Zeros

Summer Is Here Whether You're Ready or Not Camping, hiking, woodland horror, and the gentle obligation of someone else's happiness The news does not deserve summer . It has been relentless, exhausting, and frankly offensive. Concerts are being canceled. Plans evaporate. The general vibe of the world in 2026 is that you should lower your expectations and keep your receipt . But summer doesn't care about any of that. The fireflies still light up. The days are still long. The woods are still there, waiting — which brings us to the good news and the gently ominous news, depending on your plans! If you are the outdoors type, this season, camping and hiking are having a quiet renaissance among people who want to feel something that isn't a push notification . It's called: touch_grass . You don't have to go far. A state park within driving distance, a trail you've been meaning to try since 2019, a hammock strung between two trees with a pape...

The Wrench Problem:  When Digital Violence Looks Like the Drug Trade The disappearance of Nancy Guthrie — 84-year-old mother of NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie , reported missing from her Tucson -area home in early February — has pulled an uncomfortable term into mainstream news coverage. Former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer floated the theory publicly: investigators may be dealing with a wrench attack , a growing form of violent crime in which victims are physically coerced into surrendering access to their digital currency holdings . [ The Sunday Guardian ] Whether or not that theory holds in this specific case, the term itself deserves scrutiny from anyone who holds digital assets and has ever posted about it anywhere. The name comes from a thought experiment. Wrench attacks are named after a hypothetical scenario in which an assailant uses a wrench to force someone to reveal their private keys. [ Newsweek ] The irony embedded in that origin story has never quite ...

There was a time when street art meant a stenciled rat on a brick wall or a mysterious little girl holding an umbrella. Simple. Elegant. Easy for city councils to pretend they hated it before installing security cameras around it, as if it were the Crown Jewels . But now Banksy appears to have entered his Found Footage era, and honestly, it was inevitable. Because apparently regular graffiti is no longer enough. No, now it needs more cowbell : “What if  The Blair Witch Project had a merchandising department?” You’ve probably already seen these new pieces. A grainy childlike silhouette. A figure watching a balloon drift into the background,  that somehow looks exactly like the Morton Salt girl, after surviving three nights in an abandoned asylum . And a smiling cartoon face peeking through the corridors of time and space, like the last frame of a cursed VHS tape somebody found in a drainage tunnel beneath Cleveland . And the art critics get it . “...

Monero, Terror Financing, and the Faucet Question Nobody's Asking If you follow digital currency news at any depth, you've probably caught wind of intelligence reports linking Monero (XMR) to terrorism financing. It sounds alarming on its surface . But when you pull the thread a little, the picture gets more complicated — and honestly, more interesting — than the headlines suggest. Islamic State Khorasan (ISK) has reportedly shifted away from Bitcoin and Tether, and is increasingly soliciting donations in Monero through its flagship magazine,  Voice of Khurasan , drawn to the coin's privacy-focused design, which obscures transaction amounts, senders, and receivers . TRM Labs has also identified Monero fundraising campaigns linked to ISIS affiliates in India and the Philippines . So yes — this is documented, not merely rumor. But here's where it gets curious: is Monero actually working for them? Despite the growing interest, stablecoins remain the ...

Drake Just Silenced Janice — And Made Billboard History If you've been anywhere near a radio this week, you've probably already heard it — that slippery, Auto-Tuned hook sliding through your speakers before you could change the station . Drake's Janice STFU , the lead single from his new album ICEMAN , has officially debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 , and the story behind that chart position is genuinely worth talking about. The debut gives Drake his 14th career Hot 100 number one, officially breaking his previous tie with Michael Jackson for the most chart-toppers among solo male artists in the chart's 67-year history. That's not a small thing. Michael Jackson spent decades as the undisputed king of that particular record , and the timing here couldn't be more interesting — because Jackson himself has been mounting a remarkable comeback on those very same charts. The Michael Jackson biopic Michael has been a massive box office succes...

Stablecoins & Geopolitics:  Tether Goes to Tbilisi The world's largest stablecoin issuer is partnering with the Georgian government to launch GELT — a digital lari token — and the implications for the hobbyist ecosystem are genuinely exciting. If you have been watching Tether quietly expand its footprint beyond its flagship USDT , this week handed you a headline worth bookmarking. Tether, the world's largest stablecoin issuer by circulation, announced plans to launch a government-supported digital token bound to the Georgian lari, officially dubbed GELT . The announcement — posted this past Monday — came with statements of support from Georgia's Prime Minister, the head of the central bank, and a member of parliament. That is a remarkable level of institutional endorsement for a privately issued digital currency token, and the digital asset community has every reason to take notice . Georgia is not just a scenic country tucked between the Bl...

