Category Archives: Memetics

A huge collection of memes sounds that will be updated daily, This soundboard contains over 300 sounds. If you would like any sounds added please use the contact form. If you do use the sounds in a project a link back to this site would be greatly appreciated

The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene as an attempt to explain how ideas replicate, mutate, and evolve (memetics). The concept of the Internet meme was first proposed by Mike Godwin in the June 1993 issue of Wired. In 2013, Dawkins characterized an Internet meme as being a meme deliberately altered by human creativitydistinguished from biological genes and his own pre-Internet concept of a meme, which involved mutation by random change and spreading through accurate replication as in Darwinian selection. Dawkins explained that Internet memes are thus a "hijacking of the original idea", the very idea of a meme having mutated and evolved in this new direction. Furthermore, Internet memes carry an additional property that ordinary memes do not: Internet memes leave a footprint in the media through which they propagate (for example, social networks) that renders them traceable and analyzable.

Internet memes grew as a concept in the mid-1990s. At the time, memes were just short clips that were shared between people in Usenet forums.[citation needed] As the Internet evolved, so did memes. When YouTube was released in 2005, video memes became popular. Around this time, rickrolling became popular and the link to this video was sent around via email or other messaging sites. Video sharing also created memes such as "Turn Down for What" and the "Harlem Shake". As social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook started appearing, it was now easy to share GIFs and image macros to a large audience. Meme generator websites were created to let users create their own memes out of existing templates. Memes during this time could remain popular for a long time, from a few months to a decade, which contrasts with the fast lifespan of modern memes. Over the years, many memes have originated on the 4chan website, which has been described as "the cradle of memes, trolling and alter culture"; major memes popularized by that site include lolcats as well as the pedobear.

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Meme sounds JAYUZUMI SOUNDBOARDS

Cover image: VIZ Media. Background: Death Stranding (Screenshot)Graphic: Libby McGuire

Unlike movies or TV, the video game industry doesnt have many auteurs. Big-budget video games, the kind that ostensibly aspire to be like movies and TV shows, require such big teams and employ so many individual artists with their own styles and sensibilities that its kind of impossible for one person to have such a clear effect on a game that it is undeniably theirs. Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear Solid series and 2019s intensely underappreciated masterpiece Death Stranding, is the exception to this rule.

Kojima doesnt solely write or design his games, but to varying degrees, theyre all marked with his fingerprintslike his apparent fondness for whiplash-inducing tonal shifts or heavy-handed narrative themes.

One of those themes, threaded through the first three Metal Gear Solid games, is about determining how and why we are who we are. Kojimas approach to the nature vs. nurture debate is actually three-pronged, somewhat awkwardly summarized as genes (this ones obvious), memes (as in memetics, the idea that we are shaped by the information were exposed to, not funny photos with captions), and scene (the time period in which we grow up).

Those same three prongs, especially the second one, serve as the basis for The Creative Gene, Kojimas first booka collection of essays about the various cultural objects that had a dramatic influence on his life.

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Like everything Kojima does, this concept could be pretentious and naval-gazing, the sort of thing that might only be interesting to him, but Kojima imbues the book with such an obvious affection for art and culture that its hard not to get swept up in his enthusiasm.

In an early essay, Kojima explains that he goes to a bookstore every day, even if its just to walk around and see what catches his eye. Each piece in The Creative Gene is about one book (or movie or TV show) that he has really connected with. This is far from being a recommendation guide, though, with Kojima even making a point in his intro to say, essentially, You might not like the things I like, but thats the whole point of liking things. The book is a testament to liking things, with Kojimas preferred lens being the way that his favorite books and movies have left a unique impact on him.

Anyone looking for a more explicit take on Kojimas creative process (perhaps because of the title) might come away disappointed, in part because a detailed account of his tumultuous career over the last few years would make for a fascinating read. But whats in The Creative Gene is arguably a lot more valuable. Its best moments are glimpses into the mind of a visionary artist who just happens to work in a medium that isnt always known for its capacity for visionary art.

Though each section is about a specific cultural object, many of the essays use their ostensible subject matter as an entry point into something else. A piece about landmark anime series Space Battleship Yamato, for example, is really about Kojimas fathera man who had an unequaled taste for alcohol and loved to build model battleships because he was never able to join the Japanese navy.

Similarly, an essay about Bewitched, Little House On The Prairie, and Shin Chan (another long-running anime franchise) is more about Kojimas desire for a more traditional family after his dad died. As he got older, these shows became a model he could base his life on, with the essay going into how proud he is of the family hes been able to raise and, in one of many surprisingly emotional bits of self-reflection, the disappointment he feels in not living up to the kind of father he wants to be.

The books most delightfully audacious choice is a section on the novelization of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots. Writing a loving essay about a book based on his own video game is pure Kojima. But like some of his video gamesespecially Death Stranding, the one about Norman Reedus traversing an apocalyptic wasteland with a baby in a pod strapped to his chesthe displays a masterful ability to take something that seems laughable on paper and make it resonate.

