#tidal wave 2009 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mykneeshurt · 2 years

Text

Haunted part 8

I’ve just finished Modern Warfare remastered haha Captain Price was cold as fuck in that. Now I’m trying to play Warzone and I’m so shit lmfao why can’t we just have death match etc like in the 2009 version. Ffs. I don’t have a clue what I’m meant to do. Amerika explain?

Anyway! Here’s part 8! Enjoy the gif from MW. Not my gif x

Warnings - blood, gore, violence, injury

Part 9

4 days had passed and you hadn’t heard a thing, not a whisper. You expected this, the intel was huge and they had a monumental task a head of them. But still it made you worry. The members of Los Vaqueros had treated you like royalty, you’d managed to get a few to teach you some Spanish swear words. You even taught them some Welsh ones in return.

With nothing happening they took you around their training course, helping you streamline your firearm skills further. Their knowledge was invaluable and you were so grateful they took this time to help you. The day had been long and strenuous so you retired to the showers and let the hot water flow over you. Hoping the boys were safe.

Outside a storm had started raging, thick heavy rain lashed down as thunder and lightening rattled the sky. You always loved storms when you were younger, how the lightening stretched and danced across the sky. How the thunder rattled your chest and formed goosebumps on your skin. Stepping out of the shower the air still felt thick, a warm draft blew through the barracks. But something within you felt un easy. Something felt … off?

Quickly getting dressed you threw your dirty clothes onto the cot and pulled a loose fitted t-shirt over your vest. The lights went out. Shit. Where was everyone? Out of the corner of your eye you saw a flashlight illuminating the outside of the opposite building. Giving in to your gut instinct you ducked and rolled under the cot, stifling your breathing with your hand. ‘Need to find their medic, saw a couple of other stragglers come by here too.’ What accent was that? American? Fuck is going on?

Footsteps outside the building distracted them ‘eyes on Los Vaqueros! Three of em, assistance required. Over.’ They’re rounding everyone up?! What the fuck? And they’ve mentioned you by name, no doubt they’ll tear this place apart looking for you. Need to make a run for it.

Slowly shimmying out from under the cot you reached into your bag and pulled out your knife and Glock. Safety off, and added 2 more clips of ammo in your pockets. Taking in a deep breath you slowly raised to your knees, then to your feet. Only the flood lights of the compound remained on, must be a back up generator. Everything else was thrust into darkness. Staying crouched you moved your way to the door of the barracks. Poking your head out, the rain seemed to be coming down harder than before. You weren’t too far from the gate. All you needed to do was get clear.

As you were about to make a run for it the flash of gun muzzles and the sounds of gun shots rang out. It came from the direction of the gate. Fuck. Feeling your stomach drop the adrenaline hit you like a tidal wave. You steadied your breath, maybe you could make it to the office. Radio through to Price and let him know what the fuck is going on. Little did you know Ghost, Alejandro and Soap were having their own problems.

Ducking back into the shadows for cover you managed to creep through another two barracks, taking you somewhat closer to the main building. As you were about to enter an office building one of the assailants took up post right outside the door. Taking your opportunity you stood up and drove your knife deep into his neck. Your detailed knowledge of anatomy giving you the advantage. Kicking the back of his knee he collapsed onto the floor bringing him to a more comfortable height for you. Pulling his head backwards to bend his neck you pulled the knife along his throat. His blood vessels being closer to the surface allowed for a cleaner cut. Hot crimson liquid poured out of the gash along his neck, as his vocal choked bubbled trying to shout for help.

Dumping him on the floor you kicked the lifeless body over … the Shadow Company insignia?! What the fuck. This is huge. You thought they had been working with you?Scurrying across the court yard and into the office you took cover behind a flipped over desk. It was crawling with Shadows, all of them looking for any stragglers they missed. Flashlights lit up the adjacent room, sliding under one of the desks you watched and bided your time. ‘Heard the one with the Mohawk and Ghost mask got away. Glad I’m not in town, don’t wanna bump into them.’ Shit. So it was them who were outside the gate? Your heart hurt at the thought of them being hurt. ‘Yeah, but got the colonel though, Graves is takin’ him to the prison complex with the others’ another Shadow replied.

Graves? That slimy bastard.

With those two moving on you came out of your hiding spot and made your way to the back of the offices. ‘SHIT MAN DOWN, do you copy?! MAN DOWN!’ They’d found the Shadow you’d disposed of earlier. It’s now or never, making a run for it across the court yard the rain saturated your clothes. You dodged the light of the flood lights trying to stay hidden. When a searing pain ran through your calf muscle. You smashed into the wet concrete, rolling on to your back you saw a Shadow in the window. You raised your Glock and fired managing to hit them in the chest. ‘Shots fired! Shots fired!’

You frantically tried to crawl to the office steps, a trail of watery blood behind you. Mixing in with the rainwater like an oil slick. Footsteps pounded behind you, trying to stay focused on the steps you shot blindly behind you. Desperately trying to put some distance between you. That’s when another shot ran out and white hot pain seared through your right shoulder. Screaming out in pain you tried to rise to your feet. Your leg giving out beneath you. ‘Well well, what do we have here?’ A familiar voice pricked your ears. A foot hooked underneath your torso rolling you over, bringing you face to face with Graves himself.

‘Found em boys. Bring over the car.’ He commended into his radio. ‘Don’t fuckin’ touch me Graves.’ You spat, blood slowly leaking out of you. ‘Looks like I’m gonna have to sweetheart. Got some questions I wanna ask yah’ he said as he bent down grabbing your chin. Gathering the strength you had left you spat in his face ‘Fuck. You.’ He let out a low chuckle as he slammed the but of his gun into your temple ‘General Sheppard sends his regards.’

——————

A pounding thump in your head slowly brought you round, opening your eyes you were met with a bright white light. Squinting you tried to make out where you were, it wasn’t anywhere you knew. Trying to move your arms you found they were bound behind you, your ankles also bound to the legs of the chair. Shit. ‘Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey’ a male voice hummed out. They came and stood in front of the light, finally allowing your eyes some rest from the harsh light. ‘Where am I?’ You finally managed to ask. ‘Right where I want you.’

‘What do you want Graves?’ You panted, ‘I’m a fuckin medic, I don’t know anything.’

‘No, I think you do. You been working with 141 for two years, you know how they think, how they move. I wanna know where they’d go, and you’re gonna help me.’

‘Why the fuck would I help you?’ You sneered. ‘Because you got 10 seconds till you find out the difference between the military … and me.’

‘I see no difference, both look like piles of shit to me.’ You smirked.

‘A medic and a comedian I see’ he seethed as he grabbed your jaw forcing you to look at him. His grip was tight and forceful.

