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The Year in Weird and Stupid Futures

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The Year in Weird and Stupid Futures

Read Max looks back

Max Read
Dec 21, 2021
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The Year in Weird and Stupid Futures

maxread.substack.com
You’re reading Read Max, a newsletter about the future by Max Read. This Tuesday edition contains a look back on 2021, and the stories that told us something about where the future is headed, which is to say, into a cold and narrow hyperloop tunnel with failing braking software.
If you enjoy the post, please share it widely; I have no social media and rely on readers to spread the word. If you don't already do so, please consider signing up — or, even better, obtaining a paid subscription to support Read Max's ongoing research and operations.
Also: I have a small piece about the stock market in this week’s New York Times Sunday Review year-end package, if you like that kind of thing.

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January

Twitter avatar for @AXE
AXE @AXE
We'd rather be lonely than with that mob. AXE condemns yesterday's acts of violence and hate at the Capitol. We believe in the democratic process and the peaceful transition of power.
Twitter avatar for @mikedebonis
Mike DeBonis @mikedebonis
Left by the mob: a lonely can of Axe body spray https://t.co/wy2bU3fWgH
11:32 PM ∙ Jan 7, 2021
81,579Likes11,278Retweets

In January, the CIA was forced to deny that its new logo and website, part of a rebranding effort aimed at diversifying the agency, had been created by the net artist and album cover designer Ryder Ripps. As Congress assembled to conduct the counting of electoral votes, Trump loyalists clad in "Pepe the frog"- and Holocaust-themed T-shirts broke into the Capitol Building, live-streaming themselves as they seized and occupied the Senate chamber. British doctors published a paper suggesting that social media may play a role in the rise of unexplained “tic disorders” among children and adolescents. The global death toll of COVID-19 passed two million.

Twitter avatar for @AricToler
Aric Toler @AricToler
This procedurally-generated video from the Facebook of Robert Gieswein, a Colorado 3% militia member who stormed the Capitol, is accidentally the most damning evidence you'll ever see that Facebook shouldn't exist.
Twitter avatar for @arawnsley
Adam Rawnsley @arawnsley
New from me: Prosecutors have charged an alleged Colorado militia member, Robert Gieswein, which The Daily Beast has been tracking since he appeared in photos of the riot at the Capitol. https://t.co/973jPIweeQ
2:17 AM ∙ Jan 18, 2021
5,553Likes1,978Retweets

"After a close review" of posts, Twitter permanently banned President Trump's account. Citing "the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period," Facebook banned President Trump from its main platform and Instagram. Following a review, YouTube announced that President Trump's account "has its 1st strike & is temporarily prevented from uploading new content for a *minimum* of 7 days." "In light of yesterday’s shocking attack on the Capitol," Twitch disabled President Trump's channel. After determining that "the actions by President Donald J. Trump violate our Acceptable Use Policy," retail platform Shopify disabled President Trump's online stores. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni shut down the internet in the country ahead of elections. 

Twitter avatar for @marenaltman
MAREN @marenaltman
the astrology of gamestop rn not just hindsight bias this symbolism actually correlates to objectively favorable price data lol
1:02 AM ∙ Jan 27, 2021
312Likes21Retweets

Honolulu police defended the purchase of a $150,000 robot dog from Boston Dynamics, saying it could be used to take temperatures at a homeless encampment. The subreddit "WallStreetBets" triggered a short squeeze of the brick-and-mortar video-game store GameStop, increasing the stock price by 1,500 percent over two weeks. The Australian mining company GME Resources increased by 50 percent in intraday trading. Stock in the obscure health-care company Signal Advance increased by 1,100 percent in two days after Elon Musk tweeted "Use signal," referring to the encrypted chat app. Several internet-connected "chastity cage" sex toys designed to be worn around users' penises were remotely locked by a hacker demanding ransom. 

February

Twitter avatar for @AdityaRajKaul
Aditya Raj Kaul @AdityaRajKaul
A woman did her regular aerobics class out in open without realizing that a coup was taking place in #Myanmar. A Military convoy reaching the parliament can be seen behind the woman as she performs aerobics. Incredible!
6:55 PM ∙ Feb 1, 2021
67,771Likes18,686Retweets

In February, the company behind the "stablecoin" Tether agreed to pay the New York attorney general's office $18.5 million in fines to settle charges that it engaged in illegal accounting tricks to cover up the fact that it did not actually have reserves to back up the billions of coins it claimed were backed one-to-one with U.S. dollars. The FTC ordered Amazon to pay $617 million in tips stolen from Amazon Flex drivers. A Doordash driver's van was stolen with his two kids inside while he made a delivery. 

