#reddit's a good way for your stuff to be lost to the ether

[homebrewsno1asked4]

A Few Aasimar

Hey, I made some fucking aasimar! I’m going to make some fucking PDFs for them! And I will put them on this fucking website! Why am I swearing so much? Because I’m in a big time rush! Why am I in a big time rush? Because I’m leaving for Japan soon which is fucking awesome but I need to get some more shit queued up while I’m gone!

~

Cupid

When lesser angels or celestials and deities of the love domain copulate with mortals, their descendants may be cupid aasimar. Naturally smaller and stubbier - and often huskier or pudgier - laymen assume that cupid aasimar are actually halfling aasimar. You can tell a cupid by the rosy tint to their cheeks; and their tiny, permanent, not-quite-vestigial wings.

Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 1.

Lil' Wings. Unlike, say, an aarakocra's wings, a cupid's wings don’t take up much extra space. With wings unfurled, you still only count as a medium creature, fitting into a 5 by 5 space. However, they do require modified armor, which comes at a bit of an extra cost.

Flight. You have a flying speed of 20 feet. You can’t fly if you are wearing armor you aren’t proficient in, armor not tailored to accommodate your wings, or a backpack not specially tailored to your wings.

When you take damage while flying, make a Constitution save with a DC equal to 10 or half the damage taken, whichever is higher. If you fail the saving throw, you fall to the ground.

Naturally Stubby. You have a walking speed of 25 feet.

Love Arrow. All cupids have the ability to fiddle with the powerful and mysterious forces of affection, through non-harmful spectral "arrows." They wield these "love arrows" with supernatural - even impossible - accuracy.

No real bow is needed to fire a love arrow. However, the cupid must mime the firing of a bow and arrow, or a crossbow. You can produce one Love Arrow every long rest. Using a Love Arrow requires an action.

Choose any humanoid you can see. As an action, you can force your target to make a Charisma saving throw. The save is equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier.

On a success, the target only feels a peculiar tingle and a small rush of pleasant emotion. The target may be quick to pass this off as a mood swing. On a failure, the target is smitten. With who? That's up to you! The Love Arrow's effect behaves like charm person, with one key difference: you choose the object of the target's "paramour," or object of devotion. It can literally be an object. The chosen paramour can be any singular thing; they don't even need to exist.

When the Love Arrow wears off, the target realizes they weren't acting themselves, though they aren’t entirely sure why. However, on reflection, these emotions felt genuine. The target may decide if they want to continue being in love with their paramour.

You gain a second use of the Love Arrow at level 3, and a third use at level 5.

Natural Archer. All cupids have proficiency in shortbows, longbows, and all crossbows.

Earthmother

Often confused for a strange genasi variant, earthmother aasimar are the descendants of celestials and deities who patronize elemental earth, mountains, mining, caverns, etc. Most earthmothers are found sprinkled among dwarven and gnomish communities, whose pantheons contain more of these "grounded" entities.

Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.

The Designs of Gaia. In addition to the extra languages of the base aasimar, you can also speak Terran.

This also grants you the Stonecunning feature. Whenever you make an Intelligence (History) check related to the origin of stonework, you are considered proficient in the History skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.

Naturally Hardy. You have a base AC equal to 11 + your Constitution modifier.

Hardened Soul. Starting at 3rd level, you can use your action to unleash the divine energy within yourself, transforming your body into the hardest of stone.

Your transformation lasts for 1 minute or until you end it as a bonus action. During it, you gain +4 AC, a Natural Weapons (Slam) attack, immunity to disease, and resistance to poison damage. You also don’t need to breathe for this minute.

The base damage for your Slam attack starts at an extra d6 of bludgeoning damage. This die increases to a d8 at level 6; a d10 at level 11; and a d12 at level 16. This extra bludgeoning damage counts as magical.

Once you use this trait, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

Shepherd

When a psychopomp - celestials tasked with guiding souls from the material to their respective afterlife - copulates with mortals, that bloodline may produce a shepherd aasimar. Though they retain the unnatural beauty of their aasimar kin, shepherd aasimar develop features similar to creatures of omen - such as ravens, black cats, bats, toads, etc.

Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 1.

Intimate with Death. Add your proficiency bonus to death saving throws. This benefit doesn’t apply to critical failures or critical successes.

Twilight Legacy. This feature replaces the base aasimar’s Celestial Legacy. You know the cantrip toll the dead. Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast the spell protection from evil and good once with this trait, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Once you reach 5th level, you can cast the darkness spell once, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

[sleepymccoy]

sleepy do you have any fun Outsider POV headcanons about our good good ethereal & occult godparents?

Well, first of all, you should read and enjoy this that i wrote however long ago

-

But also! There's a lot of stuff that would be like. small scale weird. Like, going to a bookshop and asking for something you saw in the window and the owner's like, "oh no, that's not for sale." 

And you're like, "the books in the bookshop aren't for sale?"

And the owner's like "aaaach"

And the employee who's wearing sunglasses and drinking wine on shift is like "the ones in the display aren't. There's another edition behind the counter you can have though."

And the owner goes, "there is?"

And the employee clicks his fingers and repeats himself pointedly while you awkwardly stand there. The owner gives you the book you want. You go to the employee and ask if they have any nicely bound dictionaries for sale and he glares at you (or at least you think he does, it's dim and he's wearing sunglasses) and goes, "I don't fucking work here."

