Bitcoin and NFTs

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Surely a massive shock. Has anyone checked on Michael Lewis?

Yes, though not exclusively

The Jewish ones evolved out of the Catskill (and similar) resorts where families would spend four weeks or more during the summer.

wait, you'd go to one of these places for four weeks?

[ursus arctos]

Or longer.

Not me.

[ursus arctos]

I'm sure that he thought they would at least deliberate for more than a few hours.

[caja-dglh]

wait, you'd go to one of these places for four weeks?

four is the half. Many go the full eight.

I have learned all about this through going to NYU and following people's kids updates. I would also note that it is not cheap at all.

[ursus arctos]

I remember dglh's first term at NYU

It was a voyage of discovery

[ursus arctos]

The Catskill camps/resorts of the 50s and 60s were much less expensive and more inclusive economically.

I had a weird connection to them because the jukebox association had a long weekend there every fall and would my father and the family.

[caja-dglh]

I remember dglh's first term at NYU

It was a voyage of discovery

I learned a huge amount of stuff I didn't even know I didn't know, nor intended to.

[caja-dglh]

The Catskill camps/resorts of the 50s and 60s were much less expensive and more inclusive economically.

I had a weird connection to them because the jukebox association had a long weekend there every fall and would my father and the family.

It is loosely tied in to Ms Maisel (the amazon thing), though once again with the jewish angle. But one that probably caught every Brit off-guard, or more thinking "this is implausible bullshit!"

[ursus arctos]

My Jewish friends were shocked that a goy even knew about these places, let alone had been to several.

[ursus arctos]

This might actually be true, but is too good to fact check

https://twitter.com/julie_bush/status/1720229986924367926?s=12&t=xvOireV8JOIS_CpbTtDBow

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/davidzmorris/status/1720233120002146679?s=12&t=xvOireV8JOIS_CpbTtDBow

[caja-dglh]

It is weird they hadn't been able to come to terms that their kid was a crook.

I mean - it is fucking obvious.

[ursus arctos]

The bankruptcy estate suing them for tens of millions may have something to do with that

We spend much of our lives in very weird circles, but Palo Alto is a whole other world

[Snake Plissken]

It is weird they hadn't been able to come to terms that their kid was a crook.

I mean - it is fucking obvious.

Do any of them strike you as people who are aware of the consequences of their actions, let alone care about them?

[Balderdasha]

The closest I ever came to attending a summer camp as an attendee was doing brownie camps, either camping in tents or staying in bunkhouses, which usually only lasted about 3-4 days. I once went on a creative writing residential course for a week which I was selected for when I was 11. I went on a couple of Christian summer camp weeks / weekends as a teenager before deciding I was definitely atheist.

At university I worked on English teaching summer camps in Asia which was great fun and very intense. 2003 I worked on summer camps in Changsha, China for 4 weeks. 2004 I did 4 weeks of summer camps in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, which was particularly intense because we did 6 day summer camps Mon-Saturday for 4 weeks straight at 4 different schools with only Sundays off. 2005 I directed a team of teachers running six weeks of summer camps in Beijing, 4 weeks at a posh school, then 2 weeks at 2 different schools simultaneously in a poor migrant village on the outskirts. 2006 I organised and set up a summer camp at a school in Chongqing but I didn't directly work on that one.

Looking back, it's strange to think that I had a self-perception of me being a "lazy person" and yet on paper I was doing a Cambridge degree, holding down several paid jobs, volunteering for a charity, doing stuff like this in the holidays and loads of other stuff like hiking, netball, travelling, partying, etc. I just wasn't a morning person.

[WOM]

The bankruptcy estate suing them for tens of millions may have something to do with that

Any thoughts on what the sentencing guidelines sugggest for SBF? Will be really do ‘as much as 110 years’ for a non violent crime?

[ursus arctos]

He definitely will not get 110

The consensus is 15-20

USD 8 billion is a lot of money

[caja-dglh]

USD 8 billion is a lot of money

unless you are Israel

[Lang Spoon]

Who will Michael Lewis glom onto next, George Santos?

[WOM]

Okay. I figured he was a cinch for 20, but maybe out in 12 or 13 or something.

[ursus arctos]

The original estimates were 10 to 20, but his behaviour before and during the trial has most people opting for the higher end of that range.

Not to mention that violating his bail conditions means that he is going to be in custody until sentencing in March.

And there are still the charges that were severed early on in the process,which he could still face trial for.

[ursus arctos]

Who will Michael Lewis glom onto next, George Santos?

I think that his days of USD 5 million advances may be over

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

why did he do it? was he completely fooled by the unique combination of obvious Crypto Grifter, and ostentatious philanthropist wanker?

[Hot Pepsi]

I suspect he thought that crypto and effective altruism were something new and different, when in fact they're not. Performative charity isn't new. Neither are long cons and Ponzi schemes.

The whole "effective altruism" thing seems like the epiphany a high school kid would come up with in social studies class just so they got credit for class participation. I know that, because I was that sort of high school kid.

Yes, charities and non-profits should be efficient, and of course charities should do studies of different interventions to see which ones work the best. Perhaps there are some novel statistical methods for studying that, but the overall concept isn't new or insightful. I suspect that the only reason that idea feels like a revelation to these people is that so much of the philanthropy of this class is performative and self-aggrandizing that they think that everyone thinks of charity that way.

Anyone who has spent much time at all working or volunteering with one of these organizations knows that. And it isn't new. The difference between pretending to be holy and actually helping people is important in every ancient religious tradition I'm aware of.

They also pushed the idea that the best way to help the world is to become very rich and then give a way money. That is certainly way better than becoming very rich and not giving away money, I guess, but I suspect that the world would be a lot better if the "best and brightest" just worked directly to try to make significant structural changes, rather than just perpetuate the current system of big finance which is, as far as I can tell, much more part of the problem than the solution.

[ursus arctos]

It was easy for Lewis to fit SBF into his preferred narrative, which is about "quirky" people "disrupting" established narratives and making a lot of money in the process.