Would've read this years ago if I'd realised it had been published in the UK under the different (and greatly inferior) title Lords of Crypto Crime
(comment on Tracers in the Dark)
roddie digital đź“š
- 8 Followers
- 2 Following
- 16 Posts
Personal site: https://roddie.digital/
Mastodon: https://roddie.social/@roddie
roddie digital đź“š finished reading Character Limit
roddie digital đź“š started reading Character Limit
roddie digital đź“š finished reading Gravity's Rainbow
Gravity's Rainbow - BookWyrm
Tyrone Slothrop, a GI in London in 1944, has a big problem. Whenever he gets an erection, a Blitz bomb hits. Slothrop gets excited, and then (as Thomas Pynchon puts it in his sinister, insinuatingly sibilant opening sentence), "a screaming comes across the sky," heralding an angel of death, a V-2 rocket. The novel's title, "Gravity's Rainbow", refers to the rocket's vapor arc, a cruel dark parody of what God sent Noah to symbolize his promise never to destroy humanity again. Soon Tyrone is on the run from legions of bizarre enemies through the phantasmagoric horrors of Germany. "Gravity's Rainbow", however, doesn't follow such a standard plot; one must have faith that each manic episode is connected with the great plot to blow up the world with the ultimate rocket. There is not one story, but a proliferation of characters (Pirate Prentice, Teddy Bloat, Tantivy Mucker-Maffick, Saure Bummer, and more) and events that tantalize the reader with suggestions of vast patterns only just past our comprehension. "Gravity's Rainbow" is a blizzard of references to science, history, high culture, and the lowest of jokes.
Review of "Breaking Twitter" (1 star): Breaking Reality
roddie digital đź“š finished reading Breaking Twitter
roddie digital đź“š started reading House of Leaves
House of Leaves - BookWyrm
Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.
When I heard Michael Lewis had been following SBF as the subject for a new book before FTX collapsed, I thought (like many others) he was in the pound seats and lucky he hadn't prematurely published the book. Unfortunately, it became apparent that FTX being exposed as a massive fraud had done nothing to dent Lewis's admiration for SBF - I was able to read a copy from my local library rather than supporting the author responsible for this sycophantic fantasy.
The book seems to spend a lot of time suggesting that Sam is just a misunderstood, well-intentioned individual. Even if you didn't know anything about its subject, from Lewis's own account you would struggle to come to any conclusion other than that SBF cared about anything or anybody but himself. FTX ultimately crashed because he didn't (or couldn't) keep track of his own money or his customers' and he spent it as if he had an unlimited supply of it. But in this book, the author reaches so far he must've put his back out in the process. He writes ridiculous statements about how SBF and his parents weren't interested in money, about how people told Sam he didn't need to be so honest, how his political donations and lobbying efforts on crypto regulation weren't for his own benefit, that he didn't need a CFO because he know how much money they had and that Sam could've transformed Twitter and connected it to all other social media by putting it on a blockchain. He also is at pains to describe CZ as a stupid and unimaginative baddie (not like our stable genius hero Sam) - if he wants to a chalk up a score between the two he should maybe look at how CZ has been able to walk away from Binance with his freedom and presumably billions in the bank while Sam is left to rot in the jail for probably the rest of his life.
At least the following sentence jumped out at me for being accurate since we saw plenty of it at his trial: "Tossed a question he didn't want or know how to answer, Sam simply turned it into one that he was happy to answer."
Like most other comments you'll probably read on this book, if you're interested in SBF you'd have much more fun reading Zeke Faux's Number Go Up and you're a lot more likely to learn something than you will from Going Infinite.
(comment on Going Infinite)
Going Infinite - BookWyrm
<p>From the #1 best-selling author of The Big Short and Flash Boys, the story of FTX’s spectacular collapse and the enigmatic founder at its center.</p> <p>When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?</p> <p>In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own—until it all came undone.</p>
roddie digital finished reading Number Go Up
Number Go Up - BookWyrm
<p>In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream. Giant investment funds were buying it; celebrities like Tom Brady endorsed it; and TV ads hailed it as the future of money. Hardly anyone knew how it worked—but why bother with the particulars when everyone was making a fortune from Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or some other bizarrely named “digital asset”?</p> <p>As he observed this frenzy, investigative reporter Zeke Faux had a nagging feeling: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as curiosity—with a dash of FOMO—would morph into a two-year, globe-spanning quest to understand the wizards behind the world’s new financial machinery. Faux’s investigation would lead him to a schlubby, frizzy-haired twenty-nine-year-old named Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF for short) and a host of other crypto scammers, utopians, and overnight billionaires.</p> <p>Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world. Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to “ApeFest,” an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey. In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles upon a Pokémon knockoff mobile game touted by boosters as a cure for poverty. In an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring.</p> <p>When the bubble suddenly bursts in 2022, Faux brings readers inside SBF’s penthouse as the fallen crypto king faces his imminent arrest. Fueled by the absurd details and authoritative reporting that earned Zeke Faux the accolade “our great poet of crime” from Money Stuff columnist Matt Levine, Number Go Up is the essential chronicle, by turns harrowing and uproarious, of a $3 trillion financial delusion.</p>
roddie digital finished reading Red Team Blues
Red Team Blues - BookWyrm
<p>Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough.</p> <p>Martin is a―contain your excitement―self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He’s as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he’s a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He’s not famous, except to the people who matter. He’s made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he’s been paid pretty well. It’s been a good life.</p> <p>Now he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before―and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.</p>