The novelization, as Kojima explains, was written by Satoshi Itoh (a.k.a. Project Itoh, author of Genocidal Organ), who was rushed to the hospital immediately after their first meeting about the book. He died from cancer a little over a year later. Kojima seems deeply touched that a story he created was reshaped by Itoh and released in a new form that could connect with new people long after both of them are gone.

That, essentially, is the point of the whole book. Its not simply a memoir by way of memes (to use his word), its about the experience of being inspired or influenced and loving the artifacts that make that possible.

Kojima never lets on that thats what hes doing, though, remaining so dedicated to each essays framing device that it seems almost accidental when he hits on something heartfelt or profound to say about the works of Agatha Christie or 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Its an artful trick, and while it might not give you a deeper appreciation for the things he loves, the way he describes their impact on his life just might give you a deeper appreciation for the things that you do.

Author photo: Charly Triballeau/Getty Images

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Hideo Kojimas The Creative Gene is a heartfelt tribute to pop culture - The A.V. Club

Written by Alon Carmel, CEO of Aniview

During the 2020 election campaign, Donald Trump held a rally in Tulsa, Okla. Millions of people attempted to get tickets for the event, according to the then-presidents staff. Once the rally actually took place, coverage of the event showed crowds much smaller than anticipated.

That was largely thanks to Gen Zers taking to TikTok to urge people to buy tickets to the rally and not show up, effectively coordinating a digitally powered sabotage of the event.

This generation of TikTokers is changing the impact of social media, and older generations have a lot to learn as they court the new clientele. Brand loyalty used to be enough to carry a company to success. Younger consumers want relationships with these brandsthey care about the organization and want its core values to line up with their own. Advertisers are now re-learning how to engage with younger generations using memes, real people, and transparency.

Its no surprise that a global app can have such a far reach. What stands out in the case of TikTok is how these viral videos are creating a massive generational cultural shift. In previous decades these shifts were more subtle, with shows such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air influencing changes in attitude, dress, and behavior in the nineties, decidedly different from the eighties. Baggy jeans, for example, became a staple of nineties youth. And then in the early 2000s Mischa Barton became a fashion icon for her role in The O.C. and soon every girl was wearing low rise, flared jeans.

Still, though, the shift wasnt as clearly defined as is the one between millennials and Generation Z. There werent generational wars between baby boomers and Generation X, nor snarky comments beyond lyrics about bad parenting in Blink 182 songsthough even that band was more so a staple of early millennial culture.

Then, came the OK, boomer generation, and its pesky TikTok.

Rather than hinting at a cultural shift, Gen Z decided to publicly declare skinny jeans and side parts a thing of the past in a video publicly shaming millennials for being outdated. The new generation's influence is felt in the physical space too. When one goes into clothing stores its nearly impossible to find womens jeans in anything except mom fit, wide leg, or some other baggy high-waisted option. Every time a new generation comes of age, the media loves to point out what makes them unique. Millennials were called lazy and indecisiveespecially when it came to workwhile boomers are known as technologically inept and Gen X are considered cynical. Instead of attacking the media in return, Gen Z is owning its title, and doing so proudly.

Now brands are having to re-learn how to engage with these younger generations. TikTok may be the newest kid on the block, but with more than 100 million active users in the U.S. alone and more than six billion downloads from the IOS App Store and Google Play, it is making quite the splash in the advertising and marketing industries.

Marketing managers are seeing the sway this app has and using hashtags to promote their brands. For the first time, TikTok even came out with a Brands that Inspire Us list to showcase those who took full advantage of the Gen Z-centric app.

The rise of influencer marketing has also taken on a new meaning. No longer are companies only looking to movie stars and artists to promote their brand. As TikTok continues to climb the charts, so does the sway of the girl or boy next door that became a social media sensation seemingly overnight.

While this doesnt mean that actors and musicians are obsolete, rising stars like Khaby Lane, James Charles and Addison Rae are a new kind of celebrity. These young adults didnt rise to fame in movies and television, instead they make content that people enjoy to watch or peruse. Influencers are different because most of them are considered normal people and viewers feel a connection to their struggles and identity.

These new brand ambassadors'' are also pickythey wont just align themselves with any company. They want to make sure the brand they support has the same values and ideologies that they do. Millennials and Gen Zers are comfortable crossreferencing and collecting information from multiple sources and mediums. They are also more aware of the brands they are jumping into bed with.

Nine out of 10 Gen Zers believe companies have a responsibility to address social and environmental issues. New algorithms, applications, and startups are popping up that center around the influencer marketing sphere and finding the perfect influencer for a brand.

As brands and organizations continue to familiarize themselves with the younger generationsGen Z alone makes up 40 percent of the consumer populationthey need to be aware of their reputation. Brand awareness makes a difference, and having the right influencer promoting clothes, food, a service or another product can make or break the company. For example, a YouTuber may have millions of followers and views, but if they represent the wrong image the brand will suffer. Cancel culture is real, and its here.

Many brands focus their efforts on marketing. They try to convince consumers that they are in fact going green or pro-LGBTQ rights, when in actuality theyre more concerned with trying to look good in the eye of the consumer than they are actually practicing what they preach. These new-aged consumers know how to do their research and know when someone is virtue signaling.