Twitter avatar for @lawrencehurley
Lawrence Hurley @lawrencehurley
“I’m here live, I’m not a cat,” says lawyer after Zoom filter mishap “I can see that,” responds judge
6:26 PM ∙ Feb 9, 2021
367,016Likes99,048Retweets

A hacker attempted to poison the water in Oldsmar, Fla., by remotely accessing a water treatment facility and increasing the amount of lye in the water by a factor of 100. The decentralized finance protocol Yearn lost $11 million in a hack — $2.8 million to the hacker and the rest to so-called "gas fees" or transfer costs. Etsy removed several stores selling custom-engraved high-capacity ammunition magazine and magazine couplers from its site.

Twitter avatar for @CongressChanges
we need a wealth tax @CongressChanges
Profile picture: Sen. Cynthia M. Lummis (R-WY) campaign account "CynthiaMLummis" pbs.twimg.com/profile_images… => pbs.twimg.com/profile_images…
Sen. Cynthia M. Lummis (R-WY) old and new profile image
3:24 PM ∙ Feb 19, 2021
1,755Likes257Retweets

In congressional testimony, the former CEO of IT management company and government contractor SolarWinds, whose software had been hacked, admitted an intern put the internal company password "SolarWinds123" on Github. Reddit user "RoaringKitty" testified to the House Financial Services Committee regarding the Gamestop short squeeze. German police seized $60 million in Bitcoin in a fraud case but were unable to access it because the accused refused to tell them his password.

Twitter avatar for @daveweigel
David Weigel @daveweigel
Jeff Brain of CloutHub asks the audience to put their hands up if they've lost followers on social media. #CPAC2021
6:50 PM ∙ Feb 26, 2021
1,175Likes104Retweets

Myanmar's military detained members of the country's ruling party and effected a coup d'etat, radicalizing the country's large K-pop fandom. Tesla recalled 135,000 cars due to faulty flash memory. Tesla announced it would invest $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and accept Bitcoin as payment for its cars. The NYPD deployed a robot dog to a crime scene in the Bronx.

March

Twitter avatar for @jennineak
Jennine #SaveSheikhJarrah #SaveSilwan @jennineak
having an aneurysm
8:02 AM ∙ Mar 25, 2021
3,518Likes423Retweets

In March, the YouTube influencer and boxer Jake Paul launched a venture-capital fund. Researchers found that an advanced and widely used photo-identification neural network would identify an apple as an iPod with 99.7 percent confidence if you held a sign in front of the apple with the word "iPod" on it. A Pennsylvania woman was charged with harassment for creating "deep fake" videos of her daughter's cheerleading teammates in an effort to force them off the team. 

Twitter avatar for @PopulismUpdates
Populism Updates @PopulismUpdates
In Chile a candidate who openly embraces her support from Chilean "otaku culture" polled first place today for this year's presidential election. Pam Jiles is famous for Naruto running in parliament, which has become the central image of her social media branding
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11:05 PM ∙ Mar 22, 2021
1,835Likes464Retweets

Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda defended comedy writer Jensen Karp from accusations of emotional abuse after Karp posted photographs of what he said were shrimp tails he had found in a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The city of Minneapolis made, then canceled, plans to pay influencers $2,000 each to share “city-generated and approved messages” during the trial of Derek Chauvin. Amazon undertook a "major expansion" of its "FC Games" program, in which warehouse workers can earn "digital rewards that allow them to buy virtual narwhals, dinosaurs and other electronic pets" for completing tasks more quickly. 

Twitter avatar for @TwitterSupport
Twitter Support @TwitterSupport
A number of accounts that Tweeted the word “Memphis” were temporarily limited due to a bug. It’s been fixed and the accounts have now been restored. We’re sorry this happened.
11:03 PM ∙ Mar 14, 2021
25,904Likes3,972Retweets

An NFT by the artist Beeple was sold at Christie's, to Beeple's business partner, for the reported price of $69 million. At least three users of the NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway were hacked and had their NFTs stolen; Nifty Gateway returned the NFT tokens to two of the three. A grounded 1,300-foot container ship blocked the Suez Canal for a week, costing the global economy trillions of dollars and leading to the creation of "high-key relatable" memes. 

