Monthly Archives: November 2013

Bitcoin Miners: Burning Coal to Make Pretend Money

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The Block Erupter USB is a little device that mines Bitcoins. Bitcoins are the electronic cryptocurrency which was once used to buy drugs online through the Silk Road, but since the site was revealed to be an FBI/DEA honeypot, it is now solely used for currency speculation. Mining bitcoins is done through a computational method that uses large amounts of electricity and generates large amounts of heat. In fact, if you check out the customer pictures of Block Erupters, owners have set them up in rows with fans blowing on them to keep them from overheating.

The problem with mining bitcoins in late 2013, apart from the fact that you can’t easily exchange them for US dollars (the main exchange, Mt. Gox, had their US-based branch shut down for violations of money laundering laws) is that the computational difficulty of doing so has gone up astronomically. It’s gone up so much, in fact, that the Bitcoins you would be able to mine are far less valuable than the cost of buying the device in the first place.

Of course, the fundamental problem with Bitcoin mining hardware is the obvious: if the devices were profitable, wouldn’t the manufacturers just keep them and use them to mine Bitcoins themselves? You could ask this question to everyone from the makers of the relatively-cheap Block Erupter USB through the $500+ Block Erupter Blade all the way up to Butterfly Labs, maker of a $4,500+ bitcoin miner.

 

Terrifying Cat Taxidermy

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This item is truly disgusting, so I’ve taken the liberty of blurring it. You can view it in all its unblurred glory on the product listing page if you’re curious. It’s the worst taxidermy I’ve ever seen, and here’s why:

1. It’s just half a cat.

2. The cat’s fur is dirty, stained, and matted.

3. The cat’s body is twisted in eternal terror.

4. The cat has no eyes.

5. The cat’s tongue is hanging out the side of its mouth and its mouth is locked in a frozen scream.

I think taxidermy is fine in general, but this cat definitely should have been buried instead of nailed to a hunk of wood and posted for sale. The same seller also has a dismembered cat head for sale, which they have described as “super cute”, which it is not.

Pebble Phone-Watch

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The Pebble is a “smartwatch” which displays alerts from your phone on your wrist. You can’t reply to them on the watch, though, so you’ll have to get your phone out to do that.

But maybe you have $148.99 to burn and you want to know who’s calling on your phone when it rings. Of course, if you want to answer it, you’ll have to fish it out of your pocket, since the watch doesn’t let you do that either.

USB Hole Warmer

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I’m blurring out the jerkglob itself for discretion (you can see the uncensored picture on the product listing if you want) because what I want to focus on is the “USB Hole Warmer” in the upper right, which you stick into your jerkglob before you use it to churn your hog.

The seller also claims that the hole warmer-jerkglob combo lets you “experience what it’s like to be deep inside the world’s hottest porn star,” but unless you’re an IUD, that’s probably not true.

Paleo Soup: It Doesn’t Really Exist

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The paleo diet has become popular in recent years. It eliminates processed food and causes the average person to lose weight, as they consume fewer calories when they eat meat, vegetables, and fruit instead of ice cream and french fries. Unfortunately, the preponderance of “paleo recipe” books ignores the entire theory of paleo: that we were healthier in the paleolithic area, when humans had stone tools and had just figured out how to make tools out of stone.

Long story short: paleolithic man did not have cookware. So he did not have soup.

You can go looking for any one of dozens of “Paleo Soup” recipes, but my far-and-away favorite is “Paleo Crock Pot Soups And Stews.” Yes, before carving a rock with a rock to make a sharp rock and endurance-hunting a deer for twelve miles across a cold grassland, paleolithic man made sure to load up his crock-pot with tough meat, so it would be tender when he returned to his cave that evening. There’s also Paleo Crockpot Cookbook and Paleo Slow Cooker Recipes, for the discerning pre-Pleistoscene hominid.

No woolly mammoth recipes, unfortunately, despite evidence that paleolithic man hunted this species to extinction.






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Contact drew at drew@toothpastefordinner.com or tweet him @TWTFSale.