However, the right influencer can allow brands to focus less on their marketing and more on actually doing good, which seems to be at the core of the Gen Z soul. Having someone with cerebral palsy, a member of LGBTQ+ community, and a person of color are great starts to campaigns but are also considered a bit buzzwordy now. Everyone is trying to be inclusive, but its important to remember that if your brand does not practice what it preaches, the world will know with just a click of a button.

Instead of being left behind, advertisers and brands alike need to learn how to adapt to the new age consumer. Everything is readily available online, whether its news, videos, or shopping. By figuring out how to target the digital nativesthrough social media or printthese brands will continue to boom and progress into the digital age.

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TikTok memetics: Gen Z is reshaping the world, and fast - Geektime

meme, unit of cultural information spread by imitation. The term meme (from the Greek mimema, meaning imitated) was introduced in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his work The Selfish Gene.

Dawkins conceived of memes as the cultural parallel to biological genes and considered them, in a manner similar to selfish genes, as being in control of their own reproduction and thus serving their own ends. Understood in those terms, memes carry information, are replicated, and are transmitted from one person to another, and they have the ability to evolve, mutating at random and undergoing natural selection, with or without impacts on human fitness (reproduction and survival). The concept of the meme, however, remains largely theoretical. It is also controversial, given the notion of selfishness and the application of the concept to the evolution of cultures, which formed the basis for the field of memetics.

Within a culture, memes can take a variety of forms, such as an idea, a skill, a behaviour, a phrase, or a particular fashion. The replication and transmission of a meme occurs when one person copies a unit of cultural information comprising a meme from another person. The process of transmission is carried out primarily by means of verbal, visual, or electronic communication, ranging from books and conversation to television, e-mail, or the Internet. Those memes that are most successful in being copied and transmitted become the most prevalent within a culture.

The exploration of relationships between cultural evolution, cultural transmission, and imitation has led to intriguing theories about memes. For example, various ideas have emerged about the nature of memes, such as whether they are beneficial, neutral, or harmful. Memes may be interpreted as being inherently harmful, since, according to some scholars, memes are parasites or viruses of the mind; once assimilated into the human mind, their chief purpose becomes their own replication, with humans having little or no control over them. Some memes, however, are benign or beneficial but can become dangerous because, after they have been seeded in the human mind, they lend themselves to being misused or abused. For example, although memes associated with religious or political ideas may benefit the people who carry them, those same memes, when imposed on people whose religious or political memes are different, may cause harm, such as through the loss of religious traditions or social or political stability. Memes associated with religious or political ideas may also be abused, as in the case of religious cults or extremist groups, which can result in the death of individuals. Beneficial memes, on the other hand, could include those that promote human health and survival, such as memes associated with hygiene.

In the early 21st century, Internet memes, or memes that emerge within the culture of the Internet, gained popularity, bringing renewed interest to the meme concept. Internet memes spread from person to person through imitation, typically by e-mail, social media, and various types of Web sites. They often take the form of pictures, videos, or other media containing cultural information that, rather than mutating randomly, have been deliberately altered by individuals. Their deliberate alteration, however, violates Dawkinss original conception of memes, and, for that reason, despite their fundamental similarity to other types of memes, Internet memes are considered by Dawkins and certain other scholars to be a different representation of the meme concept.

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meme | Definition, Meaning, History, & Facts | Britannica

Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation. For most of the farmers, knowing the customer also includes mindfulness of socio-economic class and income levels. Defining mindfulness as the ability to challenge stereotypes, they advance the idea that training in mindful thinking will reduce ageism. This commentary challenges the explanatory adequacy of cognitive nativism, suggesting that memetics has as much claim to utility and "mindfulness" as innate mental modules do. On the other hand, the tide of globalization threatens the good old practices of familialism and communitarianism and the scope for mindfulness to other persons. Mindfulness of strong cultural currents that give preference to youth over age is key to a critical social gerontology. The sense of trust, goodwill, connection or familialism and mindfulness are all about the traditional type of social capital. This is frequently addressed though fostering of mindfulness. A candidate for the strategy of creation is a virtue we might call mindfulness. In mindfulness training a person learns to be an observer of the flow of impulses, emotions, and events, without allowing them to compel actions that are not reflectively endorsed. For skills related to positive affect, patients learn to increase current pleasant events, work toward long-term goals involving positive affect, and apply mindfulness techniques to positive affect. And what does this mindfulness entail? Instead of breathing a collective sigh of relief and closing the books on the breach, it displayed collective mindfulness and recognized areas of its total performance that needed reform. Similarly, 'mindfulness' in question 44 is contrasted to the concept of 'competitiveness' under globalization. They suggest that mindfulness describes the condition in which one is attentive to what is occurring, and the consequences of actions, therefore providing a basis for more informed, self-endorsed actions.

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

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MINDFULNESS | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary

BTC is up 245% and Ethereum is up 730% over a one-year period. Of course, both are now down a lot over the last month. But the price on its own tells us very little information.

The efficient market hypothesis would have us believe that information advantages, like knowing what a blockchain is, or thinking that a network with no transactions is worth less than a network with transactions, get absorbed into markets through arbitrage opportunities. If you have an information edge, no matter how fundamental or obvious or small, you act on that edge and get rewarded through profits over some time period. Therefore, incentives force rational actors to rationalize irrational markets.