So you ask the owner (who is sitting in a couch now reading a book himself and seems surprised you're still here) who says, "no, I don't have any dictionaries"

And the not-employee laughs and says, "he had a fight with Cawdrey and hasn't gotten over it."

So you leave without a dictionary.

-

But also they’re weird in those like liminal ways, where youre not totally sure that’s doable for humans, but also you’re seeing it so it must be doable. Like, you’re on a new medication that keeps you awake through the night as you adjust so for like a week youre awake every two hours and you spend a lot of that time looking out your window at the park across the road and every night you can see a guy in sunnies standing on a bridge watching the ducks all night.

You don’t think about it too much the first night. Just kinda weird. Then the second you notice him again so you start looking for him and hes just. staring. at the ducks. all night.

You take a photo, then at lunch time you see he’s still there. That night you’re still up, so you take another photo. You start taking a photo every time you’re up. You superimpose them and he’s identical in each.

You set up a camera and record. He doesn’t fucking move. It’s so perfect it looks edited. But you figure, you know, maybe he’s high or something and time isn’t moving the same for him.

On the fourth day you brave it and walk past him at like 10am. He’s in a public place, after all. He doesn’t react. You walk past again to get back, watching him much more openly, and it’s like he comes back to life. He stretches his neck, pulls his phone out, and sighs. You’re ready to call an ambulance, you just watched this guy not eat or drink for four days, but instead you watch, bewildered, as he calls a number and says, “You’re late, where are you? Forgot? No, no, it’s okay. Nah, jus’ been thinking, really. Yeah, I can meet you there. Might have to be late, though, only fair. Of course, no more than fifteen minutes. See you soon.”

His voice isn’t even fucking dry. He should be half dead from dehydration. He leaves and doesn’t return and you decide it was just your medication playing tricks on you. You never watch the video you took of him again.

-

Then you get the folk who see a clearly gay couple arguing in public and one of them sprouts bright white wings, snaps, “Well, if you’re going to be like that then I simply won’t put up with it!” and flies off into the sky.

Those people either just totally ignore it, or go full conspiracy theory on it. There’s a sub reddit dedicated to the Soho Couple. Crowley’s a part of it and when it gets quiet for too long he’ll take a new candid photo of Aziraphale doing something ethereal (occult) from through the window (either glowing with irritation while on the phone or floating above the couch because he got so relaxed while Crowley was stroking his hair. There are less photos of the second because Crowley struggles to pull himself away from a fond angel) and posts it with a falsified reading from one of those echo meters that ghost hunters use

He’s also been known to feature in those spirit box things where they scan through radio stations. He often says things like “don’t buy books” but sometimes he’ll say something more like “you know, i was fucking right when i said dates were used in christmas pudding. Do you have a pencil? Write this down. Two cups of flour. 200 grams of butter. A cup of god damned dates...”

-

Then there’s that one American agent from wherever Mulder and Scully worked (fbi? or were they cia? i never finished season one) who lives across st james park and has one of those long distant cameras and is perceptually two months away from securing proof of angels and demons. But every time he goes to his superiors his manager tells him that the next level up, one Agent Aziran Phell, needs yet more proof. Also those files you submitted five months ago were lost in a flooding incident, did you make copies? No? Well, start again, I guess.

-

I think, overall, they both cultivate a certain amount of otherworldyness because it means they’re reasonably left alone, but not completely. They’re not rude (Crowley is sometimes, but, you know) or destructive or cruel to strangers, but they are uncomfortable. They encourage polite conversation, brief and pleasant interactions that go no further. Acquaintances who don’t care enough to notice it’s been 40 years and while they’re had two divorces and one child the man who comes to the bakery every thursday morning hasn’t aged.

I think Crowley doesn’t like the idea of authority knowing about them and works to keep them hidden (he and Aziraphale disagree over the american agent when that comes out) and Aziraphale doesn’t like the idea of large scale suspicion (he’s very uncomfortable with the subreddit, which Crowley resovles by revealing it as a hoax in a similar style to that girl who faked being a gay couple with hiv to write a hamilton fic on tumblr whenever that was) but overall they do like to be weird.

Aziraphale causes lightning storms whenever he doesn’t want customers. Crowley can be found laying in a patch of perfect sun for hours in mid winter while rain clouds form meters away from him but never touch him. But Aziraphale tips generously and Crowley’s illegal parking is never in the way and Aziraphale gives money to the homeless and Crowley gives drunk people lifts home when he’s sad and Aziraphale gave baked goods tot he local bakery to sell while the owner’s husband was in chemo and Crowley only shops at the small businesses. So overwhelmingly they’re liked. But avoided. Definitely avoided.

Keith still glows a little when he’s dreaming and he insists it’s because that Mr. Fell had some kind words to say that one time. So people avoid them. Cos that’s a bit weird.

[grimelords]

My September playlist is here, 37 songs from opera to bossa nova to a song about marrying Tom Collins to thank him for the sips. I’m hopeful there’ll be at least one thing in here you’ll enjoy

Been Drinkin’ Water Out Of Hollow Log - Mississippi Fred McDowell: I love this song because every other version I’ve ever heard sings it as ‘I’ve been drinking muddy water, sleeping in a hollow log’, but straight up drinking out of the log sounds so much better. Also I just found out that this version I’ve loved for years was the original Alan Lomax recording and not a later one like I’d assumed, which is nice!

