Feeding the Birds

...has become a daily task. The rain, which finally arrived today did not deter the birds from their daily rounds, but it did deter us! Spike has officially declared his dislike for rain, refusing to make his daily trek down the driveway for the newspaper and I was happy to stay in, finishing a stripey quilt for Dana, which went together quickly as quilts go. I listened to yet another podcast about the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried,.

I've been following  the stories about the enfant terrible of the crypto-currency world, in an effort to understand exactly what crypto-currency is, but also how it is possible for any twenty-something (or anybody else for that matter) to be worth something like 20 billion (with a B) dollars after only  a couple of years, hobnobbing with the rich and famous and living in a luxury resort in the Bahamas. And what motivated him? It seems that initially he was interested in something called 'creative altruism', a mindset of making a lot of money and giving it away to help others , even when there is no direct benefit to you.

It's one thing to believe in this when it's just a notion, but it seems that once he had all the money and all the recognition, he kind of went off the rails and made a lot of really bad decisions which have just landed him with a conviction for fraud and the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. The whole story fascinates me in the same way that I was fascinated by Elizabeth Holmes who is in prison for her role in developing a company called Theranos, and a  blood testing device that never worked as promised, yet she kept raising money for it and insisting that it DID work. 

Both seem to be examples of people who were destroyed by their ideas and their refusal to admit that they weren't working. They both were young, smart and fabulously and unrealistically wealthy for just long enough to lose their principles and their way....

Makes me all the more content with my quiet, comfortable life. We all have the potential to be driven, even obsessed, by something, but I'm just glad that in my case, it isn't money.