Lex Sokolin, a CoinDesk columnist, is Global Fintech co-head at ConsenSys, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based blockchain software company. The following is adapted from hisFintech Blueprintnewsletter.

But lets not forget that social media and memetics exist, in part, to make machines out of our lizard brains and network them into the limbic system of the internet of attention.

The price, then, is not just a cold calculation of truth revealed. Rather, the price is a signal to be politicized, warred over and worshipped. If you can more easily move the sacred number with your heart than with your mind, which would you choose? No need to do math homework. Just join the bannered tribe of the Bitcoin maximalists, Link Marines, XRP Army, Doge army or some other multi-agent Twitter centaur, and tear into anything and everything that stands counter to your narrative.

The fact that people dote on price, and do nothing but talk about it as a flag is not new. But perhaps the amount of purchasing that is done based on that flag-waving alone is novel with leading cryptocurrencies. Financial rallying cries are now the norm to teach enemies their lesson in financial ruin.

Correlations are another data point here. Coin Metrics has a fantastic tool for plotting crypto asset correlations here. We can see correlations across projects starting to converge to the 0.6 to 0.8 range. Assets with very different stories, such as bitcoin, ethereum, Uniswap, Aave, Binance and Yearn are collapsing any difference in performance toward higher and higher correlation.

Perhaps that signals a lack of discrimination from institutional actors when they take an asset allocation approach. This would imply putting money into a sector, rather than into a project. Thus you would put 10% of your hedge fund into crypto, rather than into particular assets. Then, when there is a need to deleverage or rotate into a different position, you would reduce a portion of your overall allocation, and thereby impact all the sub-component parts. But its a bit hard to believe. Being pioneers among their peers, the crypto funds playing in the space are immensely sensitive to risk and market structure.

Bitcoins status as a store of value has retail actors selling off well-performing but non-core assets to park whatever remains into bitcoin. As the market overall has become bearish, selling off winners to pay off collateral calls or to turn off risk starts making sense. This seems more likely, and also sucks.

Bitcoins fundamentals

If you want to be rigorous in thinking about crypto networks, what are the metrics to actually track?

Bitcoin and ethereum come with very different stories, and thus what to track is quite different. Bitcoin is digitally scarce, and therefore can be viewed as hard and sound money. The hardness refers to how difficult it is to create additional units of the currency. It is backed by its mathematical truth with supply limited as pre-ordained by code. While the Chinese authorities may attempt to stomp out bitcoin mining like a weed, it does little to change the networks ability to secure transactions and generate a store of wealth for people who want to do so away from their governments.

In this way, Bitcoin is a political tool aimed at sovereigns, meant to strip away their monopolies on wealth. To the extent that a country cannot collect taxes, control its economy through monetary policy and otherwise rule its people economically, that country is not sovereign in the medieval sense. When a decentralized internet nation comes with its own decentralized internet currency, and promises of freedom and happiness, citizens of a country have an easily accessible alternative to the hegemon. We may soon find a better social contract with a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) than with a corporation or a nation. Thus the sovereign will use force to enforce the social contract it finds existential.

Bitcoiners, however, believe market forces to be inexorable, assuming infinite demand. For example, the Bitcoin Stock to Flow pricing model takes the schedule of BTC emissions with its halving events and overlaps it nicely on a logarithmic scale with the BTC price. Thus, the harder it is to generate the next bitcoin, the higher the price of bitcoin will be.

But maybe this is also just two exponential charts overlaid on top of each other? Like, you take one number and divide it by two and then you take another number and you multiply it by two, and then you mess around with the vertical axis until your time period matches.

Another bit of the puzzle, when you know what supply looks like, is to try to project demand. There are various analytics about which types of accounts are selling (e.g., large of small), institutional inflows and outflows, and other leading indicators to transaction count. This is an attempt to quantify how people feel about the future, and all sorts of alchemy exists in looking at social sentiment.

In our opinion, still some of the best charts for understanding the current valuation of bitcoin have been developed by Willy Woo and are available here. The NVT (network value to transactions) cap, which is based on historic money flows relative to network value, suggests bitcoin should be worth over $1 trillion. The value of all coins at the price of their last transaction is $370 billion. The market is floating somewhere in the middle.

Note, however, that the main variables in all these models are how bitcoin relates to its own value. It is valuable to the extent people paid for it the store of value and at what rate they are performing such activity. And frankly, we cant tell apart correlation and causation, because by design much of finance is recursive, reflexive and self-similar.

Web 3.0

It is a breath of fresh air to switch from talking about existential geopolitics and who gets to be the money god a monarch, a president or a computer program to talking about creative computation.

Once you layer in programmability into blockchains, you are no longer constrained into talking about money. Yes, money is lovely. But it is also a mere derivative of actual things that actual people do. Money does not exist without some work that has gone into the tangible world, and then became abstracted into something else.

To us, it is that work that is important. While upgrading the transformation function that saves abstractions to be more modern and free is a gigantic opportunity, cant we have a digitally native economy first instead of worshipping a golden calf?

