RANDOMS 2026 #9

HITS ARE FRUITLOOPS

I know I keep going on about this but the hitcount on this blog is completely fruitloops. During February the hits have varied from under 100 (a low of 79 on Feb 3) to over 8000 (a high of 8086 on Feb 16) hits in a day. That is madcore.

There don't appear to be any streams of traffic coming from links on other sites so it's probably not that. I suspect it's just that the hit counter is AI slop. 

Or, maybe Google analytics are really trying to tell me something. That it's all bollocks so who gives a toss anyway. 

My rules of Blogging 101:

1. Write blog posts strictly for my own entertainment.

2.  Don't even look at the hit count or stats. Who cares?

3. Include shitloads of images. More is better.

3. Have lots of LOLS. Being serious is lame & gay.

5. There are no rules to blogging. Rules are lame & gay.

 

KEEP ON THINKING

This is very prophetic now that we live in a society of jabbed up zombie phonetards who wouldn't notice if there were lines in the sky and poison in the water...

 

 

Hannah Arendt warned us 70 years ago: the real danger isn't making people believe lies—it's making them give up on truth entirely. 

 

She was a German-born political philosopher who survived the rise of Nazism, fled Europe, and spent the rest of her life trying to understand how civilized societies descend into totalitarian nightmares. 

 In 1951, she published "The Origins of Totalitarianism," a work that remains chillingly relevant today. Arendt's central insight was this: 

 

Totalitarian systems don't succeed by convincing people of their ideology. They succeed by destroying people's ability to think at all.

 

In her most famous observation from that book, Arendt wrote:

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (and the distinction between true and false) no longer exists."

 

Read that again. The goal isn't belief—it's confusion. It's exhaustion. It's making people so overwhelmed by competing claims, so buried in lies and counter-lies, that they simply give up trying to know what's real. 

 

When you can no longer tell truth from lies, you can no longer tell right from wrong. And when that happens, you become easy to control—not because you've been persuaded, but because you've stopped trying to think for yourself.

 

Arendt understood something crucial: totalitarian education is not about indoctrination—it's about destroying the capacity to form any convictions at all. 

 

If people believe nothing, question nothing, and trust nothing, they won't resist anything. They'll float along, numb and passive, as the world around them darkens. 

 

In her later essay "Truth and Politics" (1967), Arendt explored how lies function in political systems. She observed that constant, pervasive lying doesn't just spread falsehoods—it erodes the very concept of truth. 

 

 

When everything is contested, when every fact is dismissed as partisan, when reality itself becomes a matter of opinion, then truth loses its power entirely. And when truth has no power, neither does justice, morality, or human dignity. 

 

Arendt watched this happen in real time in 1930s Germany. She saw how the Nazis didn't just lie—they created an environment where lying became so constant, so overwhelming, that ordinary people stopped caring what was true. They became numb. Cynical. Detached. And in that numbness, atrocities became possible.

 

She wrote about this not to assign blame, but to issue a warning: This can happen anywhere. It can happen to anyone. It starts not with violence, but with the slow destruction of our ability to distinguish reality from fiction. So what do we do? Arendt believed the answer lay in what she called "thinking."

 

Not just absorbing information, but actively engaging with it. Questioning. Reflecting. Holding multiple perspectives. Refusing to accept easy answers or simplistic explanations. 

 

She wrote: "The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution." Meaning: the moment we stop thinking critically, the moment we accept any narrative without question—even one we agree with—we've already lost. 

 
Totalitarianism doesn't announce itself with jackboots and tanks. It begins quietly, in the gradual erosion of our capacity to know what's real. It thrives in cynicism, exhaustion, and the belief that "all politicians lie" or "you can't trust anyone" or "who knows what's really true anymore? 

 

"That resignation—that exhaustion—is exactly what Arendt warned us about. Hannah Arendt died in 1975, but her warning echoes forward: Guard your capacity to think. Demand evidence. Distinguish between fact and opinion. Don't let the flood of lies make you give up on truth itself. Because once you stop caring what's true, you've already lost everything that matters.

 

The fight isn't just about believing the right things. It's about refusing to stop thinking at all

 

 

I CAN'T HELP MYSELF

Given how totally gross KFC both looks and smells, it boggles my mind that there are so many of these disgusting American franchises in New Zealand. 

I live just down the road from one, and every time I walk past it I inhale it's thick aroma of greasy chemicals and stare at fat people getting out of their cars in the car park. (Yes, for real, almost all their customers are fat).

About 30 years ago I tried eating one piece of KFC chicken but it was so revolting I spat it out. And it's safe to say I've never been tempted to try it again.

So avoiding KFC (or any other junk food) really isn't a problem, I'm simply not tempted. But giving up my last two social media temptations, Youtube and Facebook, has proven harder.

