A Roundy and a Roundy: Take the Money, Bill! – Streetsblog New York

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Editorial cartoonist Bill Roundy by editorial cartoonist Bill Roundy.

Sleepy de Blasio strikes again!

Our editorial cartoonist Bill Roundy couldnt help being infuriated at the mayors ongoing reluctance to create more space for pedestrians and cyclists on the crowded Queensboro Bridge a bizarre public opposition to a project that Streetsblog even lined up the funding for!

You remember your history: First, the conversion of one lane of car traffic into a pedestrian path couldnt happen, the city said, until the completion of a roadway project on the upper level of the span. Then the city said it couldnt do the work because the lane would require a special security fence that would supposedly cost multi millions of dollars.

More recently, officials trotted out a new excuse: the work would require much more than a mere fence, but new designs for pedestrians at the entrance and exit of the bridge (though that appears unlikely).

To our cartoonist, the mayor first was stalling, now hes just being obstinate and for no reason, given that he has consistently said he wants the future of New York to be more about sustainable modes of transportation and less about the private car.

What better way to start that process to Utopia than by taking away a single lane from cars on a bridge that often has more cyclists and pedestrians on it anyway (albeit all crammed into the north outer roadway currently)?

All of Bill Roundys cartoons are archived here.

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A Roundy and a Roundy: Take the Money, Bill! - Streetsblog New York

Nine Burning Questions About the 2020 Tony Awards – Time Out New York

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Since the beginning of the Broadway shutdown on March 12, two questions have been on every theater lovers lips. To the first and most pressing onewhen will theaters reopen?we still have no firm answer, though several productions are optimistically selling tickets for performances in early 2021. To the secondwhat will become of the Tony Awardswe now have the very beginnings of an answer, but one that raises a host of smaller questions in its wake.

Since so many of this year's scheduled Broadway productions never got to open, there had been speculation that the Tonys would be scrapped entirely this year, and that potential nominees would be bundled in with next years crop.But on August 21, the Tonys announced that the 74th annual awards, honoring achievements in the abbreviated 201920 Broadway season, would indeed be presented in a digital ceremony this fall. That seems like the right decision; to do otherwise would have penalized shows that opened earlier this season. But where will this years Tonys take place? And when? And how? Those are things we dont yet know. (Additional information, including a date and platform for the awards ceremony, will be announced soon, the press release promised.)

The Tony Awards Administration Committee, which makes rulings about eligibility and other questions, is set to convene later this week for the third and final time this season. In terms of its normal work, the committee will be considering only three productions that openedsince the last time it met: My Name is Lucy Barton, A Soldiers Play and Grand Horizons. (The new cut-off date has been established as February 19, 2020; Girl from the North Country and the revival of West Side Story, which opened after that but before the March shutdown, have been deemed ineligible because not enough nominators were able to see them.) But this is no normal season. Will the unprecedented nature of the season lead to changes in the rules that ordinarily govern the Tony nominations?

With that in mind, please join us in a deep dive into the weeds. Here arenine of the main questions that remain, as of now, unanswered.

Asnoted above, the Tonys timetable is still amystery:All we know for sure is thatthe ceremony will be in the fall. But the Tony nominations usually follow closely on the heels of the final Administration Committee meeting, sothosemightbe announcedas soon asnext week. Traditionally, there are about five weeks between the nominations and the ceremonya period usually packed with lobbying from the nominated shows' producersbut this year's gapcould easilybe shorter or longer.

One answer to this question is clear:Since all three of the seasons scheduled musical revivals are ineligible (West Side Story, Company and Caroline, or Change), there will be no award this year for Best Revival of a Musical. Five scheduled revivals of plays also didnt open, but that leaves four play revivals: enough, if only barely, to populate a category for Best Revival of a Play. Heres where things get tricky: According to the Tony rules that govern the Best Show categories, if there are only four eligible nominees then the category automatically shrinks to three nomineesunless the difference in votes between the third-highest ranked show and the fourth-highest ranked show is ten percent or less. Will one of the four potential nominees (A Soldiers Play, Betrayal, The Rose Tattoo or Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune) be left in the cold? Or will the committee decide to waive that rule this year?

Of the four new musicals that opened in 2019-2020, only one, the lukewarmly received The Lightning Thief, had an original score. But the Tonys permit nominations in this category for original music in straight plays as well, for which at least six productions this season would be eligible. Will the committee choose to err on the side of generosity and leave the category as is, at the risk of harming the awards reputation? Will it decide to give the award to one of the potential nominees by acclimation, as it did when Sunset Boulevard hadthe sole new book and score in the shockingly thin 1994-1995 season? Or will it eliminate the category entirely, as it did in the 198889 season when faced with the alternative of nominating the scores for the flops Starmites, Chu Chem, Welcome to the Club and Legs Diamond? If we were betting folk, wedput our chipson the last option.

As things stand, only two nominees are eligible: Moulin Rouge!s Aaron Tveit and The Lightning Thiefs Chris McCarrell. As with Best Score, this leaves the nominators with a decision. They could have a category of two, like the Best Actress in a Musical category in 1995. They could just give the award to one of the two (read: Tveit) outright; they could also reverse course on an earlier decision and fill out the category by bumping Tinas Daniel J. Watts and/or Jagged Little Pill's Sean Allan Krillup to the leading actor category. (Both of these options would ordinarily be against the rules, but the rules can be flexible in an emergency if the Administration Committees oversight group, the Management Committee, decides there is good cause to do so.) Or they could drop the category, as they did for both Best Actress and Best Actor in a Musical back in the weak 1984-1985 seasonand perhaps make Tveit and McCarrell eligible for Best Featured Actor (which is what happened to many leads in 1985, and which is the category they would be in anyhow if they hadnt been bumped up to leading status in an earlier rules decision).

