Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 241: Our Own Fort Knox

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

This week we take a more in-depth look at the current state of crypto mining in the state of Kentucky, particularly in our neck of the woods in eastern Kentucky. Please support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Break it up or whatever. You look like you got into some fisticuffs after a contentious baseball game. God. It looks like you're wearing an old-timey baseball jersey. Is that what you're wearing? One of those, like... Baseball jerseys are still the tightest, in my opinion. Because they've got, like, the buttons down front, right?

Do baseball jerseys have that, like, right now? Like, modern baseball jerseys? Well, it is. It's kind of one of the only. Hold on one second. My garage band is going to bust. Baseball jersey. Baseball jersey.

Let's quit, god damn it. Image. Dude, they still got the buttons. Do they? I'm pleased to report that they're still still got the buttons. Do they? I'm pleased to report that they're still rocking with the buttons in the Major League Baseball League. The Major League Baseball League. Which is pretty baller.

I mean, I guess it doesn't make sense because in basketball them shits could just get ripped and buttons would just go. Yeah. It always really adds to it. Buttons just flying everywhere what in the goddamn hell is this thing doing nothing i swear to god nothing could just go

smoothly dude we'll just use the zoom recording fuck it just talking to your microphone okay there we go all right i've been using the zero recording the last couple times anyways i've just been like man fuck it all right i know just audience listen home i have a goddamn goiter on the side of my jaw from well what the doctor tells me is a blocked salivary gland so i'm i'm down bad man i was going to tell you i'm down i'm down bad it's just one of those afflictions that's not that common you don't hear about it a whole lot so it's like i don't even have a reference for what you must be feeling right now i tell you what it feels like it's not i wouldn't call it pain so much as you know when your jaws pucker when you eat something sour yeah it's like that but it won't go away it's like

feeling constantly i see so it's like you want to salivate but you can't well i don't have a problem i don't know if they're like the other salivary glands kind of compensate for one that's blocked because there's like three on each side of your jaw it's working overtime yeah just a lot of spit but i was talking to the doctor and he was like yeah in people your age this is usually caused by dehyd mild dehydration you know basically the same concept as a kidney stone or by poor oral hygiene and i was like doc i'm in my oral hygiene bag right now just got my teeth cleaned the first time in two years about a few months ago my oral hygiene i'm in my prime years of oral hygiene doc

you don't understand i have great oral hygiene i mean, it's like a brush and floss every day. Your 30s and 40s probably are your prime years of oral hygiene because it's like the one health thing that you feel like you might have some control over. Yeah. Some degree you can you can go to the gym and eat right now and stuff. But to some degree, even like your genetics will intervene there in some way. Right. Well, enough about my medical oddities, deformities. You know, it's probably happened to me.

God probably smited me for making fun of the inbred royals and their medical problems. He's like, I'll show you, pal. Got your ass. I'll show you to make fun of my representatives on Earth. I'm going to give you a rare, benign ailment. What if God did exist and to him? And to him, yeah, the what do we call that? The monarchy that is backed by God, by the authority and legitimacy of God.

What do they call that? Theocracies. Is it like absolutism or something? Absolute monarchy. Monarchy backed by God. That's what i'm typing in yeah technical name for when a monarchy is backed by the living god what do you call that that means god signs on he's like i endorse your monarchy yeah i bestow upon you the power to subjugate all these poor motherfuckers have you ever read about heaven i have walls of jasper the streets of gold so that is the case god in the one percent yeah and i think the thing is if that was the case god

therefore would hate democracy he would hate it it's not backed by the full socrates or him and plato yeah i don't know was that democracy divine divine right of kings is what i was divine right of kings yeah yeah it's the famous ursula k leguin quote right it's like capitalism or something i'm butchering this but something to the degree of capitalism seems like it's hard to overthrow but so did the divine right of kings at one point yeah well with all respects to ursula i think it's a little different just in the sense that like power is so diffused now you can't just look at one guy and be like that's the dude fucking everything up yeah i mean yeah it's like when you got a dude in a tower and you gotta go cut his

head off and cut off his future generations that's a that's an easy order you know what i mean you go round up a bunch of street toughs you go to the tower and you cut his head off now it's like hmm where do you start and even then the system will just fill back in someone you know you've like if you hypothetically did bezos there will just be a new bezos you know it's not like bezos has probably got his heirs mapped out for 10 generations I would say in the line of succession of Bezos I'd say Pitbull the rapper's probably number 4 so if you kill Bezos

and then two more guys you get Pitbull as the richest guy on earth that actually runs the show Mr. Worldwide they don't call him Mr. Worldwide for no reason just something to keep in mind anyways went to the barber shop yesterday and i told him to be gentle up top and he wasn't

and he said well we gotta fade that comb over out of there and he looked at me so i'll be honest it's gonna get worse before it gets better he was honest with you he just told you like it was yeah he's got a long term plan to make me look full and good up top so i'm gonna trust the process dude that's that's a big leap that's a big step just you know trusting someone like that it's a big it's a next step in a relationship i've been a bunch of yes men i've been trusting every year. It's just been giving me a comb over. Yeah, you're right, man. That's the thing. I don't want a yes man in the barber's chair.

I want somebody that's going to tell me like it is and give me the Budweiser cold hard facts. For all the barbers in the audience, one quick trick to getting more business. Just tell them the truth just tell them the truth tell them the truth that's if they're done up top to say man listen you're done over have you considered the jason statum look hold my hand walk with me into the light yeah man meanwhile he's got a beautiful head of hair or gorgeous tight fade

and you're like hey can i get something like that and he's just like i don't think so i don't think it's for you not for you my man it wasn't enough honestly that god made me bestowed upon me the genetics that he did took my once read for desk locks but he also had given me this goddamn goiter on the side of my face let me tell you something about human misery my friend there are no absolutes you've said it many times and i've now internalized those lessons because it's true it can always get worse you. The people you love the most will betray you. Hard to know where to look for some trust and support these days.

Yeah. We'll keep going. Right. Yeah. Well, I finally read the whole article about crypto in Kentucky. Did you read it? Yeah, I've looked at it there. I had talked to the author for a little bit when he was working on it.

Oh, really? You knew this was in production? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When I said, do you want to go to the crypto mine, that was who we were going to go with. Damn. We could have been in the belly of the beast, and yet we chose not to be.