If they weren't trying to force feed me so much pathetic AI slop I would just keep on sneaking a quick look, but AI is like the stench of KFC, it wafts about, like a stenching fart that I I'm trying to avoid but keep noticing.

Miles Mathis (who is probably a fake himself) recently wrote this:

"Why is Youtube now overrun by fake AI videos like these claiming to be narrated by Joe Rogan . . . but not. Not only are the subjects fake, but Rogan isn't narrating them: an AI voice is mimicking him.

You can tell it isn't him because it is mispronouncing a lot of words Rogan knows how to pronounce. For instance, in one he mentions a date of 1992, but says “one-thousand nine-hundred and ninety-two”.

No human makes that mistake. And this is just one channel of many publishing hundreds or thousands of fake videos. Youtube has rules against things like this and it used to police them, but now it promotes them instead, I am guessing as part of Operation Chaos. 

The question is, why is Rogan allowing it? He has to know about it. 

It looks to me like AI has been tasked with creating literally millions of fake videos tailored for every possible interest, to snare you in an endless loop, waste as much of your time as possible, stir your brain, create fear and unease, and make it impossible for you to tell reality from fiction. Why? To
keep you from starting the revolution. 

 They want you to think Joe Rogan and his pals are on it, so you can just sit back and watch. You are supposed to believe that Trump and Rogan and Tucker and RFK, Jr., and a gaggle of CIA whistleblowers pretending to be white hats are rousting out the Deep State, starting with the Epstein files.

And they are going to clean up your food supply while they are at
it, as well as declassify the aliens, explain the pyramids, and tell you what happens after we die. Ain't it great? So you can sit on the sidelines and cheer, or go back to sleep.

Even worse, they mix in a lot of truth, for maximum confusion. I am not saying everything they say is wrong. Some of it, like outing fake food, is true. See Rogan outing Kraft mac and cheese as the garbage it is. 

Unfortunately, when this is mixed with a lot of AI fakes, most people can't tell the difference between the true stuff and the false, and they eventually give up trying. Which is of course the point of it: many will conclude the story about Kraft is as fake as the rest of it, and keep buying their old garbage food."

I can help myself, and I do fully intend avoiding all AI - if that means no more Youtube, so be it. I will miss a few things, like some of the music videos, but I have saved copies of all my favourite ones.

Admittedly I do still quickly check YouTube and Facebook most days, but I'm only engaging in that filthy habit as a sort of quick check to see what normies are freaking out about. Sort of like sniffing some KFC but not actually eating any! (At least that is what I'm telling myself)

Remember the 90's? No phones (I don't use those things either), no AI, and some of the music rocked!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7gPTwY9cLM

THE FALL OF THE NFT

Just a few years ago NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens) were going to be the new Bitcoin and were being heralded as an amazing investment opportunity.

But they are not doing so well any more. In fact people seem to be saying the bloody things are now worthless and all the gullible numpties who bought them got stiffed

According to a report by dappGambl that reviewed data from NFT Scan and CoinMarketCap, 69,795 out of 73,257 NFT collections have a market cap of 0 Ether, leaving 95% of those holding NFT collections – or 23 million people – with worthless investment.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a form of crypto asset that is used to certify ownership and authenticity of a digital file including an image, video or text.

The report comes nearly two years after the craze for NFTs swept up celebrities and artists alike, with many rushing to purchase NFT collections of the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Matrix avatars.

In March 2021, the crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi made headlines when he paid $2.9m for an NFT of the first tweet from the former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey. Meanwhile, in December 2021, the former first lady launched an NFT collection named Melania’s Vision which included a limited edition digital artwork of her eyes.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/22/nfts-worthless-price

Not that NFT's were ever going to have any real purpose or long term value:

https://cult.honeypot.io/reads/10-reasons-why-nfts-are-dumb/

These are the ten most expensive NFT's of all time:

10. Stay Free – $5.27 Million

Stay Free is the tenth most expensive NFT ever sold.

The Stay Free NFT came into existence when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, entered the NFT bandwagon in April 2021. The Stay Free NFT covers the entirety of the 2015 Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision in ACLU v. Clapper, which ruled that the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities violated the laws.

“Emerging applications of cryptography can play an important role in supporting our rights,” Snowden had mentioned during the announcement of his own NFT. He further went on to add that the funds from the auction will allow the Foundation to develop privacy-protecting encryption, ensuring press freedom.

It was bought by PleasrDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization.

Stay Free portrays Snowden against the text of the hearing with his signature on the bottom right, which is a one-of-its-kind artwork. Snowden went on to sell the artwork for $5.27 million and donated the proceeds to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which is a non-profit that advocates for free speech and press freedom around the world. It is produced using open-source software.

9. Save Thousands of Lives – $5.23 Million

Save Thousands of Lives is an NFT artwork launched by a non-profit called Noora Health that was sold on May 8.2021.

