Got an email the other day from someone I don’t know. I don’t always open those. I figure it could be a notice that I am about to be picked up by the people in charge of making people like me go away. I don’t know what I might have written that would get me hanging by my thumbs in Guantanamo, but that’s only because there are so many possibilities. I can only hope when the fateful knock on the door comes, they’ll notice I’m white first thing, say “pardon me Ma’am,” and follow the sounds of the leaf blowers to their proper perps.
Anyway, I did open this one, and now I don’t know what I’m in for.
Hello, I am called Ray, McCarron. I store USDT in my OKX wallet and have my seed phrase ( +clean+ +party+ +soccer+ +advance+ +audit+ +clean+ +evil+ +finish+ +tonight+ +involve+ +whip+ +action+ ). What is the process to send my funds to Kraken? I’ve made the footage, take a moment to see it to get more details.
My first inclination, on receiving such a missive, is to type back:
The eagle flies at midnight.
I always hesitate to do that, though, because then I might be instructed to pick up a package at the bell tower and deliver it to the underground resistance and if I don’t do it everyone will die. Also, I’m already in my pajamas.
There’s a link to a youtube video that might clear things up, but I’ve told my cursor never to play with things like that and to tell me if it offers it candy or a puppy.
But I was interested enough to do a little research. After all, the sender is a little loose with his commas but he did put a period after the parentheses in the proper manner, which is reassuring. So. It would appear that I am being solicited in some fashion having to do with cryptocurrency.
I’m not interested. It’s one more spooky thing that is entirely unrelated to reality, and appears to be a new way to try to make money without making another damn thing of use to anybody, and I’m already mad at the financial sector Ronald Reagan fattened up beyond all reason, and have no use for people who are interested in money for its own sake. Or gamblers. But I repeat myself.
USDT appears to be a particular form of cryptocurrency called Tether. And if you buy Tether, or any other crypto, you need to put it in a wallet (software, so as not to ruin your line). Then your records are stored in a blockchain, which validates your coins, and consists of blocks linked by hash pointers and timestamps, and is generated and maintained by miners employing massive amounts of processing power for the possible reward of creating new cryptocurrency for themselves. And Kraken is a bitcoin exchange. The seed phrase is a gigantic password of random words allowing you to access your assets.
Fact is, when it comes to understanding this stuff, I can’t access my assets with both hands. I knew I was in trouble when I spent as much time checking to see if there was any progress in the scroll bar in Wikipedia as I did poring over the entry. I still have no idea how any of this works. All I know is that cryptocurrency mining, and AI, are responsible for massive energy use and tons of carbon emissions, all so that some people can amass pretend wealth without doing a damn thing for the world, and so we can generate fake photos of imaginary birds designed to appeal to the same people who swoon over those paintings of big-eyed children.
I have read a lot about all this and I am much better prepared, at this point, to explain quantum field theory in four-dimensional spacetime. But I need to go. The Red Queen is coming over for tea.
I’m as risk averse apparently as you when it comes to crypto. I do occasionally buy a lottery ticket, but generally don’t lose more than two to four bucks. I’ve never won anything, but occasionally amuse myself thinking about what I’d do if I did. Lately those thoughts have been along the lines of getting the hell out of Dodge and finding some safe corner of the world to live quietly.
I also don’t get cryptocurrency offers, but lately there’s been some idiot running commercials on YouTube who claims to have figured out the stock market and offering to let the worthy watch his live style (apparently he is unaware that it’s lifestyle or he’s got a singular lisp).
Meanwhile my electric utility has advised me that my rate is going up 19.9% effective June 1 in order to subsidize improvements to the infrastructure that will support data mining. Makes me wonder why these folks can’t pay for their own improvements instead of passing it along to those of us who can barely afford to pay for electricity at the current rate.
Yuck. I hope we’re all enjoying those fantasy bird pictures we’re paying for.
Just for fun, I typed that seed phrase into the search bar on YouTube. It came back with a bunch of cartoon videos. Upbit, bybit, getbit and other random bit bits seem to be piling up awaiting our deliveries.
The eagle is aloft
I was afraid to type anything in! For all I know Elon Musk could steal crypto I don’t even own.
“…but he did put a period after the parentheses in the proper manner…”
Oh Validation, how I love thee!
Can’t help but care.