April

Twitter avatar for @beesmygod_
regular-sized hat bea @beesmygod_
this is just hands down the funniest image ive seen in a while. intel is making automated bleep software and im howling at the backend
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11:32 PM ∙ Apr 7, 2021
59,243Likes11,073Retweets

In April, following the sighting of bright streaks in the night sky, a farmer in eastern Washington discovered a composite-overwrapped pressure vessel from a SpaceX rocket on his property. A security researcher discovered that the scraped personal data of 533 million Facebook users was available in hacking forums for free. The domain name for Google Argentina, mistakenly marked as expired, was briefly purchased and controlled by a Boca Juniors fan named Nicolás Kuroña.

Twitter avatar for @wagatwe
Wagatwe Wanjuki 🇰🇪 🇧🇸 @wagatwe
Someone made a new account, took videos of a model, and put intentionally racist and inflammatory content on tiktok
4:01 PM ∙ Apr 27, 2021
616Likes203Retweets

The cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase went public in a direct listing, ending the day with a market capitalization of nearly $86 billion. In a shareholder's letter Jeff Bezos announced that Amazon would introduce "new automated staffing schedules that use sophisticated algorithms to rotate employees among jobs that use different muscle-tendon groups to decrease repetitive motion." Spanish police raided a 3d-printed gun workshop.

Twitter avatar for @drewharwell
Drew Harwell @drewharwell
Popular Japanese biker @azusagakuyuki turns out to be a 50-year-old man using FaceApp. "No one will read what a normal middle-aged man posts on his account" bbc.in/3acsYb1
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2:20 PM ∙ Apr 15, 2021
27,222Likes4,334Retweets

A "counterfeit" Amazon delivery van was filmed removing barricades from a New York City "Open Street." A man in Texas was arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up an Amazon data center and "kill off about 70% of the internet." In response to Intercept stories about Oracle's ties to the Chinese surveillance state, Oracle executive Ken Glueck posted a request for tips about the reporter, Mara Hvistendahl. The global death toll from COVID-19 passed 3 million.

The legal and scholarly research and records company LexisNexis signed a $16.8 million contract with ICE to provide data. Nextdoor introduced an "anti-racism" notification that "detects potentially racist content and prompts neighbors to reconsider and edit before posting." Two brothers who founded a South Africa–based crypto investment firm told investors they'd been hacked for the entirety of their $3.6 billion assets, then disappeared. The women who started the Clubhouse room "NYU Girls Roasting Tech Guys" signed with the talent agency WME.

Twitter avatar for @MandoParty
Mandatory Redistribution Party @MandoParty
the real innovation of Musk’s car tunnel is that its so tight you can’t open your doors, you can’t pass anyone and there’s no way for an ambulance or fire engine to get in. he has created an LED lit Celebrity Death Tube. Great stuff imo.
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9:16 AM ∙ Apr 16, 2021
32,333Likes6,157Retweets

A software researcher confirmed the complaints of Black students who found that the popular remote exam program Proctorio consistently failed to recognize their faces. The teenager who killed eight people in a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis was reported to be obsessed with My Little Pony; according to an internal Facebook memo, his final Facebook status update before the shooting read, "I hope that I can be with Applejack in the afterlife, my life has no meaning without her."

May

Twitter avatar for @BrodyLogan
Brody Logan @BrodyLogan
This Ohio State Senator thought he was slick, using a Zoom background of his home office while driving... debating a bill for harsher penalties for distracted driving gizmodo.com/politicians-zo…
11:45 AM ∙ May 6, 2021
22,412Likes6,202Retweets

In May, a Belgian farmer moved a stone in his field, accidentally breaking the 200-year-old Treaty of Korvijk and redrawing Belgium's border with France. A joke cryptocurrency called Simple Cool Automatic Money, or SCAM, reached a market capitalization of $70 million. A group of hackers apologized for shutting down one of the largest fuel pipelines in the U.S., explaining, "Our goal is to make money and not creating problems for society."