Tom Collins - The Sloppy Boys: I have not been able to get this song out of my head since I heard it. “I sent an edible arrangement to my travel agent because they had free booze on the carnival cruise” is a masterpiece of rhyme and the way he screams “hold him in my grips!” is just perfect.

What Means Of Witchery - Gospel: This is a perfect song. I think it’s criminal that Gospel aren’t more widely known and I think I’ve decided to make it my life mission to spread the word. The gospel of Gospel if you will. You don’t have to. I had a long daydream a little while ago about transcribing the drums in this song, which feels like an unresolved brain problem but exemplifies just how much I love it.

A Saint Among Madmen - Helen Of Troy: This is the band the drummer from Gospel was in before Gospel and they’re really really good. This sort of spoken word song is hard to pull off without sounding totally corny and I think him being so low in the mix really helps. It reminds me of some early At The Drive-In instrumental wise. The way it finally kicks off, and the sort of yelping desperate tone to the screams in the second half is just so satisfying.

shimripl casual - Autechre: Another cut I enjoyed from Autechre’s immense new album as I work on comprehending it. I like this song because it sounds like a field recording of a prototype mechanical swamp.

New Rules - Dua Lipa: This song feels like it deserves a marching band. There's just so much going on rhythmically, the dancehall rhythm at the centre of it is constantly augmented by all sorts of other percussion, the great snare work throughout, the perfectly formed tiny fill that introduces the chorus, it's just an absolute feast. I only found out the other day that the guy who produced this, Ian Kirkpatrick, also did Bad Liar - what a year for Ian!

My Girls - Tears For Fears: Hey Tears For Fears did a cover of My Girls by Animal Collective and this might be controversial but I think it's better than the original. It tightens up the structure and differentiates the sections a bit, so that it changes from a slow building jam into an odd pop song. They also draw out the harmonies more so that you really notice how funny it is to sing 'my father's graaave' over and over in a big bass under everything.

Crosses - Zero 7 and Jose Gonzales: Sia's career from before she was world-famous Sia is so interesting because she had like a full 15 years of being notable around the world in a bunch of different ways before it all coalesced into Big Sia. She was a backing vocalist in Jamiraquai's band for god's sake. She also was the de facto vocalist of this downtempo band Zero 7 for three albums, but she's not on this song but Jose Gonzales also sang on about half the songs on this album is! This is a remix/cover of his solo song Crosses but this version really shows the song in a whole different light to the original.

Napoleon Solo - At The Drive-In: Years ago in high school one of about 5 videos I had on my iPod was this version of Napoleon Solo from 2001 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nlfmqsx1r0 and I would watch it over and over and over. It's also a good example of why Cedric's lyrics are like they are. He just talks like that. He says things like 'they had the acme weight dropped on them' to describe his friends who died in a car crash and you just have to go along with it.

Act Three: No. 27 - A Real Slow Drag - Scott Joplin: Did you know Scott Joplin, the man behind everyone's favourite song The Entertainer, wrote TWO operas?? Because I didn't. One of them is unfairly lost to history but the other, Treemonisha, was written in 1911 but not properly performed until the Joplin renaissance in 1972. This is the big finale and it's partly because of the performance but partly because of the way he wrote it but it feels a lot more modern than any other operas I've heard from the era. Even though it is mostly a march, it feels like melodically and structurally he's drawing on pre-blues and gospel music in a way that presages rock and roll and the influence it's had on all music since - it feels more like a musical than an opera.

Celia - Cults: Cults have a new EP and it's an entirely different sound for them. Pounding, dark, Ochestral Manouveurs In The Dark type synths under their best lyrics in a long time.

Sharp Dressed Man - Xiu Xiu: Xiu Xiu did this ZZ Top cover for The AV club and I absolutely love it. It sounds like Queens Of The Stone Age if Josh Homme’s charisma stat overflowed and reset back to 0. This recording they did later is is great but the original video is even better https://youtu.be/0SG6yDSbtxULazy 

Nina - Greg Phillinganes: This was a recommendation from my friend and yours @megapope and thank god he did because I've had it stuck in my head all month. Written by Donald Fagen from Steely Dan for Michael Jackson's keyboard player's solo album, a true behind-the-scenes hit.

Gobbledigook - Sigur Ros: I was thinking about how after Takk Sigur Ros got so big and famous and rich off advertising money for their beautiful music and then made the best move possible and pivoted abruptly away from ethereal graceful floating melodies hung from the moon by a gossamer string to good old fashioned stompers made of wood. This is another in my very short playlist of songs like this and The Dodos first album where the driving rhythm plus acoustic guitars are the centre of it all. A little genre that I think has a lot left in it to explore.

Betty Dreams Of Green Men - Guerilla Toss: This feels like the energy drink version of Aqua by Eurythmics from last month's playlist. This sounds like BATS to me and I'm excited because there's not enough music like this around. Extremely energetic power music about some kind of 1950s alien invasion.

#NeverUseTheInternetAgain - Homeboy Sandman and Edan: I love this song. It starts out with a sentiment everyone can agree on (facebook sucks, the internet is bad) and quickly veers into 50 year old man gripes (GPS has ruined everyone's sense of direction? you should order pizza over the phone? match.com??) but it's got such conviction in the hook that I'm sold anyway and have pledged to #neverusetheinternetagain.