Using his other hand his pushed his thumb into the wound on your shoulder, causing you to you groan in pain. ‘Pretty moan you got there sweetheart. Wonder how many times I can get you to moan before you give me what I want.’ You squirmed underneath his touch ‘I’ll fucking kill you Graves, you piece of shit.’ He pressed his thumb in deeper, this time ripping a scream from you. ‘I don’t know anything! Please … I don … I don’t know!’ But it fell on deaf ears. You struggled to catch your breath from the pain, you knew you always needed to tell the truth in hostage situations. But what do you do if you genuinely didn’t know anything?

‘Shhh shhh shhhhh’ he cooed, wiping away a single tear that adorned your cheek with his thumbs. ‘You’re too pretty to cry, but I do like the sound of you begging.’ You jerked your head away from his touch, trying desperately to compose yourself. In for a penny, in for a pound you thought. ‘Please Graves, please’ you begged ‘I don’t know anything, they’ve kept everything quiet. I don’t know where they would go.’ You pleaded with him, with your voice, your eyes, your entire soul. Just to get out of here. ‘Fine. Take her to a cell, they’ll come looking for her and come straight to us. I need to get back to HQ, gotta speak to Sheppard.’

He signalled to two of his guards who came in and released you, throwing you over their shoulder. The pain from your shoulder was indescribable, you could feel your body going into shock. Your head bobbed up and down as you were carried to a cell. ‘Cariño!’ A muffled voice yelled. Slowly lifting your head up you caught a glimpse of Alejandro being moved to another cell. ‘Alejandro!’ You called out. Not that he could do much, he was restrained into a cell by 2 heavy armoured guards.

Hearing a heavy door open behind you, you braced yourself as you were thrown to the ground. The contact winding you. As you fought to catch your breath you managed to say a final fuck you to the guards. Managing to get to your feet you took in your surroundings, must be the prison. Thick cell door, barred windows, the works. How the fuck were you gonna get out of here. For now you had to tend to your wounds as best you could. Ripping a strip of cotton off your t-shirt you tied it around the gun shot wound to your calf. Thank fuck it was a through and through.

The shoulder wound not so lucky, bullet was still in there. Cleaning your hands as best you could with rain water pouring in from outside, you dug into the wound. Biting down onto a piece of wood you found in the cell aided in stifling the pain filled moans. Your nimble fingers felt around for the bullet, with no such luck. Taking in some deep breaths to try and lower your heart rate you dug in again. This time you pushed deeper into the firm walls of muscle until you could finally feel the metal beneath your fingertip. Using your nail you managed to slowly pick at the bullet, dislodging it and bringing it to the surface. The ping of metal on the floor echoed around the empty cell as you were finally able let out the breath you’d been holding.

Curling up in the corner you tried to get comfortable, knowing you needed rest. You were gonna need all your energy to get out of here alive. You hoped and prayed to any god that would listen that Ghost and Soap were ok.

#simon ghost riley #ghost x you #call of duty #cod mw22 #ghost x reader #fan fic reading

21 notes · View notes

pocketvenuslux · 2 years

Photo

I don’t believe I’ve reviewed any Tom Fords even though it was Black Orchid and the Private Blends scents that lured me into the world of fragrance so many years ago. This is probably because the house is not even a shadow of its former self; it is unrecognizable.

Launched in 2007, a year following the release of Black Orchid, Tom Ford’s Private Blends was the vanguard in the fragrance industry. Beginning with Purple Patchouli, this early, exciting era of the house saw offerings like Tuscan Leather, Jasmin Rouge and others, many of which have been long discontinued. Among a sea of celebuscents, saccharine fruity florals and predictable gourmands that had so dominated the industry since the 90s, the Private Blends did not only seem singular, they were like revelations to someone like me who was not old enough to have been familiar with the greats of the 1980s and earlier. This era saw Ford at the forefront, with releases like Oud Wood (2007) that would be followed by what would become a tidal wave of Westernized ouds, starting with the likes of Kilian’s Pure Oud (2009) and Byredo’s Ouds (2010). I’d say this period ended in 2013 which saw the release of the Atelier d'Orient line - one of the last stand out lines of the house. 2013 was also the year the Oud line was expanded in an attempt to ride on the coat tails of Oud Wood’s success. Perhaps a suggestion the kind of commodification of the house that was to come.

The house changed with the rise of niche luxury fragrance houses in the 2014. It was around this time Estée Lauder began snapping up houses like Kilian and Frédéric Malle in a move that would transform the industry. As the niche market began to establish itself, Ford was no longer the only widely-distributed house pushing boundaries. Private Blends were still exciting in this period but were slowly shifting away from its innovate roots. Perhaps the last quality line from the house during this middle period was the Les Extraits Vert line, released in 2016, which wasn’t innovative so much as a retreat into 70s nostalgia. At this point, the fragrance market was also growing increasingly crowded. A new Tom Ford release (or release from other houses like Serge Lutens) just didn’t seem so special anymore.

For me, the nail in the Private Blends coffin and our current trash era began with the release of Fucking Fabulous in 2017. FF kicked off a cynical trend of crasser names paired with grossly inflated prices. Rather than an attempt to create a beautiful scent, FF seemed more like a product designed to see how far Lauder could push the price point for luxury fragrance.

Which brings us to the present day - Cherry Smoke, an opportunistic attempt to cash in on the success of Lost Cherry. What is there to say about it? The opening is pleasant enough. Syrupy macerated dark cherries and expensive leather drying down in a linear fashion to an abstract sweetness and synthetic oud smoke before finishing on banal white musks. It’s not horrific, it’s never scratchy or densely flat - but this is damning praise for a house that once released Noir de Noir. And I’m sorry to say that compared with Electric Cherry, a painfully generic fruity floral, Cherry Smoke is the better scent. Yours for an eye-watering CA$480/50 ml.

RIP Tom Ford Private Blends 2007-2017. After FF, I should have realized what I know now: you are dead to me. I’m sorry the house that initiated me into the world of fragrance has become so pathetic. Someone at Lauder, I beg of you, when the executives and accountants aren’t looking, please pull the plug.

#tom ford #tom ford private label #cherry smoke #fragrance industry #niche fragrance #luxury fragrance #fragrance review #perfume review #american perfume

10 notes · View notes

thedalatribune · 11 months

Text

Under The Wave Off Kanagawa

You’ve seen this image before. A giant wave, its distinctive curly claws arched and ready to pounce. It’s invoked when natural disaster strikes, but also when it’s time to sell beer, jeans, and sweatshirts. It inspired Claude Debussy’s orchestral work “La Mer” as well as a not-insignificant number of tattoos. It’s an omnipresent image and one used towards a variety of ends. Good grief, it’s even an emoji. What is it about this image that continues to enthrall us? Let’s better know the Great Wave. First off, the title is not the “Great Wave”, and its subject isn’t really a wave. It’s one of a series of wood block prints called “36 Views of Mount Fuji” made by the Japanese printmaker Katsushika Hokusai, between 1830 and 1833. Long considered sacred by followers of Shintoism and Buddhism among others, Mt. Fuji is depicted from a variety of perspectives and the artwork in question is just one of them.

