: "he's really heavy," "his speech was a bit heavy for 9 o'clock in the morning." "the old guy is really sharp," and "he really didn't say anything about radio or records."

No, Bucky wasn't right. Anyone who complains about IGNORANCE is automatically wrong.

The commenters were right. Bucky was heavvvvyyyyy in the 70s sense, a shitpile of big words with little meaning. The last commenter recognized that Bucky wasn't talking about anything at all, just bullshitting as usual. All of Bucky's "inventions" are equally bullshit. Just plain DUMB.

= = = = =

And then the inimitable McLuhan.

We entered Barry's large sterile living room and for the first time that evening I saw Dr McLuhan without his coat...Even while he had napped at home he had kept it on...Now he seemed to change...to relax more...He literally fell down on the couch in slouch...and began to rap...For some unknown reason his subject began...

MARSHALL: Ahhh...There we go...Somebody said..."Farting is such sweet sorrow...You might be amused to know that the word "fart" means go...It's the past participle of the word "faron "...which means..."to go"...to fare...forward...to fare...and "faron" to go...is the past participle of fahrt (German) meaning gone...and when you're "gone"...or "fahrted" why the people say in England..."and joy go with thee"...instead of saying..."Gesunheidt" they say..."and joy go. with thee"...But, Chaucer built his great poem The House of Fame...or..."The House of Fame"...It's a theory of what human reputation of fame is...He built the entire poem on the metaphor of "fart "...because he says "Fame is just air broken and broken air "...Here's your resonant interval again...And broken air creates the noise of sound...And then there's reputation...or fame...And fame is just a collosal fart...So he built a learned poem using all the physics of the Middle Age entirely on the pun... "As Fame As F a r t "... T h e G r e a t Chaucer..."

"Incredible"...I said, trying to figure out just what great wisdom he had bestowed upon me...

No wisdom at all. Pure bullshit. Schizophrenic rambling.

Fart doesn't come from fahren, it's an old word that goes all the way back to Indo-European, and always meant a gaseous emission from an asshole.

McLuhan's famous "philosophy" about media was equally transparent bullshit. This connects nicely with previous item about the condensation and fortification of radio.

Radio and text are condensed. They present an outline or framework that invites you to create your own universe, to exercise your own mind. Television and movies are the opposite. They inject a pre-cooked universe, leaving no room for your own imagination.

McLuhan had it EXACTLY FUCKING BACKWARDS. He claimed that TV was cool, which meant that it passively invited you to fill in your own images, while text and radio were hot, actively providing the full package. This is OBVIOUSLY AND BLATANTLY AND TRANSPARENTLY WRONG.

You don't need to know ANY FUCKING THING about neurology or printing or modulation or cathode-ray tubes. Anyone who has experienced all three types of media KNOWS how each type works.

Both of these assholes were basically cult leaders. They had more in common with Charlie Manson than with any actual inventors or philosophers.

Labels: NOT alternate universe, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 9:45 PM

  Seen unbeauty
This outfit has been advertising its "services" lately. They're latching onto the trend of super-rich securitization of "art". As usual they're trying to suck in some not-so-rich suckers.



ART?

No actual designer would ever produce this shit, even on his worst day.

This is evidence of serious brain damage. That's all you can say about it.

The real tragedy is that THOUSANDS of EXCELLENT artists are working their hearts out, trying to sell in places like Etsy, and making small amounts of money. Some are able to survive full-time, most aren't.

All the money and power belongs to brain damaged bloody psychopaths.

This is a definitive and comprehensive diagnosis of our current situation.

Labels: Editors, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 6:05 AM

  McAfee dead
Apparently he committed "suicide" in prison.

I wish I could work up sympathy, but I can't. He didn't NEED to be in jail. He was rich. He could afford to pay taxes. He chose to evade taxes for the joy of cheating. Not a martyr, just a fool.

He was a poetic spokesman for HARDASS realism, but he was also a salesman for Bitcoin, an unrealistic fraud.

= = = = =

Reprint from a few months ago:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Truth is just an advertising gimmick.

Well, not exactly and not entirely. But it's a fairly consistent pattern in political circles.

What does truth advertise? Fake monetary reforms.

In the 1880s, the prairie populists under Jennings Bryan were telling the HARDASS truth about corporations and banks. Their solution was more debt plus Bimetallism, now forgotten. Bimetallism was a variable mix of gold and silver that would remove gold from its position as the one solid measuring baseline. Debt plus bimetallism would give MORE power to the banks, not less.

Now many (NOT ALL!) of the people who are telling the truth about economic crimes and "global warming" crimes and "virus" crimes are also selling Bitcoin. Bitcoin is another scheme to remove solid baselines from money. Bitcoin goes vastly farther than bimetallism, removing money from money. Bitcoin is an abstraction that can't be spent, can't be earned, can't be relied on for stability, and can't be reliably stored. It violates every single rule for currency.