But that could be a great article. Trillbillies go to a crypto mine. Somebody should write that. Hey, if you're out there, you're looking for a good story. Trillbillies go to the crypto mine let's just bring remember noisy yeah yeah with the ey yeah with the ey like damn they're sloppy and noisy yeah instead of sending a guy that uh you know the skinniest nerdiest white guy to the south side of chicago to interview drill rappers

it'll just be me and you going into dicey situations let's do it which is in essence basically a lateral move from what i just described but nevertheless we need we need to need to bring back that hard-hitting vice journalism not at all problematic. Well, I don't know if you read the whole thing, but towards the very end, an old Trillbilly's favorite shows up. Like, there's a cameo appearance of an old character. From what season? let's see here pandemic first year 2020 what year was that year four sturgill sampson pops up

sturgill sampson's running a crypto mine in harlem county huh what you want me to read it to you yeah the the the article is in my favorite new section on the thompson reuters foundation website called inclusive economies um oh boy what else is in the inclusive economies tab i actually didn't tap on that till just now welcome inclusive account inclusive economies economies are only truly inclusive when they are equitable participatory and sustainable and when they respect and preserve the environment around us according to oxfam what is oxfam and it's funny they have that name like yo we're oxfam yeah yeah that's like you already know yeah i always think oxfam is is it like one of those like sort of like unicef or i think so you know one of those ngo type deals

one of those like type deals. One of those like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a large NGO, like a large human rights NGO probably like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International. Dude, the best shit in the world is that Amnesty International

poster that's like the greatest dagger you can deliver to the heart of tyranny is writing a letter to amnesty international and it's gonna type yeah yeah it's like make sure the holocaust yeah make sure the holocaust never happens again by writing to amnesty international right right and it might also say and your congressman on there. I want to start one of those UNICEF Oxfam type outfits called Portly. But we celebrate fat guy genius, like moving the buttons on your jeans over a little closer.

So even when you grow a little, put on some weight, you can still button. Yeah, there we go. Our founder was Lyndon Baines Johnson. yeah there we go our founder was lyndon baines johnson because his weight fluctuated 15 pounds a month and his pants didn't give him enough room in the crotch um yeah uh ox oxfam and portly yo we're oxfam and portly yeah the according to oxfam the world's 26 richest people own as much as 50 of the world's fourth what the fuck is this what is the thompson reuters foundation i've got a lot of questions already who are we it's just i think it's just reuters i think that's just their christian name who we are an overview. Just tell me who you are.

This is their Christian name? I think so. I think it's just Reuters, but whatever. We use the combined power of journalism and the law to build global awareness of critical issues faced by humanity. The combined power of journalism and a law, huh?

Or did you say the law? I said the law, but... I thought you said the law? I said the law, but I thought you said a law. I was like, wow. We use that's what we use here at True Branded. We use the combined power of journalism and a law.

And it's hard to, the unimpeachable living God. And the power of the pen. To build global awareness of critical issues faced by humanity, inspire collective leadership and help shape a prosperous world where no one is left behind. And then it says who funds them? People like us. And charitable donations.

And our work is supported by an annual donation from Thomson Reuters and via project funding specifically dedicated to supporting our career services. Anyways, back to inclusive economies. The global economy is now five times larger than it was 50 years ago but inequality is rising and more people are excluded than ever around the world 40.3 million people live in conditions of slavery 10 million of them are children 24.9 million of them trapped in forced labor hiding at the bottom of global supply chains and some 4.8 million people are victims of commercial sexual exploitation damn this is fucked up the climate crisis has also risen to the top of the international agenda with global yeah you get you get the idea you get the idea as i can't i can't hear the word

agenda without wanting to make a joke about the gay agenda. It's always funny just that the gay agenda was like what set some of these guys off. It was, you know, critical race theory now or whatever. But back then it was the gay agenda. It was. It was big gay. Yeah. That was dope.

When big gay was running the shots, calling the shots. The Halcyon days. Right. The Halcyon days of Big Gay. Anyways, it sounds like an NGO journalism operation. Sort of like, remember the Center for Public Interest or something like that? They did that Black Lung series.

I think it was Public Integrity. That's what it was yeah yeah great name by the way like no institution in america has any integrity whatsoever yeah yeah except portly you said portly portly has a lot of integrity. Portly is, yeah, we're guided by the principles of our founder, Linda Banks Johnson. Okay, cold to crypto. All right, anyways, back to the original article. Sorry, I already had to go through a few hyperlinks. I get a little hyperlink happy at the beginning of articles sometime, man.

That's why I don't finish a lot of articles. I start reading and then I start clicking the hyperlinks. And then before you know it. A little update on my condition. It feels like maybe I felt a little movement. Gipson movement. I think it's stone is. I think I'm I'm think I'm on the mend a little movement. Gipsy movement. I think it's stone is. I think I'm I'm think I'm on the

man a little bit. See, dude, this is the power of conversation. This is laughter. Laughter is the best medicine. That's what they say. That's it truly is. Cold to crypto.

The gold rush bringing Bitcoin miners to Kentucky. It's a bit of a long one, but I'll try to skip around. In a ravine deep in the Appalachian Mountains, Warren Rogers stands on the ruins of an abandoned coal washing plant that used to prepare hundreds of tons of fuel a day for transport through the tiny town of Belfry, Kentucky. Read that from the top again. I want to make one editor's adjustment. Okay.

In a ravine deep in the Appalachian Mountains, Warren Rogers stands on the shoulders of giants. Yep. I already disagree with you with the framing. Stop defining Appalachia by its poverty and its rubble. Yeah. His construction crews have been putting in 10 to 12 hour shifts through the winter,

retrofitting the old site to power a new kind of extractive operation, mining the digital currency Bitcoin. We're trying to digitize coal, said Rogers, the chief strategy officer of Blockware Solutions, a Bitcoin mining giant that is expanding rapidly in eastern Kentucky. Over the past years, Rogers, a former venture capitalist, like, I don't know, like, what is a is that one of those things like being like a nazi in world war ii like you you can't ever take off the uniform if you were once a venture capitalist you're always a venture yeah but instead of like carving a swastika in your head

you just wear like a i don't know whatever jd v wears. Like a blazer and some bad jeans. Over the past years, Rogers, a former venture capitalist, has been crisscrossing Appalachia on the hunt for new Bitcoin mining sites and the power to run them. This is hilarious, dude. This quote fucking dropped me. This quote got me. We own a money printing machine roger said

like every good scam every time you see a movie and they're like on the bottom floor of a scam like what was that movie with leonardo dicaprio like catch me if you can if you can it was just like printing money and like tom hanks walks in it's just like like that's a good sign that you're on the bottom floor of a scam if you say it's a virtual printing money printing machine yeah i also like how they've just like you remember who was the kentucky state legislature that was recorded as saying he likes the benjamins on a recorded line i remember that who was it ken hall keith hall i think it was his name yeah yeah it's like this guy's just stripped away the pretense he's like okay what this is is it's a money-making venture you know

you know it's i can appreciate that because for years all the crypto guys have been talking about how like this is like this sort of like god's end like whatever that's going to change the way we do contracts and whatever whatever whatever but this guy's just like yeah no we're just basically printing money here it It's honestly, it reminds me of that scene in There Will Be Blood where he's like, there's an ocean of oil beneath our feet. I'm the only one who can get at it. You know what I mean? It's like drunk with like hubris and power.

