as someone who likes to collect cool or new words, you would not believe my delight just now when i discovered my e-reader saves a list of all the words i look up while i’m reading
Crypto firms hope putting a blockchain veneer on traditional equities will allow them to sidestep lessons learned in the 1929 Wall Street crash, crypto firms look to become banks, and Congress celebrates crypto surveillance while claiming to outlaw it
How James Gunn's comments about "basic human kindness" triggered a predictable right-wing media meltdown.
A couple of years ago I wrote a tweet thread about how I'd begun to see people in the crypto and finreg spaces expressing excitement about the traceability of cryptocurrencies.
Thinking back to it as I watch Senators and crypto industry executives talk about how delightfully traceable public blockchains are. No pesky warrant required!
![Molly White
@molly0xFFF
1:33 PM · Feb 14, 2023
the past ~month or so i've suddenly started seeing a bunch of people in crypto and in the financial regulatory/enforcement world who are unironically excited about crypto because of the financial surveillance it could empower, and that scares the shit out of me
the other day i was listening to a conversation about how "algorithms" could detect criminal activity occurring on public ledgers in real time to automatically alert law enforcement, or be programmed into the money itself to stop transactions.
[Screenshot of a text message: "or I'm going to move to a cabin in the woods with a faraday cage built around it"]
anyone know any good welders?
i run into people somewhat regularly who think that because i don't like crypto, i support unfettered government/LEO surveillance of personal finances.
like, no, that's part of WHY i don't like crypto](https://storage.mollywhite.net/micro/b023de32a956269bfb2b_Screenshot-2025-07-10-at-11.41.47---AM.png)
What Would You Do? Of course we would stand up for what was right. Of course we would hide the fearful and innocent targets of the regime in our attics and crawlspaces. Of course we would oppose the dictator, join the resistance, maybe… sabotage a bridge??? It’s unclear which bridge or how that would help, but surely we would know these things when and if that unthinkable day came. We would be ready, and we would resist. And now, here it is. As Donald Trump laughed and mugged for cameras in front of the chain link fences of Florida’s new concentration camp, as Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis joked in front of the kennels they had built for human beings they planned to abduct and confine there, human beings they planned to starve and torture there, what I did was: paint my bedroom. What Would You Do? I would carefully scrub the accumulated decades of grease off the old paint with TSP, making sure to rinse well so as not to leave a residue that hampers adhesion by the new paint. I would cut in with a 2 ½“ angled brush around all the window and door trim. I would listen to podcasts while I shuffled along the baseboard on my knees, pausing occasionally to stretch my aching back. I would make hot dogs for lunch and eat them while reading posts on Bluesky about the passage of a bill through Congress that will ramp ICE funding up to levels competitive with other countries entire military. I would text my wife in New Zealand that things back home are pretty bad, and I don’t know what to do.
every time we get a spate of hot weather i remember i'm a discworld troll whose brain slows to a crawl above 70˚ or so
It begins to feel like a broad celebration of mediocrity. Finally, society says, with a huge sigh of relief. I don’t have to write a letter to my granddaughter. I don’t have to write a three-line fetch call. I don’t have to know anything, care about what I’m doing, or even have an opinion. I can just substitute some Content™. I can just ask the computer for Whatever But I like programming. I like writing. I like making things and then being able to sit back and look at them and think, holy fuck, I made that. There is no joy for me in typing a vague description into a computer and refreshing my way through a parade of Whatever until something is good enough.