For a short while I consented to some of our funds being sunk in crypto, with a ceiling of how much I felt comfortable losing. But things started getting hinky real fast (the death of the single person who knew the magic word to unlock the funds was particularly memorable and scary), and I insisted to my husband that we have nothing further to do with the whole make-believe “industry”.
It took our home-grown IT guy two days to get through the hoops, traps, and brick walls thrown into the process of retrieving our money! Thank goodness we raised one of our own–I don’t know who we’d’ve turned to, otherwise.
I tried to rent to home-grown IT people but it’s been hit or miss. No kids. I can’t even operate my TV.
I don’t even buy lottery tickets anymore. They upped our price to $5 and it’s too rich for my blood!
My money is in an account at the credit union. I would prefer it in cold hard cash in my underwear drawer where I hide all valuables, but my homeowners insurance says they only cover $50 or $100 or something in case of fire. I would turn it into gold, but I was forced to read “Alas Babylon” in high school (where someone drops a nuclear bomb on the United States and the people hoarding gold did not do well.
Crypto currency is best left to video monopoly games.
My money is out there somewhere in the market and draining out just about as fast as the administration can manage it.
Lottery tickets are for people who don’t understand mathematical probability. Or else they are optimists.
And what Murr said about Crypto? I didn’t understand a single word of it. I doubt that very many people who are into Crypto even understand how it works. I’ve been more into paper money now as well as the barter system. I only use my credit card when it’s something I’m buying online, or else it’s something pricey and I don’t feel comfortable carrying that much cash on me.
Barter is great. I do something for you; you do something for me. I gave a lot of black walnut and mahogany to a woodworker friend of mine, plus some woodworking tools. (They were my uncle’s.) He, in turn, made me a chef’s knife and a paring knife made out of said wood with carbon steel blades. (Worth upwards of a thousand dollars.) He also sharpens my knives as we chat. It feels good to do this rather than just pay some stranger. We both enjoy the conversation, it’s a small expenditure of time for either of us, and we both gain from it.
The attraction is obvious, but the problem of cold hard cash in your underwear drawer is that after a few years it loses all its stretch and is threadbare and nobody will give you anything for it.
Glad I took a break from raking out the garden beds to read this. I thought everyone in the entire world but me knows about or is invested in crypto, making money madcap and I’ve been feeling ignorant and anxious about all of that. Of course, I’m also very anxious about “money is out there somewhere in the market and draining out just about as fast as the administration can manage it.” Same, but it’s always a relief to hear that you aren’t the very only one. This blog post cleared up a lot.
Up until about age 55 it seemed a simple path: start work at 14, save money, go to college, then more college, then become a professional, buy a house, have a baby or two, thrive, save money, buy a bigger house. Become an unwilling partner in divorce, work harder, be a single parent, save more money for kid college and pay off the mortgage. Simple. And then…it sort of all went fuzzy and money issues became confounding. I had been thinking a lifetime of work and saving would help one transition smoothly through retirement, onto a couple of brief barge trips in Italy and then a simple sudden and quiet demise. Now it feels as though a person cant get out of here fast enough .The long term care company went belly up and was sold to China, all this crypto malarky and now life savings vaporizing despite the promised new boom. About the only thing I can rely on is the deer eating every tiny new sprout. Back out to see what else has disappeared.
My sister’s father-in-law has apparently lived too long and is in danger of getting kicked out of his nursing home because his funds have run out.
Paul was in a rehab center during his last months, even though he had too little muscle mass by then to rehab. His insurance was on the verge of refusing to pay any more for the rehab. It would have cost more than we could ever afford to stay there on our dime. I talked to hospice workers, and he was scheduled to come home for hospice care, (which was free, but I would have still have had to do most of the work, with only a half-hour relief at a time. That’s not enough time to even drive anywhere around here.) on a Tuesday. I had quickly had the legs of our bed shortened, got various equipment he might need, had a ramp built, and grab bars in our shower put in. (Thanks to immigrant labor. I could never afford Anglos to do all that. I LOVE Mexicans.) Also had cooked food and stocked it in the freezer so that I wouldn’t have to cook continually. But that Monday night, he was perilously low on oxygen. He was taken to the ER… where he died on that Tuesday. I’m still getting bills for shit that the insurance didn’t cover. Not only is our health care system broken… our entire country is.