Ordinarily, the categories for Costumes, Set, Lighting and Sound of a Musical have at least four or five nominees. This year, however, there are only four eligible musical productions, which would mean automatic nominations for everyonesomewhat defeating the prestige involved. The administration committee could leave that in place, which would be great news for, say, The Lightning Thief. Alternatively, it could thin the lanes to two or three nominees in each race. Another option might be to drop the split, for this season alone, between musicals and playsa split that has only existed since 2005, after alland put all the productions in one category. (The same logic might apply for Best Director, though in that case the split dates back to 1960.)

David Byrnes concert show was not submitted by its producers for Tony contention, though it has been widely expected to receive a Special Tony Award for merit. Given the situation, howeverand if enough of the nominators and voters saw it anyhowmight the Tonys decide its an eligible musical after all? The answer here is: almost certainly not. But it would make several of the categories more interesting if they did.

If the Tonys hew to their ordinary rules, then the race for Best Play will be the most straightforward, since ten new plays are eligible and only four that had been scheduled to open are not. That translates into fine, fat categories of five nominees for Best Play, its attendant acting awards andif the nonperformance categories are not combined (see above)Best Costumes, Set, Lighting and Sound of a Play. Expect big hauls for Slave Play andThe Inheritance.(The categories for featured performances in musicals, which usually have more than enough candidates, may end up with only four nominees apiece this year.)

Now we move into a very tricky area for the Tonys: not the nominators and administrators, but the voters. Two years ago, the Tonys instituted a new system to ensure that the pool of more than 800 Tony voters had actually seen all of the nominated productions; voters had to visit a special portal and provide proof of attendance for each show. That system might prove very exclusive this year, however, since a larger proportion of the voters might not have seen all of the nominees in many of the categories. (They might have been putting off seeing Jagged Little Pill, for instance, on the assumption that they would have plenty of time to do so before voting in May.) Enforcing the existing standards strictly might limit the voting pool significantly; dropping it, on the other hand, would tacitly acknowledge that the voters were judging work they hadnt seen.

For many theater lovers, who rarely get to see Broadway theater except on the annual Tonys telecast on CBS, this is the really important question. Its also, unfortunately, the question we have the least information about. Giving out the awards themselves is easy enough: Other awards showsthe Obies, the New York Drama Critics Circle, the Lucille Lortel Awards, the Drama Desk Awards, the new Antonyo Awardshave already given out their prizes online, and you can watch those ceremonies here. But the most exciting moments of the Tonys, for many viewers, are the musical numbers from nominated shows. Its hard to know how that part would be accomplished in a satisfying way. First of all, there are only four potential musical nominees this year (plus American Utopia). Yes, the broadcast could easily also include numbers from shows that were supposed to open this year and will instead be part of next seasons crop. But assembling such numbers in a way that would showcase them at their best would be extremely difficult: A number like Moulin Rouge!s Bad Romance simply doesnt fit in Zoom boxes. In theory, casts could be gathered, quarantined, rehearsed and filmed on stagebut the logistics would be a nightmare and the expense would be prohibitive, especially since the numbers would not be fulfilling their usual function of trying to generate ticket sales for the shows in question. Under the circumstances, we lean toward expecting a relatively modest virtual ceremony in October or Novemberjazzed up with numbers that can be performed more or less solo and pre-recorded effectivelywith a larger Broadway special of some kind to follow, months down the road, once the Street is open for business again.

As we await the answers to these questions and others, it is worth remembering what Broadway did manage to offer this season: ten new plays, four new musicals, four play revivals, a memorable theatrical concert and many glimpses of exciting things to come. Theres a lot to celebrate, and we look forward to doing just that with this years Tony Awards, in whatever new forms they assume.

RECOMMENDED:Our day-by-day roundup of the best theater, opera and dance to stream online

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Nine Burning Questions About the 2020 Tony Awards - Time Out New York

The 14 Best New Books of 2020 – Men’s Health

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One of the very few perks to life in lockdown (and boy, do you really need to look for the silver linings) has been that we've all had a lot more free time to dedicate to that stack of unread books on the nightstand. And as 2020 is officially the year of the staycation, we thought we'd bring you our faves from this year's releases, from gritty thrillers to far-flung fantasy to big idea non-fiction.

1The City We Became: A Novel (The Great Cities Trilogy Book 1)

This innovative modern fantasy epic by the author of The Fifth Season takes place in a version of New York City very much like the one we know except its alive. In Jemisons world, cities have souls, and The City We Became is the story of the human incarnations of the Big Apple as they fight to defend the metropolis they love from an otherworldly, Lovecraftian horror.

2Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America; Essays

Playwright and columnist R. Eric Thomas debut collection of personal essays explore big themes of race, sexuality and religion that authors have been grappling with for years and manages to make them funny. With the trademark wit and insight that made his Ellecolumn Eric Reads the News so popular, Thomas recounts some of the most formative, hilarious experiences of his childhood and young adulthood, before turning his wry-yet-hopeful eye to the future.

