Good morning. Hello. How are you? #808
Julian Sands, a weird Diet Coke incident in c 1985, what if (gulp) SBF isn't wrong?, and the return of Razzlekhan
Good morning, friend. Hello! How are you? All well? Two thousand twenty-three. I will probably jinx it by saying this, but it’s going okay so far. Considering I started it with covid and all. Jane’s latest batch of tantrums seem to be dying down, her “but why” phase is gaining steam, and the “but why” phase was very much part of my fantasies before I had a kid. I love the but why phase. Yesterday… well, one “but why” session lead to 9/11, which was sort of unpleasant but we got through it using Mr. Rogers and “focus on the helpers.” That worked. Other “but why” topics right now are gravity, inertia, momentum, standarization, greed, and laws vs rules. We spent a long time on that one yesterday at breakfast. Talked about jail. She did not really like the idea of jail very much. Felt bad for people that had to go to jail, even if they broke a law. Maybe its time to introduce bail reform this morning ha.
Not a lot of comments on yesterdays post which was weird. Actually, I think NO comments on the FB version, which is unusual. Makes me wonder if they downvote talk about, erm, certain topics, but maybe it was just statistics. And I did get some responses to the classified section of the post, so thank you for that.
I got my colonscopy “kit” in the mail last night. Never done this before. Seems very unpleasant. Not looking forward to it at all, nope nope nope not one bit.
And Julian Sands is missing. He is missing in the hills of LA after going on some hike. Julian Sands is only 65. Julian Sands is a great actor. His performance in A Room With A View is nearly perfect, and his malevolence in Warlock is terrifying. I’m looking at his IMDB page and it’s good to see he never stopped working. But Julian Sands has not been given roles suitable to his talent in the last decade or so. Julian Sands deserves a career renaissance, not to be lost on a hiking trail on Mt. Baldy. That is sad. I hope they find him.
Also that little story about piano lessons and church reminded me of an incident once where I got out of my piano lesson and had to walk the five or so blocks to the church for choir practice and on the walk I started feeling very faint. And I thought I was gonna fall over. Felt malnourished and weird and suddenly my brain decided it absolutely needed a Diet Coke and saltine crackers. I had, at this point in life, had maybe one Diet Coke ever. I was like 13 I didn’t drink Diet Coke. But right now I desperately needed one as I staggered up Cowles street. This was very distressing to me cuz it was the first time I’d ever felt any of these feelings. I’d never fainted before, I never felt dizzy. And here I was about to fall over.
I got to the church, which was empty. I usually had an hour or so between piano lessons and choir practice where no one was really in the church. I deliriously headed to the little pantry off of the office, which is usually devoid of food (most of the food was downstairs in the larger soup kitchen pantry).
And sitting in this empty pantry, in a church, like an offering to me from god, was a six pack of Diet Coke and a box of Premium Saltines.
Reader, I confess I stole a Diet Coke and half a bag of saltines from the church, from god, and the whole experience did not make me question my then-atheism even one iota.
So. The liquidators of FTX had to do an interim presentation to the creditors the other day. And so they made a powerpoint for them. Here it is. I read it last night. Also, SBF, probably entirely against legal advice, has started a Substack where he is presumably trying to taint the jury pool or get the truth out or defend himself or muddle things enough for reasonable doubt or whatever. And so he wrote a rebuttal to the liquidators presentation. Here it is.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… reading both of these closely, I kinda buy SBF’s argument more than the liquidators? First off, the liquidator’s presentation is absolute garbage. Bordering on incompetently made, just absurd shit going on. It’s still giving real-world value to a bunch of shitcoins which is just insane at this point. It highly editorializes the fact that Alameda and SBF had unique access to the site, pointing out they had a credit facility of $65 billion, a number they keep using, which seems to have been simply the coders making it a moot topic, but the presentation keeps implying that number was some sort of financial thing, that Alameda had stoline $65 billion yeah no.
More to the point, it turns out that thousands of other people had credit facilities on FTX and had been exempted out of the automatic cash-out rules. This was new to me. The creditors are like “oh they were just market makers” as if that somehow negates the profundity of the revelation. SBF also argues quite convincingly that the creditors did some basic bad math. It’s not good!
One thing that was kind of interesting though was that both parties seem to agree that the hack was just a hack and not SBF or Caroline or someone absconding with a bunch of crypto. Also, buried in the footnotes is the fact that the creditors have hired Chainalysis. They don’t quite say it, but they’d be idiots to hire Chainalysis and not have them track down the hacked $400 million. And if that’s the case, I’m fairly confident it’ll be found. Eventually.
Overall, the creditor’s presentation makes me think that a) FTX US had more than enough money, b) FTX had a metric shit ton of money just so much money, and it had $400MM+ more than the numbers here because they hadn’t been hacked yet. My god, they had so much money. And c) SBF is honestly probably right that they could have hustled through it.
Does all this mean he didn’t commit a crime? Eh, probably not. I’m sure he did something illegal somewhere. But I think in the end it is absolutely not a surefire case and if I were the Feds I would strongly consider a plea.
In other crypto news my nominee for best person in the world, immigrant, rapper, diva, Youtube bedazzler, one of the first 100 people in Egypt to get H1NI, growth marketing engineer and indicted defendent in the largest theft ever in the history of mankind Razzlekan… got a job. In the role of “growth marketing and business development” at a NYC tech company. God I love NY tech. They are the best. Long-time readers of GMHHAY know of my obsession with Razzlekhan. Razzlekhan is the best. Why has this movie not been made yet. I do not condone crimes. I do not condone committing the largest heist ever (aside from wage theft, I suppose, and wars and whatnot) but man she just rules. Might be time to go watch her entire Youtube channel again I hope she has not taken it down why would she take it down, she is a growth marketer (oh thank god. It’s still up). The woman bedazzled her exercise bike, come on.
Justa mix for you today but it’s a good one. Starts out kinda gothy, then it’s kinda rocky, then it’s kinda synthy. A nice little journey. Mostly new stuff except for more Tribe and it ends with Wang Chung cuz why not. It’s a great song. Excited about the new Everything but the Girl (!!!) and Hold Steady.
Talk tomorrow where we will have an exciting Walmart adventure oh frabgeous day.
also not looking forward to scoping my colon. that said, my friend jen's take on the experience gave me hope: SHE FREAKING LOVED IT. she was a fan of the fasting, of the mental acuity she experienced, of the drugs and the medical staff, and of the excuse to have an epic special lunch afterward. according to her, 10/10, and "i can't wait till next time!"
look, i know this will *probably* not be my experience, but you can bet your ass (HA HA) that i made sure to book mine at the same facility.
i hadn’t heard about julian sands and when i looked up the story i saw that he’s been missing nearly a week! how horrible. 😞
i think i will watch room with a view tonight…