Zeros

Mississippi Weighs the Pros and Cons of a Proposed Bitcoin Mining Facility A proposed Bitcoin mining facility in Starkville , Mississippi , is generating plenty of discussion as local officials, business owners, and residents debate whether the project would be a long-term benefit or an unnecessary burden on the community . Like many digital currency projects across the United States, the proposal has created a clear divide between those focused on economic development and those concerned about environmental and infrastructure costs . According to city officials, the proposed facility would represent roughly a $10 million investment in the community. Supporters argue that the project could generate new tax revenue for the city , Oktibbeha County , and local schools while also creating a large, stable customer for Starkville Utilities . The mining operation is expected to consume approximately 30 megawatts of electricity, which city leaders say falls within the utility ...

Curls, Reconsidered Curls are having a moment again, and the current wave — sorry — owes more to hairdressing history than most trend pieces let on. Before diffusers and curl creams, there was the permanent wave, and before that, the finger wave. Both are worth understanding if you want to know what today's curl revival is actually reviving. The Permanent, Properly Explained A classic perm restructures the hair's internal bonds rather than just shaping it temporarily. Stylists section damp hair around rollers of a chosen diameter, then apply an alkaline lotion — historically ammonium thioglycolate — that softens the hair's protein bonds. After processing under heat or time, a neutralizer resets those bonds around the new curled shape. The roller size determines the curl: small rods produce tight coils, while larger ones create loose waves. Done professionally, it's a chemistry lesson as much as a styling appointment. Finger Waves, the Origi...

Pakistan's latest Islamic ruling against digital currency has added a fascinating new dimension to one of the world's fastest-changing financial debates. While the country's government has been developing a framework for regulating digital assets and promoting innovation , a prominent religious ruling has declared that purchasing goods with digital currencies is not permissible under its interpretation of Islamic law, as digital assets do not qualify as recognized wealth . The decision immediately created tension between religious guidance and economic policy. That tension becomes even more intriguing when viewed alongside its neighbor,  Iran . Although Iran is also an Islamic republic , it has spent years exploring the use of digital currency in international trade and as a way to reduce dependence on traditional financial systems affected by sanctions . Two nations with similar religious foundations are arriving at noticeably different conclusions about t...

What's Actually Being Built at the White House Right Now If you've caught aerial photos of the White House lately, you've noticed the East Wing isn't there anymore. It was torn down in October 2025 to make way for a 90,000-square-foot state ballroom, and the site has been under active construction since September of last year. The National Capital Planning Commission approved the final design in an 8–1 vote this past April. However, the project hasn't escaped legal turbulence : the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued in December to halt construction, and a federal appeals panel heard oral arguments on June 5 without issuing a ruling. Construction has continued throughout. The price tag has grown considerably since the July 2025 announcement. What started as a $200 million estimate is now pegged at roughly $600 million, with more than half reportedly coming from taxpayer funds routed through the Secret Service and the White House Military ...

Kansas Athletics has taken a bold step into the future by announcing a multi-year partnership with Ripple , which will feature the XRP logo on the uniforms of every Jayhawk athletic team. The agreement is believed to be the first time a major college athletics program has featured an XRP jersey patch , making Kansas one of the most closely watched universities in the growing world of digital finance. Beyond the uniforms , the partnership includes financial education, technology programs, and career opportunities for students interested in digital assets and modern payment systems. For students, that may prove to be the most valuable part of the agreement! Many graduates enter the workforce with a limited understanding of blockchain technology, digital currency, or the evolving landscape of global payments. Whether someone eventually works in banking, software development, accounting, cybersecurity, or business management, familiarity with these technologies is becoming ...

Royal Purple Is the Back-to-School Color This Year (And It's Not Playing It Safe) If you've wandered a school supply aisle in the last few weeks, you've probably noticed it: a deep, saturated purple that leans anywhere from bruised-plum to near-indigo , showing up on backpacks, slacks, and, notably, the occasional boy's sneaker without anyone blinking. Fashion editors are calling it royal purple , and it has been staging a comeback since the spring 2026 runways, when Prada , Celine , and Balenciaga all quietly agreed that the color deserved a second act. This isn't the soft lilac or washed lavender that resurfaces every spring like clockwork. This is purple with some weight to it — the kind that reads more like a design decision than a pastel afterthought. What makes this particular shade interesting is its range. It ranges from a dark, almost magenta-leaning pink on one end to a purple so deep it borders on navy on the other. That elasticity is par...

Money Time: The App That Pays You to Watch and Play Its Own Games Somewhere in the great faucet-and-microtransaction economy I've spent an embarrassing number of hours in, there's a special little niche for apps that don't pretend to be anything more than what they are: a vertically integrated ad-delivery machine that cuts you in on a sliver of the take . Enter Money Time , a mobile app I've been messing around with lately that has genuinely made me laugh out loud at its own brashness — in the best way. Here's the pitch, stripped of the marketing gloss : you open the app, you play their in-house games (their games, their ad inventory, their platform — no outsourcing, no middlemen   you'd need a decoder ring to identify ), and every three hours a little timer resets. If you've kept up with the tasks in that window, you walk away with something close to a dollar . Do that consistently, and you're looking at roughly $2 a day, which happens to ...

