clevermonkey93

[clevermonkey93]

If you’ve been reading our blog for long, you probably could’ve guessed we think investing in cryptocurrency is bad and stupid.

And yeah, I considered using more expansive words like “unethical” and “speculative” instead of “bad and stupid.” Those words had precision, but lacked panache.

Our Patreon donors vote on potential article topics, and this month they wanted to read our thoughts on investing in cryptocurrency. So we get questions about it all the time! Which isn’t surprising. Relative to cash and traditional investment vehicles, crypto is new and confusing. To make matters worse, there’s so much hype surrounding it in the personal finance world that research feels like reading a data science textbook through a swarm of bees.

Mercifully, we’re not here to explain what crypto is, or how the mysterious blockchain technology works (others have done that intolerably boring work for us). Rather, we’re going to release you from caring about crypto in the first place!

So it’s our personal opinion that investing in cryptocurrency is bad and stupid, and you shouldn’t do it. Here’s why.

[clevermonkey93]

I got a tumblr, it really was quite great

I blog about a lot of things, but mostly what I ate.

I thought it was a sweet gig, it really was quite cushy.

Then they went and banned me, ‘cause all I ate was pussy.

[clevermonkey93]

Oh man I can't believe I forgot. You know that post that was like "tell me what clothes you've bought because of a character" or whatever. I searched for ages to find an adequate white cable knit sweater because of Ransom's in knives out.

[clevermonkey93]

Tom Hardy was a surprise competitor at the 2022 Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Open Championship in Milton Keynes, England

"I was shell-shocked,” Appleby said about Hardy’s showing up to the event unannounced. “[Hardy] said, ‘Just forget it’s me and do what you would normally do.’”

Appleby continued, “He’s a really strong guy… You wouldn’t think it with him being a celebrity. I’ve done about six tournaments and I’ve been on the podium in every one. But he’s probably the toughest competitor I’ve had — he certainly lived up to his Bane character, that’s for sure.”

[clevermonkey93]

the other day i started writing an office romance but i quickly remembered that i have no idea what working in an office is like

[clevermonkey93]

#Ewan McGregor still getting the high ground 17 years later. TIFF 2022

[clevermonkey93]

"Good old liquid cardboard!"

[clevermonkey93]

“Feeling cute might cause a traffic jam”

(via)

[clevermonkey93]

my pain scale invention. it goes from 0-16. you fill it out like this:

i made this because i find pain to be a multifaceted thing that influences me in different ways. i can accomplish lots of small tasks while in pain but that doesnt mean i can move around or even think clearly. its name is the goldstein expanded pain index or gepi. you can use it if you want. or not.

[clevermonkey93]

has this been done yet?

[clevermonkey93]

You know what would make a GREAT plot twist? Fidelity.

[clevermonkey93]

one of my roommates bought the manga and lent it to me to read, it made me very nostalgic and I loved this scene <3

[clevermonkey93]

We can talk about that goddamn shitty movie Maleficent till the cows come home, go on and on about how stupid it is to make such a simply evil but awesome villain the martyr for no goddamn reason.

But you know what I want?

I want a spinoff of the Beauty and the Beast about the one who cursed Adam (the beast,) the Enchantress.

Because this bitch

This fucking bitch, is possibly as evil, maybe even more evil and sadistic than Maleficent.

The Enchantress cursed the prince because he failed a test, he was unkind to her because she presented herself as an ugly old hag. She turned him into a werewolf minotaur hybrid (fucking cool I’ll give her that,) because he was rude to her and didn’t want her rose.

So she cursed him, along with every single one of his servants. What did his servants have to do with any of this? Why are they being punished?

Not only that, but this stood out to me when I watched the movie again. When the spell is broken, all of the monstrous statues and art pieces transform into graceful, beautiful ones, I’m assuming that’s what they looked like before.

So this enchantress not only cursed him and his servants (oh and his fucking DOG DID I MENTION THAT) she took away every beautiful thing he had, replacing them with things like goblins, dragons, ghouls and other monsters, just to remind him what he was and what she had done to him, and he would have to look at them every single day.

I’m going to rightfully assume she provided the magic mirror as well, all of the magic in the movie stems from her, the mirror most likely came from her. His only window to the outside world is a handheld mirror, so he can fucking look at himself.

But you know what the kicker is?

If we take these two lines into consideration

“The rose, which was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his 21st year” ~Narrator

“Ten years we’ve been rusting…” ~ Lumiere

We can reasonably deduce that the Enchantress cursed the prince when he was eleven years old.

I want this filthy green bitch publicly exposed.

[clevermonkey93]

“The desire to be ‘accurate’ suddenly disappears when sex isn’t involved and it is actual interesting day to day minutiae,” says Eleanor Janega, a medieval historian who teaches at the London School of Economics. “If the (‘Game of Thrones’) world was historically accurate, why isn’t every single noble house or castle absolutely covered by huge gaudy, colourful murals? Why is it that this form of historical accuracy isn’t important, but showing rape as endemic is?”