3The Glass Hotel: A novel

Mandels previous novel, Station Eleven, followed a disparate group of characters through the outbreak of a global plague, then caught up with the remnants of human society decades later. Her latest book may feature fewer apocalypses but is no less sprawling in scope, beginning with one fateful evening at the Hotel Caiette in British Columbia, and tracing the echoes that reverberate through several characters lives over the decades that follow.

4Antkind: A Novel

One of the greatest screenwriting minds of all time takes his shot at the literary with the sprawling, funny, mind-warpingAntkind.Much like he did withBeing John MalkovichandAdaptation,Charlie Kaufman gets very meta in this novel that also invokes the films of Judd Apatow and the surreal, speculative workof Philip K. Dick. With just about every single one ofAntkinds 720 pages, youll be testing your own mind, and getting another rare and exclusive glimpse into Kaufmans (and laughing all along the way).

5The Answer Is . . .: Reflections on My Life

Game show host Alex Trebek has been a beloved part of the American cultural canon for more than 30 years, and when he revealed in 2019 that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the public responded with unanimous messages of love and support. Trebek says this memoir was written as a kind of thank you to those unwavering fans; each chapter takes its title from a Jeopardy!-style question, and includes never-before-shared stories from Trebeks life and his time on the show.

6Blacktop Wasteland: A Novel

Billed as Oceans Eleven meets Drive, this gritty modern noir follows Bug, a former getaway driver who earned a reputation as the best wheelman on the East coast. Hes trying hard to go legit, but as a Black man living on the brink of poverty in the rural South with a family depending on him, the promise of one last job is all too alluring, and so he agrees to take part in a heist which could change his life for good or be his undoing.

7The Vanishing Half: A Novel

The Vignes sisters are identical twins, and were once inseparable. But when they ran away from home at the age of sixteen, their lives diverged. Ten years later, one of the sisters passes for white, with a husband who has no knowledge of where she comes from, and the other sister lives in the same community they once tried to escape. And then their daughters paths cross. The Vanishing Half weaves together elements of family saga and social commentary to ask the question: what makes us who we are?

8Mexican Gothic

Noemi, a society girl living in Mexico City in the 1950s, receives an alarming letter from her cousin, Catalina, claiming her husband is trying to poison her. What follows is a richly imagined take on the Gothic fiction genre, complete with a baroque remote mansion, a complicated and brooding male lead, and a mystery in dire need of solving.

9Smoke & Mirrors: How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It

Were living in a time of technological marvels, but all too often, the lofty claims and bombastic headlines surrounding new advances tend to obfuscate or oversimplify. How many times over the last few years have we heard that robots are coming to take our jobs?Through chapters on everything from healthcare to energy to artificial intelligence, science writer Gemma Milne makes the argument that hype is a dangerous tool when it comes to shaping human progress, and that we all need to be able to think critically.

10Such a Fun Age

A young woman of color is accused of kidnapping a white child in a supermarket at the outset of this Booker-longlisted novel. Things only get worse for Emira, the babysitter, when the childs mother Alix tries to make things right by taking to the internet, igniting a series of events that feel both gripping and inevitable.

11If It Bleeds

In addition to churning out one doorstopper of a novel per year, preternaturally prolific horror writer Stephen King is also a master of short-form suspense. His latest collection comprises four characteristically original, unnerving novellas, including the titular If It Bleeds, which functions as a standalone sequel to Kings 2018 thriller The Outsider, which wasrecently adapted into a chilling miniseries by HBO.

12The Paper Girl of Paris

The YA debut of Mens Healths own deputy editor Jordyn Taylor, The Paper Girl of Paris unfolds over two timelines. In the present day, 16-year-old Alice inherits an apartment in Montmartre that has been locked ever since the Second World War. And in the 1940s, a young socialite named Adalyn experiences the first spark of resistance during the Occupation. Part mystery, part love story, The Paper Girl of Paris is a timely novel about coming of age and doing the right thing.

13Utopia Avenue: A Novel

This kaleidoscopic tale of sex, drugs and rocknroll focuses on the fictional band Utopia Avenue and their stratospheric rise in the late 1960s. There are very few genuinely greatbooks about music, and it takes a novelist of David Mitchells talents to satisfactorily capture the ineffable thrill of a live gig. Utopia Avenue is a love letter to a specific time, and a specific kind of band and for Mitchell fans, its also full of Easter eggs that place it firmly in the wider, deeply strange shared universe of his other notable works likeCloud Atlas andThe Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

14A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom: A Novel

Ambitious doesnt even begin to describe this novel, which starts out as the story of a family in Biblical times before taking the reader on an epic journey across continents and through centuries, ending in the year 2080. With the introduction of each new character and setting, Boynes thesis becomes increasingly clear: everything (and everyone) is connected, and history will be doomed to repeat itself unless people start to figure shit out.

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The 14 Best New Books of 2020 - Men's Health

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Part II: Le Guin’s Psychomyths and Those Who Walk Away – tor.com

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A biweekly series, The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread explores anew the transformative writing, exciting worlds, and radical stories that changed countless lives. This week well be covering the first half of the short story collection The Winds Twelve Quarters, from Nine Lives to The Day Before the Revolution, pp. 105 to the end, in the 1975 Harper & Row hardcover edition.