There are songs that sound like summer, and then there are songs that feel like summer. Tucker Wetmore's Sunburn falls into that second category. From the opening moments, the track creates the atmosphere of warm beaches, ocean breezes, and unforgettable vacation memories. It's the kind of song that makes you want to roll the windows down, turn the volume up, and take the long way home. What makes Sunburn especially interesting is its musical style. While Tucker Wetmore sings with a distinctly country music voice, the production leans into smooth R&B rhythms, shimmering electronic textures, and modern pop influences. The result is a fresh combination that doesn't abandon country music— it expands it. Instead of relying on traditional guitars and fiddles, the song uses a laid-back groove that feels equally at home on country radio and a summertime playlist. That crossover appeal may be exactly what helps Sunburn become one of Wetmore's biggest ...

BONK Holders Voted Themselves More BONK:  That's Not How Money Is Supposed to Work One of the stranger stories in digital currency this week involves the memecoin BONK . According to reports, attackers accumulated enough voting power in the BonkDAO governance system to pass a proposal that transferred roughly $20 million worth of BONK from the project's treasury to wallets they controlled. The incident has reignited debate about whether decentralized governance always produces fair outcomes —or whether it simply rewards whoever owns the most tokens. In the real world, you can't gather a group of shareholders, city council members, or taxpayers and simply vote to give yourselves more money. Laws, regulations, and fiduciary duties exist to prevent exactly that sort of self-dealing . Digital assets often operate under a different set of rules, in which smart contracts automatically execute proposals once they receive sufficient votes. That doesn't necessarily ...

The Red Card Heard Round the White House On Sunday, FIFA did something it had not done at a World Cup since 1962: it rescinded a red card . Folarin Balogun , the American forward who'd been sent off for a foul on Bosnia and Herzegovina's Tarik Muharemović , was staring down a one-game suspension that would've cost the U.S. its best scorer against Belgium . Then the phone rang in Gianni Infantino's office, and the caller ID read President of the United States . Hours later, FIFA's disciplinary committee announced the suspension was, "suspended for a probationary period of one year." Balogun played. Belgium called it an insult. Their coach compared FIFA's timing to April Fools' Day , four months late. Let's be clear about what actually happened, because the mechanism matters more than the outrage . A red card triggers an automatic ban — that's the rule , no discretion involved . What FIFA invoked instead was Article 27 of i...

The latest development in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie has added another strange chapter to an already heartbreaking case. A California man has now pleaded guilty to sending fake ransom communications to Guthrie's family after initially denying any involvement. His last-minute plea agreement closes one legal case , but it leaves behind a much larger mystery—who sent the other ransom messages, and were any of them connected to the actual disappearance? For digital currency hobbyists, one detail stands out immediately: Bitcoin was placed at the center of the story. According to federal prosecutors, Derrick Callella admitted to contacting members of the Guthrie family to inquire about a Bitcoin transfer. Investigators said he already knew that an earlier ransom demand had been made , and used that knowledge to harass the family while trying to learn more about the investigation. Authorities traced the messages back to him, leading to his guilty plea. What makes t...

Ruined. Completely, Irreparably Ruined. Let us observe a moment of silence, gentle reader , for the woman formerly known as pop music's last great mystery. As of Friday night at Madison Square Garden — under Adam Sandler's officiating hand, as though the universe required one final absurdist flourish — Taylor Alison Swift became Mrs. Kelce , and with that single vow, by all reasonable accounts, torched the entire architecture of her existence to the ground! Consider what she has thrown away. The mystique! The mythology! An entire cottage industry of Easter-egg theorists, bracelet-code cryptographers, and Wembley-adjacent conspiracy boards — gone , replaced overnight by the crushing banality of a marriage certificate. She could have kept us guessing forever!  Instead she chose certainty, that most unforgivable of celebrity sins. She had the whole world convinced she was unknowable, and then she went and let everyone watch her do the electric slide at her own rece...

The Billion-Dollar Side Hustle A 927-page disclosure form, one very generous royalty arrangement, and the quiet dread of doing the math . So here's a number to consider: $1.4 billion . That's roughly what landed in Donald Trump's pocket from digital-currency ventures in 2025 alone, according to the annual financial disclosure his own ethics office released this week . For comparison, Joe Biden's final disclosure ran eleven pages. Trump's ran 927. I don't know what to do with that information except to state it repeatedly. The bulk of it traces back to two places. First, the meme token launched three days before his inauguration, spiked to over $74 within a day, and now trades around $1.67 — a fact that should haunt everyone who bought at the top. Trump himself doesn't profit from that price collapse; he profits from royalties on every sale, regardless of whether the buyer wins or loses . That royalty stream alone brought in over $635 million ...