Hardass realists, from McAfee to Assange to AIER, are Bitcoin salesmen.

This contradiction doesn't fit the usual Sucker Filter pattern. The usual scammer is looking for suckers who are unmoored from reality, who will believe any sort of nonsense if it's presented convincingly. The sucker category here is based on social position, not truth detection. In a time of total lies, people who see the truth about anything at all are dissidents, constantly mocked and shunned and punished. They need reassurance and respect. The scammer creates respect by agreeing with the sucker on most of reality, and then uses the respect to sell one obviously unreal product.

In between the 1880s Bryan types and the 2020s McAfee types, there were two giant exceptions to the rule. Harding and FDR. Both of them told the hard truth about economics, and used the truth to create GENUINE REFORMS that dethroned the bankers and restored human skill and human culture.

How do we break out of the Bryan/McAfee side of this cycle and get back to the Harding/FDR side?

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Labels: infinite STUPID, MMT, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 1:56 PM

  Unfiltered sucker
Seems to be a lot of hoopla over the "official" "revelations" of UFOs. Nothing new, of course. Government has played this game before, cultivating UFO fans to run an open beta on stealth tech. Deepstate never actually reveals anything. All "revelations" are publicly available info, staged to look new.

I looked at the alleged "Navy UFO video". Jesus. They didn't even bother to stage. This is an insect on the camera lens. It moves like a small fly or beetle, and you can see the legs sometimes.

= = = = =

Broader rant: What happened to professional pride? Deepstate used to apply skill and talent when staging "panics" and "emergencies". The Skripal "event", part of the rehearsal for the 2020 holocaust, was elegantly executed with careful timing of the various parts. Now that they own everything, it's all Sucker Filter all the time. No need for skill when you don't need to persuade.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 12:54 AM

  Some people are learning how to be maximally cynical
Speaking of romance-type scams....

Judging by what I see at Quora, there's a MASSIVE VOLUME of fake military and fake prisoner scams right now. Hundreds of people are wondering how to send money and food to a specific military base or a specific prison. The answerers are trying to tell the suckers that this is a scam, but it doesn't seem to be slowing them down. The suckers are fully convinced that the soldier or prisoner who CONTACTED THEM AT RANDOM FOR NO REASON is genuinely in need of money and help.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 3:29 PM

  Why total cynicism pays
Watched this episode of Highway Patrol last night. A lonely middle-aged lady is romanced by a criminal who uses her money and car to commit crimes. After seeing most of the truth, she bounces back to loyalty a couple of times, aided by calls from the romancer. Near the end she gets hammered with HARDASS truth and finally realizes:


I've been a fool.

Two episodes of other cop shows have similar plots with similar endings. Lonely people fall hard for the slightest hint of respect and affection, and the fall is persistent.

Realizing you're a sucker is NOT fun. It HURTS. After I turned off the TV in 2011, I finally quit bouncing back to neocon mode, and realized I was a fool.

NOT FUN.

That's why I turn the paranoia up to 999999999 now, avoiding the false flags on "both" "sides". Deepstate knows how to romance everyone.

Madman Lincoln left the key for his successors: You can fool some etc.

He was instructing his descendants to romance ALL of the people ALL of the time, focusing SOME of their poison on each category of SOMEs. But you'll never be able to romance everyone, so you'll always need to exterminate the unromanceables. He demonstrated the process by exterminating 20% of America. That's called GENOCIDE.

The latest Lincoln fans have developed a new stage. After you break up the entire fucking world into individual hermetically sealed pods, muzzled and distanced and lucited to avoid all communication and contact and emotional transfer, EVERYONE is desperately lonely, and EVERYONE is easy to sucker and hard to de-sucker.

Labels: endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever, Jail mode, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 5:37 AM

  Law of One Exception
Polistra's Law Of One Exception is obvious at the level of officials. Deepstate is not obliged to allow any exceptions at all, but will sometimes allow EXACTLY ONE heretic in each group. Never more than one. This provides the "appearance" of "fairness" and "democracy" to gullible suckers.

Among Supremes, the One is Clarence Thomas. In the upper house, the One (mild version) is Rand Paul. I can't think of any exceptions in the lower house. Among governors, Noem is the One. Among epidemiologists, Ioannidis is it.

Among world leaders, the heroic martyr Magufuli WAS the One Exception, until Deepstate eliminated him last month.

= = = = =

The Law Of One may also apply on the temporal level to behaviors or utterances. Loyal servants of Satan are allowed to say One thing that could be interpreted as only 99.999999999999999999% orthodox. After this One extremely mild deviation, the loyal servant returns to 100.00000000000000000% perfection.