In the last post of the Le Guin Reread we looked at the first half of Le Guins first story collection, The Winds Twelve Quarters, which we continue here. I was pleasantly surprised that no one shamed me (to my knowledge) for my comments about short stories generally (thanks for sparing me, Rich!), and in fact one reader wrote elsewhere in recognition of the feeling of getting lost in a world as opposed to a story.

While the early stories of the collection are something of a retrospective on the first few years of her life as an SFF writer, coming up through the magazine world with increasingly better and more ambitious short storiesseveral of which launched the storyworlds that made her career, quite literallythe second half reflects the difference of a writer finally coming into her own. I (regrettably but, for me, truthfully) called the first half meh, but the nine stories of (my arbitrarily divided) part two are individually and collectively anything but meh. Semleys Necklace and The Good Trip were but a taste of what Le Guin can do with the short story form, and Winds Twelve Quarters culminates with a bevvy of heady, beautiful, and thought-provoking stories composed with a careful, sometimes quiet, power. The stories are as myths or fableslittle bits of truth and reality poured into SFF skins.

Unsurprisingly, a shared set of symbologies unite the stories of the collection, and these meanings are drawn all the more clearly in the later stories. Among these are an abiding interest in and love for the rural and the rustictrees, caves, roads, pathwaysas well as in the myths, mysteries, and psyches of human cultures across time, space, and genres. Indeed, Le Guin labels nearly every story in the second half of Winds Twelve Quarters as a psychomyth, though shes never really clear what she means by it beyond a short description in her foreword to the collection: more or less surrealistic tales, which share with fantasy the quality of taking place outside any history, outside of time, in that region of the living mind whichwithout invoking any consideration of immortalityseems to be without spatial or temporal limits at all.

Whew, a mouthful, but which basically means: a fabilistic or mythological story independent of most temporo-spatial markers that would place it noticeably in, say, medieval Europe or far-future China, and that by virtue of being tempo-spatially (and, to the extent possible, linguistically) unmoored is able to focus on human truths. Of course, the idea of a psychomyth is itself a fantasynot unlike the idea of a shared, universal human experiencebut its a nice fantasy and one allows Le Guin to establish a kind of writing unto herself that helps her carve a literary-intellectual niche for herself. And this isnt a bad thing, since with few other exceptions (at least in this collection!), Le Guins stories that actively aim for being labelled fantasy or science fiction are, well, just OK (a surprising thing, since her SFF novels are fucking fantastic, but every writer is different!). Psychomyth is nonetheless an interesting concept for thinking through these storiesGabrielle Bellot, for example, pinpoints how Omelas uses the psychomyth to defy generic categoriesand at the same time points toward just how much thinkers like Carl Jung (sorry, but blech!) influenced Le Guins writing in the early half of her career.

There are nine stories and psychomyths in this reread, three of which will likely be familiar to Le Guin stans, and the others of which, if unfamiliar, will come as a wonderful surprise. These stories are:

Ill do what I did in the previous reread and cover each story shortly and succinctly, discussing plot and theme, and what the story means for Le Guin as writer-thinker, the idea being to provide a somewhat holistic picture of The Winds Twelve Quarters as a whole. In taking this route, I end up deemphasizing the final two stories, which are no doubt Le Guins most famous, but others have written about those stories at great length and Im not sure I can add much to the din.

Onward, then, to the stories!

To start withno. Nine Lives is not, unfortunately, about cats. Let the disappointment sink in for a moment and remember that Le Guin probably wrote Catwings to correct this immense error, or at least thats my headcanon. So Nine Lives isnt about cats, but the title is probably an immense troll on the storys publication venue: Playboy. Yep, the magazine that built Hugh Heffners empire and made porn mainstream. And its the only story she wrote under a pseudonym (U.K. Le Guin) at the editors insistence. To be sure, theres a lot of sex in Nine Lives, until theres a lot of death. This is the story of a tenclone, a group of five male, five female clones of a brilliant scientist named John Chow.

The clones (theyre actually referred to as a singular) have come to the planet Libra as an elite work-crew for a newly discovered mine; they work better than non-clones because of their intense bond and social cohesion (the nightly sexual pairingsis it sex or masturbation, one non-clone asksbetween male and female clones helps). One accident later, however, and only one of the tenclone is left: Kaph. The nine lives, then, is a reference to the nine lives, the nine selves, Kaph loses when the rest of the tenclone dies; he experiences intense pain and suffering, almost as though a psychic bond is shorn at the others death, and through it all he is aided by two non-clones, who show him the way toward making human connections outside of the clone collective. Its a very sweet story about homosocial (potentially homosexual between the two non-clones, though I dont think thats Le Guins intention) bonding and grief, learning to see other humans as people to share life with.

Things, by turns, is not sweet, but bittersweetand my favorite story in the collection next to Semleys Necklace and The Good Trip. Originally titled The End, altered by Damon Knight from Le Guins preferred title, it is a psychomyth as close to Le Guins definition as possible (or at least as comparable as Omelas); she might have called it a pure psychomyth. The story takes place in a village at the supposed end of all things. The villages are split between the Weepers, those who gather to lament the end, and the Ragers, those who party hard until its all over. The Weepers and the Ragers have left the things that mattered behind, detaching themselves from whatever made meaning in life, what glued together the social order, what made the village a village.