Vicki, you and Murr are my two favorite people to read, and if you left FB and started your own blog, then I could FINALLY slam the door in Meta’s face on my way out. Please give this serious consideration, and I thank you once again for introducing me to Murr!
I’ve about had it with Meta but I fear losing good longtime friends- some as much as 20 years since I signed on to track and snoop on my starter person ((yes, I’m embarrassed about that but we’ve raised our children together!) and if I do sign off, will I work to stay connected or end up hopelessly lonely? I hang on because Murr and my good blog friends are here. Trying to acclimate to substack but so far it’s tough. The other thing about Meta is I find myself writing more and more pap despite the fact that I am more and more completely outraged. At least Murr hits the nail on the head. She’s great.
I had a few hundred FaceBook friends before I deleted my account. Before I did that, I announced several times that I would soon be doing it, and offered to exchange emails with anyone who wanted to keep communicating with me after FB. That worked — with exactly two people.
This is what bounced me out of FB: an actual, real-time friend was upset that I didn’t “friend” her on FB! WTF? Didn’t years of interaction mean anything if it wasn’t validated on social media? I’m fairly certain I cancelled my account that week. No, wait…it was when my ex found me via FB. I cancelled that day.
Somehow a lot of this got buried in the middle of the comment section so I’m just getting around to seeing it, and I would just like to say I treasure all of you, and am so happy I get to host a space that produces conversation like this. I freely admit I wish you all would consider shuttling over to Substack, which is in many ways a better (if not more intimate) spot, to continue it there, but I’ll keep this going for now. You people are a light.
Venison. Venison is a viable plan. I don’t think wealthy people should be in charge of how our money works. They are REALLY dumb.
Mimi-this is an opportunity for me to say how sorry I am for your fairly recent loss of Paul. Going through this sort of thing is both heroic and absolutely god awful. When we are young we imagine manageable end of life scenarios but in reality, in this country, they are so often incredibly miserable and lonely. As with everything else, we have been lagging far behind in
More reason to jump ship. Those last two comments were from me, Vicki, but I get all bolloxed up trying to post things but I just wanted to finish by saying, yes, as a caregiver, I feel you. The support system is not great. Makes one think about Switzerland. But again, I’m really sorry you’ve lost Paul.
You can even find support in a comment section. Not exactly the same as respite care and long-term insurance, but it’s not nothing.
I don’t like crypto currency or bitcoin or anything similar and send those unopened emails straight to my spam folder. I like my money real, so I can count it and spend it and count again to see how much I have left until next shopping day.
And that kind of money, like all money, is as real as other people say it is. And no realer.
You know who else has no friggin’ idea what crypto is or does? DJT. He spews key words to sound smart, and knows that somewhere he’s making a shitload of money off if it.
And I’m sure it’s just an amazing coincidence that he granted pardons to three co-founders of the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange, and to a fourth former high-ranking employee.
The news says: Prosecutors accused the men of effectively operating BitMEX as a “money laundering platform” and that its purported withdrawal from the U.S. market was “a sham.” And then I realized that those are terms he understands.
Nothing he spews sounds smart. Ever. The corruption in the current regime is so vast and all-consuming that no one pays attention anymore. It’s like someone dropping a bomb on an entire city and proclaiming “I’m not a murderer.”
Know who else doesn’t have a clue what crypto is or does? DJT. All he knows is it makes him a shitload of money.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that he pardoned three co-founders of the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange, and to a fourth former high-ranking employee.
Prosecutors accused the men of effectively operating BitMEX as a “money laundering platform” and that its purported withdrawal from the U.S. market was “a sham.” Then I realized they were singing DJT’s tune.
In the words of Andrew Cotter, addressing his Golden Labrador (in case you don’t know, Cotter is the Scottish sportscaster who dealt with his covid-induced unemployment by doing hilarious voice-overs about his two dogs — and the videos went viral on YouTube — I highly recommend them) on the subject of being a scammer’s target:
“It’s like when the cat next door tries to get you into BitCoin…”
COVID’s impact will be felt for decades.
Okay now I look up A. Cotter.
“Your comment is awaiting moderation”…after two days…
Before so-calls support “systems,” there were families who lived in reasonable proximity to one another. We pay a price for our culture of individualism and high mobility. Very liberating at the onset of life, but not practical or kind at the end.