There's an ocean of an immaterial, highly hostile asset underneath our feet. And all we got to do to get at it is build this warehouse with a bunch of gateway computers running around the clock in it and we need some fans too staffed with six employees yeah at least two of which have to be an out-of-work coal miner so we can say we're doing the mine to mines thing later on in this article they will say that like every bitcoin mine it's like they're hiring like seven to twelve people and it's hilarious because that is literally less employees than a single mcdonald's this is like why would you write an entire article about opening one arby's in hazard like this that's the that's the only amount of jobs it's creating yeah i know i know there i

mean put that in perspective i ran a duplex and there is more people in both these units than work at any one of these bitcoin plants yeah um we own a money printing machine rogers said gazing at a tangle of power lines, which descend the steep hills and connect to a pair of rusted old buildings where his team is installing rows of Chinese made Bitcoin mining computers. We're building our own Fort Knox, he told the Thompson Rogers Foundation. Just drunk with power. Just the hubris. I'm the only one who can get it.

And it really is pretty funny. Like that he's right. We're building our own Fort Knox here. When the planned construction is done, the facility will create up to three bitcoins per day worth over one hundred thousand dollars, all the while sucking more power than all the houses in Belfry combined, based on estimates from Blockware Solutions. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are created or mined by high-powered computers competing to solve complex mathematical puzzles. It's a process that guzzles energy and fuels planet heating emissions. Meanwhile, there is debate around how effectively such operations can replace jobs lost when

coal mines and other fossil fuel businesses shut in 2016. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The Belfry operation will provide between five and 10 full time jobs, Rogers said, paying twenty three dollars an hour, nearly three times the minimum wage. Hey, think about this, okay? I read somewhere once that every McDonald's employee creates $100,000 in value for every McDonald's stockholder. If this guy claims that they're making,

let's assume they're working an eight-hour shift, right? Standard eight-hour shift. Let's do the math here. By his own admission they're creating a hundred thousand dollars a day in value right right and they're staffing how many people like what would this one say five to ten full-time jobs let's split the difference call it eight okay times 23 times eight so they're spending one thousand four hundred and seventy two dollars a day to make a hundred thousand dollars that is insane so let me just tell you guys something you're getting fucked in the ass so hard it's not even funny.

That means some asshole that just built this like very, just like sort of, you know, chintzy facility is making $98,548 a day on the backs of eight guys making a grand total of $1,472 a day. Well, dude, that is a fascinating observation because there's something about the way they build these jobs that I want to get into. I'll keep going here. I'll flag it when we get to it.

The Kentucky boom comes as environmentalists campaign to limit the spread of Bitcoin mining, which consumes as much energy as a country about the size of Malaysia each year. China banned all crypto transactions and mining in September, citing energy concerns. I didn't know that, actually. Interesting. China. Hold on a second.

China said that Bitcoin was a bridge too far. Yeah. Yeah. They said, well, I think it was because their energy, I think there's still sort of, they were concerned.

The Chinese were concerned about the energy consumption of Bitcoin. I think so. Yeah. I wonder how much like waste there is. I mean, it's a pretty planned economy, right? Like,

I mean, it's like capitalist, but it's economy, right? It's capitalist, but it's like... Right. I'm sure. I didn't mean to make that sound like the Chinese are just wanting climate change accelerationists or anything like that through their industries.

I'm sure they have this stuff sort of... You know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know i don't know i don't know anything about china i'm just i don't either but i do know that if you're like you know you make everything in the goddamn world that probably requires a lot of energy and it is a little alarming for them to say that's a little too much for us right i mean it seems to me that an economy like there is probably needs to remain somewhat sleek and efficient and like if you're just gonna like send all this energy to this industry that isn't really a guarantee it is kind of a gamble it all depends on like how good your algorithms and shit are right like right

i guess i guess i guess so uh yeah i kind of here's my thought on like i heard somebody say this about nfts and it might have been like the only smart thing i've ever heard said about an nft and they were like well in essence it's like owning your own masters from like music whatever like you own the original right Right. Right. You know what I mean? Which I could dig that if like every NFT was like Bob Dylan's catalog, but it's not. You know what I mean? It's ugly ass picture of a monkey.

Well, that's such a stupid ass comparison, though, because. They're so overinflated in value. Right. they're so overinflated in value. Like a song, which takes much more creative energy and labor and intelligence is in this schematic, like penny worth pennies on the dollar, as opposed to this digital visual image that was made in like three seconds, three milliseconds, probably by an algorithm or something.

Yeah. Like what, what is the value imparted there? That's a good question that I don't know. I don't know. Did you see, have you seen this? I saw this or heard this on a time crisis this week, but they were talking about a lot of these venture capital firms and finance outfits are buying up catalogs of artists. You know what I mean?

Like, I know famously Bob Dylan. Yeah. And I think I think Neil. Yeah. Neil Young sold what? Half of his catalog. And we'll get into that maybe on a later episode. So I don't want to get too much into that but one thing I thought was interesting was

that they brought up was somebody somewhere value value Motley Crue's catalog as equal to Neil Young's thoughts hey dude it depends I mean you got to look at it

like this though a lot more drugs went into those albums and drugs cost money all right so maybe whose albums neil young's or motley crew motley crew i mean i know it's not like neil young famously made on the beach half like some sort of homemade cajun fucking angel dust. No, I'm saying that Motley Crue had like four Neil Young's in it. Whereas Neil Young was just, I guess he had crazy horse. Yeah. And then he had, what was it? Which one of the Kershaw brothers, Doug or Rusty?

I can't remember. Basically was the brains behind On the Beach and would make the stuff. Yeah, he would make this like homemade stuff. They would get high off of it was like a wet, like maybe it was just some kind of wax or something. I can't remember. That's not cocaine or ice dust, but they were like they stayed dusted during

the sessions for On the Beach. For a second, I thought you meant Sammy Kershaw. She don't know she's beautiful. She don't know she's beautiful. I've long wondered if Sammy is akin to Doug and Kershaw. They're all from Louisiana, all Cajuns. You could tell. There were time and time

I told her so. We got that nasally. Yeah. Eat some onion rings and watch TV okay Charlie Daniels or the torque wrench is one of the best lines in any song ever

how did we get on that I took us on diversion with I see all alright let's see let's get back China banned all crypto transactions and mining in September citing energy concerns and New York legislators recently introduced

a bill to ban Bitcoin mining saying it undermined the state's climate goals Kentucky however is hoping to woo miners from all over the world dude I found out a lot of crazy shit about kentucky in this article um i don't see anyone who can compete with kentucky in bitcoin mining since state senator brandon smith who has traveled the world pitching kentucky as a prime location for mining operations

he's not the character i was referring to by the way and let's call it what it is brandon smith probably wasn't traveling the world searching for pitching kentucky he was probably looking for a never mind i've got to be a little more judicious in my inflammatory rhetoric these days last year smith who chairs the natural resources committee in the state senate spearheaded a package of tax incentives for Bitcoin miners. The law was signed by the governor in March 2021. It would cost Kentucky taxpayers about $9 million a year in lost tax revenue.

So Bitcoin proponents say that will be outweighed by the broader economic benefits the industry brings, such as jobs and out-of-state investment. So it's like, yeah, OK, so like. They're rolling the red carpet out, right? Right. For Bitcoin, you know, a bunch of tax abatements and stuff like that. Like they don't there's no cost for them relocating here. Yeah, it's it is.