Media & Celebrity:  Hunter Biden's Accidental Week of Self-Sabotage He sat for two of the most unusual interviews in recent memory — with Candace Owens , and then with Soft White Underbelly . He answered questions politely . That's about the most charitable thing anyone can say about how it went. If you've been scrolling YouTube this week and noticed the same face appearing in two very different thumbnails, you're not imagining things. Hunter Biden — son of former president Joe Biden , convicted felon, recovering addict, and now something of a strange media fixture — sat for not one but two lengthy interviews in the same week. One was with Candace Owens, who until recently spent years publicly mocking him . The other was with Soft White Underbelly, a YouTube channel run by a man named Mark Laita , who has built a large and devoted following by interviewing people in difficult circumstances with a style best described as unfiltered . If you're not ...

Ohio's Got a Billfold and a Backstory Ohio just made history, and it did it quietly — the way Ohio does things . On May 22, 2026, Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague announced the Buckeye Billfold initiative , which will enable Ohio residents to make payments to state agencies using a digital wallet, including those made with digital currency . Ohio is now, by its own account, the first state to successfully authorize and promote statewide agency use and acceptance of digital asset payments . Congratulations, Buckeye State. Pull up a chair. We have questions. Let's talk about the mechanics, because this is where it gets interesting — and where a lot of headlines are going to get it wrong . When making a payment, whatever digital currency you use will then be converted to U.S. currency . That's the part that deserves a slow read. Ohio isn't actually holding your Bitcoin , your ETH, or whatever asset you use. The state isn't becoming a digital as...

If you ever needed proof that civilization has peaked, look no further than the tiny volcanic island of Stromboli , where local officials have reportedly decided that Wednesdays are now a complete musical dead zone . That’s right. No singing. No dancing. No public music. On Wednesdays , the island apparently transforms from Mediterranean paradise into the world’s most aggressively enforced dentist waiting room. Honestly, it’s the most shocking attack on rhythm since your uncle tried karaoke after three limoncellos and turned Stayin’ Alive into a hostage negotiation. However, Stromboli is famous for its volcano. ( The mountain literally erupts on schedule more reliably than most classic rock drummers from the 1970s .) So maybe officials thought the island already had enough natural percussion. “Do we really need bongos,” they asked, “when the earth itself is dropping bass?” Still, banning music on Wednesdays feels oddly specific. Why Wednesdays? Did somebody finally snap...

Your Attorney Is Using ChatGPT and Charging You $400 an Hour On lawyers, language models, and what happens when you try to pay your retainer in Polkadot Let's have a frank conversation about your attorney. Not your attorney specifically — perish the thought — but the general category of person who passed one very long multiple-choice exam, hung a sign, and is now billing you $400 an hour to have a chatbot draft your LLC operating agreement. Welcome to the modern American legal system, where the fox is not merely guarding the henhouse ; the fox has subscribed to an AI platform and is monetizing the chickens at a premium rate. The dirty secret of small private practice is that most  non-legacy attorneys are operating without the gilded infrastructure of BigLaw . No paralegal army. No secretary who quietly fixes their grammar. No $800-a-month legal research database keeping them current on case law . Westlaw and LexisNexis charge fees that would make a h...

Walk, Walk —  Lady Gaga and Doechii's   Runway is the summer anthem you'll either love without question or spend the rest of the season interrogating. Possibly both. There is a moment in the music video for Runway — the new Lady Gaga and Doechii collaboration from The Devil Wears Prada 2 soundtrack — where the whole thing tips just slightly past spectacle and into something harder to name . The runway is impossibly long. The looks are architecturally absurd. The strut is impeccable. And you cannot quite tell whether these two women are celebrating fashion's theater or quietly eating it alive. On pure sound, the song delivers everything you want from a summer Billboard entry. The track is booming with in-your-face bass and filled with the exact type of rizz anyone about to hit a runway would want to hear . It opens with the spoken command, "No matter what, you better strut," which is simultaneously an instruction, a dare, and a kind of absurdist pe...

Cedar Falls Says No To Digital Currency Mining The Cedar Falls , Iowa , city council voted unanimously this week to reject proposed zoning ordinance changes that would have allowed digital currency mining facilities in the city's industrial districts. The council followed the recommendation of the city's Planning and Zoning Commission, sending the proposal back without approval. The vote was decisive , but the conversation around digital asset mining in Cedar Falls appears to be far from over. The proposal was connected to discussions about a potential facility from a company called Simple Mining . Adam Haynes, founder and CEO of Simple Mining, addressed the council and argued that the proposed facility would bring jobs and additional property tax revenue to the city . That's a familiar pitch in the digital asset mining space — operations of this scale do employ workers in facility management, electrical maintenance, and security, and they generate taxable infr...