Its actual title translates to “Under the Wave off Kanagawa” because “under” is where Mt. Fuji is nestled, far in the distance. Also under the wave are fishermen, just trying to get home after delivering fish to the city of Edo, rowing for their lives to escape the wave, but the great wave, of course, dominates the composition and has become an accepted title…

In the 1830s when the Great Wave was created, Japan was largely shut off to the wider world due to the isolationist policies of the Tokugawa shogunate then in power. We can see Hokusai borrowing from Japanese artists like Ogata Korin, especially in the tentacle-like projections from his waves, but Western realism was creeping in to Japanese art nevertheless, largely due to European engravings smuggled in by Dutch traders. The Great Wave betrays a clear Western influence. The use of linear perspective, a low horizon line, and the appearance of Prussian blue, a synthetic pigment then very new to Japan, hailing from, that’s right, Prussia. Thousands of copies of the Mt. Fuji prints were released within Japan, mostly bought as souvenir by an emerging market of domestic tourists and those making pilgrimages to the mountain, but in the 1850s after Hokusai’s death, trade began to open up and his work was shown at the 1867 International Exposition in Paris.

Japanese culture quickly became all the rage in Europe and prints were admired and collected by many, including Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and a number of artists who were heavily influenced by their depictions of city life, vivid colors, and what for them was a flattening of space.

In 1896, a tsunami hit Northern Japan and news of its destruction spread worldwide. It’s been hypothesized that this event, coupled with the craze helped propel the Great Wave to international renown, although the print does not depict a tsunami. In 2009, researchers identified it as a 32 to 39 foot tall rogue wave, or what they call plunging breaker. It would certainly still be deadly, however, and that’s where we get to the real and obvious drama of the picture. Nature is large and we are small. This juxtaposition can be seen in the art of many cultures at many different times, but we have perhaps never seen it played out more clearly and more distinctly than here.

Traditional Japanese landscapes of the time put the viewer at a remove from the action, but here we are right up against this pending disaster. Hokusai’s contrast of near and far, and manmade and natural, heighten the tension and place us inside the narrative. When Debussy composed La Mer in 1903, he drew on his own childhood experience of surviving a terrifying storm on a fishing boat, as well as paintings by JMW Turner and Hokusai’s print, which he selected for the score’s cover.

The image later illustrated a 1948 Pearl Buck novel that tells the story of a young boy from a Japanese fishing village who loses his family to a tidal wave, a post World War II story of grief but also resilience.

It’s an image mobilized when disaster strikes, as it was after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami off the Eastern Coast of Japan. Scientists and empirical evidence tell us that global average temperatures are rising, with extreme weather events becoming more frequent and more intense. While the sea has always been a formidable opponent for humankind and The Great Wave a useful illustration for that relationship, its relevance is likely to become even stronger, but of course the image can be interpreted in many different and less specific ways, symbolizing a great many imbalance of power.

We don’t know if our fishermen are going to make it out of there alive. It’s a cliffhanger, even if you don’t register the boats or Mt. Fuji and see the wave alone in its detached emoji state, it still holds us in and tells us quite forcefully that big things are happening, or are about to happen. Unlike the GoPro views of surfers tunneling through barrel waves, The Great Wave’s story is not one of mastery over nature. It’s notably called The Great Wave and not “The Heroic Fishermen Who Survived the Rogue Wave”.

Other artists have capitalized on the power and theatricality of waves as subject matter, but rarely in such a way that we marvel at the talents of the artist instead of the spectacular beauty of the wave itself.

What’s more, this image was meant to be reproduced, not sequestered in one museum where only a few have the privilege of witnessing it. While there are certainly numerous crimes against this image perpetrated across the internet, the crisp graphic quality of the original woodblock prints make it friendlier fodder for duplication and interpretation.

When most of us experience the ocean, this is thankfully not how we usually see it. It’s an incredibly improbable view. It’s a film still or screen capture in the most dynamic, unstable, and unpredictable of environments, but it has nevertheless become our favorite stand-in for the ocean, a way to isolate some fraction of the vastness that covers 70% of planet Earth. It’s an icon. It’s the ultimate, most wave-like of all waves, but it’s also an entire story told simply and succinctly and masterfully. Whatever your Great Wave is made of, you are undoubtedly under it and always will be, until you’re not.

Sarah Urist Green Better Know the Great Wave

#Sarah Urist Green #Better Know the Great Wave #Katsushika Hokusai #Under the Wave off Kanagawa #Great Wave #Art #Postcard #Still Life #Architecture #Museum #Urban #City #Sumida-Hokusai Museum #Sumida #Tokyo #Japan #The Art Assignment

4 notes · View notes

whisperthatruns · 2 years

Text

For Those Who Need a True Story

The landlord told Raymond’s mother that twelve dollars would be deducted from the rent for every rat killed. She sends her son to the store for a loaf of Wonder Bread and five pounds of ground beef. Young Raymond returns with bread & meat that she tears & mixes inside a metal bowl. Mama seasons the meatloaf with rat poison pulled from the cabinet beneath the sink. Well done, meat sits steaming in the middle of the kitchen floor. Then the scratching scurries. The squeaking begins and screeches toward the bowl.

Raymond describes the wave of rats like a tidal crash covering the bow, leaping over each other’s bodies then the dropping, the stutter kicks.

A chorus of rat screams ramble through Raymond’s ears. Keening, furry bodies tense paws against churning guts as they hit cracked linoleum until an hour passes. Silence swept away the din in death’s footsteps. The mother’s voice quivers in her next request. Raymond, help me count them.

They waded through these small deaths with rubber gloves, listened to the hump of each dead rat as it rustled against the slackness of plastic bags. Raymond wanted to stop counting, but mama needed to save a dozen dollars wherever she could if they wanted to finally leave the rats behind.

After the last rat was counted, Raymond handed the bag to the landlord as proof. Here.

Enough rats to skip the rent for three months. Enough rats to avoid the fear of sweet sleeping breath leading to bitten lips. Healthy children wrapped in designer dictates cannot describe Raymond’s fear of rabies, the smell of poison rotting from the inside out, the scratching inside the walls at night.

Those children should find soft lives that drop pendulums in their dreams and never tell another story about the ghetto until they’ve had to count rats with their hands.

Tara Betts, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, ed. Camille T. Dungy (University of Georgia Press, 2009), reprinted in Joshua Bennett’s Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020)

#tara betts #for those who need a true story #black nature: four centuries of african american nature poetry #being property once myself #being property once myself: blackness and the end of man #poetry

3 notes · View notes

pangeasoftware · 8 months

Text

back to incredibly vivid dreams again. This time, while watching coastal survey drones at work (10 foot column of glossy grey 2009 plastic with inlaid cameras + bumpy exterior like a massage roller, whirring about wading through the seafoam) from an observation deck (rounded, plexiglass hull, composite floor and joinery--run parallel to the beach about 3 stories above the ground like a monorail track) we see a pack of 5 wild horses. As what appears first to be a sneaker wave colored a troubling cobalt with pale white ridges rushes in, the animals are taken by a sudden sense of urgency. The water is relentless and over the course of another 15 or so paces the animals have to find their place between the surface of the water and the ground before being brought along with the current and subsumed by a massive tidal wave, ultimately breaching the viewing structure and taking us eastbound in to town. Though i had never seen the town before, I felt particularly sure that I hadn't seen it like this - from street level, light filtered through the ocean's surface meters above. I tried to remember how divers avoid getting the bends.