So I think a lot of like. Ari's reporting is like based on the idea that a lot of these Bitcoin outfits are getting ran out of the Northeast. Right. Because of like kind of what we were talking about, like some NIMBYism, that kind of stuff. Right. This is a little too lowbrow for the people in Greenwich or wherever. You know what I mean? Right. So you know what that means? All the southern governors that are dying for something one big idea hey hey no taxes we'll give you money even come down please please yeah you know and so yeah you're creating it's so funny to see that we're so desperate that we're staking our economic futures uh i mean you're gonna see like the teacher's

pension fund probably funded by NFTs and Bitcoin in the not-for-the-distant future. That type of shit. We're betting big on the most volatile asset that loses so much value every couple years. Bitcoin has a huge thing where it loses

trillions in assets. There are billions in assets. Don't you think it sort of seems like to me that in the last couple of weeks, the NFT craze has kind of died down a little bit. It just seems to me like you're not hearing about it as much. It seems like right around the time of the Super Bowl, it was all anybody was fucking talking about.

Even Larry David did the commercial. Yeah. It is funny. It's almost like it was like they made one big score and got out. Last November, Senator Smith briefly became the co-owner of a Bitcoin mining operation in

the Appalachian town of Inez. He pulled out of the company called Bio Fuel Mining in February 2022 and did not receive any tax town of Inez. He pulled out of the company called Biofuel Mining in February 2022 and did not receive any tax incentives for the project. He's still working to make Kentucky a global hotspot for Bitcoin mining. We want to raise a flag and say to Bitcoin miners, come to Kentucky. Many large U.S. states have attracted significant Bitcoin mining investment in recent months, but Kentucky is emerging as a small powerhouse.

This is the part that I was talking about. With its fossil fuel heavy energy supply, Kentucky produces more carbon from cryptocurrency mining than any other U.S. state, according to economist Alex DeVries. Did you know that? No. That's crazy.

No, I knew about some of these operations. I know there's one out west, I think, in Calvert City or Campbellsville, somewhere like that. But like, yeah, I guess now they're just proliferating a bit. They are fucking like swarming here. Yeah. Well, dude, it's crazy to think about. I guess.

It's because what, like in easternentucky in the summer it doesn't get that hot i mean it gets pretty fucking hot but like i lived in texas and you know how hot it gets here in the summers and how hot it gets in texas there's not even any comparison like out there it sucks you want to do the pissing contest where we talk about dry heat versus humidity? In Austin. One of my favorite things that people do. But they're just for no reason. Well, everybody has to prove that they've had it harder.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, y'all got that dry heat out west. Here it's a little more humid. that dry heat out west. Here it's a little more humid. He estimates the state's carbon footprint at 3.1 megatons of carbon dioxide a year, the equivalent of running 650,000 passenger vehicles. I would be curious to know if the state of Kentucky, what the state of Kentucky, what the state of Kentucky,

if you could sort of privatize carbon footprints, I would be interested to see what the state of Kentucky has been just after being like the world's most productive coal field for so long, up until like the last 10, 15, 20 years, whatever it's been. And now this. I know. And now this. I know.

Where one small facility is using more power than whole towns that they're in. I know. In the meantime, Bitcoin mines have been springing up across the state on top of abandoned coal mines alongside highways in industrial parks high in the mountains and deep in shell gas fields hooked up to abandoned gas wells it's fucking nuts man how like the extractive industry that took place here like 20 years ago left behind a lot of infrastructure that is making it amenable to locating these facilities here it's kind of like maybe the weather is maybe they would much rather go farther north. But if they can just like come down here and like hook up to an abandoned gas well.

Yeah. Well, there's more or less four complete seasons. So it's like. That is bizarre. It's fucking weird because some of them are setting up an abandoned power plants and like using the infrastructure of the power plant to mine the bitcoin you know what i'm saying yeah it's like you go to a bitcoin facility it looks like do you watch that show uh archive 81 or something like that. Never heard of it.

It was on Netflix. It was like, you know, it was like one of the 800 shows that gets to be like the talk of the town for like three days. And then just kind of goes away. Right. But there's,

there's a guy that's like in this facility and it's just been like totally left in disrepair or whatever. And it's like, it's thinking about like, these guys are printing money in like just like these places like when we were in harland county the other day like or recently you know it's like these like abandoned like cold dimples and different shit just like strange so to least, you know, it's cheaper for them because they have to build new facilities

and infrastructure, you know, they have to make more sort of expenses, less overhead, I guess.

Yeah. And the weather is decent. I don't know, it's just an interesting

sort of coalescence of several different forces, you know? Yeah. The precise energy mix and climate change impact of these operations is hard to pin down blah blah blah investors from new york texas and

san francisco are racing to find suitable sites in kentucky forming local entities who prospect in the appalachian region of eastern kentucky where late land is cheap and power abundant at least four new operations have announced plans to build or expand Bitcoin operations there since late 2021. And then it goes on to talk about like Martin County. A fascinating anecdote from here was about how in Martin County, there is a hulking metal trash incinerator that was just recently built. It will burn and gasify municipal waste trucked in from across the country,

creating energy that local Bitcoin miners plan to divert to their operations. After years of experimenting, the waste-to-energy technology is now ready for primetime, said John Burke, a former coal mine operator who co-owns the facility. Some people say it smells like trash, but it smells like money to me, said Burke, who grew up in neighboring Floyd County. Oh, boy. Yeah. Once a Bitcoin mine being set up around the plant becomes operational, the power will instead be routed to it, says Wes Hamilton, a local businessman.

The vast majority of Bitcoin mining operations in Kentucky do not generate their own power, but draw on the state's carbon-intensive grid. The incinerator facility in Martin County is part of an ambitious Bitcoin-based... This is an incredible sentence. Part of an ambitious Bitcoin-based economic revival plan by the small businessman Wes Hamilton,

who was co-director of biofuel mining with Brandon Smith until the senator left this January. Like, damn dog, look at my just transition. It's funny. It's like all these sort of just transition projects that all the NGOs and everybody's been pining for for years were all really just to put infrastructure in place for Bitcoin for. Including that, like all these solar projects and all that shit. like all just this whole time like late in the game just like character reveal villain reveal like this whoopsie daisy we were doing it for bitcoin dude it's i just did the numbers here

and if those numbers are correct and those values of Bitcoin stay the same, which they won't, but let's say they do. These guys are printing about $38 million a year and their overhead is about half a million bucks. Jesus Christ. Because I mean, I don't even know with all the tax incentives and stuff.

It's probably way more lucrative than that, but it's like just transparently a fucking scheme. You know what I mean, I don't even know with all the tax incentives and stuff. It's probably way more lucrative than that. But it's like just transparently a fucking scheme. You know what I mean? Yeah. This is a good article. I didn't mean to imply at the beginning that it wasn't. The only reason I was interested in Thomas Reuters Foundation is, you know, I'm a little paranoid. You got to know.