I noticed this with Demon Woodward, the demon mayor who slaughters Spokane. After chief Public Death Officer Lutz was fired for some insignificant personal reason (NOT for being a murderer), Demon Woodward expressed satisfaction at his firing, in a way that could be interpreted as vague weariness with the whole process. After this One, she returned to 100.00000000000% loyal enthusiastic murder service.

Last week the Wash State Repooflicans, for the first and last time, expressed mild semi-semi-dissatisfaction with the way Superdemon Inslee is holocausting.

Now the Repoofs are immediately back to normal Repoof territory, full-time service to Lord Bezos.

Their latest coward-ass pussy-ass bitch-ass sissy-ass email:

The 2021 Legislative Session just ended and Democrats in Olympia have once again shown that their top priority is taking more of your hard earned money to spend it on big government liberal wish-lists - this session they passed a state income tax, environmental cap and tax provisions, and a low carbon fuel standard with the promise of increasing gas taxes in the near future. To add insult to injury, Democrats even added language intended to block a citizen referendum on the state income tax.

The One is Done. Undoubtedly pussy-ass Heimlich is breathing a sigh of relief that he got the One Fake Thing out of the way. Now he can return to giving Lord Bezos ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX. Nasty vile chickenshit.

Actually I'm more pissed at MYSELF for being gullible enough to believe the One Fake Exception. I should know better.

Now I'm more broadly pissed at MYSELF after looking back through the earlier years of the blog to find the first use of the Exception Law. I was a gullible fool for several of Deepstate's frauds, from "Soviet subversion" to "Islamic terrorism." I didn't recover from those idiocies until I threw away the TV in 2010.

Labels: endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 10:59 PM

  Odd spam, beyond Sucker Filter
In the last couple weeks I've been getting occasional email messages from groups.io, which was a replacement for Yahoo Groups.

I was in a few assorted Yahoo Groups until it closed, maybe 2016? I might have looked at the successors in groups.io, but never joined.

These messages aren't obvious spam. They're just snips from the middle of various uninteresting discussions.

Example:

A well done dopefish fic can be a lot of fun - BUT that is the problem right there. Most of them aren't well done.

I've never discussed or made or read fanfics, and never heard of dopefish.

One of the discussions could be vaguely related to courseware, but otherwise the whole thing is totally disconnected. Nothing to click, nothing that seems to be an invitation or enticement. No Sucker Filter.

I tried to unsubscribe, and the auto message from groups.io said that the group itself was gone. Maybe the unsubscribe was the targeted clickpoint?

= = = = =

Speaking of spammy stuff... Academia.edu, after teasing me for several years with ambiguous "mentions" of my name in various journal articles, finally presented me with a specific list of a dozen articles that I had actually authored or co-authored. For each one it asked "Is this you?" and I was able to proudly click Yes for each one. Feels good to get some credit for real science, especially in the current "situation" where real science is being slaughtered along with millions of real people.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 1:56 PM

  Sucker Filter Ultra
The latest Bitcoin variant began on April 1, which probably should tell you something. It's a joke based on extreme numbers, issuing something like 616 trillion abstract "coins" with a par value so close to perfect zero that you can hardly calculate it. Seems to be aimed directly at the autistic and Krautistic types who hunger for MORE DECIMAL POINTS! MORE DECIMAL POINTS! MORE MEANINGLESS PRECISION!

So far I haven't seen any echoes of it in the literalistic autistic Quora world, which indicates that even autists understand it's a joke.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 9:18 AM

  Odd variation on Sucker Filter
Now that the "election" crap has cleared out of spam, the spammers are back to the usual tricks. One recent trick is new and puzzling.

Congratulations Capital One Customer!

Special Offer for Wells Fargo Customer!

Refund for Walgreens Customer!

Open for news, valued State Farm customer!

And today a paper mail containing a supposed refund from Hemmings Auto News.

Why odd? They're all for companies that I don't use. My bank is USBank, not Wells Fargo. My credit card is Citibank, not Capital One. My insurance is Allstate, not Geico or State Farm. And I've been subscribing to Collectible Automobile for 20 years, but never bought an issue of Hemmings.

The spam is never aimed at my actual purchasing patterns. All of it seems to think I'm a customer of a different company in each category.

Must be Sucker Filter. If you're foolish enough that you don't know your own bank and insurance and shopping habits, you're foolish enough to go for Bitcoin or an inheritance from somebody you never knew.

Labels: Sucker Filter, TMI

  ¶ 12:39 PM

  Exponential Sucker Filters
The incomparable Wolf has been tracking and CLEARLY describing two massively idiotic new forms of fraud. SPACs and NFTs.