1 note · View note

adhamhocaoimh · 1 year

Text

Some forever ago, my dear friend, and erstwhile yet perpetual collaborator, Tommy Foster of The Deadlians and creator/curator of the Turning Earth podcast, was in a brassy, hefty project named dEvolution, and I was an avid fan. Below is a write up of the at the time, brand new EP, ‘The Science of Spite’. This is from 2009.

Whilst the recent reviews aped (satirically, naturally) the typically metaphorically laboured and overzealous form employed by many critics in these… intellectually liberal times, today I will try to give a more balanced perspective.

Now, far be it from me to aspire to be some music critic. As, John Zorn once said: ‘Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.’ And this is true, there’s no point in trying to compare the various shades of sound here in terms of hurricanes and tidal waves or star sprent skies or anything else that has fuckall to do with ones cochlea.

Instead I will say this: dEvolutions newest recording, entitled ‘The Science of Spite’, is by and large the most aggressive thing the band has released thus far. Not eschewing, but perhaps toning down the experimental tendencies that underscored last years ‘Can I Lick Your Possessions?’, they have delivered an almost punk-rock influenced affair that is daring in its structure and accomplished in it’s execution.

The opening track, and the first of two re-recordings from 2006’s ‘A New Throne For An Old God’, entitled ‘I Am Your Child’, demonstrates how far the band has come in the years since, which is all the more remarkable considering the lengthy hiatus they recently returned from. The song has developed from it’s former neanderthal brutality into a subtly complex beast, blending jarring riffs and a militaristic tone with the furious pace driven by the rhythm section. All of this is entwined with a vocal performance by Eric Burke that does nothing if not render the occasional criticisms the band met in 2006 obsolete.

The song also serves to immediately call to attention the exemplary engineering work that guitarist Tommy Foster provided for the recording. The guitars, previously somewhat buried in a wash of distortion, now ring with a vibrant defined fuzz that recalls something between Mastodons midrange roar and Michio Kurihara’s treble soaked fuzz on his collaboration with Boris, ‘Rainbow’. The bass is crushing, thickly distorted and is delivered with a crunch that had always been lacking in the studio recordings, and fills out the bottom in a way that seems much more satisfying than they allowed. The drums are crisp and tight, perfectly suited to the busy and energetic style of Jonathan Hughes, allowing us to hear every beat and crash with the clarity that drives the bands impressive live show.

‘Prism’, the second of the reworked songs from‘A New Throne…’, and another that gains more than a little from Fosters production makeover, recalls echoes of Sepultura and Napalm Death (and importantly, none of the Alanis Morrissette influenced Tampop that’s been making a comeback), a particular highlight for myself being a soft and teasingly short clean section that builds and breaks down to announce the songs slippery verse riff and the subtle cymbal work that complements it. Hughes’ creativity shines here, underscoring his flourishes with the simplest of metronomic beats resulting in a rhythmic juxtaposition that compliments the song in an unpredictable fashion.

dEvolution have always tempered their harder moments with three things; an ear for melody, the good sense never to settle for simple repetition when development will suffice, and the even better sense to know which parts merit returning. This leads to something that resembles songwriting, an apparently out of fashion idea that most modern heavy music leaves behind as it heads off in one of two directions: endlessly muted downtuned powerchords or bands playing every damn chord and every damn scale in every goddamn part of every goddamn song they write.

The new track the band recorded for the EP,‘We’d Eat The White Man If He Wasn’t Very Toxic’, is perhaps the most interesting here, kicking off with a relentless off-kilter groove and barely lets up in the near 8 minutes of its duration. As evidence of the bands most recent compositions, it bodes well for the future, as they step further afield and find their voice, and again exhibits the fact that the band are damn fine musicians, but don’t let the fact get in the way of their music. The song is a flux, parts changing and developing with a fine attention to detail, and meanders into the sonically textured dirge territory and rhythmic curiosities that make bands like Converge and Meshuggah so rewarding, all the while marrying it with their own songwriting aesthetics.

The final piece on the album is a song that’s been in the bands setlist for as long as I’ve known them, ‘Voluntary Piss Impants’ but is only somewhat recognizable from the incarnation on a rehearsal tape I have from forever ago. The song still betrays the bands affection for System of A Down, but now has been fleshed out with jazzy interludes and some very strange melodic developments that overall, I don’t think I have listened to enough to fully appreciate. dEvolution have, for me, always been the kind of band that grew on you, that you find yourself absentmindedly caught off guard by. The song as a whole carries a vaguely sarcastic tone to it that many of Mike Pattons projects seem to employ, and does make for an engaging listen, but I can’t help but wonder if it was the right song to close the EP with. On the other hand, it’s (comparatively) softer, melancholic and dynamically adventurous pacing do make for a more complete listen, and the EP does not end on a weak note.

In all, you can’t really trust my opinion, because if it were up to me Eric Burke, Tommy Foster and Jonatan Hughes would be given a licence to print currency and rewrite ‘Walls Inside’ all day, something that the band don’t do, presumably out of a crippling fear of money and success.

But I digress. It would be far better for you to click below and download the whole thing, pro bono, courtesy of the generous little guys.

(Trivia: Not one member of dEvolution is taller than 5′ 2″)

Enjoy.

#music #review #ireland #sludge #metal #Bandcamp

0 notes

don-lichterman · 2 years

Text

'Avatar: The Way Of Water' Wave Engulfs U.K. Box Office

‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ Wave Engulfs U.K. Box Office

Disney’s “Avatar: The Way Of Water” created a tidal wave at the U.K. and Ireland box office in its opening weekend washing away almost everything in its path. James Cameron’s much-anticipated return to Pandora debuted at No. 1 with a gargantuan £11.1 million ($13.5 million), per numbers released by Comscore. The film’s opening is 68% higher than the three-day total for “Avatar” in 2009, which…

View On WordPress

0 notes

archivist-crow · 11 months

Text

On this day:

GREAT NORTHEAST BLACKOUT

On November 9, 1965, thirty million people in eight U.S. states and the Canadian province of Ontario made history. It was 5:16 p.m., rush hour in New York City and many other cities, when the region was plunged into darkness. It was the Big Blackout. People were suddenly trapped in elevators, on freeways, and in skyscrapers. Backup generators became common after this incident, but at the time, they were rare.

