I shitposted my way through Sam Bankman-Fried's recent appeal hearing.

It will cleanse your fucking soul to read about just how badly this massive dumbass embarrassed both himself and his 'elite' apellate lawyer

open.substack.com/pub/davidzmo...

I've just unearthed some never-before-seen photos of Bitcoin Miami 2014, which featured the announcement of Ethereum. I will be posting them all to Dark Markets in just a few minutes.

davidzmorris.substack.com

Here's Vitalik Buterin talking to Dan Larimer just after the announcement.

Tomorrow's Dark Markets: Surveying a week of disturbing reports of LLMs harming cognition, driving people insane, possibly infecting @Mattel toys, and tricking its own biggest fans into swallowing a fake research paper whole.

Newsletter signup: davidzmorris.substack.com

POV Elon Musk decided you were funny the very first time he took ketamine

Table of Contents for "Stealing the Future: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elite Fraud, and the Cult of Techno-Utopia."

Coming October 2025 from Repeater Books

Coming tomorrow at Dark Markets

I've been thinking about Foundation and Dune in relation to Sam Bankman-Fried, Rationalists and EAs for like a year. I think I finally cracked it.

Asimov posits "psychohistory" as a functional mathematics of prediction. EA shares the faith.

Frank Herbert says "hold up."

Rough preliminary design of my book cover - with filler subhed and lorem ipsum.

Actual full title: "Stealing the Future: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elite Fraud, and the Cult of Techno-Utopia."

I was worried my topic would be outdated by release day in October, but unfortunately, it will remain relevant.

Tremendous feelings after belatedly discovering this send-off from @the-sy-guy.bsky.social on the occasion of my 2021 departure from Fortune.

Covering vaccines with Sy was a huge privilege.

I'm not crying.

Later today from Dark Markets.

davidzmorris.substack.com

The more I find out about the thought and movement, the more convinced I become that the suicides, murders, sub-cults, and psychotic breaks that beset Yudkowskyite Rationalism are direct consequences of the ideology.

From today's Dark Markets:

tinyurl.com/9kyy6c66

I made a quick meme for a post about New York City congestion pricing and the absolutely hilarious right-wing hissy fit it has triggered

When people tell you to care less about things, that your care is weird or uncool, that you're being "sentimental" or "emotional"?

They want to control you. And your children. And your children's children's children.

Finally recovered from the Bangkok Plague enough to write up my highlights of Devcon 7, including a great cypherpunk rallying cry from Amiir Taki, an on-chain game that's actually good by @movingcastles_, and more.

davidzmorris.substack.com

The New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI isn't just a battle over law or ethics.

It's another sign that unless they can get around the Constitution, generative content algorithms *have no viable business model.*

tinyurl.com/mpa9w5j9

NYT vs. LLM: A Death Sentence Foretold.

Alright, BIG GIANT PIN here: Wirecard's spy COO overrode principled execs to mass-surveil customers.

Marselek used the data to track German intel agents and expose them to his Russian handlers.

But in the U.S., if you oppose payment data collection, you must be a terrorist.

Well this just gets better. Marselek's paternal grandfather may also have been a double agent for the Soviets.

The collapse of WireCard was staggeringly similar to the collapse of #FTX - though, unbelievably, smaller. Marselek was using Wirecard to monitor German intelligence assets, some of whom later had to be relocated and hidden.

As I hinted yesterday, this morning I'm laying out my plans for growing my newsletter into something more professional and full-featured, including things like a podcast.

Read more here:

davidzmorris.substack.com/p/im-not-a-b...