Vanishing Hour - Helen Of Troy: This is another Helen Of Troy song but it basically sounds like an unheard Gospel song, which is incredible new for me; the guy who will never stop tracking down every cassette and live recording they ever did. I don't know how the membership of Helen Of Troy went beyond sharing a drummer but the vocalist of Gospel is unmistakably in the mix here and it sounds fantastic.

Canon x Love S.O.S. - Justice: Another great cut from Justice's new sort of live album. This whole album has really made me appreciate Love S.O.S. a lot more. It comes back two or three times and I'm grateful every time. It's a perfect glam rock sentiment. Sending a love ambulance because there's a love emergency happening.

Mariners Apartment Complex - Lana Del Rey: I feel like we don't deserve new Lana yet. I'm so grateful but I'm still getting over Lust For Life and she's going to do this to me? Amazing.

I Got Cash - Brooklyn Funk Essentials: Another @megapope find. Perhaps the most powerful song I've ever heard, in the sense that I feel like I'm being personally admonished throughout. The power structures at play here are towering and the beat.. it's funky.

Pray - Jungle: Jungle flat out released five (5) singles before their album came out and they were all so amazing that I was worried they wouldn't have anything left for the actual album but guess what: the whole thing is absolutely gold, and especially this last song Pray. The feeling I get from the hook into the big drop feels like being dropped bodily into a big tub of honey, if there was a way that that could feel good instead of terrifying. It’s just luscious.

Sad Rude Future Dude - Ball Park Music: I googled “haven’t had a friend in years” trying to remember what this song was called and became instantly suicidal at the sheer amount of reddit threads that phrase returned. Which is I suppose exactly what this song’s about: posting on reddit about how the internet has ruined my relationships and brain, but in a very upbeat, singalong way. This song is a good example of how a dynamic drummer can completely elevate a song to another level.

Knuck If You Buck - Crime Mobb: Knuckle up if you're buck wild it's Crime Mobb. The best named crew since Ruff Sqwad. The two women in this (Princess and Diamond) absolutely carry the whole song. Everyone else has got such a mopey boring flow but they both come in so lively and so aggressive you cannot get away from it. Is there a more powerful opener than "I come in the club, shaking my dreads, throwing these bows and busting these heads"? Is there a better line in general than "Crime Mob, it ain't no stopping, it be like Saddam Hussein, Hitler and Osama Bin Laden"?

Deixa - Toquinho: I'm quickly becoming one of these 'the end is near' sandwich board guys grabbing people on the street and yelling at them except about bossa nova. It is criminal how much this whole genre has been reduced to funny elevator music or The Girl From Ipanema as ironic intermission music when it has stuff like this to offer us. I really recommend this whole album, I've been obsessed with it over the last couple weeks and it's just breathtaking start to finish.

The Way - Friends: This band's spotify page is good because it's full of absolutely no-name recordings of Blank And Friends that have fucked up their tagging. Anyway I have never heard a song like this, and I didn't think it was possible to use big 80s pinch harmonic guitars like this but they pulled it off in an absolutely beautiful way.

Mass Grave - Health and Soccer Mommy: Corrin Roddick of Purity Ring produced this new Health song which brings the degrees of separation between Health and Katy Perry down to a thrilling 1 since Purity Ring did two songs on her new album. This really does sound like Health covering a Purity Ring song and that's excellent news in my book. I don't know much about Soccer Mommy but this song has definitely inspired me to check her out so I'll undoubtedly report back on that next month.

(two circles) - Boredoms: I only just made the connection that Yamantaka Eye from Boredoms is the same Eye from from Hanatarash who famously drove a bulldozer through the back wall of a venue as part of a performance. Which I mention only because it really exemplifies just how much of a change of direction Vision Creation Newsun is from all that, just ten years later he's in a totally different direction of building something beautiful instead of tearing music (and buildings) apart at the seams. Nobody knows how to describe this album, it's space rock it's post rock it's experimental but it has something that a lot of that music doesn't - positivity. This whole album is a sun-worshipping positive fever without ever feeling lost or meandering.

Centreline - Ava Luna: I'm mad at this song. At about 1:15 they do an extremely satisfying thing sing the 'line' in 'centre line' in a deep bass and it sounds great. Then every other time that section comes around they either don't sing it or there's something else going on that obscures it and it blueballs you for the whole rest of the song. Other than that it's good, but i'm at war with this song.

Venice Bitch - Lana Del Rey: I am so excited that Lana Del Rey is finally embracing the most often ignored part of americana and facilitating a jam band. This is the last thing I would expect from Jack Antonoff but he did amazingly. It sounds closer to Ultraviolence era than anything else she's done and I'm just plain excited to see what the album is going to be like if this is any indication.

Act 1 Scene 4: This Is Monstrous, Wozzeck! - Alban Berg: I found an english version of Wozzeck and it's one of the best opera recordings I've ever heard. It's just plain mixed and recorded well, which is a rarity when a lot of opera recordings seem like they just hung a single mic somewhere at the back of the theatre and pressed the button. Anyway here's the good bit from Wozzeck where Wozzeck goes to the doctor and the doctor yells at him for "Pissing! Pissing there on the pavement!" See, opera’s fun!

Pop Roll Flow - Clypso: I heard this song on Unearthed when they had Nick Littlemore from Pnau guest programming and I love it. It feels brand new and very familiar at the same time, every sound in it is in absolute hypercolour, and the verse vocal sounds like a cool insect is singing at me. What's not to love!

