Attached: 1 image Do you remember NFTs? I remember NFTs. They exploded onto the scene in 2020 and were *everywhere* in the public discourse. At their peak in 2021, there were something like $25 billion in NFT sales globally. There were NFT Super Bowl ads. Jimmy Fallon had Paris Hilton on his show to awkwardly shill for NFTs. And then, by 2022, 2023 at the latest, the bubble had burst and NFT market had lost up to 99% of its value. Blessedly, I never have to think about those fucking Bored Apes ever again. I remember thinking, when NFTs first appeared, that they were so obviously a scam, but also a vague sense of surprise that such an obvious scam was proliferating while we were still living through the previous blockchain-related scam, cryptocurrency. And since the NFT bubble burst, we moved on absurdly quickly to the next tech scam-bubble, AI. 1/
Currently ⅔’s thru Gibson’s “The Peripheral.”
These two paragraphs describing “The Jackpot” were just the right stuff to help me fall soundly asleep last night.
"The company has been at the forefront of the pandemic-era trend towards home brewing, which has escalated in the inflationary period as customers cut back on cafe purchases."
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, "pandemic-era" "the inflationary period"; it's all just stages in #TheJackpot.
Watch, soon there's going to be a month whose name will become a sinister, dread word for all the remaining decade of human history, because of something that happened in it.
"Welcome to The Crumbles" is a zeitgeist catch-phrase floated by the It Could Happen Here podcast crew.
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@mjohnharrison as retweeted by William Gibson, in reference to the linked story:
everything's a metaphor now https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jun/14/uk-public-buildings-feared-to-be-at-risk-of-collapse-as-concrete-crumbles
I usually put on a brave face and focus on constructive thoughts. But sometimes the grief is too much, and I have to hold space for it.
The 21st Century is just going to be us opening one Pandora's Box after another
Between the Texas blackouts a couple years back, that one crazy guy blowing up a power station last year, and the North Carolina attack yesterday I’m getting worried about the potential for right wing insurgents causing widespread trouble by attacking the American power grid.