Two Guests Check Out of Level 0: What the Empire State Building Climb Looked Like From the Backrooms A Russian rooftopping couple scaled New York's most famous spire, got engaged, and got arrested — and somewhere behind the wallpaper, a very different broadcast was airing. Somewhere between the yellowed carpet and the buzzing fluorescent hum of Level 0, two figures noclipped straight into the biggest engagement stunt of the summer, and they had no idea the rest of us were watching through the seams in the wallpaper. Around noon Wednesday, Ivan Vanya Beerkus and Angela Nikolau, the Russian rooftopping duo behind Netflix's Skywalkers: A Love Story , free-climbed the antenna atop the Empire State Building — 1,454 feet up, no ropes, no harness, just vibes and, apparently, a ring. They unfurled a black-and-white banner referencing Jimi Hendrix , held the moment for the cameras, and Beerkus got down on one knee. Nikolau said, yes . The NYPD said, several felonies ....

Getting paid in digital currency and gambling with it are becoming more closely linked than many people realize. So , what are your thoughts on it? I'm really interested to hear how you feel about this. Are you comfortable earning part of your income in Bitcoin or another digital asset? Are you willing to risk some of it on a sporting event? Or does that combination make you uneasy? Many people already earn digital currency online without thinking twice. Shortened links are one of the most common examples. Link-shortening services often pay publishers in Bitcoin , Litecoin , Dogecoin , or other digital assets instead of traditional U.S. dollars . Faucets , online rewards programs, and some freelance opportunities do the same. For thousands of people , collecting digital currency has become part of an everyday routine. But here's where it gets interesting. If someone offers to pay you in Bitcoin instead of fiat U.S. dollars, would you take it? Sometimes the paym...

The night sky has always known how to hold two kinds of light at once: the light that shines above us and the light that shines from people who leave a lasting mark on the world . This year, those two lights seemed to meet beautifully. As the Strawberry Full Moon rose in all its quiet brilliance, legendary artist Lauryn Hill accepted a BET honor that reminded audiences why some voices never fade. The Strawberry Moon has never actually been about the color of the moon. Instead, its name comes from the season when strawberries were traditionally gathered , a time of abundance, gratitude, and the beginning of summer's sweetest days. It is a moon that invites reflection. It reminds us that growth is rarely rushed. Every harvest begins with seeds planted long before anyone notices the blossoms. That symbolism feels remarkably fitting for Lauryn Hill. Her career has never followed the easiest path. She arrived like a shooting star with The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill , c...

Franklin Templeton's Big Bet on Digital Assets: Confidence, Contradictions, and the Search for Profit For decades, Franklin Templeton has been one of the best-known names in traditional investing. The firm's reputation was built on mutual funds , retirement accounts , and conservative wealth management . Today, however , it is making one of the boldest moves by any legacy investment company into the world of digital assets. That alone is fascinating. At a time when headlines continue to feature Bitcoin thefts, exchange failures, phishing attacks , and online investment scams , Franklin Templeton is expanding rather than retreating . The company appears to believe that institutional investors eventually want regulated ways to own digital assets without having to manage private wallets or navigate unfamiliar exchanges. One of the firm's newest ventures is the FRNT stablecoin initiative, which reflects its growing interest in tokenized finance and blockchain -...

World Cup 2026 | Group L The Black Stars Didn't Blink Ghana's defensive masterclass held England scoreless in Boston — and the footballing world is still processing it. England held 72 percent possession in Foxborough, Massachusetts, this past Tuesday night. They brought Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, and Marcus Rashford fresh off a 4–2 demolition of Croatia . They brought the weight of a tournament pedigree that has haunted its own fans for sixty years. What they did not bring home was a single goal. Ghana made sure of it. The final score — England 0, Ghana 0 — reads like a typographical error at first glance. England launched nineteen attempts at goal to Ghana's two . They peppered the box, they recycled possession, they threw on substitutes with names that read like a Fantasy Football jackpot . None of it moved the scoreboard. Goalkeeper Benjamin Asare and a back line that defended with the collective discipline of a military formation refused to yield...

The Growing Gap in the Digital Currency World If you've been following digital currency for more than a few years, you've probably noticed something interesting . The community isn't moving together anymore. It's splitting into different groups with very different goals. Take Binance , for example. Not long ago, the message seemed clear: Europe is an important market . Then headlines shifted. Operations changed, regulations tightened, and suddenly the conversation became about leaving certain markets or focusing elsewhere. Many of the platform's customers weren't giant investment firms. They were ordinary people from the lower and middle parts of the economy, hoping digital assets might give them opportunities that traditional finance hadn't. That group still exists. In fact, it may be larger than ever. Meanwhile, another group has its eyes fixed on Bitcoin exchange-traded funds . The theory was simple enough : once traditional investment prod...