I Might Survive - Architecture In Helsinki: I always feel like Arcitechture In Helsinki are poised to make like Portugal The Man and have an international superhit off their seventh album. They have been consistently reinventing their brain of weirdo-pop every single album for 15 years now and it feels like they've still got so much more to give. This song especially deserved to be a hit in my opinion, it's pop perfection and I've come around from hating to completely loving the little 'than alive baby!' adlib near the end.

Angels - The xx: My two best friends got married to each other this month and it was beautiful. What's more, she picked the perfect song to walk down the aisle to. I'm so happy to see two of the people I love the most in love with each other, and also when I drove them to their suite after the reception my phone accidentally started playing Merzbow's new album which was good.

Jesus Was A Cross Maker - Judee Sill: I'm so glad I found out about this album. Judee Sill had a crazy life, and her wiki page is a ride but unlike a lot of musicians with a back story her music stand alone - unique, rich and beautiful. Tightly structured and thoughtfully composed for such hippy-dippy christian mythology themes, and melodically beautiful even when her voice isn't quite up to the task. It really does feel like the spirit was moving through her. This song in particular is amazing I have been straight up listening to it on repeat. The phrasing is insane, the self-harmonised vocals sound like they're phasing in a very cool way, the violins break into a Bach figure halfway through - it's just amazing. I cannot stop listening. I've also started a playlist of this, Jesus Is A Dying Bedmaker by John Fahey and Jesus Came To My Brithday Party by The Middle East so I'm absolutely 'on one' as the kids say.

Rappers Convention - Harlem World Crew: another thanks to @megapope for bringing this incredible moment to my attention. A very early rap song that was recorded in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis and helpfully gives a complete breakdown of the situation in the opening verse before getting back to basics and detailing how much they love partying for the remaining 5 minutes. Music is truly incredible. 

I Need A Lover - John Mellencamp: I'm learning a lot about John Mellencamp this week. Apparently this song was originally on the album 'A Biography' in 78 that didn't get a release in the US because his first album did so badly, but I Need A Lover was a top ten hit here in Australia and was thusly included on his next album a year later and blew up in the US. The other surprising thing is the album version, this version, has a fully two minute long intro before it gets to the song.

High (feat. Elton John) - Young Thug: The Lil' Nutsack song that makes Dewey Cox famous again in Walk Hard is real now and it's good as fuck.​

listen here

[evanvanness]

Annotated edition for the May 24, 2020, Week in Ethereum News

Several people this week have told me they want a “drama” section in the newsletter and have asked me to annotate the Aragon and Autark Ado this week.  

Perhaps that’s why the Aragon drama leads the most clicked list:

So why is Aragon suing its grantee?  Aragon held a vote where the community approved these grants.  Aragon now does not want to pay, claiming breach of contract - presumably that they did not believe Autark was not delivering fast enough or that products that were up to snuff.  It’s a bit hard to follow the play-by-play but at some point Aragon decided that after spending 600k of the 1.6m awarded grant, they did not want to pay any longer, so Autark threatened to sue.  Aragon offered to settle for $250k of the remaining million in grant payments, but it appears Autark rejected because Aragon would cut off the ANT incentive payments.   So Aragon sued Autark, to make sure that the case happens on its home turf in Switzerland which benefits their deep pockets versus Autark’s (now unfunded) startup budget.

For what it’s worth, I believe I voted against Autark’s first request and while I thought I voted against the second one, it turns out I didn’t vote.  There were a lot of votes in that round, and it was obviously going to pass (it passed “unanimously” with only 1 ANT voting against), so i must have decided not to spend the gas.

This all seems pretty boring, it’s just back and forth arguing over a contract, why are other people commenting on it?

1.  Aragon has a reputation for not paying people.   

It has long been an open secret in the industry that Aragon routinely doesn’t pay people in full or on time.

Grants are hard!    I can empathize with both Aragon (presumably feeling like it wasn’t getting enough ROI) and Autark (presumably thinking that a community approved grant couldn’t be secretly overturned by Jorge and Luis).  

2. Aragon sold a token for tens of millions of dollars, but after 3 years the only use for the token was a tokenholder vote.  Now, the results of those votes are unilaterally and privately discarded. 

It’s been over 3 years since Aragon raised a crazy amount of money selling a token.  In that time frame, the only use for the token has been these votes. 

If Jorge and Luis could decide by themselves to countermand the results of any of those votes without even telling the tokenholders anything, then what was the point of these votes?   Why did I waste my ETH paying gas to vote in these things?

 [Digression: They also recently released an ANJ token that you can exchange ANT for, but I don’t count being able to exchange a token for another token as utility.  After more than 3 years, I cannot think of any other possible utility for ANT.  Note: i’m very bearish on “dispute resolution by tokenholder vote”]

3.  Aragon marketing hasn’t matched Aragon actions

The Aragon Manifesto was a clarion call.  In black and white terms it paints the picture of transparency and technology as a solution for society’s problems of centralization, censorship and oppression.

Yet the rhetoric hasn’t matched the reality.  They’ve declared that Aragon is the world’s court, yet go running to Swiss courts to claim jurisdiction rather than even attempt to use Aragon Court in parallel (since they can’t possibly lose in either venue).   

They’re the rich ones with deep pockets, yet they’ve repeatedly chosen not to pay grantees who have very little leverage in negotiation (with the exception of Prysmatic after they complained).

None of it has been transparent (though of course there are often good reasons).

----

The Aragon team so far has responded to all these concerns by saying things like “you’re questioning our good intentions” or “the courts will decide”. 