You got to know about the sources you're reading from, man. Right. you gotta know about the sources you're reading from man right um but there's a the way this is all framed up here in a second was fucking phenomenal my passion is to change the economic face of this region hamilton said showing off shipping containers full of thousands of bitcoin mining up computers arrayed a stone's throw from the trash gas fire. I love that sentence. My passion is to change the economic face of this region. I wake up every day and say that to myself in the mirror.

Listen, I'm not going to go guillotine guy circa 2017, but there could be a cool cosmic justice if you could, I don't know, guillotine guy circa 2017. But there could be a cool cosmic justice if you could, I don't know, put one of these guys in a trash gasifier. Or if they ended up, I should say, if they ended up in one, you know.

What does it mean to be gasified? What kind of experience would that be like? Would it be like instant? Are you just kind of, are you like the blue guy? You just become vapor as soon as you like hit it. Yeah, right. Like in Watchmen. First you're there and then it's just your dick and balls.

Well, I mean, also, okay, as i read this like honestly if bitcoin didn't take so much energy if it wasn't a complete suck on the resources around it i guess i wouldn't theoretically oppose it i mean yes it's a it's a capitalist industry just like any other and so there's going to be exploitation and all that kind of stuff but like as a sort of mode of political economy it kind of makes sense and i've guess i've kind of said that we both of us have said that for years like the future of this place will probably be like 3d printing and stuff just very small scale operations, just like a Bitcoin mining facility. But like, but the thing is, is it is also a massive sink on resources. And so it's like, you know, this is a,

that in and of itself will create contradictions and problems further on down the line, just like the coal industry did with surface mining and shit. Well, I'm curious if there's a situation where Bitcoin loses all its value at some point. Not all of its value, but let's say you're mining, you're running Bitcoin at a loss at some point. And then you're just like, well, we just got to get through the lean years.

And then they just go in the toilet because energy prices are probably continuing to go through the roof, but then like Bitcoin is just down here. Like it would be, I don't know what will happen in the future of Bitcoin. I'm not going to prognosticate about it, but it would be interesting if you got to a point where like, it's not advantageous to mine Bitcoin anymore, not because it doesn't have any value or anything,

but the value has sunk to the point that like the overhead has now risen in terms of like what you pay in power bills and whatever yeah it's weird to think about i feel like it's going to be around for a long time just because it has a compelling story to it that people buy in to ideologically like yeah this is the way we fight the power man it's like decentralized currency this is how we fight back you know i think that like that ideological narrative behind it kind of makes it compelling and until that is dealt with by like any world by any government worldwide then i don't i don't know but i guess china's cracking down on it so i don't know. But I guess China's cracking down on it. So I don't know, man. Maybe China's like they made powerful enemies with Bitcoin people, the crypto people.

They maybe the crypto people, my powerful enemies with China. OK, anyways, back to Martin County. Then we get some stats about Martin County, high poverty rate, blah, blah, blah. Investors from around the country are descending on the can. Also, the place where Tom and I got to be in the room for a devil's milkshake. Yeah. And we're Kodak Black was locked up and converted to Judaism. Uh huh. Yeah. Investors from around the country are descending on Martin County, where Hamilton pitches them on his vision for Bitcoin mining powered entirely from trash. Okay, so I just want to say something here. So that's what the vaporizer, right?

That's what? So what they're going to do is they're going to vaporize the trash and that's going to create energy somehow to power Bitcoin facilities. Yes. So the future of Eastern Kentucky rural economy is essentially going to be

finding arcane ways to create energy for Bitcoin facilities. For arcane currents to use. I guess arcane might not be the right word for Bitcoin. But yeah, it's interesting at least, but it's just very,

it trips all of my bullshit detectors. You know what I mean? Like all at once. Well, also it's like, it's kind of clever. I'll give it that they're they should lean into this honestly just pay me 250 000 up front uh finders fee for this one but lean into this like what do you see most often driving around the haulers of eastern kentucky just people burning the trash i mean they've made

it they've managed to make it a local like you know local ritual thing it's just like no we're keeping heritage live here what if we burn this but it also made me and my buddies millions of dollars helped cut cut into our overhead yeah it's pretty genius, honestly. The crown jewel... I just plopped down $50,000 for a few machines. Why not, said Adam Kohler, a Bitcoin investor who lives in Cincinnati and drove down in December

to see Hamilton's operation. The crown jewel of Hamilton's plan is to open a center to train out-of-work locals to repair broken-down Bitcoin mining machines built by the Chinese company Bitmain. Bitmain? Bitmain!

That's who we're going to contract for Datcoin. That's right. Bitmain's first single, Datcoin. It's the newest. It sounds like the newest guy signed a 1017 brick squad. So far, seven technicians have been trained, Hamilton said, adding that his company employed another 25 people in areas

including maintenance, construction, and electrical work. Core Scientific, a Bitcoin mining giant that announced plans to invest over $44 million in Western Kentucky in 2018, predicted in its application for government financial incentives that it would create a total of 35 jobs. There's no doubt jobs are needed here, said Colby kirk the judge executive of martin county the highest ranking elected official in the county people drive one or two hours to find work young people leave because they see no future he wishes the local bitcoin operation success but it is not sold on bitcoin as a silver bullet for economic revival can i just say something about what all these like dumb bastards i'm like at my wits end

with like easter kentucky leadership even like you know usually it's like i just kind of like make fun of them or whatever but i think well you know they're just good old boys trying to do the best that they're not though so what these fuckers don't understand is that like oh well there's young people don't see any future but you don't build somebody's future or get anybody excited about the future with fucking jobs. It has to be like a total project. Right. You know what I mean?

Right. Right. You all build these ugly fucking pieces of shit all over the fucking place. Like you, you invest nothing in like you're just your basic infrastructure or anything like that. You're like, well,

I wonder why nobody sees a future. Well, it's a grim fucking place to be man. And no amount of $23 an hour jobs is ever going to fucking change the fact that you have the ugliest eye in the world and you have no vision of the future outside of oh how can i create an industry that i can pay people enough to keep them around and not too miserable but i can still make millions of dollars off of. And this is the perfect checks every box for that.

And I know, listen, I hate to be like a fucking malcontent sort of pissy guy all the time, but this shit fucking kills me because we have the dumbest fucking people in the world figuring out ways to prosper and like ruling over these like grim little fiefdoms in eastern kentucky where they can just say to some guy that's donated his life and lungs to some fucking cunt somewhere else and say well buddy we're going to get you back up there we're going to get you 23 now we're just going to get you some job training and da da da da da it's like no man it's like you you have to build a fucking society yeah it ain't about it it's not about you could you could build a goddamn yeah the horse cum soap factory or whatever man it's

not gonna get anybody excited to stick around i'm gonna go stick around here in this fucking anyway i'm sorry that's just well the the way the jobs are kind of billed is very interesting. Or wait, let me finish. Let me read this part about. OK, then there's a segment called Tax Breaks. As part of Kentucky's drive to woo Bitcoin miners, legislation written by Smith allows miners who invest more than a million dollars in the state to have their sales taxes waived. Miners can also avoid paying sales tax on electricity bills.