In between these groups are folks like Lif, a former brickmaker, along with the widow of one of Lifs fellow bricklayers. These two havent yet detached from the order of things / Order of Things, and so go on trying to find meaningat first in trying to do what brickmakers and widows do in the normal course of things, and later in one another. Lif turns to a myth of far-off islands to create meaning for life in the end times, but his culture has no boats, so he decides hell chuck all his bricks into the sea in the hopes of making a pathway to islands that may or may not exist. This gives his life meaning and as his relationship with the widow develops, she too becomes interested in his project, and together they build a path. One night, all the villagers are gone, their attachment to the world finally severed. For Lif and the widow, this signals the end, so they decide its time to try the path. Try they do, and soon myths become real.

I love Thingswhich I agree is the better and more thought-provoking titlebecause its beautifully written, short, and simple, evidencing just how well an economy of language and form can create something so amazing. At the same time, its a complex questioning of the relation between lifeways and cultural meaning, between things (as objects, as cultural practices, etc.) and the meaning that has both Buddhist and anti-capitalist overtones (that interact in not-so-easy ways). Its a story that deserves more attention and one Im sure Ill be returning to again and again.

I cant say the same for A Trip to the Head, which demonstrates that an economy of language and form, even in Le Guins hands, dont always produce little works of staggering literary genius. Its another psychomythological story, by her description, in which the object of extrapolation is the question of how powerful an imaginative force is the mind. It pairs well, in this way, with The Good Trip, and also places the mind above psychotropics as a force for creation. In this story a person, Blank, emerges from a forest with no knowledge of their identity (City of Illusions vibes, anyone?). Blank talks to another person, imagines who/what they might have been, and becomes that person, only for it to not feel right, so he (the newly assumed identity) takes off for the forest to forget this iteration of self, starting the cycle all over again. Its a story worth reading once in your life if you have the inclination or if it happens to be in front of you; otherwise, its nothing to go out of your way for. What it has to say about the mind and imagination have already been said, and said better, in the other novels and stories weve covered.

By contrast, Vaster than Empires and More Slow is one of those stories that says what it says well and also resonates powerfully with many of Le Guinsother themes, making it something worth seeking out and wrestling with. Its a novelette in the Hainish cycle that departs from the usual heres how humans evolved on this world fare to instead imagine a world of collectively-sentient arboriforms (tree-like and plant-like organisms). At the same time, its a massively problematicand as a result, critically interestingstory featuring an autistic character (or, really, a character cured of autism).

The set-up of the story is also quite unique among the Hainish stories, since most feature some sort of League representative to a human world, whether before or after their integration into the League. But Vaster is about Terras fundamental dissatisfaction with the fact that all sentient life in the universe was seeded by the Hains; its not a major plot point, nor discussed very often, but Le Guin uses the frame to highlight that Terrans as a group dont deal super well with being told they arent specialreally an allegory for Americans. So Terrans send out Extreme Surveys, crewed by the occasional non-Terran curious about the wider universe, to spend several hundred years traveling in FTL ships to see if anything sentient exists outside of the Hainish sphere of influence. Well, reader, you can guess what happens: they find something. A whole planet of plants that, after many months, the crew discovers has evolved into a collectively sentient lifeform that is terrified of the otherness represented by the humans.

This is all quite interesting, but the real focus of the story is on the cured-autistic crewmember Osden, who has apparently been cured of his inability to parse external emotional stimuli (only one possible manifestation of autism) to such an extent that now he is magnificently empathic, and can feel all sentient beings emotions. As a result, most people are uncomfortable with him and he lives constantly in their disdain, discomfort, and even hate. But its his abilities to sense emotion and feelings that help the crew discover the plant planet is sentient. Its a story that simultaneously does everything wrong you could do when writing about autism, but also demonstrates forcefully and tragically the ways in which neurotypical folks ostracize neuroatypical folks. But Ive never claimed Le Guin is perfect, and the story provides a great deal to think about with regard to disability, ecology, sentience, and emotion. No wonder it has remained one of Le Guins most discussed stories.

The next two stories in the collection are short, intelligent, fun mysteries (of a sort). The Stars Below is a fantasy about an astronomer whose science is considered heretical and who is literally forced underground, to live in the dark of a mine nearing the end of its productivity. The Field of Vision is science fiction about two astronauts who return from an archaeological dig on Mars, one deafened and the other blinded.

Both are, in Le Guins presentation, psychomyths. The Stars Below doesnt have much to recommend it, honestly, except that it is a great example of a person losing their shit because, well, a bunch of priests burned their livelihood and forced them into underground exile as a hereticbuy, hey, at least the astronomer helps the struggling miners find a new vein of silver! Actually, whats great about this story is you can see Le Guin returning with gusto to writing about people learning to live underground and in the dark, as she did so perfectly in The Tombs of Atuan. The Field of Vision is by far the better story, with an Arthur C. Clarke feel to it, what with the giant, unfathomable alien structures and the revelation of Gods reality and immanent presence in the universe. Which isodd?for Le Guin. I wont spoil it; check it out for yourself, since the mystery is worthwhile.