Twitter avatar for @wsteaks
Will Steakin @wsteaks
Jake Paul says he Faced-timed with Donald Trump recently:
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6:48 PM ∙ May 4, 2021
13,125Likes694Retweets

The local-news app Citizen piloted a partnership with a "subscription law enforcement service" that could be summoned through the app. French influencers said they were approached by a U.K.-based marketing firm to spread anti-vaccination talking points. Instagram removed and blocked posts with hashtags relating to al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, because the company’s content-moderation system believed the posts were associated with “violence or a terrorist organization.” Thousands of people who showed up in Huntington Beach to attend “Adrian’s Kickback,” a birthday party whose invitation had gone viral on TikTok, were greeted with police in riot gear firing “nonlethal” rounds.

Twitter avatar for @republic_leaks
Republic Leaks @republic_leaks
Nearly 150 people were arrested Saturday night in Huntington Beach, California, where a massive crowd showed up for a birthday party that went viral on TikTok. Police said an estimated 2,500 people descended upon downtown Huntington Beach for “Adrian’s Kickback”. #adrianskickback
3:47 PM ∙ May 25, 2021
7Likes1Retweet

The Justice Department launched a money-laundering investigation into Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. A glitch on Doordash gave workers thousands of dollars, then the company took the money back. U.S. soldiers accidentally exposed nuclear secrets by using free public online flashcard apps to memorize security protocols. Meatpacking plants in the U.S., Canada, and Australia belonging to the world's largest meat producer, a Brazilian company called JBS, were shut down by a cyberattack.

Twitter avatar for @DanielZamoraV
Daniel Zamora Vargas @DanielZamoraV
The « AmaZen » mindful room video has been deleted. But I recorded it because it’s awesome.
11:35 AM ∙ May 28, 2021
596Likes159Retweets

The website for a DeFi protocol called DeFi100 was briefly replaced with a statement reading, "We scammed you guys and you can't do shit about it"; after the website was restored, the developers claimed they'd been hacked. John Cena posted a video to Weibo in which he apologized, in Mandarin, for saying that Taiwan was "the first country" that could see F9. Tesla announced it would no longer accept Bitcoin due to concerns over fossil fuel usage. A man was arrested in California for sitting in the backseat of his Tesla as it drove down the highway with its "autopilot" feature on. Elon Musk hosted Saturday Night Live.

June

Twitter avatar for @DonRubix
Brother Voodoo @DonRubix
#AMC CEO Adam Aron caught wearing no pants to the Zoom meeting 😭
10:57 PM ∙ Jun 3, 2021
6,212Likes803Retweets

In June, AMC stock surged to an all-time high of $72.62, representing a 3,600 percent gain since January, as the movie theater chain became the focus of a campaign on WallStreetBets. AMC CEO Adam Aron appeared to be wearing only his underwear on a Zoom call with the host of a YouTube channel called "Trey's Trades." The single-wheeled electric skateboard company OneWheel accidentally sent private data about thousands of customers to a guy named Daniel.

Twitter avatar for @KevinReuning
Kevin Reuning @KevinReuning
I was curious about how quickly CRT has become a thing on the right, and so used the data @annewhitesell, @LeeHannahWSU and I had collected on local Republican party facebook pages to see what percentage of posts mentioned CRT.
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1:20 PM ∙ Jun 5, 2021
368Likes143Retweets

In a video appearance at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced plans to make Bitcoin legal in his country. Uber retracted an offer of health-insurance subsidies it had mistakenly sent to its drivers. Satellite internet provided by Elon Musk's SpaceX shut down in Arizona when temperatures exceeded 112 degrees. Facebook tested a "prayer post" feature.

Twitter avatar for @imbadatlife
Luke Bailey @imbadatlife
bring me death
Image
11:25 AM ∙ Jun 2, 2021
8,995Likes683Retweets

A company called Alfi announced a deal to install 10,000 advertising tablets with facial-recognition systems in the back of Uber and Lyft cars. Loopt founder Sam Altman announced he was working on a cryptocurrency called WorldCoin, based around retina scans taken by a basketball-sized silver orb. Western Digital advised consumers to disconnect their internet-connected hard drives after they unexpectedly started wiping themselves. Texas energy companies remotely raised the temperature in some houses with smart thermostats without warning in what the company described over text as an "energy saving event."