Paying for your sandwich in BTC or Apple stock is not a digitally native economy. Building software that runs on Ethereum, or another bridged computational blockchain, definitely is.

Having open-source, mutualized financial engines that provide the best financial functionality in the world is a worthwhile goal. Fixing the original sin of the internet by rewiring human creativity out of attention-eating advertising monsters and into economic exchange seems like a pretty good goal too. Designing, congealing and governing an emerging metaverse to make the cyber expanse feel grounded and worth inhabiting may be the largest goal of all.

To that end, we find it much easier to root in Ethereums fundamentals because it welcomes non-canon extensions, whether they are scalability networks like Polygon, Optimism or Arbitrum, or whether they are the myriad decentralized applications extending the financial uses of ETH through trading, lending, investing, insurance, structuring and asset management.

The more others build, and the easier it is for them to build and therefore generate economic exchange and transactions, the better off everyone becomes. This is like watching the number of applications grow in Apples iOS or the number of merchants connected to Alibaba go through the roof.

To believe in the future of the crypto economy, you dont have to believe in stories about sovereigns, digital or flesh. Rather, you have to believe in stories about the benefits of non-coercive peer-to-peer economic exchange. To that end, instead of swapping out old governments for the internet, the thesis is that you are swapping out the old economy for the internet. This then is our favorite chart, showing how Ethereums 1-plus million in daily transactions is now combined with another 7 million daily transactions from Polygon.

Or maybe this one, showing 135 million contract calls in May the song of software running code.

As the crypto markets continue to display both (1) pronounced volatility and (2) increased correlation between different asset types, its important to articulate the main difference between the motivating purpose of Bitcoin and Ethereum. We do not think crypto prices are telling a useful or clear story, so it is worth considering the fundamentals of what one is betting on to become true.

Bitcoin and Ethereum/Web3 are aiming for quite different goals and will take very different paths to get there. Perhaps during some beautiful singularity, they will converge. The Twitter universe will yell at you until you comply to its price narrative, so be vigilant and pay attention to core principles. A lot is at stake.

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Why Ethereum's Price Is Built on Firmer Ground Than Bitcoin - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

Neither the author, Tim Fries, nor this website, The Tokenist, provide financial advice. Please consult ourwebsite policyprior to making financial decisions.

It has now become a routine for billionaires to disrupt the crypto space, after having been warmly embraced by millions. Elon Musk uses the platform of his fellow billionaire Jack Dorsey to spread Bitcoin FUD. Both can profit massively by buying Bitcoin at a discount.

Last year, we witnessed a historic transfer of wealth from the working to the billionaire class. If not rapid acceleration, it is a continuation of the widening wealth gap increase for the last two decades. As of Q1 2021, out of $129.46 trillion percolating in the US economy, $41.52 trillion belongs to the top 1%.

For contrast, that chunk of the pie is larger than the total US wealth in Q4 1999, at $41.04 trillion. Consequently, whales in the financial world are not only becoming more prevalent, but there seems to be a wipout of borders between the corporate and the governmental. One doesnt have to look further than BlackRock, the worlds largest asset manager holding $9 trillion AuM. The corporate revolving door to the highest political offices has never spun faster:

The current chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell,himself statedthat he has been in frequent consultations with BlackRocks CEO Larry Fink. Long before the word crypto became a staple of the public discourse, the stock market feared the wake of such whales. Either institutions or individuals, whales hold a sufficient amount of assets to shift their market price.

Not only can they place a buy wall so that bidders are forced to raise the price of their bids, but they can often take advantage of surrogates in the financial media, or even own the media outright as is the case with Amazons Washington Post. As this hyper-centralization of the economy blurs the corporate-government border, Bitcoin emerged as an alternative, decentralizing counter.

Relative to the global market capitalization of over $100 trillion, crypto space still constitutes a fraction of the pie. This creates a lopsided environment in which funds from one space can flood the other with effectively infinite cash. Consequently, crypto whales have a massive power over the market.

Although they tend to use private OTC (over-the-counter) exchanges to not ripple the ocean and scare the smaller fish, some crypto whales have become particularly problematic through other means. While Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy haspositively influencedthe market with his investments and intellectually substantial public discourse, Elon Musk tends to have a chaotic effect, basing his output on hollow memetics about dubious DOGE coins.

In particular, on May 19th, Elon Musk was the key co-contributor to the historic crypto crash, combo-ing the blow alongside the China crackdown narrative thatconspicuously popped upsimultaneously.

The withdrawal of BTC from Teslas payments wasless importantthan the reason Musk gave for it. He effectively framed Bitcoin as not eco-friendly enough, despite the facts saying otherwise.

In turn, this eroded the legitimacy of the dominant crypto by directly positioning it against the prevailing climate change narrative. As the king of subsidies tapping into the government-corporate pool since the days of PayPal, one can only speculate on his motivation. The fact remains, Musk established himself as the crypto disrupter, thanks to his 57 million followers, which constitutes a greater mediatic force than the respective population of his homeland, South Africa.

