Easy Money, Ben McKenzie

Subtitled Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism and the Golden Age of Fraud
With Jacob Silverman

I heard McKenzie interviewed on Odd Lots. That interview does a great job of capturing the tone, and a lot of the structure, of this book. I liked the interview, so I bought the book and the book did not disappoint. It is a fast paced overview of the crypto bubble that started in the pandemic and has been collapsing recently, leading to a lot of indictments.

I do not know if I learned a ton here (altho the scope of SBF’s donations to Republican politicians had not caught my eye), but it was nice to have it laid out beautifully and entertainingly with sources. While Levine has consistently downplayed the human toll, McKenzie does NOT downplay the human toll of the fraud. In particular, the death of Hal Henson is depicted movingly.

The Shkreli quote about jail not being that bad was pretty funny tho.

Highly recommend, especially if you found the entire extended episode mystifying. Mckenzie connects the most recent crypto bubble to penny stocks peripherally and to online gambling fraud as well.

Samples: Hey Hun by Emily Lynn Paulson and Stolen Focus by Johann Hari

Subtitled Sales Sisterhood Supremacy and the Other Lies Behind Multi Level Marketing

I saw this in the background on one of TikToker Canadian Kels’ tiktoks. It looked interesting, and I actually read samples. The sample is good, and I may get the book, but for now, I will continue through other books I already own. Paulson has fictionalized the MLM she participated in and the people she recruited other otherwise interacted with at that MLM. Paulson had 5 kids (!!) when she started participating in an MLM, and was already in marriage counseling and money was difficult. It sounds like she did well selling, but developed a drinking problem, got sober, continued selling, and then got out because, well, look, you can only do this kind of thing for so long. Cults are exhausting.

And that is probably why, as good as this sample is, I am in no great hurry to read the whole thing. But if it sounds interesting to you — or useful! — I think it is worth a try. Paulson has a good grasp of why MLMs are so appealing to certain people at certain points in their lives.

Stolen Focus by Johann Hari

Subtitled Why You Can’t Pay Attention

Hari is a journalist, apparently, and sounds like maybe an elder Millenial? Considerably younger than me, anyway. I do not think he has offspring of his own, but he has a younger person important to him who really struggles with attention in an addictive way, and Hari realized that it was not just the younger person, but a society wide problem. Hari has an initial approach, which dominates the sample: book a beach apartment in Truro (he says P-town, but it really sounds like Truro) for three months and bring a Jitterbug phone, paper books, a laptop that does not have functioning wifi, and have cable and internet disconnected from the unit. He then documents the impact on himself. He talks about walking on the beach, reading 3 newspapers a day in a cafe in P-town (yeah, yeah, look, this is so Walden it is hilarious), taking yoga classes and initially sleeping a lot and then, around the time the sample runs out, the initial relief is replaced by wild, compulsive need for connectivity.

He talks to a lot of men — and yes, it is almost all men — about changes in focus over time and the impact on whatever. None of it is particularly new or earthshaking. It is a pity that this book is pitched as being about attention or focus or whatever. If it had been pitched as My Struggles with Information Sobriety, it would have been a super different reading experience. I think it is probably pretty good as a My Struggles type book. As an analysis of our society and focus and attention and wtf, it is … meh.

But it is just a sample, so what do I know. If I want to read a book about information addiction, I will shop for one. It might wind up being this one, but I think I would prefer a woman author, honestly.

It is odd, tho. I used to absolutely adore non-fiction that was about someone who got really interested in a topic and then wandered around and talked to the experts in the topic and just hard core nerded out about it. On one level, this is one of those books. And yet, it is so simultaneously self-obsessed and lacking in self-insight (the reading 3 newspapers in the moring and feeling like he was on some kind of an info diet felt super, super, odd, even to me.) that it is difficult to continue.

End of the Month!

End of the month! But we fly home on the 11th of August, so plenty of vacation left.

My cousin has to work and his wife has other commitments today, so we probably will not see them today. I thought about going to York, however, I really needed to catch up on laundry, specifically, the night time clothes which require a full day to dry so they have to be done in the morning as the clothes washer in the unit here has no drying feature at all.

We ate the croissants for breakfast; the vegan one had some kind of berry jam in it which was delicious. The peanut butter from the coop was acceptable. Laundry has been done and we have discussed lunch and the current plan is Sleepers in Beverley, which was on my list for this trip.

Sleepers was tasty. I had a cider on tap, R. had a Worthingtons. The spicy bean wrap was really good, especially with the guac that came from T.’s nachos that he had put on the side. Everyone enjoyed their meal. Yay!

We walked over to Hotel Chocolat to get ice cream for the kids, and we also bought a bunch of chocolate. I stopped at the Cornish Bakery across the street and repeated what I did yesterday at the /Whitby Cornish Bakery: vegan croissant and 3 chocolate pastry. We looked in a few shops, then went back to the farm and just had a mellow day while it rained outside. I made A. another cheese sandwich for dinner, along with fruit, carrots, celery. T. had a chocolate pastry, carrots, celery and some of the Hotel Chocolat peanut butter chocolate. He has consumed all of the milk that was here when we arrived. R. got a little nip of gin at Hotel Chocolate and it was pretty good, he said. I smelled it and otherwise did not consume it. I had a pb&j and some pineapple, and some of A.’s apple. I also had a little granola with almond milk. I used to eat meals like that pretty often, but not recently. Easy and tasty.

I got a message from my cousin. I think we will be having dinner tomorrow and maybe listen to some music at the Sun Inn.