This artwork was sold to programmer Paul Graham at a charity auction. This artwork aims to help fund Noora Health’s efforts with new mothers in South Asia by teaching them how to take care of their babies once they get home from hospitals.

Noora Health has been working with more than 165 hospitals in the region and works with the families of the new mothers, by educating them on how to keep the mother and the baby healthy and safe.

This artwork was sold for $5.1 million or 1,337 ETH, saving lives at a cost of $1,235 for every life saved.

8. World Wide Web Source Code – $5.4 Million

Sir Tim Berners Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web decided to explore the NFT ecosystem when he decided to sell an NFT that consisted of the original source code for the web. It’s an artistic representation of the web source code, bundled together as an NFT.

The artwork which was titled “This Changes Everything” went on sale at Sotheby’s with critics complaining about the same. Many said that this went against the web’s decentralized nature.

However, the sale went on ahead and garnered $5.4 million. Interestingly, days after the artwork was sold, someone pointed out a coding error in the artwork sold.

7. CryptoPunk #5217 – $5.59 Million

The CryptoPunk #5217 is one of the 24 ape punks wearing a knitted hat and a gold chain. Features on the #5217, our second CryptoPunk on the list, are considered to be quite rare and unique by the Punk enthusiasts as well.

The CryptoPunk #5217 is currently owned by the address 0xe30161 and isn’t up for sale.

6. Ocean Front – $6 Million

The Ocean Front is an artwork by graphic designer NFT artist Mike Winkelmann, popularly known as Beeple.

Ocean Front tries to create awareness around climate change and showcases a tree sitting atop cargo containers in the middle of the ocean. What makes Ocean Front one of the most popular NFTs is the way it highlights a real-world social problem.

Justin Sun, Founder and CEO of the Tron Foundation won the winning bid for the artwork at around $6 million. The proceeds from the Ocean Front sale are going to benefit the Open Earth Foundation, a nonprofit organization working to avoid the existential risk of climate change.

The Open Earth Foundation is working on “raising assets to foster an imaginative open advanced framework for further developed administration of planet Earth helping track straightforwardly the worldwide advancement on the Paris Agreement to keep away from the existential danger of environmental change.”

The artwork was sold on Nifty Gateway.

5. Crossroad – $6.66 Million

Another one from the drawing board of Beeple is Crossroads. Back when it was sold in February 2021, it remained the most expensive piece of digital art ever sold for a brief amount of time.

Crossroad is an artwork focused on the US elections, and supposedly showcases a defeated Donald trump lying in the background after the 2020 results. However, it was supposed to showcase him wearing a crown, had he won.

The NFT was sold for $6.66 million by Nifty Gateway, which brokered the deal between the original owner of the artwork and an anonymous buyer. It was sold at 10x of its original price within four months of its initial purchase.

 4. CryptoPunk #3100 – $7.51 Million

Yet another CryptoPunk on the list is CryptoPunk #3100, which was sold for $7.51 million. The #3100 is one of the rarest CryptoPunks, known as the alien punks, and sports a headband. It was sold for 4,200 ETH or $7.51 million in March 2021.

Out of the 10,000 Cryptopunks out there, there are 9 alien aliens, that make them enviable amongst the NFT enthusiasts.

3. CryptoPunk #7804 – $7.56 Million

At $7.56 million, CryptoPunk #7804 is one of the 9 aliens, similar to the one mentioned above. The person behind the sale of this NFT was Dylan Field, the CEO of design software Figma.

Sold in March 2021, the #7804 sports three accessories- a forward cap, shades, and a pipe. The pipe adds to the rarity of this NFT.

2. CryptoPunk #7523 – $11.8 Million

This appalling picture of a CryptoPunk in a face nappy sold for $11.8 million proving that NFT market is utterly retarded...

"It sports a face mask that provides it a sense of relevance during COVID-19. Moreover, it comes from the group of 9 Alien CryptoPunks. The face mask adds to the uniqueness, making it the only Alien Punk with a mask"

Great that makes it extra cool!

1. Everydays: The First 5000 Days – $69.3 Million

The winner of the most expensive NFTs ever sold is Everydays: The First 5000 Days by Mike Winkelmann which was sold at Christie’s.

Everydays is an artwork that represents a collage of 5,000 of Beeple’s earlier artworks he made every day in the last 5,000 days. Mike Winkelmann stated that he was inspired by British artist Tom Judd and began with the Everydays project on 1t May 2007.  The artwork consists of images ordered chronologically with some of the images actually being hand-drawn. It was purchased by Vignesh “MetaKovan Sundaresan.

The second-highest bidder for Everydays was Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, who was snipped at $60.2 million by Sundaresan.

 

Most of this post was copied from

https://insidebitcoins.com/buy-cryptocurrency/buy-nft/most-expensive-nfts