The final story before we get to the Big Two of this collection is The Direction of the Road, a story that like many of her shorter ones grew out of a family moment, a familiar memory, a Le Guinism. In this case, its a tree off Oregon State Highway 18 that Le Guin and her family passed several times a year, a tree that came to define that particular stretch of highway for the family, a part of the Order of Things. And so Le Guin spins a tale of that tree, of its long life among humans, of the coming of cars, the paving and repaving of roads, the explosion of traffic, and, after so many years, the death of a heedless driver at the base of the oak. The story is told in first-person and is at first rather confusing, since the oak speaks of itself as an entity in constant motion, growing and galloping and roaming, but while some of Le Guins language confuses, her intent is purposeful: to bring to life the inner being of an organism that, to many humans, hardly seems to be living but is almost always a backdrop in a world of roads and cars. Le Guins oak is a vibrant being and one who rejects the meanings humans place upon it: when the human dies, he sees in the oak the face of Death, freezing that vision in eternity through his death. But the oak rejects this, refuses to be an eternal symbolof death or elsewiseand instead embraces its ephemerality in the organic sphere, as long and ancient as that may seem to us short-lived humans. Its a great story that leads well into the final two of the collection.

And so we come to Omelas, a story about which I have little to say beyond what has been said by othersand often better (or at least more forcefully). It is not only Le Guins most well-known story, it might also be the most well-known science fiction story of all time, if only because every other philosophy course in college assigns it and (dryly) asks students, So, what would you do? Discuss! I jest, mostly because my partner is a philosopher, but truly Le Guins set up of the moral and ethical dilemma is an important one, and as she notes, its a questionwould you let the child suffer in order to live the dream?at the heart of modernity, whether you understand the modern world as one forged by the industrial revolution, the birth and growth of capitalism, or the expansion of overseas empires through colonial landgrabs. ()Omelas() is a powerful allegory for the ways in which systems of power lift up some at the expense of others.

The particular ways Le Guin tells the story, that utopia exists for all because one person (a child) lives in pain and horror, comes from a critical tradition that frames questions of systemic oppression in individualist tonesin this case the thinking of early psychologist William James. So the utopia of Omelas and the utopian bargain emerge from an intellectual tradition that attempts to understand how people think and why they think, especially with regard to our ethical duties to other people. As a result, walking away seems perhaps radical in this situation, an allegorical disavowal of the system as a whole.

Thats the psychomyth; taken literally, however, as something other than a parable, the decision to walk away looks a lot grimmerand thats exactly what other writers, for example, N.K. Jemisin, who responds in The Ones Who Stay and Fight by suggesting that the more radical thing to do is, well, reread the title; or Egyptian author Mona Namoury, who turns to the agency of the one imprisoned. Omelas is for sure an ambivalent story, one that has no easy solution because there is no solution, because utopia is ambivalent, because utopia doesnt exist, is only ever in the making, just over the horizon, the journey and not the destination, and it always implies the presence of dystopia. For Le Guin: yin and yang, no light without the dark. But, seriously, dont take my word for it; check out one of any several thousand essays on the story.

Though Omelas has become Le Guins most famous story, she ends The Winds Twelve Quarters with a different banger of a tale: the prequel to The Dispossessed, the story of the founder of the anarchist movement that ends up on Anarres. The Day Before the Revolution is the story of Odo, manifester of the Odonian revolution that upset the Urras political world 100 years before The Dispossessed. It isand Im sorry if this sounds repetitive, but its only because its so true of Le Guins shorter fictiona great little piece, particularly for the way it presents this revolutionary icon as a curmudgeonly old woman not all that interested in the final ends of the revolution, in part because the youths have taken it their way. But so it goes, so political movements transform, because a living politics is not defined by an individual, and Odo knows this, too. Through this Le Guin extends her argument in Omelas that utopia is open-ended, ever-changing, not an Eternal force but a Relative one, like the oak by the roadside.

What I particularly love about the placement ofThe Day Before the Revolution in The Winds Twelve Quarters is that Le Guin calls it a story thats actually about the ones who walk away from Omelas, or more precisely that the Anarresti are the ones who made the decision to leave the utopia of a lush, verdant planet for the harsh desert of the moon. Its honestly not a great parallel between Omelas and Urras, butlets go with it?Le Guins forcing of the parallel reveals who got left in the wake of the Odonian movement. After all, when Shevek visits Urras, he finds that there are many anarchists and revolutionaries fighting against the violence of two oppressive statesthe folks who, in Jemisins words, stayed and fought.

In all, The Winds Twelve Quarters is a multifaceted, intellectually rich, and artistically transformative collection of short stories that showcase the vibrancy of an artist becoming an artist. As a collection, its a fascinating microcosm of the same pattern of transformation and growth we see across the novels already covered in the Reread. Some stories are forgettable, many are worth a reread every couple of years, and a few stick tenaciously to the mind like a utopian parasite. Whatever the aesthetic judgmentshey, maybe you found these stories pretty boring, and thats all goodthe historical one is clear: here is a story collection that serves as a foundation for the larger storyworlds, themes, and political concerns that make up our collective cultural memory of Le Guin.

Join me in two weeks on Wednesday, September 9 as we read Le Guins not-very-SFF YA novel Very Far Away from Anywhere Else. Be seeing you!

Sean Guynes is an SFF critic and professional editor. For politics, publishing, and SFF content, follow him on Twitter @saguynes.

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More than 500 visitors to Nevada infected with COVID-19 – Las Vegas Review-Journal

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More than 500 visitors to Nevada have tested positive for COVID-19 since casinos reopened in June, according to newly released state data.

