The Big Bitcoin Theory: Writers Throw Sneaky Shade at Bitcoin

@thedesignflaw
12-01-2017

This contains spoilers. You’ve been warned.

Well the king daddy of cryptocurrencies has officially hit the mainstream with the airing of “The Bitcoin Entanglement,” the latest installment of the seemingly infinite, expanding, universe of The Big Bang Theory. That’s 11 seasons of Howard’s gargantuan belt buckles ladies and gentlemen… pretty impressive. As a bitcon idealist myself, I couldn’t help but keenly anticipate exactly how producer Chuck Lorre and his writing staff would handle this foray into something I’d be very surprised if they really understood. I expected a somewhat superficial overview of the “honey badger” currency that has for years just seemed to parkour its way out of any and every attack… and superficial it was.

But under that surface, I feel like I got more than just a plot line out of bitcoin in this episode. I sensed a distinctly negative, almost subliminally delivered, and frenzied depiction of the world’s first global censorship resistant decentralized currency. The plot was simple and harmless enough: Boys mine bitcoin, boys forget bitcoin, boys search for bitcoin, boys lose bitcoin. I mean, come on… we knew these guys weren’t walking away from this episode as bit-millionaires. But the devil is in the details, and I’m thinking those details were not designed to cast bitcoin in the best light.

Forget that the price doubled in the roughly six weeks between filming and airing ($5000 to $10,000). Forget that this sound money is saving lives in countries with collapsing economies like Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Let’s talk about the subtle little jabs the BBT creative team took at bitcoin, and just how, um, tangible they are. I’ll give the caveat that some of these quotes took place 7 years earlier in the episode’s timeline, so they may have been MORE true then than now. But that doesn’t mute the naked effect of pall-casting.

Ode to the Spark: A Bernie Sanders delegate’s final thoughts on the Nevada Democratic Party 2016 Caucuses

by Mark Szczygiel
May 17th, 2017

Donald Trump is president. Hillary Clinton presently is vapor and Bernie Sanders is still campaigning. The new “cold war” is heating up. This is the state of affairs today.

Our pendulum swings in politics similar to the swings in our capitalistic economy. Some say only a revolution can fix it. Some have tried to a degree, Henry Wallace, MLK Jr., RFK, even JFK. Then stopped cold dead for the most part. I tried my part, beginning in 1972 – voting for George McGovern. Naïve empowerment filled me, not knowing in the background, my Democratic Party was throwing him to the wolves.

Enter Bernie Sanders and his “Our Revolution”. I took the bite – one last chance to make things right – one last swing to crack the proverbial vault and to vanquish the soulless, the contemptuous, the psychopaths from society’s command.

First, my wife and I caucused for Bernie in our precinct and we managed to get a tie in the body count. Surprising, considering it’s an affluent area. In the end, Hillary won by support from the Harry Reid’s controlled Culinary union. A feat documented by Jon Ralston calling Reid “Prince Harry” and delivering for Clinton. Onward and forward.

A Canary in the Data Mine: NSA Takes Another Bite Out of Apple

If the canary hasn’t died, it has definitely been winged.

Apple, Inc. has changed its privacy policy (you know, those things that almost no one reads) and according to gigaom.com it has removed what is known as a “warrant canary.” A warrant canary is a statement within a company’s privacy policy that indicates it hasn’t received certain communications from, oh, lets say the NSA. When removed, it indicates the company has been served a secret subpoena by an intelligence service (NSA, FBI) regarding information it is holding on behalf of some customers, but are gagged from telling its customers about it.

What do NSA Vans…

“What do NSA Surveillance Vans and rape vans have in common? Everything but the budget.”

Missouri Police Chief Admits Citizen Journalists Keep Cops Honest

As I’m sure most of you know, there has been a bit of a situation in Ferguson, MO. The killing of unarmed citizens by police, the presence of protesters, the true arrival of the police industrial complex, the accidental shooting of protesters and vitriolic displays by what seem to be mentally unstable police officers.

But just like every black hole emits Hawking Radiation, there is some good emanating from the situation in Ferguson. In fact, I believe we’ve been given the strategy to defeat psychopathic cops by one of their own. More on that later…

To start off the good news, three of these potentially psychopathic cops have either retired, been suspended or fired after displaying tendencies towards violence and mass murder.

“Where is a Muslim with a back pack when you need them.” -Matthew Pappert courtesy of Facebook

Let’s start with ex-officer from Glendale, Matthew Pappert. He was caught on Facebook posting that the protesters should have been put down like dogs and lamented at the lack of a Muslim back-pack bomber to do the job. Now I can see why he doesn’t like protesters, because I’d have to guess there have been numerous gatherings protesting his gold-douche-chill fedora shown on the right. What I can’t see is how a guy who claims to have gone to Harvard has such a hard time with subject-verb agreement in his Facebook posts. Regardless, he’s been fired, much to the delight of the sane. Score one for Facebook and the Daily Caller who preserved the Facebook posts.

If Your Gods Are So Almighty…

“If your gods are so almighty, why do you have to do all the fighting?”

Are Pharmaceutical Companies Responsible For Ignoring an Ebola Cure?

There has been a new untested treatment used on two Americans infected with the Ebola virus, sparking a controversy about a potential cure. However this isn’t the first controversy over an Ebola treatment. In 1995 during a breakout in Zaire, local doctors used a simple transfusion method on nine people. Despite vocal opposition from the Western doctors on the scene, eight of the nine people survived.

The Less Low Moral Ground

“Those who think they have the high moral ground are lucky to be on less low moral ground.”    – Toozie

BREAKING: Howard Stern’s Fart DID NOT Bring Down Flight MH17

First off, our condolences to the families of those lost on Malaysian flight MH17.

Now on to the ridiculousness… You really shouldn’t expect too much from 24 hour TV news anchors. You can expect milquetoast tripe in the way of questions, a general lack of pertinent information and a hyperbolic packaging of the useless trivia they do supply. But is this really all their fault? I doubt they write their own questions and they certainly have little, if any, say in the editorial direction. Come on now; these faces are just the blank canvases on which the editor marionettes paint their corporate commissioned lies.  There is one thing they can do however:

They can listen to the answers of the questions they actually posed.

Opinions Differ…

“Opinions differ among the saints as well as among the sinners.”    – Abraham Lincoln