Immediately an investigation was underway. At first a substation at Syracuse, New York, was thought to be at fault, but investigation showed it to be in perfect order. After six days of exhaustive searching, the malfunction was pinpointed at a backup relay of one of the six lines connecting the Sir Adam Beck No. 2 Generating Station, just north of Niagara Falls in Ontario. An inexplicable surge of power caused a circuit breaker to trip. The cutoff power rippled outward, tripping circuits, and within seconds a tidal wave of electricity closed down the entire grid of thirty interconnected power stations.

Some areas were without power for three hours. New York City was electricity deprived until the next morning. The media focused on the human-interest aspects of the story while mostly ignoring the cause of the dilemma.

A large amount of UFO activity was reported that day, by reputable sources, prior to and during the blackout. One UFO was observed near a Niagara Falls power plant. Even as the UFO stories gathered momentum, they abruptly halted at the explanation of a broken backup relay as the cause. But where did the sudden surge of power come from? Experts were baffled, and the question remains unanswered.

Text from: Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored by Juanita Rose Violini, published by Weiser Books, 2009

#on this day #november #ufos

11 notes · View notes

sanjosenewshq · 2 years

Text

7 California counties might be uncovered to tsunami threat

The California Geological Survey launched a brand new tsunami hazard space map. The up to date map identifies tsunami threat areas in seven counties: Ventura, Napa, Santa Cruz, San Diego, Marin, Sonoma and Solano. The map identifies the danger areas and the diploma of threat to be able to assist the residents put together for potential evacuation. Proceed studying beneath Our Featured Movies That is the primary time the company has launched an in depth tsunami hazard map in over a decade. The final map was launched in 2009, however rather a lot has modified technologically since then. Associated: A brand new island emerges after volcanic eruption within the Pacific Tsunamis are uncommon in California, however all the shoreline of the state is uncovered to potential tsunami occurrences. In keeping with the governor’s Workplace of Emergency Companies, there’s a big potential of tsunamis occurring anyplace alongside California’s coast. A tsunami final hit California in August, following the Tonga volcanic eruption within the South Pacific Ocean. Thanks! Preserve an eye fixed out for our weekly publication. Be part of Our E-newsletter Obtain the most recent in world information and designs constructing a greater future. SIGN UP SIGN UP One instance of the most recent modeling exhibits that an earthquake off the Aleutian Islands close to Alaska would end in 18 to 25 ft of tsunami waves in Santa Cruz. This impact could be twice as excessive as predicted by the 2009 modeling. The brand new modeling additionally pays consideration to different water our bodies the place tsunamis may journey. In keeping with the Nationwide Climate Service, tsunami waves may journey up most water our bodies together with rivers that circulation to oceans. In different phrases, tsunamis may trigger flooding upstream if they aren’t contained. The consultants warn that the worst locations to be when a tsunami strikes are seashores, bays, lagoons, estuaries, tidal flats and river mouths. With greater than half of California’s inhabitants residing on the coast, it is very important present enough details about the potential of tsunami occurrences. The map supplies extra correct info that locals can use to organize for the worst. Even so, the likelihood of a tsunami occurring in California could be very low. “Our purpose is to make sure that coastal communities are conscious of and ready for the following tsunami,” the California Geological Survey stated. “The up to date Tsunami Hazard Space Maps can be utilized by officers, communities and people/households to replace or create their tsunami evacuation plans.” By way of Los Angeles Occasions Lead picture by way of Pexels Originally published at San Jose News HQ

#San Jose News HQ

0 notes

ailtrahq · 1 year

Text

This article is featured in Bitcoin Magazine’s “The Broke Issue”. Click here to subscribe now.The story of Bitcoin has certainly had its fair share of nefarious characters, criminal activity, bad haircuts and worse wardrobes, and yet our anti-hero du jour has seemed to outdo them all. Sam Bankman-Fried, better known by the three letter acronym SBF, burst onto the scene at the peak of the 2017 bubble, founding Alameda Research that September, just four years after graduating from an internship into a full-time position at one of the world’s largest market makers, Jane Street Capital.SBF is the son of Stanford Law professor and founder of left-wing super PAC Mind The Gap, Barbara Fried, and Stanford professor Joseph Bankman, an expert on tax shelter laws and government regulation. At the start of 2018, SBF had struck digital gold while taking advantage of the arbitrage opportunity presenting itself between a higher demand for bitcoin in the Asian market, colloquially known as the “kimchi premium”. By the end of the year, and after amassing a considerable fortune from this high-volume bitcoin/dollar spread, he officially moved to Hong Kong, formally founding the derivatives exchange FTX in the following spring.The Bitcoin network that SBF rode from rags to riches and back again was partially launched in direct response to the fiat money experiment rearing its ugly head in the subprime mortgage, real estate and eurodollar crises that culminated into what is now known as the Great Financial Crisis of 2007 to 2009.“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”- Satoshi Nakamoto, January 3, 2009This now infamous inscription in the genesis block made clear the inappropriate fractional reserve banking and predatory loan fiascos of our regulated banking industry was to be put to rest once and for all by this emergent monetary protocol; a completely transparent and decentralized ledger would de-incentivize fraud and prevent obfuscation of illicit activity. A new competitor to the dollar arose from the ashes of the meltdown, and with it, a new standard for financial fairness, complete with predictable issuance, controlled once and for all by the people for the people. Yet in any system made with good intentions, criminals like SBF and his bought-and-paid-for political and media allies manage to find a way to hurt innocent people for the advantage of an unknown few. Like most intriguing stories of fraudulent financial crimes, this one starts in the Bahamas, and ends with a tidal wave of asset liquidations and broken homes.“If you think the Bahamas has ruined your global tax system, you have a pretty terrible global tax system.”- Steven Dean, Summer 2020 [1]Launching The Stablecoin, CBDC Race To The BottomThe Bahamas seems innocuous enough, and yet there is a long history of U.S. tax avoidance, complete with rum-running bootleggers during the prohibition era. Continuing this tradition, the Caribbean banking centers, including the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, as of August 2022, were the fourth-largest foreign holders of treasury securities, behind only Japan, China and the U.K. Shortly after the time of its founding, FTX was fully taking advantage of the free money era that began with the 2008 crash and was sustained by low-to-zero interest rates brought upon by the Trump administration.These rate cuts were started by the Trump-nominated and Biden-renominated Jerome Powell and were further exacerbated by both of their administrations’ COVID responses. An unprecedented pumping of all things dollar denominated occurred, with real estate, stock indexes, bitcoin and a whole bunch of unregistered securities known as altcoins reaching new highs across the board. In June 2019, one month after the founding of FTX, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced Libra, a digital currency based on a basket of international currencies; a novel take on stablecoins. This launched the stablecoin and CBDC race in earnest, and coincidentally