The Department of Health and Human services reported that as of Aug. 15, at least 530 visitors had tested positive for the novel coronavirus either while in the state or soon after returning home. The data dates back to June 1; casinos reopened June 4.

As of July 25, only 347 infected visitors had been identified, according to department data released earlier this month.

The vast majority of the visitors tested positive while they were in Nevada. The state knows of only 11 who have tested positive after they returned home, an increase of just one case since data was last released.

Nevada health officials have said they only find out about visitor cases discovered outside the state if the visitors home state notifies them. So far, Nevada has been notified of such cases in Arizona, California and Ohio.

Professor Samuel Scarpino, head of Northeastern Universitys Emergent Epidemics Lab, has said the low number likely reflects an antiquated interstate disease reporting system.

My hunch would be that those numbers are low because of reporting issues, not because theyre actually low, he told the Review-Journal last week.

Among Nevada residents, more than 67,000 cases had been identified throughout the states outbreak as of Thursday.

Track the coronavirus impact on Nevada through data

Contact Michael Scott Davidson at sdavidson@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on Twitter.

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Travel restrictions leave growing toll on ‘9th island’ of Las Vegas – FOX5 Las Vegas

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Ready for action: Local pro boxer returns to ring in Las Vegas on Saturday – Houma Courier

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Chris Singleton|The Courier

It is almost showtime for local professional boxer Rance Pressure Ward.

Ward is scheduled to step in the ring to take on Javier Martinez in a middleweight fight put on by Top Rank Boxing promotions on Saturday in Las Vegas.

The fight is one of eight matches scheduled for Saturday at the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas. It will be televised on ESPN+ and will start at 6 p.m.

It will be Wards first trip back to fight in Las Vegas since he tested positive for the coronavirus while preparing for the scheduled middleweight fight against Fred Wilson Jr. in June.

Wards trainer, Justin Martinez, also tested positive before the fight in Las Vegas. Ward was forced to back down from the fight due to all boxers being required to pass a coronavirus test in order to compete.

Ward, who has spent recent days training in Las Vegas for Saturdays fight, said he is ready to go this time.

He is very motivated and eager to put on a show for his hometown. He has remained humble and wants to do the talking after the fight.

I feel great, Ward said. Im still out here working. Im very confident. I just got to be humble and bring home the W.

Ward will try to improve on his 4-1-1 record as a pro. He will take on Javier Martinez, who recently turned pro. The fight is set to go four rounds.

When he steps into the ring, Ward said will be more focused than ever before.

Ive been training hard and working hard, Ward said. Im just going to stick to my game plan and just stay focus and keep on pushing.

While training in Las Vegas this week, Ward got the opportunity to visit the Mayweather Boxing Club gym.

Ward said it was a great opportunity to visit the gym, especially since he wants to follow in the footsteps of boxing legend Floyd Mayweather Jr.

My turn is going to come one day, Ward said. I just have to be patient with it thats all. I want to learn the business side of this sport.

Wards agent, Thibodaux native Quintarius Queen with CLEVER Sports Entertainment, said it has been inspirational to see how his client has bounced back since testing positive for the coronavirus and missing out on his scheduled fight in June.

Now Queen and the rest of Wards family and friends will get the chance to fight live on national television.

Were all really excited. Everybody has been waiting for this fight to happen. We just feel so good about it, Queen said. Im really confident in Rance, not just because thats my client, but he really looks good. He has gotten better with thework that he has been getting the last couple of weeks. Its been crazy to see his mindset and physical demeanor. Everything about him has changed. The energy is completely different from the last time. This time there is something different about him. He just has to go take care of business.

The main event of Saturdays fight card will feature Jose Ramirez versus Viktor Postol. It is scheduled to be a 12-round fight for the WBC/WBO junior welterweight title.

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Ready for action: Local pro boxer returns to ring in Las Vegas on Saturday - Houma Courier

Open Art Las Vegas offers a new space for creation and community – Las Vegas Weekly

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or 23 years, Daniella Etel Courban had a front-row seat in the amphitheater of the human experience while working as an obstetrician-gynecologist. In a May 21 Instagram post (@pineconerevolution), the day that she submitted her final resignation in order to pursue art full time, Courban wrote that she will always be grateful to the thousands of women who allowed me to be there for them both in great moments of joy as well as profound moments of sadness and loss.

Courban is taking all of that hard-earned wisdom, insight and empathy into this next chapter of her life. While the medical doctor has always made her own art on the side and will continue to do so, her new focus is the creation of Open Art Las Vegas, on the second floor of the Arts Factory.

Kids work on personalized mandalas during an Open Art workshop

During the pandemic lockdown, Courban brainstormed about how she might build a business or program Downtown. I thought about different spaces in my life that have been very nourishing the rooms [in my] high schoolI was an art majorwhere people could just drop in and work on projects, Courbon says. I thought, What a wonderful idea to bring that to Las Vegas and have it be for not just teenagers, but for adults.

Thus, Open Art Las Vegas was born with a soft opening in July and a planned full opening on September 1. The light, airy 480-square-foot space serves primarily as a drop-in art studio, where anybody can make art. Im going to have supplies set out at different stations, Courban says, so that they can just drop in to take a break from their regular day and not have to carry anything.

In addition to the unstructured free creative time, Open Art will host workshops and classes for all ages. Due to the pandemic, capacity is limited to six participants. So far, Courban has hosted about seven workshops, along with a few private bookings.