And Smith is pushing forward another batch of legislation that would give cryptocurrency similar legal status to traditional currencies um such as allowing them to be passed on to heirs something now difficult hell yeah brandon he's he's looking at he's looking out for his future, his progeny. It's so great. It's like in the future, the fucking white cokes of the world are going to be fighting the estate tax on these crypto and these like assets that weren't even like real in their father's time. Right. Right.

The question is, how do we get people to come here instead of West Virginia, Texas or Pennsylvania? Ask Daniel Mudd, a lawyer in Louisville. His firm is fielding an influx of inquiries from Bitcoin miners trying to understand the tax breaks available to them in Kentucky. Blockware and Silicon Valley based Bitcoin mining firm Prime Block are among-of-state firms that are exploring Kentucky's tax breaks. Senator Smith said his office is getting a constant stream of queries from Bitcoin miners about how to take advantage of the tax breaks. Though he says the state has so far been slow to actually approve applicants. On top of the tax incentives, Kentucky's existing power infrastructure is itself a major draw, the company say. as Kentucky's existing power infrastructure is itself a major draw,

the companies say. The state is studded with abandoned industrial and coal sites already wired to handle large-scale energy supplies. That's what I'm talking about, dude. See? It's all been... It's just like a perfect combination of industrial abandonment meeting that kind of nas nascent ngo driven sort of theory of change that was all got all this stuff sitting around what are we going to do with it

right if it's the question people in the ngos we've been asking themselves for a long time what we're gonna do all these old abandoned coal sites well here's the future baby well the fascinating thing about that is that there is contradictions even within that so for example let's see let's see let's see this is a long article bro i'm sorry i'm sorry to have brought such a long one to the table today um some bitcoin some development specialists are skeptical that bitcoin incentives will help produce blah blah blah blah blah still for the locals who have found work in the bitcoin mining facilities it can feel like a big break i've seen all of my family in coal mines for my whole life

getting their backs broken said ethan asslinger, 22, from Harlan. He was recently hired by Prime Block, the Silicon Valley firm, as one of 10 promised local hires. All right, now here we come to the way these jobs are described and billed. So they say that these jobs are, and it's like they kind of do it subtly. Like they don't really like explain what they mean by this but the two job requirements of these jobs are to do routine maintenance on their mining operations and guarding the operation so it kind of feels like there's a kind of like law enforcement or security i guess element tied into this yeah i don't know maybe that's what it is these guys

are just the muscle to protect these facilities i guess because what else what do you do other than i mean i'm sure that like if you're not just going to trust some you know unwashed philistine with your money printing machine you know it's like what are these jobs are they just there to appease like the people that say well we gotta you know if's like what are these jobs are they just there to appease like the people that say well we gotta you know if we're gonna sell people on this we got to make a couple of jobs and they're really just kind of bullshit jobs you know i would bet they yeah i guess they're just guard jobs they're basically just hiring security guards yeah but here's another bigger question i think in this sort of mad dash and it's interesting because brandon young has been or brandon young brandon smith has been one of these guys brandon brandon young is my friend his mom caught him

masturbating this is this guy guy's not a state senator brandon smith is assured uh brandon smith is and uh it makes me it it makes me wonder if like this sort of mad dash to like buy up all these coal mining facilities that were running coal at a loss you know i my my first hypothesis was well maybe trump has just made it advantageous with the tax breaks to run coal at a loss or whatever but maybe these guys just got in on the ground floor of the future and knew that like all these sort of facilities were going to be moving here and it's like oh well if i just get one of these old fucking coal mines that are still wired you know to handle these things that you're talking about right i'm getting in on the ground

floor i'm like ready just to slide right in there and put bitcoin facilities on under whatever yeah i wonder if that was in the calculus or if it's just a happy accident i think it was probably man that's a great question because like some of these acquisitions made no goddamn sense right at all and people just started buying up the coal mines at like for pennies on the dollar. You are right. Like back in like 2015, all of a sudden you started seeing these like we do for a while. We thought that what was actually happening was old fashioned money laundering. We thought that maybe like the like some mob, some like, you know,bed a bad fit somewhere was just buying these abandoned they needed a loser on their taxes you know what i mean yeah as like a money laundering scheme because it made no sense why would you buy these mines in like 2000 especially like 2015 16 when it was just you know abysmal like there was no future in it i guess maybe that's fucking why

dude yeah i bet if you looked hard enough, you'd probably find some of those connections far enough back. Possible. That's fucking nuts. Also interesting, but I can't connect this doc because it's above my pay grade. But if you look at the paper trail of all these old abandoned coal mines, it usually goes back to like Russian and Ukrainian,

like former like soviet petrol guards i don't know if that has any implications in the you know current sort of uh conflict du jour but i'd be interested to make that connection if somebody who's smarter than i am could put those together right right right um let's see okay at forty thousand dollars a year it is an extremely competitive entry-level salary for the region um gaurav budrani a former goldman sachs executive and ceo of prime block said he is prioritizing building operations near energy grids that rely on renewable sources of energy he also closely tracks which states are offering tax breaks for new operations his bitcoin mining firm is building facilities around the appalachian region and in the tennessee valley so um all right

so now we get to the part we an old character an an old friend pops back up. I do. I found this part of the article highly entertaining, highly interesting. Let me go first, actually, before we get into. OK, OK. When a whole lot of December's. Showing in your face. lot of Decembers showing in your face. Your auburn hair is faded and silver takes its place. You'll be just as lovely and I'll still be around. And if I can, I know that I'd still love to lay you down. Lay you down and softly whisper pretty love words in your ear. Lay you down and tell you all the things

my woman wants to hear. I'll let you know how much it means just having you around. Darling, how I'd love to lay you down that was conway twitty with lay you down and softly whisper pretty love words in your ear I'm Tom Sexton. This is 88.7 WMMT-FM, the hip-hop giant in the mountains. Terrence is peeing, but he'll be back shortly, hopefully, if he didn't fall in.

Okay, anyways, Here we go. Here we are. But Kentucky's efforts to attract Bitcoin mining frustrate businessman Jeff Marietta, the former head of the Chamber of Commerce. Ah, you son of a bitch. Jeff Marietta's frustrated. He's frustrated.

You will now feel the wrath. Be warned. Heads will roll. Heads will roll. A former head of the Chamber of Commerce in Harlan County who runs a small business accelerator. What? What's the accelerator?

The coffee shop? Of all the bullshit things I have heard in my life, and there have been a lot, my friends, I'm pushing 35. I've heard a lot of bullshit out there. I am nearly four decades of life. I've heard plenty.