Musk influence on crypto space has now gained a life of its own. As cemented crypto influencer, other whales and mini-whales observe Musks tweets and anticipate how people would react based on them. Consequently, Musk greeted us with another mini-crash yesterday, dropping BTC under $31k again, unraveling its steady recovery from the China miners exodus.

Because Bitcoin acts as the anchor for the entire crypto space with the largest market cap, it plunged DeFi as well, with Ethereum as its leading representative.

This is quite telling because Ethereums upcoming gas fee restructuring, in addition to its scalability and consensus upgrade, is poised to create massive upward price pressure. You can read more about its details in thisexcellent threadby Evan Van Ness, the editor of This Week in Ethereum.

Although Musks Twitter escapades are eroding his reputation as well, with an increasingly negative-to-positive sentiment ratio on his timeline, there is little anyone can do to change the course of this corrosive dynamic. Elon Musk is deeply embedded in governmental dealings, and the SECs mission to protect investors is unlikely to extend into the grey zone of vague proclamations and allusions from the crypto pope.

By the same token, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, is also the owner of Square, which had reported $3.51 billion in Bitcoin Q1 2021 revenue via its Cash App. Interestingly, Dorsey stated this week in an interview with Business Insider that Bitcoin is more important to him than both Twitter and Square.

Bitcoin changes absolutely everything, and what Im drawn to the most about it is the ethos what it represents, how conditions that created it are so rare and so special and so precious. And I dont think theres anything more important in my lifetime to work on,

Unfortunately, the interviewer failed to probe him on the pervasive Bitcoin FUD spreader on his platform. However, both will meet at a Bitcoin event called The B Word scheduled to take place on July 21. If the conference is to be open for Q&A, perhaps some new insight could be gleaned.

One thing appears to be certain though. Elon Musk doesnt care that he scares off thousands of unseasoned Bitcoin investors and wipes out their wealth. Fortunately, as millions of people have granted him his lofty influencer position, he seems to be adamant to devalue it. The question is, how long will it take.

One email every Friday, everything that matters in the new era of finance.

Youre well on your wayto being in the know.

Do you think Iron Man movies were the first stepping stone in creating Musks public persona and elevating him to his current status? Let us know in the comments below.

About the author

Tim Fries is the cofounder of The Tokenist. He has a B. Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Tim served as a Senior Associate on the investment team at RW Baird's US Private Equity division, and is also the co-founder of Protective Technologies Capital, an investment firms specializing in sensing, protection and control solutions.

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Are Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey Working in Tandem to Spread BTC FUD? - The Tokenist

While the entire world has been focused on the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, two other much older viruses have been lurking in the shadows for quite some time. Since these two viruses are non-biological in nature, they are vaccine-proof. One of them is marketplace-based, the other, mind-based. While the origin of the coronavirus may or may not be traced back to Wuhan in China, the two older viruses originated in the US. Silicon Valley has had a huge role to play in propagating and prolonging these two viruses.

The three seemingly disparate viruses are actually linked in major ways when viewed from the twin perspectives of cultural anthropology and economics.

The marketplace-based virus has to do with conspicuous consumption, a term coined by American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class. Conspicuous consumption is a catch-all phrase that best describes the practice of acquiring goods of quality and quantity far in excess of ones needs an acquisition process facilitated these days by e-commerce giants such as Amazon. While conspicuous consumption is typically associated with affluent countries in the West, it is catching on fast in India, much to the delight of delusional politicians and IT companies. I find this quite curious since India does not meet the definition of an affluent society, viz., a production-oriented society where the basic needs food, clothing, and shelter - of its citizenry have been met.

The mind-based virus is centred on meme, a term coined by Richard Dawkins, British evolutionary biologist and author of the 1976 best seller, The Selfish Gene. Memes are units of information that propagate in the meme-pool (akin to the gene pool) by leaping from brain to brain. Memetics is the study of information and culture based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution. Despite being dismissed as a pseudo-science by academicians, memetics does explain quite well the prevalence of all kinds of disinformation on the internet pertaining to the coronavirus and potential cures including vaccines. The frequent pronouncements of Donald Trump in this regard come to mind. Memes, be they visual, auditory or text-based, replicate through imitation a monkey-see, monkey-do approach to life that does not involve any thinking, much less any understanding of the real damage that can be done to society. The philosophy underlying the three wise monkeys see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil -- has largely been lost.

Note that the mind-based virus is closely linked to the conspicuous consumption virus. For example, a huge number of products (home, office, news, etc.) have been successfully promoted on the Web through memes created by influencers, be they individuals or companies. The veracity of these memes has rarely been challenged.

Over the last 10 months, there has been an enormous increase in online shopping, principally through Amazon, owing to people being confined to their living quarters because of the coronavirus. During this period, the net worth of Amazons founder, Jeff Bezos, has increased by $24 billion to $138 billion. The enormity or obscenity of these two figures takes on a whole new meaning when viewed in terms of the GDP rankings of the 195 countries and territories that make up the world. Bezos net worth is greater than the GDP of any of the bottom 135 countries while his profits during the pandemic are greater than the GDP of any of the bottom 60 countries.