July

Twitter avatar for @NicosPanoptikum
Weltraum-Nerd @NicosPanoptikum
Ein Video aus #Ahrweiler von @thelifeofchris1 ... #Hochwasser #Ahr
2:05 PM ∙ Jul 15, 2021
1,083Likes595Retweets

In July, as they seized territory across Afghanistan, the Taliban engaged with Afghans on the audio app Clubhouse on topics including "the Taliban's view of the afterlife, how to have a happy relationship and Persian poetry." Jack Dorsey appeared on a panel with Elon Musk and Cathie Wood and said he believed Bitcoin could "create world peace." Italian museums rolled out a surveillance system to gather data on how long visitors engaged with artwork and help establish an "attraction value" for each piece of art. A slowed jet stream allowed heavy storms to stall over northern Europe, leading to floods that killed hundreds in Germany, Belgium, and Romania.

Twitter avatar for @hinz_tamara
Tamara Hinz @hinz_tamara
When the hospital temperature sensor won’t let you into the building because it’s 38° and it thinks you have a fever 😑
7:17 PM ∙ Jul 2, 2021
9,454Likes1,293Retweets

A porn company purchased the domain name of a defunct video-hosting service and briefly served porn videos to the websites of the Washington Post, New York magazine, and HuffPost, among others. Another police officer was caught playing a pop song on his phone — Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" — in order to trigger a DMCA takedown should the video be posted to YouTube. "Pegasus" spyware made by the Israeli firm NSO was found on the phones of Bahraini activists, a Hungarian journalist, a British human rights lawyer, and five French cabinet members. The federal government auctioned off the sole existing copy of the Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which had been purchased by imprisoned hedge-fund manager Martin Shkreli.

Twitter avatar for @JordanTeslaTech
Jordan @JordanTeslaTech
Hey @elonmusk you might want to have your team look into the moon tricking the autopilot system. The car thinks the moon is a yellow traffic light and wanted to keep slowing down. 🤦🏼 @Teslarati @teslaownersSV @TeslaJoy
3:31 AM ∙ Jul 23, 2021
15,111Likes2,510Retweets

A Tesla Model S burst into flames while out on a drive three days after delivery, briefly trapping its owner inside when the electronic door system failed, according to his attorneys. An 18-year-old was sentenced to five years in prison for calling a SWAT team on a 60-year-old man, who subsequently died of a heart attack; the teenager was trying to coerce the man into giving up his Twitter handle @Tennessee. The stock-trading app Robinhood went public, citing in its S-1 filing the volatility of the joke cryptocurrency "Dogecoin" as a risk factor for the company. The global death toll from COVID-19 passed 4 million.

Twitter avatar for @mxswd
Maxwell @mxswd
looks like apple got access to a bunch of Australian business regos and just dumped them into maps without validation. Now everyone’s ‘retirement trusts’ (SMSFs) are showing up...
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1:52 AM ∙ Jul 21, 2018
823Likes391Retweets

Former Trump spokesman Jason Miller launched a “non-bias social network for people all over the world” called GETTR. Used car salesman Marc Zelinka launched a "digital currency for the MAGA community" called magacoin. Self-described "world's youngest Bitcoin millionaire" Erik Finman launched "a phone made for conservatives, by conservatives" called the Freedom Phone. Jeff Bezos traveled into space on a 10-minute flight, describing the experience as the "best day ever!"

August

Twitter avatar for @piercepenniless
James B @piercepenniless
This is what the future looks like, arriving.
9:06 AM ∙ Aug 7, 2021
36,953Likes8,972Retweets

In August, Brazilian Twitch streamers went on strike, protesting a 66 percent drop in subscription value. An unidentified hacker stole $610 million worth of tokens from the DeFi platform Poly Network, only to return the tokens after the company publicly begged "Mr. White Hat" for restitution. Rachel Dolezal launched an OnlyFans. Wildfires tore across the Greek island of Evia.