But small business accelerator, like it brings to mind like a physical object that you put something into and like a coiled, you know, rotating centrifuge like spin something. Yeah, like Young Frankenstein or something, you know, like an out pops a frozen yogurt stand or something like, yeah, yeah, yeah. What business do you want to run? It's like, you know, I don't know. So it's interesting because this gets into like the kind of conflicts within this like just transition framework that, you know, and it could be also that just our boy marietta here is just being like contrarian

or just wants to get in the newspaper get quoted somewhere which i think is also likely the case anyways i am making a generational oh my god i am making a generational investment in this community i'm not here to flip bitcoin said marietta standing in a half completed brewery he's building a downtown park and all the bitcoin guys are like bro breweries that's a little uh you know little yesterday even for our standards, a little dated. He's a fucking... He got outpaced, man. They got lapped.

They got fucking lapped. Dude, imagine when the guy's trying to get on the ground floor and just exploit all the fucking... Because these guys could come in and say, I went to such and such school. Give me all your resources and infrastructure or access to them or whatever and i will promise you i will get this rolling and then like all the guys that have been like brandon smith and them for as much as i can't stand them either like yeah bro actually we got it from here well dude what it is is that like this whole project of the mariettas because like i kind of we talked about them in 2020 because they early on in the pandemic they had had this

like wasn't it a blog post or something that went viral they were man weren't they mad because some kids spray painted a dick and balls on their sidewalk of the coffee shop. Something like that. Okay. They might, that might've been the first time we kind of heard from them. The second time was when they were handing out all that stimulus money and small business owners were like, well,

they can just pay everybody to stay home. And so we don't have it. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the second time. You're right, right, right.

Now they got beef with the other, the other faction of the just transition movement. Yeah. It's fucking crazy that like. This kind of just pairs it down to what their mission really is. And like in their mission, his like you read between the lines of what he's saying. I am making a generational investment in this community i'm not i named all my children after eastern kentucky

counties god damn it i demand i want that much service whatever that's worth i want that much service it's like savior is competing against other saviors. It's just like this guy is the epitome of climb down off the cross, asshole. We need the wood. This whole this scenario is the embodiment of that saying, like, like we couldn't give a fuck about your humanistic, your humanizing, like civilizing mission here. That is what their whole thing is. It's not to sell coffee or beer in a brewery. It's to make people here have the right ideas. Right, right, right.

Yeah. And on the other side of this guy, these guys are just trying to get a payday. Exactly. That's why they're winning. Yeah. That's why Marietta's getting lapped. Well, think about the rhetoric though, right?

Like Marietta's, I'm making generational investments. I name my kids. Let your Harlan, Knox, and Perry. And then these guys are over here like, bitch, we're printing money over here. We got the vaporizer. We're printing money. You know what I mean?

They're going by Marietta's coffee shop and just like, hey, broke motherfucker. They're like 10, 17 brick squad chains on. Marietta over there in some pleated khakis. His Patagonia fleece. Yeah, they're like, Marietta ain't got no bitches.

This motherfucker opened a brewery. Oh, fucking god damn that marietta ain't got no bitches we got the gasifier son what the fuck do you got are you playing are you playing with me right now you go to the gasifier

what a strange end it would be if in a high profile savior beef marietta gets thrown in the gas fire and paradoxically is actually his physical form is used to power a bitcoin operation because he fucked with the wrong guys at martin county they they had them whacked because they're like him speaking out in this article. These Bitcoin miners are like, no, dude, like he's fucking with my bag. Like we got to. I'm probably fucking with daddy's paper. We're going to say we're going to send you back to Minnesota

as a thousand particles per million. Thousand parts per million, bitch. Play with me. Oh, man. Just driving by. Barry Adams ain't got no bitches. Barry Adams ain't got no bitches. Oh, fucking Christ.

These guys just drive by rolling coal every day playing OJs for the love of money by his little coffee shop. Anna, Anna, Anna. Oh, my fucking God, dog. Standing in a half-completed brewery he is building in downtown Harlan, a few miles from an under-construction Bitcoin mine. And then this got a photo of him standing

around in his half-completed brewery with a cup of coffee, looking like... Marietta, who also opened a cafe and event space, is trying to rehabilitate a downtown dotted with abandoned buildings. Yet while the Bitcoin mine down the road

is owned by yeah you and everybody else pal it's just like it's just more fucking whining it's like bro the game is capitalism motherfucker there are no morals here no one cares about your fucking whining yeah everybody's listen everybody's every time anybody like us has like sit here and throw bricks from the sideline and criticize what you're doing. It's because you're operating in a system that has no law of governing, my man.

And now you're just sitting and you're getting eaten by it. Yeah, listen to this. Listen to this. Funny too how all these guys want to be the only game in town, though. Yeah, listen to this. You know what I mean?

Like, why is Marietta pissy about Bitcoin? I'll tell you. He says, while the Bitcoin mine down the road is owned by out-of-state investors and will employ less than half of Marietta's payroll, it is paying lower tax rates than the owner of a restaurant

or small business in town. That is a sign that the state is prioritizing a quote-unquote volatile asset over solid long-term jobs and small businesses i mean again a brewery is not a solid long-term bro a fucking a fucking small business in appalachia is the most volatile asset there is 97 of them fail in the first three years yeah You want you want to talk about like the downtown in the town I live? Like I have seen over the course of the last ten years, at least like 20 or 30 different small business restaurants come in and out.

The only things that have stayed are health care industries. They fucking lie. They fill all the vacant offices downtown now. Like that's that's big money right yeah a kentucky off-grid bitcoin miner who goes by his moniker hodl tarantula thinks it is unfair to cast the industry in those terms there is no limit to the amount of capital that can be extracted from stranded energy now that bitcoin mining is at play, he said, standing at the side of a mine he has built in the middle of the woods in southeast Kentucky. The small installation, miles from the nearest paved road, draws methane gas from a long

abandoned well that Hodl Tarantula has fixed up with a generator and satellite internet, pumping out more than $20,000 in Bitcoin a month.odl tarantula who believes bitcoin offers people a path to financial freedom sees off-grid crypto mining as a way for industrious small timers to get into bitcoin without having to grow big banks power companies or government subsidies imagine an episode of the simpsons where cleatus goes into the to a steel in the woods but it's not making moonshine. It's mining Bitcoin. That's what we need to do. That's what that coin is. We're going to take an old moonshine steel and use it to power Bitcoin.

Yes, dude. Dude, yes. Because they're the only actual cool people in this article. The people who are just like hooking it up and fucking abating it. Figuring it out. Yeah, I can respect that hustle.

I'm not going like do any like weird fucking california city boy bullshit where i'm gonna hire five guys for peanuts to do this thing i'm just gonna go wildcat it out in the woods by myself and see what happens i like i respect that i did too i did too dude and it's probably got like an actual future as i mean i guess there were like wildcat minors and stuff even up to recently there probably still are like coal miners i mean right um when he is not maintaining his own minds he teaches others to set up similar operations we were never going to stop mining he said this is just beginning so uh anyways i mean just an interesting cast of characters again no i like the article i didn't mean to uh bag on it or anything i just love that it was in the inclusive economies tab on this

it is an inclusive economy in the sense of the word yes yeah unless you're a small business owner trying to do wet that whack shit that was popular 10 years ago who the fuck cares about it like they're like mocking jeff as they drive by like you're gonna do an axe throwing thing yeah we're gonna do axe throw yeah yeah yeah uh yeah go do some artisanal pizza, Geoff. My money real good right now. My money real good right now. 10-17, British squad, bitch. Just pouring $5 a gallon gasoline off the back of the truck.