There are certain moments in sports highlights where reality bends so hard it feels like somebody slipped something into the India Pale Ale  22-ounce draft. (In a move that sounds less like NFL strategy and more like a late-night FM radio caller ranting over the outro to White Rabbit ...) The Pittsburgh Steelers have apparently re-signed Aaron Rodgers . Re-signed him . Which implies incorrectly that we all remembered he was here in the first place. Hello, older pop radio listeners; you've been through a lot. You survived disco backlash, the transition from vinyl to CDs, and the horrifying realization that classic rock stations now play Nirvana . But asking America to emotionally process Aaron Rodgers in Pittsburgh is an AI bridge too far. Half the city still talks about Terry Bradshaw like he’s warming up in the parking lot. The other half is trying to remember if Rodgers already played a season here, or if that was just a peyote vision during a weather delay. An...

There's a question quietly circulating near digital currency water coolers that deserves more attention than it's getting: is Bitcoin — by design or by drift — positioning itself to slip through the back door of the American banking system, using underutilized national bank charters as the key? It sounds like a conspiracy theory. It might not be. In just 83 days, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency under Trump -appointed Comptroller Jonathan Gould granted conditional national bank charters to eleven digital asset and fintech firms — including Ripple, Crypto.com, Circle, BitGo, Paxos, and Fidelity Digital Assets. That's a stunning pace, and it raises a reasonable question: what exactly does a national bank charter give a digital assets company that it couldn't already get on its own? The short answer is legitimacy. And access. Bitcoin, as a decentralized asset, has long existed in a regulatory gray zone. It doesn't technically require state-by...

Wednesday night at a Sherman Oaks bistro had all the makings of a classic TV misunderstanding — complete with barking, a steak knife, and an ending that was somehow fine. If you've ever seen the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode where Frank Reynolds and his ex-wife agree to meet their adult children for a civilized dinner in public — knowing full well that the very concept is aspirational at best — you already understand everything that happened Wednesday night at Blue Dog Tavern in Sherman Oaks, California. The setting changes. The energy does not. According to multiple witnesses who spoke to TMZ , Britney Spears arrived at the restaurant with her assistant and bodyguard, settled into a corner booth, and proceeded to have what her representative later described as, "a quiet dinner." Witnesses described something closer to a dinner theater production with no script and no intermission. There was reportedly yelling. According to at least one a...

Back in the Cold War , Americans were told something very specific: if you worked hard, became successful, and accumulated wealth, that was proof the system worked . The villain in the story was the authoritarian state that punished achievement, spied on citizens, and forced people to hide their success out of fear. That was the sales pitch for decades . So when a modern executive connected to digital currency investigations casually suggests wealthy people should conceal their assets for safety reasons, older Americans hear alarm bells. Recently, Danny Nelson of Chainalysis said the quiet part out loud. The message wasn’t subtle: if you have significant wealth tied to digital assets, maybe you should not advertise it . Maybe anonymity is safer. Maybe public visibility is dangerous now. And if you grew up during the Cold War, that sounds less like triumphant free-market confidence and more like advice from a nervous shopkeeper living behind the Iron Curtain . Of course, t...

If you have a YouTube account in 2026, there’s a decent chance you’ve accidentally wandered into a livestream where someone is screaming in a parking lot, reviewing chicken sandwiches like it’s a Senate hearing, or explaining why civilization collapsed because a video game character had purple hair . The algorithm no longer gently guides you. It opens a trapdoor beneath your feet and yells, Good luck . Which brings us to Chud the Builder , the controversial livestreamer now facing attempted murder and other charges after a shooting outside a Tennessee courthouse. Authorities say a physical altercation escalated into gunfire , leaving another man hospitalized and Eatherly himself wounded after apparently accidentally shooting himself during the chaos. Eatherly has claimed self-defense.  And honestly, the whole thing feels like the final boss battle of internet attention culture . For years, online audiences have watched creators escalate themselves into increasingly st...

The CLARITY Act: What It Is, Where It Stands, and What Happens This Week A bill is currently working its way through the United States Senate that, if passed, would fundamentally change how digital assets are regulated in the country . It is called the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, and it has been in various stages of becoming law for nearly a year . This week, it hits one of the most consequential checkpoints yet. The core problem the CLARITY Act aims to address is a longstanding turf war that has been ongoing for years. Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have claimed authority over digital assets, and they have rarely agreed on where one agency's reach ends and the other's begins. The result has been what regulators and industry lawyers both describe as regulation by enforcement — meaning the rules get written after the lawsuit, not before . The CLARITY Act would draw a clear line: the CFTC gets ...