Both serve to securitize the buzz surrounding a celebrity.

SPACs are companies sponsored by a celebrity, for the specific purpose of doing nothing. The SPAC pretends to offer the potential possibility that it might buy something. Supposedly it might acquire a startup, sparing the startup from going through the normal red tape of SEC approval. The SPAC doesn't promise to buy something, so it's not a 'future' or an 'option' in any meaningful way. It's just a money-laundering tool that might or might not be used for money-laundering. Fools rush in to get in on the ground floor of money-laundering.

NFTs would be prima facie illegal if we had laws. The 'non-fungible token' consists of a stolen artwork or image or something or other, sometimes with permission of the celebrity and sometimes not. The stolen piece of something or other is written into a PDF, perhaps contained in a thumb drive, and this forged copy is given a serial number that relates somehow to Bitcoin. Fools bid up the price of the forgery, eagerly seeking the privilege of "owning" a forgery with a fake signature.

Hmm. Come to think of it, this type of appeal is not new. Most of the scams and frauds described in the old cop shows of the '40s made the same pitch. "Why is this such a good deal? Because we're operating just outside the law. But you and I know how to get around such limitations, don't we? (wink wink)"

The sucker, believing that his participation is illegal, isn't going to call the cops when he ends up broke. If he believed that the scammer stole his money while engaged in normal business activity, he'd call the cops.

Labels: infinite STUPID, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 1:18 AM

  Truth is just an advertising gimmick
Well, not exactly and not entirely. But it's a fairly consistent pattern in political circles.

What does truth advertise? Fake monetary reforms.

In the 1880s, the prairie populists under Jennings Bryan were telling the HARDASS truth about corporations and banks. Their solution was more debt plus Bimetallism, now forgotten. Bimetallism was a variable mix of gold and silver that would remove gold from its position as the one solid measuring baseline. Debt plus bimetallism would give MORE power to the banks, not less.

Now many (NOT ALL!) of the people who are telling the truth about economic crimes and "global warming" crimes and "virus" crimes are also selling Bitcoin. Bitcoin is another scheme to remove solid baselines from money. Bitcoin goes vastly farther than bimetallism, removing money from money. Bitcoin is an abstraction that can't be spent, can't be earned, can't be relied on for stability, and can't be reliably stored. It violates every single rule for currency.

Hardass realists, from McAfee to Assange to AIER, are Bitcoin salesmen.

This contradiction doesn't fit the usual Sucker Filter pattern. The usual scammer is looking for suckers who are unmoored from reality, who will believe any sort of nonsense if it's presented convincingly. The sucker category here is based on social position, not truth detection. In a time of total lies, people who see the truth about anything at all are dissidents, constantly mocked and shunned and punished. They need reassurance and respect. The scammer creates respect by agreeing with the sucker on most of reality, and then uses the respect to sell one obviously unreal product.

In between the 1880s Bryan types and the 2020s McAfee types, there were two giant exceptions to the rule. Harding and FDR. Both of them told the hard truth about economics, and used the truth to create GENUINE REFORMS that dethroned the bankers and restored human skill and human culture.

How do we break out of the Bryan/McAfee side of this cycle and get back to the Harding/FDR side?

Labels: Metrology, MMT, skill-estate, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 11:28 PM

  Nice clear article on Bitcoin
Atypically, BBC has a wonderfully clear account of recent moves in Bitcoin, plus a straightforward and understandable description of how the crime works. The latter is remarkably hard to find.

The article compares Bitcoin's total energy usage with several countries, which has been done before and isn't really useful. Countries have a wide variety of climates and use energy in a wide variety of ways, so the total energy of Holland or Chile can't be compared with anything else.

The article also compares Bitcoin with the total power usage of all data centers, which is a precise comparison. Bitcoin and the cloud are the same thing working for different purposes. Bitcoin uses HALF AS MUCH POWER as the total of all other data servers. The cloud is working for real business and government. Some of what the cloud does is horrible by my standards, but it's unquestionably REAL. Bitcoin is working for nothing at all, just running calculations that are discarded. Absolute pure total purposeless meaningless waste, and mostly run by fossil fuels.

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Calibrating: I've been puzzled or bothered lately by the convergence of Bitcoin sellers and truth-tellers. Several of the best HARDASS truth-tellers are also Bitcoin cultists.

Are they cynically using the truth as a 'loss-leader' to attract followers? Or do they have a blind spot? The latter is always possible. Everyone has blind spots, everyone sees the truth about some things and deludes themselves about other things.

No puzzle about McAfee. He is total HARDASS. He tells the truth (as he sees it) about everything, and openly states that he's pushing Bitcoin solely to make money. Sucker Filter right out front.

Labels: Asked and unanswered, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 9:37 AM