enough, the Central Bank of the Bahamas became the first such institution to announce its own CBDC, the sand dollar, in October 2020. The sand dollar itself was pegged to the Bahamian dollar, which is itself pegged to the United States dollar, and thus with its government-sanctioned launch, the birth of the first central bank-issued stablecoin dollar came to be on the sandy beaches of SBF’s new home."What is the reserve currency of the crypto economy going to be? Right now it's unambiguously the USD. And interestingly it's USD whether or not you're looking at the American crypto economy."- Sam Bankman-Fried, November 5, 2021While the U.S. government feigned fear of systemic risk at the time, the Chinese government understood the Libra project to be a backdoor dollarization of the G7 currencies rumored to be included in its basket. A Metaverse-held take on the 1985 Plaza Accord, this plan of coordinated central banking would spread USD network users across the internet’s biggest network, sped up by the high velocity available in centralized digital payments and globalized by the borderless nature of the Facebook user base.The digital yuan was trialed in April 2021 with great haste in reaction to this development, and by the Winter Olympics 2022, had launched for foreign attendees in Beijing. Not to be outdone by these new-look, same-shit fiat cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin made its own financial history when President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador took to the stage at Bitcoin 2021 to announce the legal tender aspirations of his small but dollarized nation. On March 9, 2022 President Joe Biden signed Executive Order #14067–”Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets”, which included aspirations for mitigation of financial risks in digital asset markets, as well as a clause stating that within 210 days, the attorney general, in consultation with the secretary of the treasury and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, must provide a formal proposal for a government-issued CBDC. By this point, the Bitcoin financial system had been utterly and properly dollar-ified, with billions of dollars in liquidity of dollar-denominated trading pairs making up the lion’s share of market activity. The same can be said for the Ethereum network, which has seen its compliance-driven perversion by non-native assets taking the wheel from its token Ether, as stablecoin and other dollar derivatives now uphold the majority of economic weight of the system. Both stablecoin giants Circle, issuer of USDC, and Tether came out in support of the merge, further ossifying their stake in the now-nearly-70%-OFAC-compliant blockchain. [2] As of this article’s writing, over 15.5 million ether are currently staked without active withdrawals in the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain, worth nearly $18 billion dollars.[3] Fortunately for Bitcoin, the consensus weight of its system is not manipulated by user stake, and thus the Bitcoin market has been seemingly unaffected – negatively anyway – by this decade-long development. At least until scammer Do Kwon and his ponzi-scheme Luna wreaked havoc on investors at the start of May of 2022.“[Crypto is] obviously serious…you want to do right by it in the regulatory space.”- President Bill Clinton, April 27, 2022 (Allegedly) [4] Click the image above to buy The Broke Issue. Contagion SpreadsOnly a few weeks after SBF hosted a keynote with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton at the FTX-organized Crypto Bahamas conference, one of the largest-ever over-the-counter bitcoin purchases was announced by the LUNA team.Terraform Labs and the non-profit Luna Foundation Guard, two entities headed by Do Kwon, had begun a campaign to purchase bitcoin as a reserve asset in the event that their algorithmic stablecoin, UST, deviated from its $1 peg. Shortly before their collapse, the plan had ballooned to the lofty goal of stacking over $10 billion in the hardest known digital commodity known to man. This purchase

was financed with Three Arrows Capital, or 3AC, and was facilitated by cryptocurrency broker Genesis."Terra's remarkable growth has continuously reshaped crypto markets over the last two years”, said Joshua Lim, head of derivatives at Genesis. “Genesis is excited to be a liquidity partner to the Terra ecosystem, connecting it to a broader audience of institutional market participants."With the bitcoin reserves of Luna Foundation Guard totalling 80,394 BTC, valued at over $3.1 billion on May 5, 2022, this purchase placed LFG among the top-10 bitcoin holders in the world. [5] But only for a moment, for while it might feel like a lifetime ago, what happened next should look awfully familiar; the peg was attacked, the recently-purchased bitcoin fortune was liquidated, Binance, led by CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), aptly halted all trading on LUNA and UST pairs – with notable exceptions to their own stablecoin BUSD – and Kwon seemingly fled to outside of U.S. jurisdiction to Asia. [6]Thus begins our first of many repeatable points of inquiry; where exactly did this bitcoin go? According to an audit released in November 2022, over 33,000 bitcoin were transferred to Binance on May 10, 2022, and sold along with other assets while failing to defend the peg. [7] The same day the nearly $1 billion dollars worth of bitcoin hit Binance’s order books, bitcoin’s USD price broke below $30,000, falling from $40,000 just a week before.On May 13, SBF purchased a 7.6% stake in Robinhood, the trading platform that came under scrutiny for halting trading during the GameStop fiasco in early 2021. Bloomberg had reported that around 40% of Robinhood’s revenue came directly from selling customers orders to firms such as Two Sigma Securities, and Citadel Securities. [8] Citadel had been fined $700,000 in July 2020 for front running trades placed by customers orders, and in September of that same year, Robinhood itself was questioned by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for improperly informing clients of selling stock trades to known high-frequency trading firms.Previously in December 2020, Robinhood had agreed to pay $65 million to settle charges of repeated misstatements for failure to disclose their receipts of payments from said trading firms. [9] When newly-nominated Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen briefed newly-elected President Joe Biden on this conflict of interest in February 2021, she herself had to acquire an ethics waiver due to having received at least $700,000 in speaker fees from Citadel LLC the year prior. [10] SBF had disclosed this purchase via a filed Schedule 13-D form with the SEC, costing $648.3 billion dollars and giving him 2.8% voting power in their dual-class share structure, under the entity Emergent Fidelity Technologies; a name said to be randomly generated. [11]“On July 13, Coinbase Exchange will be unifying USD and USDC order books. As part of the unification process, USDC order books will be merged under USD order books to create a better, more seamless trading experience with deeper liquidity for USD and USDC.”- Coinbase Exchange Twitter, June 29, 2022 [12]Circle, the entity behind the increasingly utilized USDC stablecoin, had previously expanded their international offerings with a subsidiary operation based in Bermuda with an announcement made on July 22, 2019. [13] This entity, filed under the Digital Assets Business Act of 2018 (“DABA”) meant that Circle was the first major stablecoin issuer to receive a Class F (“Full”) DABA license that covered their operation of custody, payment services, exchange, trading and more financial services within the digital asset realm. Circle’s other banking partners, Signet, Signature Bank and Silvergate Capital had made USD loans to Celsius, Voyager, Block Fi, Three Arrows Capital and Alameda Research. By the time this article was written, all had filed for bankruptcy. Two of their other business affiliates, Galaxy Digital and Genesis, have also reported massive losses in the FTX collapse, with rumors of further contagion effects coming.