To add insult to injury, both Amazon and Bezos will see their fortunes increase even more in the years to come, thanks to coronavirus vaccines about to enter the world market. Amazon recently announced it was getting into the drug delivery business and has gone on a hiring spree to recruit delivery workers in the US, India and elsewhere. Given its global reach, Amazon is better positioned than any other organisation, public or private, to ensure Covid-19 vaccines are delivered to various countries in preferential order. For a price, of course.

Apple became the first trillion-dollar company two years ago. Jeff Bezos is on his way to becoming the first trillionaire, I think.

Will Amazons delivery workers see a similar increase in their fortunes? Given that they are non-unionised contract employees with no guarantee of continuous employment or health insurance or retirement benefits, I doubt it.

The three pandemics have catastrophically widened the inequality divide worldwide. Solutions, anyone?

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The pandemic dividend: The other two viruses we dont think about - Deccan Herald

by Maria Medina and Abigail Sterling

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) Experts say contact tracing is going to play a critical role in fighting the coronavirus. Its been practiced for decades, used to fight SARS, Ebola and AIDS, but never on as big a scale.

Technology is sure to play an ever-growing role in contact tracing. But for COVID-19, its starting off the old fashioned way, person to person and boots on the ground.

When the pandemic made Robin Fletchers sales job grind to a halt, she jumped at an opportunity to use her people skills for something more meaningful.

We really need to think about on a deeper level what I am capable to do, its going to call us to adapt, said Fletcher. A friend mentioned contact tracing, I had never heard of it, even though its been around for a bit.

Contact tracing starts with basic detective work. The average person who has the coronavirus transmits it to two or three other people, who each then potentially could transmit it to three others.

So one contact leads to another, and everyone along the way has to be notified, isolated, and treated, if necessary, to try to contain the viruss spread.

Fletchers first step: a free, five-hour online course offered through Johns Hopkins University where she learned the types of questions to ask, skills for effective communication, and how to balance public good with privacy.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at least 100,000 contact tracers will be needed to combat the coronavirus. But they are just one piece of a complex process.

Our team is very multi-disciplinary, said Dr. Darpun Sachdev, lead physician for contact tracing at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. We have case investigators who are the first line of calling people after they get a new diagnosis with COVID. We also then are working very closely with clinical leads and with a team of social workers to help us to identify resources for people who need to isolate and quarantine.

San Francisco is working with the University of California, San Francisco on the project, using a customized data-gathering program. Thats just a way of really making sure that once weve interviewed someone, that all the different touchpoints can be notified at the same time, said Satchdev. So our goal is really to ensure that people get tested on that day that were notifying them or the next day.

In San Francisco for now, contact tracing involves just health department staff, with some new help from furloughed employees in other city departments.

But outsourcing will soon become necessary. Third-party companies are already poised to provide the service, like Applied Memetics, an IT sourcing company for businesses that are now targeting the contact tracing market.

Most health authorities are already doing some form of contact tracing. Theyre using their existing staff to pull lab results for infected patients. But theyve all reached capacity, said Erin Thames of Applied Memetics. What theyre looking for is not only those contact tracer roles but coordinator, investigator and navigator roles, so they can manage those tracer teams, really just taking that burden away from the already overloaded public health system.

Thames says her company is already getting requests for help from health departments across the country.

Fletcher has already applied. She hopes her sales experience will help her get a job. Youve got to have some courage, to put it politely, to pick up the phone and call someone and establish immediate rapport and do it well, said Fletcher. There is an aspect of educating, there is an aspect of social work, theres an aspect of just being a good listener. There are a lot of skills that people I think can really bring to this.

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Army Of Contact-Tracing Workers Being Recruited To Help Combat Coronavirus Pandemic - CBS San Francisco

With reports riddling headlinesof "fake news"in the media, questions have arisen as to whether this is simply poor journalism, or if there is a concerted effort by some journalists to co-operate with state-sponsored Information Operations (InfoOps). Is this a "liberal" problem, or could disinformation be found in "conservative" outlets, too? Should citizens trust the news presented to them? What if it comes from a source such as the Vatican?

Pope Francis met with members of the Vatican Dicastery for Communications, cautioning them to take initiative "unmasking"news that was "false and destructive"ahead of the recent controversial Pan-Amazon Synod. Speaking to the members of the Vatican and Italian pressSept.23, the pope advisedthat "the task of a journalist is to identify credible sources... put them in context, interpret them and give things their due importance."

The Pope's comments have come, however, after a tumultuous year for the Vatican press, including a scandal now known as "lettergate." MonsignorDario Vigan, then prefect of the Secretariat for Communications (and now newly appointedvice chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences) was forced to resign after doctoring photos and omitting paragraphs of a letter sent by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

Recently, Pope Francis receiveda copy of a book during an in-flight press conference, written by a member of the press, claiming certain Catholic media outlets and their financiers are promoting disinformation about him from the United States. The pope lauded the book, stating, "For me it's an honor that Americans attack me,"and that the book was a "bombshell."

The presentation, its timing and the pope's statement drew heavy criticism, especially in the United States: Was this a concerted attempt by the Vatican at propaganda operations?

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions. People hurt faster than institutions.

Within the weeks that followed, certain individuals went to social media and published within their media outletscertain questionable rhetoric.