Other historians point out that, as prurient and gasp-worthy as something like a crude C-section death is, such butchery wasn’t as prevalent as storytellers would have you believe.

“They were very keen on protecting mothers from harm,” medieval history scholar Sara McDougall told Slate.

Texts from the time indicate that such extreme measures would usually be performed on women who had already died – not, as in “House of the Dragon,” a fully awake and alert woman with no clue what was about to happen to her.

[…]

Janega points out that, while medieval times were certainly not overkind to women or anyone else who wasn’t rich, powerful and male, they weren’t the burlesque of suffering we’re so used to seeing on screen.

“'Accuracy’ is always focusing on the distasteful aspects of a society, but never the pleasurable ones,” she says. “(It) somehow always encompasses sexual violence and never things like, for example, the three field system, or fishing weirs. They don’t really show how women other than the nobility are a dynamic part of the medieval workforce. Women are found in pretty much every facet of medieval work: as blacksmiths, running shops, brewing beer, in cloth production, running bath houses or in trading delegations addressing the court.”

[clevermonkey93]

Aunties, this isn’t finance related per se, it’s privilege related. I had a really rough start to adulthood - abusive parents isolated me from friends and family, wouldn’t allow me to get a job or license, then kicked me out as soon as I turned 18. I struggled to even finish high school, let alone get a job, but a few years have passed and I have a nice car and trailer in really proud of, I graduated and planning to go to college next year, I have a pretty okay job that pays above min. wage (1)

And knowing me now you’d never know I was violently suicidal for all my teen years and had a brief stay in a mental hospital, shortly before my parents kicked me out. All in all I’m in a much better place, and I know I’m lucky to have gotten out of that place, but... my coworkers drive me crazy. The job I have now would have been impossible for me to get back when I was really struggling, so a lot of the people I work with never struggled like I did, they came from middle to upper middle (2)

Class families, young people still living with their parents who pay all their bills, only part time work so they can go to college full time which their parents also pay for, parents bought their first car, etc. And I find myself resenting them because they don’t seem to know how good they have it, how lucky they are to have loving supportive families. They didn’t understand why it was such a big deal to me when my car broke down at work, because they didn’t know I struggled for four years (3)

To even get a license, let alone a whole fucking car. Not only do I resent them but I feel like I can’t relate to them at all, which makes it a little lonely sometimes. My old job was in the middle of a very impoverished area, all my coworkers were in my same position, we all related to each other. I felt like I belonged. I don’t feel like I fit in with these privileged people, even though I recognize I’m also privileged myself to even have all the things I worked so hard for (4)

The cognitive dissonance is real. I know it’s not my coworkers fault that they’re privileged and I should be glad they all had better upbringings than I did, so how do I stop feeling so bitter about it? (5)

My darling child, your story is fucking important. Not only do I feel you on a lot of levels (feeling bitter about privileged friends and colleagues yet also guilty about my own privilege), but I think a lot of our other readers do as well. And this is a really, REALLY good example of how privilege works to divide us, even when someone like you claws their way over a mountain of extremely difficult odds to earn a place of stability and status in their community. 

I have a lot to say about this whole feeling, which I wrote here:

The Subjectivity of Wealth, Or: Don't Tell Me What's Expensive

But I’m going to take a detour from our usual advice here and make a radical suggestion. It’s ok to stay bitter and angry. Especially when it comes to class discrepancies and cluelessly privileged people. 

I just finished reading “Rage Becomes Her” by Soraya Chemaly, which is a wonderfully vindicating book, but also very hard to read because every 10 pages or so I had to throw it across the room whilst screaming in anger about all the things we have to be justifiably angry about. But the last two chapters of the book are extremely useful because they’re about weaponizing our anger--using it as a tool for change both in our private lives and in our culture at large. 

So I’m going to make the radical suggestion that instead of trying to get over your bitterness, you embrace it. The next time someone makes you feel small or angry because of your struggles... tell them so. Practice telling pieces of your story calmly and firmly, in a tone that doesn’t invite contradiction. Practice walking away after telling this story. And practice telling people, “Not everyone has access to the same resources and advantages that you do. For example, let me tell you how my parents denied me access to resources and education that would help me be independent and support myself, and then kicked me out at age 18 in spite of these disadvantages.”

Feel free to tell me to go to hell, though! If you’d rather work on tamping down your anger and bitterness, that’s totally legit. Write back and I’ll point you to some resources about how to resolve those feelings.

But I think you could do a lot of good for yourself and your peers if you stopped swallowing your feelings and instead bared them for all to see. While no one is entitled to your story, I just read it and I think it’s fucking powerful. The cluelessly privileged need to learn. And they’re less likely to do so if they blithely assume you grew up with all the same advantages they had. 

[clevermonkey93]

I needed to record this because r/perth is having a regular one today