Coinbase, a publicly-traded exchange under the ticker $COIN, announced in its Q2 2022 shareholder letter that nearly one third of total revenue was derived from interest on USD-denominated holdings, including a large USDC position:“Interest income was $33 million, up 211% compared to Q1. The increase was primarily driven by our USDC activity, as well as higher interest rates as we generate interest on fiat customer custodial funds… at the end of Q2, we had $6.2 billion in total $USD resources. In addition, we had $428 million of crypto assets.” [14]When the letter was released in late August 2022, interest on USDC holdings for 12 months was up to 4.7%, while one-month yields were an even 4%. By November 16, 2022, USDC yields were down to 0% across all time frames.[15]“1) Binance converts USDC --> BUSD, and we see the change in supplies. Thus begins the Second Great Stablecoin War.”- @SBF, October 23, 2022 [16]On September 4, 2022, Binance announced that it would be auto-converting all USDC, USDP and TUSD, three major dollar stablecoins, into its self-issued BUSD, effective in just 25 days. [17] This led to continued concerns about Binance’s solvency with the preceding few months, especially July 2022, seeing the largest known outflows of bitcoin in the exchange’s history, eclipsing even March 2020’s black swan bottom.On October 11, 216 days after Biden’s executive order with the aforementioned 210-day clause, BNY Mellon, the world’s largest custodian bank with over $43 trillion on the books, and coincidentally, the custodian of Circle’s reserves backing USDC, announced the launch of its digital asset custody program. [18] Involved with more than 20% of the world’s investable assets, the bank founded by the first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was also listed as a partner in the FedNow pilot. [19]Despite these institutional developments, a continued bear market weighed heavily on the now-plummeting bitcoin price. Paradoxically, more and more Bitcoin hash rate poured onto the network. These concurrent movements saw Bitcoin’s hash price plummet to an all-time low, spurring a massive liquidation of bitcoin liabilities off mining operators books. On October 26, Core Scientific, then the largest Bitcoin mining operation in the world, filed for bankruptcy with millions of dollars in debt liabilities, thousands of ASICs, and yet in their filings, held only 24 bitcoin total when the circus came to town. [20] Where exactly did all this bitcoin go? On that same day, barely two weeks before the FTX collapse, Binance saw its largest single day outflow, with 71,579 coins, totalling over $1.1 billion in dollar terms. [21] This pushed net outflows to nearly 95,000 coins from the world’s largest exchange since just that July. Again, where exactly did all this bitcoin go? The very next day, October 27, 2022, SBF appeared on The Big Whale and announced future plans for FTX to launch its very own stablecoin. [22]More Sand Than Dollars“CIA and Mossad and pedo elite are running some kind of sex trafficking entrapment blackmail ring out of Puerto Rico and caribbean islands. They are going to frame me with a laptop planted by my ex gf who was a spy. They will torture me to death.”- Nikolai Muchgian, October 28, 2022 [23]On October 24, 2022, the MakerDAO approved a community proposal to custody nearly $1.6 billion USDC with Coinbase Prime. [24] Four days later, Nikolai Muchigan, the co-founder of MakerDAO and inventor of Rai, a DAI-fork stablecoin, tweeted that his life was in danger due to a Caribbean island blackmail ring, supposedly backed by Israeli and U.S. intelligence agents. Three days later, on Halloween, the 29-year-old coder Muchigan was found dead, having drowned in the sea off Condado Beach in Puerto Rico. [25]Two days later, on November 2, 2022, CoinDesk reporter Ian Allison released findings that over a third of all assets – around $5.8 billion of $14.6 billion – on the balance sheet of SBF’s Alameda Research was intrinsically, and soon to be fatally, linked to FTX’s exchange token FTT.

A “bank” run commenced, and after three days of nearly $6 billion in withdrawals, FTX was left with literally one single bitcoin. Where exactly did all this bitcoin go? The next day in an interview with Fortune, Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong made note that USDC will become the de facto central bank digital currency in the U.S. [26]“The policymakers in the U.S. will set the framework that need to be followed so that the private market will actually create the solutions, and USD coin has been on a really rapid rise… the regulatory environment is one of the biggest unlocks we’re going to have in terms of growing this industry and perhaps even getting the prices to go back up in the right direction”- Brian Armstrong, November 3, 2022On November 6, CZ announced Binance would liquidate a remaining portion of FTT it had acquired from exiting FTX’s equity, having received around $2.1 billion in BUSD and FTT. Minutes after his announcement, Caroline Ellison, SBF’s partner and the CEO of Alameda Research, offered to purchase the tokens at $22 each, in an over-the-counter fashion. [27] By November 8, CZ and SBF had a phone call and seemingly came to a tentative deal for acquisition, reserving the right to back out of the deal at any time, while interestingly also leaving both U.S.-based proprietary exchanges, Binance.us and FTX.us, outside the scope of the deal.“Things have come full circle, and FTX.com’s first, and last, investors are the same: we have come to an agreement on a strategic transaction with Binance for FTX.com (pending DD etc)”, SBF tweeted. [28]Later that evening, FTX officially suspended all asset withdrawals. As part of the conditions of the acquisition, SBF was forced to open the FTX books and show the bottom of his pockets; seeing more sand than dollars, CZ backed out of the deal. A few important statements were made in the 48 hours or so that led up to this sudden cataclysm, including from the awfully-quiet U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission itself.“Liquidating our FTT is just post-exit risk management, learning from LUNA. We gave support before, but we won't pretend to make love after divorce. We are not against anyone. But we won't support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs. Onwards.”- CZ, November 6, 2022 [29]On November 7, 2022, the SEC officially deemed LBRY, or Library Coin, an unregistered security offering, setting a devastating precedent throughout the extended cryptocurrency market. [30] In the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire, the memorandum and order read, “The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) contends that LBRY, Inc. offered and sold unregistered securities in violation of Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933”, the act colloquially known as The Howey Test.Due to LBRY reserving a pre-mine of nearly 400 million LBC tokens, and the knowledge that the company to date had spent approximately half of its pre-mined LBC, the SEC determined common enterprise complete with a lack of disclosure and proper filing of its now alleged security offering through required channels in the Gary Gensler-chaired SEC. The implications of this filing sent shockwaves across the pre-mined token industry, including exchanges listing these tokens as well as the entities behind their issuance. Conveniently, the next day was November 8, the United States’ midterm elections, with the balance of the senate and the house — and perhaps the regulatory path of the digital asset industry — once again at stake.Searching for FTX on FEC.gov brings up 456 individual campaign contributions from SBF, CEO Ryan Salame, and others. [31] Salame’s contributions total over $14 million towards GOP candidates, while SBF’s “effective altruism” contributed over $20 million in donations to DNC politicians. Having been the second leading donor to the Biden campaign, by the time the final tallies from election night rolled in, SBF’s bankroll had finally caught up with his morals, and he found himself nearly completely bankrupt.