Twitter avatar for @z_long
Zach Long @z_long
If you're in the Loop, you must visit the Blue Screen of Death Fountain
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11:49 PM ∙ Aug 23, 2021
30,988Likes3,563Retweets

Appearing on stage for Tesla's "AI Day" with a dancing human in a bodysuit, Elon Musk announced plans to build a humanoid robot within a year. A Tesla on autopilot crashed into a Florida Highway Patrol cruiser while it was stopped behind a disabled vehicle. Amazon announced a WiFi soap dispenser that can be paired with an Echo speaker to “automatically play songs, jokes, and more when you wash.” The credit-monitoring agency Equifax acquired Appriss Insights, a data contractor that offers to monitor workers and benefits claimants for "criminal activity" that can be used to fire or deny claims; following the acquisition, Appriss Health, whose "NarxCare" product is used to deny pain medication to patients whom the proprietary NarxCare algorithm deems to be at risk of overdose, was renamed "Bamboo Health."

Twitter avatar for @Qaser_Bakhaly
قاصر بښلی/Qaser bakhaly @Qaser_Bakhaly
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5:43 PM ∙ Aug 31, 2021
1,977Likes356Retweets

The supposedly woman-led "Fame Lady Squad" NFT project was revealed to be the project of a group of Russian guys. The Cyberspace Administration of China announced a plan to regulate platform algorithms, prohibiting app alerts about gossip and violence and directing companies to moderate or forbid fan groups online. OnlyFans announced it would ban sexually explicit content. The sheriff of Washington County, Ark., confirmed that the local detention center's medical provider was prescribing the deworming medication Ivermectin to inmates diagnosed with COVID-19.

Twitter avatar for @Java_jigga
Spending Reparations Check On Buck Breaking NFT @Java_jigga
It is 1963, my grandmother is attending the March On Washington It is 2021, her grandchild is doing the toosie slide as a fedora joker in the fortnite March on Washington
4:41 PM ∙ Aug 26, 2021
34,356Likes5,064Retweets

OnlyFans reversed its ban on sexually explicit content. The Taliban seized Kabul, an event documented on 4chan by a 21-year-old British student named Miles Routledge, who had arrived only a few days earlier. Facebook banned the Taliban from WhatsApp, Instagram, and its flagship app. Facebook released data showing that the most widely viewed post on its platform for Q3 2021 was a post from a page called "Thinkarete Lifestyle" that read "Who can honestly say they never had a DUI ✋ i'll wait."

September

Twitter avatar for @nayibbukele
Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 @nayibbukele
Buying the dip 😉 150 new coins added. #BitcoinDay #BTC🇸🇻
3:15 PM ∙ Sep 7, 2021
55,759Likes9,759Retweets

In September, the largest-ever carbon capture facility, called Orca, went online in Iceland. Elon Musk and Grimes broke up. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen "appeared abruptly" in a Zoom call between exiled members of the country's banned opposition party and said, “I have been listening, and have entered to listen many times already.” The Wall Street Journal published leaked documents from Facebook revealing that the company’s own research found that teenagers blame Instagram “unprompted” for “increases in the rate of anxiety and depression.”

Twitter avatar for @LisaForteUK
Lisa Forte @LisaForteUK
Not sure you’re ready for this. Introducing mr goxx the crypto trading hamster. Funniest video ever but he is now outperforming the S&P500! 😂🤦🏼‍♀️ the wheel pics the cryptocurrency, the tunnels are “buy” and “sell” 🤣 @0Bfkx
9:30 AM ∙ Sep 29, 2021
52Likes13Retweets

Bitcoin officially became legal tender in El Salvador. China banned Bitcoin. Litecoin spiked in price after a faked P.R. statement was published to newswires claiming Wal-Mart was partnering with the cryptocurrency. Andreessen Horowitz invested $5 million in Friends With Benefits, a social club organized as a blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organization. In response to evidence that an employee was buying NFTs before they were featured on the website's main page, the NFT marketplace OpenSea implemented insider-trading rules. The human partner of a crypto-”trading” hamster named Mr. Goxx announced that Mr. Goxx’s earnings were outpacing the S&P 500.

October

Twitter avatar for @giorgiomomurder
giorgio @giorgiomomurder
Chinese influencers pretending to be in Los Angeles by taking pictures at the Shanghai Costco
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4:35 AM ∙ Oct 26, 2021
12,314Likes1,265Retweets

In October, Facebook went down for five hours, crippling essential services across the globe that relied on its apps and locking Facebook's own employees out of their offices. Donald Trump finally debuted his long-awaited social network, "TRUTH Social," for which users were obligated to agree to terms of service that prevented them from disparaging the site or making "excess use of capital letters." Facebook leaker Frances Haugen revealed she was based in Puerto Rico because she'd "bought Bitcoin at the right time" and was taking advantage of the island's status as a crypto tax haven. Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be renaming itself "Meta."