It was questionable, as they repeated keywords and themes that when observed in context with one another displayed a clear attempt at spreading disinformation. Concerning, as more than a few are directly connectedto the Vatican Dicastery for Communications.

These events renewed questions as to whether some in the media including Catholic media are engaging in propaganda, or spreading disinformation. How is a reader to decipher if a journalist or media outlet is doing so?

I sat down with Daniel P. Gabriel, a former CIA Officer and subject matter expert on Information Operations (IO). Aside from his service in the Central Intelligence Agency, Gabriel has served as a senior strategic communications advisor and strategist to U.S. policymakers, civilian/military officials, international media organizations and foreign governments. He is also founder and CEO of Applied Memetics.

Gabriel shared with me how IO is active in the press, identifying factors and a standard of ethics readers should expect from journalists reporting the news.

Bree Dail: Mr. Gabriel, can you provide a synopsis of your expertise in the area of IO and journalism?

Daniel Gabriel: I graduated from George Washington University with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and a minor in political communications.When I joined the CIA as a staff operations officer in 2003, my focus was the "war of ideas" specifically understanding how violent Islamic extremism posesa threat to the West.This job required me to apply everything I understood and had learned about strategic communications to advance the national security interests of the U.S. Government.I did this by working at Langley and overseas (including Iraq, Afghanistanand southeastAsia) to prevent the spread of this ideology.

BD: What are the basic definitions of IO?

DG: IO is often referred to as PSYOP, propaganda, active measuresor covert influence. The terminology and the methodology tends to depend on the sponsoring organization or government agency. However, it proceeds from a general principle that the intent is to "inform" with the goal of affecting behavior or in some cases preventing behavior.In this sense, it's really as simple as marketing or advertising, where the strategic objective is to change behavior. What's different and in some cases can seem sinister is when the hand of the sponsoring agent is concealed. In government circles, this spectrumis defined between "white" propaganda (attributed), to "black" propaganda (non-attributed, or, in some cases attributedto a third party actor (aka "false flag").

BD: Based on your expertise in the agency (and in the private sector), what should readers know about IO?

DG: The methodology can be easy to spot, but the funding is critical to understanding the ultimate motivations of those engaged in IO.This is why so much attention is spent on identifying the nefarious and global activities of organizations like those sponsored by George Soros. In other words, follow the money.

BD: Why might a journalist spread disinformation or propaganda?

DG: In recent times, it has become fashionable for journalists to become advocates. The editorial line has disappeared from newspapers and broadcasts, and the Western public simply isn't sufficiently well-educated to be able to discern between opinion and reporting. It's all the same thing. In modern journalism, it is common for journalists to wear their stripes on their sleeves. Look no further than the Twitter accounts of most national political journalists to understand where they are coming from. Look for common language use among similar outlets, common narratives or the use of anonymous, uncorroborated sourcing. Readers should expect journalists to prove their story to them, with factual data. Refuse to be told how and what to think by a journalist.

BD: What might indicate a journalist is an "agent provocateur"or a propagandist, and how might a journalist or outlet avoid being targeted for disinformation or propaganda operations?

DG: Be suspicious of the bylines that always seem to have the best access, especially "inside"access. Journalists have to work hard to obtain or maintain that level of access.Nothing is free in this world.

Be suspicious if journalists rely on anonymous sourcing. You're essentially taking their word for it, and sources are easily compromised no matter how "trusted."

There are groups of so-called media personalities that are there to engage, entertain and "troll,"but these are hardly journalists. They are "agent provocateurs."They don't care about the truth, they care about a narrative. You can find them on the political right and the left. They will take a truthand spin a lie from it often to discredit the personal reputation of another.

Journalists, on the other hand, would be well-advised to stick to the principles of journalistic best practices, as taught in media programs and J-schools dating back to modern American political history. These practices include identifying sources, corroborating the information provided by sources, presenting both sides of an argument and letting the reader draw their own conclusion.

BD: There have been recent cases in the mediawhere a certain journalist or outlet has published breaking news based on anonymous sourcing and no corroboration. Later, these stories were discredited by other outlets. Was this disinformation operations or just poor journalism?

DG: To me there are some broad takeaways in this scenario. First, I don't think any true journalist any even semi-professional journalist would put out something they know is false and can be disproven. However, if a journalist is misinformed to the extent that the story they are providing is inaccurate? Well, I think shame on them. They deserve to be discredited. Why would anyone want to be in such a position? It's embarrassing.Was no due diligence done? Why would an editor print a story without corroboration?

If a journalist's report is untrue, and proven so, he or she loses credibility and so does their outlet. As a journalist, you are there to inform, to educate and to influence.

As I said, journalists and "agent provocateurs"are two very different categories, and I believe it is impossible to be both, because as a journalist you are concerned about your credibility. You are going to check your sources, you are going to corroborate with factual evidence.

However, if this outlet in question and I suspect this might be the case is on the other side of the spectrum with the willingness to print outrageous or outlandish things to draw in readership or "clicks,"then you've moved away from journalism. You've become an "agent provocateur."In other words, you're "fake news."

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Controlling the Narrative? - Church Militant