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90% of crypto's Illinois primary spending failed to achieve its objective

The cryptocurrency industry super PACs dumped $14.2 million into the Illinois primaries. 90% of that – $12.8 million – was wasted, in that it went to opposing Democratic candidates who won their primaries (Stratton in the Senate race, Ford in H-07) or supporting their opponents.

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The Fairshake pro-crypto super PAC network spent $10 million to oppose Senate candidate Juliana Stratton and $2.5 million to oppose H-07 candidate La Shawn Ford, both of whom won their primaries

The PACs' only victories in the state were where they contributed money towards outcomes that were already highly likely. They opposed Robert Peters (H-02), who had been polling in third place and ultimately received 12% of the vote. They supported Bean (who was leading the polls in H-08) and incumbent Budzinski (H-13).

Sadly this early spending in Illinois used up less than 6% of what the super PACs have on hand, so buckle up for a looong eight months.

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Sam Bankman-Fried’s mom, a former law professor, has been asked to please stop filing documents on her son’s behalf in regards to his motion for a retrial (where he is supposedly representing himself)

Memorandum Endorsement United States v. Bankman-Fried, 22-cr-0673 (LAK) Ms. Fried is not a member of the Bar of this Court, has not sought leave to appear pro hac vice, and has not filed an appearance. A power of attorney granted by the defendant does not authorize her to seek relief from the Court or otherwise to participate in this litigation. Pridgen v. Andresen, 113 F.3d 391, 392-93 (2d Cir. 1997). The Court of course understands that Ms. Fried is the defendant's mother, was trained and practiced as a lawyer, and has taught at Stanford Law School. Nevertheless, with no disrespect, she lacks standing to file papers or seek relief in this case. Indeed, Bankman-Fried is represented in this matter, to this day, by three members of the Bar who have appeared here and who do have standing to act on his behalf. It is appropriate also to mention the fact that Ms. Fried's attached letter to the Court bears no indication that it was served on the U.S. Attorney's office, which should have been done if the letter had been appropriate in the first place. Moreover, court staff have advised that Ms. Fried or someone so identifying herself left a voicemail message on the chambers telephone line. The Court does not accept telephone calls from litigants or from members of their families. In the circumstances, the due date for any response to the government's opposition to Bankman-Fried's previously filed motion is extended on the Court's own initiative from March 18, to and including March 23. This will afford time within which Bankman-Fried or his counsel may seek a further extension if that is desired and for the government to respond to Ms. Fried's letter. SO ORDERED. Dated: March 16, 2026 Lewis A. Kaplan United States District Judge
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My custom keyboard layout

A list of my favorite custom keyboard features thus far, courtesy of TailorKey:

  • Caps word: Engages the caps lock function only until you hit a word boundary (anything that's not an alphanumeric character, underscore, or backspace basically). So helpful I'm wondering how I ever typed without it.
  • Home row modifiers: Tap asdf or jkl; and they function as normal letters, but hold them and they function as modifiers (ctrl, alt, cmd, shift). Tremendous.
  • The "select word" functionality. This is a macro for alt-leftarrow (move cursor to beginning of word) followed by alt-shift-rightarrow (select to end of word boundary). There's also a select line, but I haven't found myself using that much yet.

I've also added some of my own customizations:

  • A key that triggers a script that flattens whitespace from selected text
  • Keys to uppercase, lowercase, titlecase, and sentencecase selected text
  • A key that triggers a macro to type "site:citationneeded.news ", which I type constantly while writing my newsletters and trying to find a past newsletter where I referenced something
  • A two-key combo to trigger the typically three-key cmd-shift-4 screenshot selected area command
  • A two-key combo for "paste and match style", which is the hand-breaking four-key ctrl-option-shift-v
  • A two-key combo for — (em dash), which is typically three (alt-shift-hyphen)

And I've moved some of my previous shortcuts that tended to bump up against other shortcuts (like alt-arrowkey to snap windows to portions of the screen) to esoteric key combos involving F13+ that will never conflict. (I don't have physical F13+ keys, but by using layers I just map comfortable keys to the shortcuts I want).

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my new keyboard layout has “caps word” functionality (think caps lock but just for a single word) and my god traditional keyboard manufacturers need to get with the times

where has this been all my life

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The Binance crypto exchange has just filed a defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal over its article reporting that Binance's own compliance investigators had found $1 billion in transfers to Iran-backed terror groups, and then were fired.

The article, and related investigations by the New York Times and Fortune, were cited in an inquiry over the alleged sanctions evasion by Senator Blumenthal, and a request by Sen. Van Hollen and others for an investigation by the Treasury and Justice Departments. Today the WSJ reported that the DOJ had opened such an investigation.

Binance spends much of the filing complaining that news outlets like the WSJ do not give them enough credit for how hard they're trying. I'm not sure bragging about stopping $131M in illicit transfers quite lands when the whole point of this article is that you allegedly allowed 10x that.

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The Coinbase-backed "Stand With Crypto" advocacy group has declared Illinois Senate candidate Juliana Stratton to be "strongly against crypto" solely because she made a statement criticizing the $5.5 million the crypto industry had already spent to oppose her

Stand With Crypto profile page Juliana Stratton Democratic Political Figure from Illinois Crypto letter grade of F Strongly against crypto Based on 1 statement and 0 votes. Vote History No recent votes. Statements Juliana Stratton @JulianaStratton x.com logo We have the momentum. Raja Krishnamoorthi and his allies know that, and it's why his MAGA-backed crypto bros are dumping $7 million into this race to try to stop me. Illinoisans aren't buying it. pic.x.com/5iqNcwSvWM tweet image @JulianaStratton Mar 3, 2026 on X Very anti-crypto
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with great sadness i had to retire my trusty Ergodox Infinity, but: new keeb! expect typos as i learn how to type again

(MoErgo Glove80)

A dark grey MoErgo Glove80 with white keycaps. It's a split, ortholinear keyboard with concave keywells and thumb clusters 

the Ergodox was also ortholinear with thumb clusters so the transition shouldn't be too difficult, but the default layout on this one is a little different (thumb shift and modifier keys mostly)