It is obvious that Aragon will win in the courts.  They have the deep pockets; Autark doesn’t.  They drafted the contract, and any decent lawyer will have drafted it so Aragon can’t possibly lose.  Even if the contract somehow wasn’t one-sided, Aragon chose to run to the home field courts.  It would be shocking if they lost.

Aragon’s intentions aren’t bad; that’s not really in question.  I’m 100% sure that Jorge and Luis’s intentions are good and that any individual decision is defensible.

What is in question is their decision making overall.  When you stake your brand on “transparency” and anti-oppression, then people will feel disappointed when your brand promises do not match your actions. 

------------------------------------------------------

Enough with the drama.  As with last week, a few things I think I’d read if i were an Eth holder interested in high level things.

Carl Beekhuizen’s Eth2 keys explainer

5 things crypto can learn from Visa’s struggle for adoption in the 1970s

Brave’s anti-fingerprinting v2, available in the beta releases but coming soon in the main releases

Working in reverse order, it’s always surprising to me how little people understand how much info your browser is leaking.  Fingerprinting basically lets people figure out who you are even if you switch IP addresses, clear your browsing history, etc.  I used to work in anti-fraud, and I was surprised how often you could figure stuff out from the fingerprints.  Good for anti-fraud, but bad for privacy.  Brave is changing the game on fighting fingerprinting!

I’m old enough to remember when Visa and especially Amex were not the ubiquitous things that they are today in America.  There were some interesting parallels around their ads “think of it as money.”   The more things change, the more things stay the same.

A good Eth2 keys explainer, definitely worth reading if you’re interesting in staking.  

On to the annotations.  The stuff that I think might deserve extra comment, not necessarily the stuff I think is most important.

Eth1

Péter Szilágyi’s snap sync, and some benchmarking of snap vs fast sync

Discovery peer advertisement efficiency analysis, also applicable to eth2

Sync improvements are a big deal, as the initial sync time is one of the things that most people find daunting around running a full node.

Depending on who you are, this may not be considered sexy, but it’s an important thing for eth1 usability.

Eth2

phase 0 spec v0.12 – added latest IETF standard. This is THE spec for the eth2 launch, barring any updates for bugs

Lighthouse client update – BLS key implementation, under Trail of Bits audit, 300mb RAM to run 2000 validators

Lodestar client update – syncing to both Schlesi and Topaz testnets

Prysmatic client update – Schlesi fork post-mortem, slashing client and protection

Fizzy v0.1 – WASM interpreter written in C++

Carl Beekhuizen’s Eth2 keys explainer

There’s been plenty of talk around “this is the spec” before, so I sorta can’t blame someone who says “but you’ve already said that before!”

Basically, they were all true, but with specific exceptions.   And that’s still true - there will likely be some kind of bug or clarification found so that that this isn’t THE spec that launches the eth2 chain in a few months.  But unless something crazy happens, this spec for the eth2 chain isn’t going to change except to fix bugs.

Layer2

Fuel does a demo of Reddit’s community points in an optimistic rollup that reduces transaction fees by 60x

Loopring to pass 1 million trades on its zk rollup in just 3 months of being live

Gazelle (formerly Plasma Chamber) alpha release with an API for deposit, transfer and exit

Fuel’s demo is pretty cool.  It’s obviously just a demo - they don’t have a way to withdraw back to the testnet where Reddit’s community points are house.

Dexes continue to improve!  Using their zk rollup, Loopring has a trading experience that is just as good as a centralized exchange, but with much cheaper fees and no risk of centralized exchanges getting hacked and losing your crypto. 

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Stuff for developers

web3js v1.2.8 with Ethers v5 ABI coder integration, ENS’s contenthash, and EIP-1193’s AbstractProvider

Mocking Solidity code with Waffle

A writeup of Solhint v3’s features

How to get randomness onchain using Chainlink’s VRF

Offchain voting for personal tokens, tutorial from Austin Griffith

Gas and circuit constraint benchmarks of binary and quinary incremental Merkle trees using Poseidon

Loopring’s new approach to generating frontend keys to sign offchain requests

Hegic had to shut down again because of an exploit that Sam Sun reported weeks beforehand

tBTC found a bug during their rollout; launch delayed

Matic’s mainnet is in the process of going live

I’ve seen some games migrate over to Matic.  

Matic is “in the process” of going live.  I note the “in the process” because I see a bunch of new blockchain projects saying that they are live, but....they aren’t really by any definition I would use.

But as I said previously in an annotated edition, it’s a process.  It’s not exactly some binary “we’re live now.”  Even Ethereum went live in July 2015 with less than full features.

Ecosystem

Tornado.cash non-custodial mixer is now trustless, with the admin function burned and the frontend available at https://tornadocash.eth.link

Ethereum Foundation q1 update, including how EF thinks about funding

Intro to dwebsites. dweb = ENS + IPFS (and equivalents)

Network usage is at an all time high. With similar use of the Eth2 chain, Ethereum will have negative issuance of ETH because part of every transaction fee is burned

I was surprised that gas usage is so high that we’d be in negative issuance if Eth2 was live.  

I’ve said before that I’m not sure how I feel about negative issuance.  On the one hand, the worry is that negative issuance means that no one has any incentive to use their ETH.  On the other hand, that’s already the reality today - hardly anyone wants to pay for anything in ETH at $200, because basically every ETH holder I know has obscenely high expectations for what the price is likely to do in the near to medium term.