Twitter avatar for @racs_o
Racs-O🍌 @racs_o
The biggest party in NYC. @BoredApeYC wgmi!
12:03 PM ∙ Oct 31, 2021
4,061Likes403Retweets

A key infrastructural SMS-routing company, Syniverse, revealed that it had been breached by hackers since 2016. Netflix fired the trans employee who organized a walkout over Dave Chappelle's stand-up special, saying they leaked internal data. Eight fictional TikTok influencers competed for a fictional billionaire's money on a live Zoom call. A cache of data from Twitch, including creator payouts, was hacked and posted to 4chan, leading streamers to assure their followers they made more money than was revealed in the hack.

Twitter avatar for @pitdesi
Sheel Mohnot @pitdesi
Drones raining from the sky in Zhengzhou 😬 Word on the street is that a rival drone company that lost the bid interfered to overwhelm the drones nav system!
8:09 PM ∙ Oct 4, 2021
12,471Likes4,585Retweets

A man was accidentally killed in the disputed Caucasian region of Abkhazia when his friend opened fire on a group of men trying to steal Bitcoin mining equipment. Jeff Bezos announced plans to build a "mixed-use business park" in space called Orbital Reef. An NFT representing a 14.5-inch, 1,784-pound tungsten cube kept in an office in Illinois and granting the owner "one visit to see/photograph/touch the cube per calendar year" went up for auction on OpenSea with a minimum bid of 47.74 ETH, or around $200,000.

Twitter avatar for @AutomataEmily
Emily (Former TradFi CFA, CAIA, CA, MBA) APE 🦇🔊 @AutomataEmily
Axie farm
11:56 AM ∙ Oct 27, 2021
2,333Likes416Retweets

Nine schools in England introduced facial-recognition payment systems to the school cafeterias. Tesla rolled back a beta software update after it rendered some cars "undrivable" thanks to a "phantom braking" issue. A dead-end street became crowded with confused Waymo self-driving cars, which would turn onto the street and then "stop in a queue as if they are completely baffled by the dead end."

November

Twitter avatar for @HardPass4
Hard Pass @HardPass4
Hey @TraegerGrills - who the HELL sends a software update on thanksgiving?!?
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3:03 PM ∙ Nov 25, 2021
9,751Likes1,089Retweets

In November, Zillow announced it would lay off nearly a quarter of its employees and close its instant-offer "iBuying" division after its pricing algorithm, tweaked to make aggressive offers, bought thousands of houses at the peak of the real estate market. After hacking the U.K. jeweler Graff and revealing sensitive data about its wealthy clients, a Russian hacking group apologized "to His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman and any other members of the Royal Families whose names were mentioned" and pledged to implement "a more rigid data review process." The China-based EDward Gaming Team won the League of Legends World Championship.

Twitter avatar for @manyapan
Manya Koetse @manyapan
Uhoh, some students in Xianyang got so excited over EDG winning #Worlds2021 that they replaced the national flag with the EDG esports team flag. Police are now involved 😬
12:09 PM ∙ Nov 7, 2021
45Likes11Retweets

A decentralized autonomous organization called ConstitutionDAO raised $47 million to buy a copy of the U.S. constitution at auction, but were defeated by the hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who entered bidding at the behest of his son. A group of conservatives announced the creation of a new university in Austin, Texas, with a "Forbidden Courses" summer program and an entrepreneurship and leadership master's program. Facebook shut down its facial recognition system and deleted the data associated with it.

Twitter avatar for @BitcoinMagazine
Bitcoin Magazine @BitcoinMagazine
Purchasing beer with #Bitcoin in El Salvador 🇸🇻 ⚡️
8:10 PM ∙ Nov 16, 2021
8,624Likes1,384Retweets

A decentralized autonomous organization called CityDAO purchased 40 acres of land in Wyoming with the intent to build "a city on the Ethereum blockchain." Users found the Allen Institute’s Delphi, an AI system for rendering moral judgments based on a large corpus of internet text, would approve of genocide under the condition that it would make everybody happy. Two days after winning election to be mayor of New York City, Eric Adams announced that he would take his first three paychecks in Bitcoin.