By November 9, the day after the elections, SBF had reportedly lost 94% of his net worth, down to $1 billion from more than $15 billion, leaving him with the largest single-day loss by a person according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. [32] Early in the morning of November 10, SBF took to Twitter to explain what happened, writing “I'm sorry. That's the biggest thing. I fucked up, and should have done better”, before making a specific note that “THIS IS ALL ABOUT FTX INTERNATIONAL, THE NON-US EXCHANGE. FTX US USERS ARE FINE!” [33]Chapter 11“The administration [...] has consistently maintained that without proper oversight, cryptocurrencies risk harming everyday Americans…The most recent news further underscores these concerns and highlights why prudent regulation of cryptocurrencies is indeed needed.” - White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, November 10, 2022 [34]On the eleventh day of the eleventh month, FTX and Alameda Research officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and SBF stepped down as CEO. In addition, 130 affiliated companies connected or associated with FTX also commenced voluntary proceedings under Chapter 11. [35] The tide had gone out, and nearly everyone involved got caught swimming naked, as a near-endless tidal wave of dollar-denominated liquidations made quick work of SBF’s Caribbean empire.While the first trickles of a dollar CBDC may have started in the Bahamas, the monsoon of coming regulation and contagion of the Second Great Stablecoin War is far from over. The dollar, having fallen 10% off 35-year DXY highs since September, looks for new ways to innovate and further dollarize markets across the globe.On November 15, just four days after the SBF tsunami crashed to shore, BNY Mellon, as well as a dozen or so other banking institutions, announced the start of a twelve-week digital dollar pilot program with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. [36] On the very same day, BlockFi announced plans for bankruptcy filings, only five months after taking a $250 million loan from FTX, and Circle announced users would now be able to settle payments by accepting Apple Pay. [37,38] With a significant 43% discount now showing on the highly-regulated Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, further community requests for proof of reserves are growing around Genesis and Grayscale, both owned by the Digital Currency Group, and even their custodian, Coinbase Custody. [39,40] As of this writing, these requests have so far been denied for security reasons.While appearing to be riding the wave of the booming digital asset revolution, gathering celebrity endorsements and political allies alike, it turns out SBF was drowning in debt and capital misallocation amongst the loud, mainstream praise. Later that month, on November 30, SBF was set to appear in person at a New York Times event, sponsored by Accenture, alongside Secretary Yellen, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, former Vice President Michael Pence, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and others; tickets for the event were listed at $2,499 per attendee.[41] The interview between SBF and Andrew Ross Sorkin was streamed as advertised, albeit with both parties shooting remotely.Bitcoin tends to be a ballast of truth, bringing all sorts of ballooning fraud rushing to the surface. FTX and Alameda Research will take their place amongst the seemingly too-big-to-sink players that ended up doing just that. They will certainly not be the last. However the following weeks, months, and years play out, it is clear that SBF was but a small fish in an ocean-sized, dollarized pond. And as he quickly found out, there is always a bigger fish.“At some point I might have more to say about a particular sparring partner, so to speak. But you know, glass houses. So for now, all I’ll say is: well played; you won.” [42]– Sam Bankman-Fried, November 10, 2022This article is featured in Bitcoin Magazine’s “The Broke Issue”.

Click here to subscribe now.Divider(Variant 1)ENDNOTES:[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxnotes/2021/06/24/in-the-1930s-the-bahamas-became-a-tax-problem-for-treasury/[2]https://fortune.com/2022/08/09/stablecoins-circle-tether-support-ethereum-merge-proof-of-stake[3]https://ethereumprice.org/eth-2-deposits/[4]https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/entertainment-celebrity/inside-bahamas-crypto-festival-where-ftx-ceo-bankman-fried-welcomed-bill-clinton-and-katy-perry/[5]https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/luna-foundation-now-holds-more-bitcoin-than-tesla[6]https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/binance-remove-trading-pairs-ftx-114338983.html[7]https://lfg.org/audit/LFG-Audit-2022-11-14.pdf&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1668725884650403&usg=AOvVaw22nNl-O_mnhcT8MxsEtEiX[8]https://www.truthorfiction.com/does-citadel-own-robinhood/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1668980992263700&usg=AOvVaw31decanIMGsjR2r2ceb0sP[9]https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-321[10]https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/treasury-secretary-janet-yellen-to-call-regulator-meeting-on-gamestop-volatility-seeks-ethics-waiver.html[11] https://www.axios.com/2022/05/13/what-does-sam-bankman-fried-want-with-robinhood[12]https://twitter.com/CoinbaseExch/status/1542270332299579396?s=20&t=3qAy3oJqtmMnLdfwk-JTJA[13]https://www.circle.com/blog/circle-expands-international-offerings-with-new-bermuda-operations-and-digital-assets-business-license[14]https://s27.q4cdn.com/397450999/files/doc_financials/2022/q2/Q2-2022-Shareholder-Letter.pdf[15]https://www.circle.com/en/usdc-yield#start[16]https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1584077423280521216?s=20&t=UB_GcB9mjBRJtNS8sS4RJQ[17]https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/binance-to-auto-convert-usdc-usdp-tusd-to-busd-binance-usd-e62f703604a94538a1f1bc803b2d579f[18]https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/bny-mellon-launches-new-digital-asset-custody-platform-301645324.html[19]https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/community/news/012521-announcing-pilot-program-participants.html[20]https://www.forbes.com/sites/rosemariemiller/2022/10/27/core-scientific-unable-to-pay-bills-warns-of-bankruptcy/[21]https://bitcoinke.io/2022/11/largest-bitcoin-outflow-on-binance/[22]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sbf-ftx-stablecoin-second-great-055956820.html[23]https://twitter.com/delete_shitcoin/status/1585918718088970241[24]https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-launches-usdc-institutional-rewards-program-with-makerdao[25]https://www.trustnodes.com/2022/10/31/etherean-nikolai-muchgian-dead-by-drowning[26]https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/03/coinbase-ceo-says-usdc-will-become-de-facto-cbdc/[27]https://twitter.com/carolinecapital/status/1589287457975304193[28]https://www.binance.com/en/news/flash/7268278[29]https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1589374530413215744[30]https://odysee.com/@lbry:3f/secvslbrysummaryjudgementruling:a[31]https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_employer=FTX[32]https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/09/business/sam-bankman-fried-wealth-ftx-ctrp/index.html[33]https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1590709166515310593[34]https://cointelegraph.com/news/white-house-says-prudent-regulation-of-cryptocurrencies-is-needed-hinting-at-situation-with-ftx[35]https://cryptopotato.com/ftx-and-alameda-file-for-bankruptcy-sbf-resigns-as-ceo/[36]https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/digital-dollar-wall-street-banks-new-york-fed-ftx-crash-2022-11?miRedirects=1&op=1[37]https://www.businessinsider.com/blockfi-ftx-bankruptcy-crypto-lender-emergency-loan-pausing-withdrawals-2022-11?op=1[38]https://www.circle.com/blog/apple-pay-is-now-available-on-circle[39]https://news.yahoo.com/grayscale-bitcoin-trust-hits-record-132435240.html[40]https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-11-18-2022/card/coinbase-vouches-for-grayscale-investments-products-yA5vzaPEIvaOr7Ffj2GE[41]https://www.nytco.com/press/the-new-york-times-to-host-annual-dealbook-summit-on-nov-30/[42]https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1590709197502812160

0 notes