Some interesting thoughts in the EF update about how EF thinks about funding.

Meanwhile it’s great to see Tornado continue to improve the trustlessness of their product.    Incredible work from the Roman S team.   (if you missed the joke, it’s because both of them are named Roman and have last names that begin with S)

Enterprise

Using Eth mainnet, Baseline Protocol privately and securely synchronizes data and business logic across SAP and Microsoft Dynamics

Hyperledger Fabric founder John Wolpert’s common sense statement on using blockchain and Ethereum mainnet

The Baseline Protocol as lean strategy

Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s Project Whitney using Ethereum mainnet to “support private market securities, from issuance through secondary markets”

I’m surprised by how quickly the use mainnet approach has taken hold.   If you rewind back to the last hype cycle, relatively few even considered the idea, even as enterprises were buying private chains that didn’t make much sense.  (hat tip to GridPlus CEO Mark D’Agostino’s seminal No Country for Private Blockchains article)

DAOs and Standards

Aragon sues to avoid paying grantee a community-voted grant

Exploring DAOs as a new kind of institution

MetaCartel is becoming a DAO incubator

ERC2665: ERC721 transfer fee extension

EIP2666: Repricing of precompiles and Keccak256 function

Application layer

Uniswap v2 launched, with more features – direct token pairs, price oracles, flash swaps, etc

UMA launches the ETHBTC synthetic token, so you can bet on The Flippening

idle v3 – stablecoin yield rebalancer adds dydx, USDT, and a risk-adjusted strategy

Maker changes USDC stability fee to .75% and WBTC to 1%. Also, how Dai became a favorite in Latin America

Argent launches v1 of smart contract wallet with one touch access to TokenSets,  PoolTogether,  Aave,  Uniswap V2, Compound, Maker and Kyber.

5/5 DeFi in the app layer section.  Of course what I put in the app layer section vs what I put elsewhere is certainly arbitrary.  

And hey, why isn’t Tornado Cash on DeFiPulse?  It’s got a decent amount of value locked up.

Tokens/Business/Regulation

5 things crypto can learn from Visa’s struggle for adoption in the 1970s

WBTC mints another 1500 BTC on May 21. There’s now 5200 BTC on Ethereum compared to less than 3000 BTC on Lightning and Liquid combined

Blockchain code as antitrust, Schrepel and Buterin paper

ETH to soon surpass BTC on Bitcoiners’ preferred stock-to-flow metric

Staking will turn Ethereum into a functional store of value

What’s interesting about that 3000 BTC is that Liquid is just a trusted sidechain, and it has 2200 of the 3000 BTC.   Now to be fair, WBTC definitely has some trust assumptions as well.   

Still isn’t it interesting to see BTC migrate to Ethereum, where it can be used relatively trustlessly, rather than go to Blockstream’s products? 

General

KYC puts lives at risk: BlockFi hack leaks client name, address, and crypto addresses. Similarly, a hacker claims to have exploited Shopify for Trezor and Ledger databases, though Ledger says the databases don’t match

Using zero knowledge proofs for vulnerability disclosure

World Economic Forum’s principles for a decentralized future (transparency, self-sovereign data, privacy and accountability)

JK Rowling jokes about trolling BTC because of her significant ETH holdings

The Winklevosses say they own a similar amount of ETH and BTC

Brave’s anti-fingerprinting v2, available in the beta releases but coming soon in the main releases

Using zero knowledge proofs for vulnerability disclosures is very cool.   It’s a pretty classic problem if you’re a whitehat hacker - how do you disclose the vulnerability and then trust that you get anywhere near the value back that you deserve from someone’s bug bounty program?   There are examples - even in the Ethereum space, where people should understand the value - of responsible disclosure not getting paid anything commensurate to what they deserved.

I’ll be interested to see if BlockFi suffers as a result of the hack.  They’ve certainly put at risk any whales which used their service and didn’t give a PO Box/false address/whatever.   Yet the history of database hacks even in our space is that most people just eventually return as if no hack ever happened.

Soon this annotated edition will be going paid, more details coming soon.

That’s all for this week!

Housekeeping

Follow me on Twitter @evan_van_ness to get the annotated edition of this newsletter, usually forthcoming in a day or so, as well as a real-time source of Eth news.

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Permalink: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-may-24-2020/

Dates of Note

Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):

May 26 – last day to apply for Ethereum India fellowship

May 28 – EIP1559 implementation call

May 29 – core devs call

May 29-June 16 – SOSHackathon

June 16 – deadline to apply for Gitcoin’s Kernel incubator

[Post updated at night for accuracy.]

[littlesunf1ower-blog]

Peachy’s Log - 11/29/18

Hello to whoever’s reading. Even if it’s nobody.. hello, ether. :} 

Originally, I intended to create some kind of online journal or a log. Then it kind of shifted over into wanting to get into poetry and artsy shit. Then I thought, maybe I’d share playlists. Then I just started trying to create some kind of aesthetic page for myself to look at. My intentions were all over the place. A cool side effect of depression and ADD. Welp, I’ve kind of recollected. Key words “kind of.” I’m just gonna start logging my days. Notebooks get lost, but this will stay for.. well.. forever. I think? Writing publicly makes me feel like I’m talking to someone, which is nice... because, as social as I am with the world around me... I find that I am much more well spoken through written word. 