Twitter avatar for @switch_d
switched @switch_d
Tesla servers throwing 500 errors. People unable to unlock their cars. teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/ap…
10:28 PM ∙ Nov 19, 2021
386Likes82Retweets

Following a report of sexual misconduct, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy encouraged fans to purchase his "One Bite" frozen pizzas to "beat cancel culture." After intense storms, floods, and landslides, Vancouver was cut off by road from the rest of Canada. Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter. A 6,090-virtual-square-foot plot in the online world Decentraland was sold for $2.4 million, a record for a virtual-real-estate transaction. A Moderna-affiliated scientist with a pine marten fursona emerged as a prominent Twitter voice on COVID-19.

December

Twitter avatar for @iLepikVonWiren
IllimarLepikvonWirén @iLepikVonWiren
Modern times in Estonia. A robot which had become stuck in the snow, saw me coming, and asked with a synthesised voice whether I could help out. So I did, and both of us carried on with our day.
Image
12:04 PM ∙ Dec 7, 2021
35,939Likes5,325Retweets

In December, scientists announced that the first U.S. case of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, which was spreading rapidly across the United States, had been observed in an attendee of the Anime NY conference. Life360, a free location-tracking app used by parents to surveil their children, confirmed that it has been selling location data gathered by the app to a variety of data brokers since 2016. Arcade Fire, Snoop Dogg, and Alice Cooper played the "Into the Galaverse" crypto festival in Las Vegas. Square announced it would change its name to Block. 

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Ana Breton @missbreton
This is not a joke. And yes, she was involved in the Jan. 6th attack.
4:14 PM ∙ Dec 8, 2021
137Likes21Retweets

Blake Resnick, the founder of "nonviolent" drone startup Brinc, apologized for a 2018 promotional video in which a Brinc drone demonstrated its capabilities by firing a taser at an actor playing a migrant. A rumor spread on Twitter that the prime minister of Finland was a "catgirl" after she was unable to quarantine after a COVID-19 exposure because she could not be reached at a nightclub. The Chinese Yutu-2 lunar rover photographed what its official blog described as "mystery hut" on the moon. 

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Daniel Tilles @danieltilles1
Lou Bega singing Mambo No. 5 at a concert in support of Polish troops defending the eastern border amid a migration crisis is the most surreal thing I've seen for a long time
11:14 PM ∙ Dec 5, 2021
13,763Likes2,666Retweets

Better.com CEO Vishal Garg laid off 900 employees at once on a Zoom call. Hackers forced retail store receipt printers to print anti-work manifestos listing worker rights and directing readers to the "antiwork" subreddit. Analysis of "crime prediction" software used by police departments across the U.S. found that it disproportionately "predicted crimes" in Black, Latino, and poorer neighborhoods.

Twitter avatar for @TrueCrazyFrog
Crazy Frog @TrueCrazyFrog
Hello, everyone. We would like to start this message by acknowledging that while we appreciate all the valid criticism toward NFTs, sending us death threats and other nasty things to our email isn't cool or productive. 1/9
7:04 PM ∙ Dec 13, 2021
5,235Likes663Retweets

Elon Musk was named Time magazine's person of the year. Hackers took $120 million in cryptocurrency from the DeFi platform BadgerDAO. Hackers took $196 million in cryptocurrency from the cryptocurrency exchange BitMart. An Amazon Web Services outage took down the DeFi platform dYdX. CIA director William Burns told attendees of the Wall Street Journal's "CEO Summit" that the CIA has "a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency."

Thank you to Sam Biddle, Brian Feldman, Libby Watson, Barry Petchesky, and Samer Kalaf for nominating items for this list. No thanks are due to Ashley Feinberg, who ignored a request for help. The list draws on the reporting work of lots of journalists, but especially those at Motherboard, The Verge, Rest of World, The Intercept, The Markup, Bloomberg, The Terminal, Garbage Day, and Today in Tabs as well as the "Web3 Is Going Just Great" project.
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The Year in Weird and Stupid Futures

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9 Comments
Haley Nahman
Writes Maybe Baby
Dec 21, 2021Liked by Max Read

omg

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Justin Charity
Writes Whitney's Miltank
Dec 21, 2021Liked by Max Read

a decent year otherwise

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