Yeah. They see Geoff at the gas station. They're filling their duallys up. They pull the pump out and just start draining it on the ground and looking at it like, it don't matter. It don't matter, Jeff. Need some gas, Jeff? Yeah, if you need some, hey, pull your car over here, Jeff. I'll fill you up.

Got that gas. We're going to the gasifier later. Yeah, baby. Fucking Christ almighty. that gas we're going to the gas and fire later yeah yeah maybe fucking christ almighty just whining just whining it's just like dude I'm not hearing a flat back coin mark my fucking

words if this really gets like a foothold it actually becomes a thing Jeff will be all over. Yeah. Well, I've reconsidered it and I think it's the way of the future. Oh, you're exactly right, dude. Give it two years,

if that, a year, maybe six months, and he will have reconsidered it and he'll be into it. Well, at first I wanted to bring Axe Throw into the mountains, but now I know it's Bitcoin. It is weird, though, because he started off as one of those tech guys like teach them how to code tech guys you know what i'm saying like i don't know like it's interesting that he's he's like an ivy league boy like bitcoin

mining is probably beneath him in some ways i feel like you're probably right because like i feel like you know i feel like bitcoin crypto mining is a bit more yeah like you say a bit more like west coast tech guy you know guys that graduated from the uc system and shit like that whereas like you know the small business, whatever, whatever is very like. Old school, just business school shit. Well, these. Yeah, I think in this case, these guys are like missionaries, but for like whatever Elizabeth Warren stands for. Right. I think that is.

I don't know. I think we tried to get into it on that one episode. I think they're just kind of like lib. But it's like this is the road you chose. Again, this is capitalism. This is the road you chose. You don't get to fucking whine.

This is the rules of the game. If you lose, you lose. I don't know. This is the problem what happens when you think when you're a capitalist but you think you're fighting against capitalism you know

yeah or trying to reform it or trying to reform it or like or like yeah like Liz Warren says capitalism without rules is theft right right right right uh okay yeah just i don't know just interesting well i there

was another article in the new york times about how there's nothing good in it but it's just it's it's interesting to note um it's from like the other day yesterday two days ago bitcoin miners want to recast themselves as eco-friendly facing intense criticism the crypto mining industry is trying to change the view that its energy guzzling computers are harmful to the climate and this is interesting because this article takes place literally in my neck of the woods around lubbock like west West Texas. I guess like they're saying that they're going to use wind power to power these facilities. I mean, T-Boom Pickens was alive to see it now.

Is he dead? Did he die? I think he did die. Damn. Rich no more. That's what sucks about being rich. You just you don't get to take any of it with you.

You can die cool and still be cool, but you can't die rich. You won't be rich after you're dead. No bitches, no money. No bitches, no money. Oh, man. Well, anyways, oh man well anyways um that about covers it for today you got anything else you want to add i just i i've i've said it all man i just uh yeah um down bad so it felt good to have a laugh at somebody else expense today yeah ain't that the truth i i am similarly not doing good at all and people ask terrence why are you so mean on your show why don't you talk so much about other people and the answer is that i

am miserable yeah i have to have an outlet for it. And I just don't have the constitution for universal love. Yep. Yep. Well, anyways, you can go over to Patreon. We had an episode just this past Sunday that critics are calling sensational, phenomenal,

changed my life. Don't you want to go see what that episode is about i think you do it's got kate wagner of mcmansion hill which i know all you guys like to listen to because all the comments on the episode say i love kate wagner mcmansion hill i wish she would start her own podcast here was a here was a comment i saw that was good i love the trill billies in any mode but the recent few episodes where you've had guests and been a bit more prepared con or done a bit more prepared content definitely hit the spot that's from alex h thanks alex h yeah you know sometimes it helps to be prepared i've been saying it my whole life i was prepared to be born i i remember all the way back then you remember getting prepped i remember getting prepped to go through you finally got the call up young blood enjoy this it's. Much of it's going to suck,

but you'll have some good times. That's right. What? I don't know. I think I'm going to be tripped. I like it here. Oh, man. So featuring Kate Wagner, also featuring Justin Rosnick of the Well, There's Your Problem podcast. So I know you want to go check that out. a show that I've not plugged recently and that I need to plug if I could just find

the mother fucking god damn flyer for it. Oh man, dude. I never can find anything. You ever just feel like you're extremely disorganized all the time?

I can't hear you. What happened? Oh, do it's it's embarrassing like i'm never organized and like i try to get organized and i'm like this sucks i fucking hate this shit and then so i just give up anyways the what i'm trying to plug and i can't find the flyer so i'm just gonna have to pull this one from the depths of my memory my band has a show my band tenure has a show on april 2nd at the place that used to be al's bar or is it still al's bar still al's bar still al's bar in lexington kentucky i know you're gonna want to come out and check that out that's kind of a or is it still Al's Bar? Still Al's Bar. Still Al's Bar in Lexington, Kentucky. I know you're going to want to come out and check that out.

That's kind of a bigger venue, right, Tom? How many people can you pack in there? Like 3,000 or 4,000? Yeah, it's the biggest venue in Lexington by a mile. I think we'll pack it out. I think there's a good chance. I mean, I've heard that they've already sold out all tickets for it. So you can come to an arena style show to four or five thousand people.

Here it is. I finally found it. Al's Bar. We are playing with Appalachian Atari and Slut Pill. And it is eight8 or $8. No, it's $5 cover at 8 PM at the door, Saturday,

April 2nd, Al's bar come out. It's it'll be a good show. You know, first live show. Well, that's not true. We did that show in Nashville a few weeks ago,

but first live music show out of Whitesburg for me since the 2020. So I'm excited about it. And you should come out and watch it and invite your friends and have them all pay $5 at the door. It won't go to a shady Bitcoin mining operation, but maybe it will. Maybe Tom and I are going to get into wildcatting. Let's just get into a fucking Bitcoin mining.

Wildcatting. Me and you. People will write songs about us if we do that. Like they gave up a life of podcasting. Oh, he was a bit modern man down in them Kentucky hills. We'll be like Marks and Angles or. Or just Angles. Or just Angles.

Or Angles' dad. Or Lewis and Clark. You know, some of the great duos of history. Like, we became outlaws. Like, Boyd Crowder says, you may be criminals, but that don't make you outlaws. That could be us, dude. Boyd Crowder would be all over this wildcatting Bitcoin stuff.

1,000%. Yeah. 1,000%. Yeah. 1,000%. Damn. All right, that covers it for us. Go see that show in a couple weeks. When is that? Is that two weeks from tomorrow?

Oh, shit. That's next weekend. Damn, that's next weekend. Fuck. I'll be damned. damned well come on out to that show all right well we'll see you next time thanks everybody