Anyways, these entries will probably vary. Some will be short. Some will be lengthy and most likely, undesirable to read. I am no important figure to the general public, so naturally, I don’t expect to have an audience at all. But if you are an audience, whoever you are, hello, I hope you are having a good day. I do have one follower. It is a bot. An illicit bot, at that. So if you’re reading, bot. What the hecc is up, friend.. hope your day is going swimmingly. 

---

This one will be kind of an introduction I guess, and will segue into my entry for the day. 

Hi, I’m Peachy. I am 27 years old and - I don’t know if this is the right term or not, but it’s how I describe myself - I am a functioning depressed person. Does that even make sense? Feel free to yell at me if I’m not correct. Clear answers are always better than guesses. Maybe I should just say I am depressed. I am currently working through it, and I am attending counseling for the first time in my life, and it has helped immensely. I have made breakthrough after breakthrough, but I still have my off days. 

Throughout my life, I have built a lot of bad habits in terms of how I handle different situations. I have incredibly low self esteem (working on that), and often hold back a lot of my thoughts in fear of bothering other people. My mindfulness of others, as well my attempts in being constantly self aware, have benefited me in a lot of ways, but it has also held me back. I tend to bottle things up until it overflows and I have a breakdown. Often times, it has affected others and my relationships with family, friends and significant others. Ultimately, I am terrible at communicating and I am always guilty of giving sound advice to others who reach out to me for help, but I never follow it myself. 

I have constantly battled with body image issues. A habit I am trying to break. I have never had an eating disorder, but I will say that I have spent most of my life self loathing in terms of my physical appearance. I am working on that as well. I have accepted that I don’t have the genetics to eat like shit and never gain weight. I am pretty active and work out, and I’m happy with that, not just because it’s done wonderful things to my physique, but also because I am ensuring a healthy future. I fixed my intuitive eating and I’m keeping my joints healthy and able. It’s an ugly thing, in my opinion, to be as heavily insecure as I am. I feel like the person I see in the mirror, is not the person that other people see. I often feel ugly and like I got the short end of the stick from being mixed race. More specifically, I got all the shitty traits from both of my nationalities. Learning to love myself has been an uphill battle, but I’m getting there... I think. 

I am incredibly moody person. Well, I was until I took a stance on it, because that was no longer who I wanted to be, and it was in my power to make a change, so I did. In my low points or in moments of anger, I was angry and mean. I had a short fuse, and would stew in my anger. It would consume me and I became an ugly person because of it. Deep down in my heart, I care about everything and everyone. It is my truest intention to be the most kind and loving person I could possibly be. I think that being passionate about certain issues and situations will always be a character trait, but I am working on how to reduce, and eventually put an end to, reactions that result in anger or being mean and logically process and communicate responses. Did that make sense? I feel like it was a run on sentence. Oh well, don’t feel like going back and changing it. 

Anyways... 

Back to the breakthroughs. 

I’ve been making pretty sweet progress because of counseling and conscious efforts to make a change. Yesterday was my first time, in weeks, of getting sent back into the depression hole. It came at me like a backhanded, brass knuckle equipped slap to the face. One second I was fine, the next, I was not. I thought it came out of nowhere, but I was told that the beginning of the downwards spiral was a slow build up and was noticeable just hours before. It’s interesting to know that I was showing signs, but was not aware. I decided to lay low for the day... but then found myself tunneling into a deep pit of social media, and some craving of on-the-surface social interaction, which eventually led to overuse of social media and a complete lack of focus on my work. 

I went to bed feeling confused. I was kind of happy, but kind of sad... feeling unnoticed and unwanted. Simultaneously alone and lonely. Today, I woke up feeling worse. I wasn’t sure how to fix it, or how to remedy the situation.. so I just decided to disconnect completely.

This morning, I checked Facebook Messenger once.. I think upon waking up, and then shut it off, and then turned my phone on to “Do Not Disturb.” I left it in my bag for the first half of the day. I actually did pretty well, but as 2pm hit, I felt myself getting anxious. Currently, my phone is sitting face down, underneath my best friend and also colleagues phone. Muscle memory almost made me cave once, in which I fast-typed the Facebook domain in my browser, but I quickly closed it before it could load. One incomplete slip up the whole day honestly counts as a win for me. I don’t really miss that sense of online connection and haven’t really thought about it. It’s good to know that I’m not as dependent as I thought I was, however, it is no question that I am still dependent on it, even with one day of disconnecting. 

I turned to Reddit. I read a lot of interesting stuff. Today was mostly about microdosing psychedelics to help with ADD and depression. I also looked at a lot of art. Mostly cyberpunk themed, because that’s my shit and I love it a lot. I listened to some music, but more importantly... I journaled for the first time in forever! 

There are a lot of things I haven’t really been honest with myself about lately. I don’t want to speak my thoughts aloud, because I don’t want to put truth behind the things that are bothering me. But instead of not doing anything about it.. I wrote about it. I was completely honest on paper, and that was enough for me at this moment in time. I acknowledged that I knew what the answers to my questions were and that I knew I was feeling the way I was for very specific reasons.. and now, at some point, I plan to address these issues verbally... it’s just a matter of when I gather the courage to do so.

Anyways... that was my day. I haven’t eaten because I’ve just been nervously guzzling black coffee all day. Probably not the best idea, but boy did it help my anxiety with the 30 minute salt-nic puff marathon during my lunch break. 

Signing off for now. 

Later, bot.

Later, reader(s). 

~Peachy