Zeros

What in the Monkey Heck Is Happening at Ichikawa Zoo? Let us take a moment — a long, bewildered, slack-jawed moment — to absorb what has transpired at the Ichikawa City Zoo in Chiba Prefecture, just outside Tokyo , because the facts of this story read like a fever dream generated by a group chat that has lost all contact with civilization . You know Punch . If you've been anywhere near the internet this spring, you've likely heard of Punch . The baby Japanese macaque was abandoned by his mother shortly after birth at Ichikawa City Zoo, and zookeepers, after experimenting with rolled-up towels and other substitutes, settled on an IKEA orangutan plushie as his emotional support companion . The internet collectively shattered. Zoo attendance jumped more than 100,000 visitors year-over-year, reaching the highest annual total since the park opened in 1987 . Punch became a global phenomenon — a small, abandoned primate clutching a stuffed toy while the rest of his tro...

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...