Having lived in Las Vegas for two years, the East Coast transplant has connected quickly with the local arts scene. Courbans desire to help foster community is clear from Open Arts many planned collaborations. Last week, Courban debuted a collaboration with Blue Sky Yoga (on the ground floor of the Arts Factory), in which children participate in an hour of yoga, followed by an hour of art.

On September 26 (7 p.m., $36), artist Stanley Webb will lead a workshop titled Black Arts Movement: The Art of Protest. And in October, Courban will co-lead a monthly multisensory workshop on color with author and Velveteen Rabbit co-owner Christina Dylag. Coming from diverse creative backgrounds, both women will explore the idea of color in experiential ways, Dylag explains. The course will encourage its participants to see and experience color in a new way, Dylag says.

Additional classes include observational drawing for teens, multimedia mandalas, coloring book creation, illustration and gelli-plate printmaking.

Visitors will also have access to Open Arts library of art books and monographs. One of the benefits of having an open space is to be able to share ideas and share art, Courban says. Im trying to bring as many books here as I can in terms of exposing [people] to some artists they might not have heard of. I think thats really exciting.

Open Arts price points further reflect the theme of accessibility to all. Studio time costs $10 per hour, which includes the use of supplies; most workshops run $20. My main goal for this place is to offer a very relaxing, open environment for creativity, Courban says. You dont need to have artistic skills to come here.

OPEN ART LAS VEGAS The Arts Factory, 107 E. Charleston Blvd. #210, 617-251-3564, openartlasvegas.com.

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Open Art Las Vegas offers a new space for creation and community - Las Vegas Weekly

UFCs White touts Trump as hard worker on final night of RNC – Las Vegas Review-Journal

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WASHINGTON Self-made Las Vegas businessman Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, praised his friend, Donald Trump, on the final night of the Republican National Convention.

I am friends of the president, White said. I spoke at this convention four years ago and I am back because I believe in President Trumps leadership.

White, 51, heads the largest mixed martial arts fighting league in the nation. He endorsed Trump in 2016 at the RNC in Cleveland.

His remarks Thursday were taped and aired before live speeches that were delivered on the White House South Lawn.

White and Trump struck up a friendship years ago. In 2001, the UFC held an event at Trumps Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. It was dubbed, UFC 30: Battle of the Boardwalk. It was a venue and an event that helped the fledgling UFC under White.

Trump invited White to speak at the RNC in 2016, where the Las Vegas athlete endorsed Trump, who went on to win the presidency.

Whites comments Thursday were part of a videotape on athletes that included images of baseball great Lou Gehrig, golf phenom Tiger Woods, Stanley Cup winning teams and others.

White grew up in Boston and was a boxer before he moved to Las Vegas, where he became a promoter and a partner in the UFC mixed martial arts league.

Earlier this year, Trump tapped White to serve on the White House coronavirus task force. White praised Trump for trying to reintroduce entertainment and encouraging live sporting events during the pandemic.

The UFC was the first to do it, and we are continuing to do it, White said. Now, other sports have joined us.

Still, the Las Vegas businessman conceded, we have a long way to go.

But White said, no one, and I mean no one, is going to out work this guy.

The boxer- turned-promoter becomes the fourth person from Las Vegas to speak at the RNC.

Earlier this week, Trump pardoned convicted bank robber Jon Ponder, who has since been released from incarceration and started a ministry, Hope for Prisoners.

Ponder appeared at the White House with Richard Beasley, the former FBI agent who made the arrest and helped Ponder turn his life around.

The convention kicked off Monday with a prayer by Pastor Norma Urrabazo of the International Church of Las Vegas.

Contact Gary Martin at gmartin@reviewjournal or 202-662-7390. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter.

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Analyzing the ups and downs from Vegas’ playoff performance thus far – Las Vegas Sun

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Jason Franson / The Canadian Press/AP

Chicago goalie Corey Crawford looks back after a goal by Vegas William Carrier (28) during Game 1 of the teams first-round playoffseries.

By Justin Emerson (contact)

Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020 | 2 a.m.

The Golden Knights breezed through the round robin and the first round against the Chicago Blackhawks, winning seven of the eight games and establishing themselves as not just one of the best teams in the Western Conferences, but one of the favorites to win the Stanley Cup.

The road only gets harder from here. The Golden Knights have begun Round 2 against the Vancouver Canuckssplitting the first two games ahead of Game 3 on August 27and are three long series victories from hoisting the Cup.

So it seems like a good time to review a few things the Golden Knights have done right in the early goings of the postseason, and a few things theyll need to work on moving forward.

1. Theyve dominated possession. The biggest reason the Golden Knights were able to dispatch the Blackhawks so quickly was that they spent five games treating Chicago like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football. Vegas ended the series plus-4 in goal differential, but other numbers point to a big blowout.

The Golden Knights edge was plus-64 in shots on goal and a staggering plus-100 in shot attempts over the five games. Advanced stats provided by Natural Stat Trick suggest Vegas advantage in expected goals was plus-7 and high-danger scoring chances was plus-24.

If a team has the puck, its going to shoot the puck; and if its shooting the puck, its not defending an attack. The best defense is a good offense, and the Golden Knights showed that in their assault on the Chicago net, and that hasnt slowed against Vancouver, with a plus-48 edge in shot attempts so far.

2. Theyve been comeback kids. During the regular season, the Golden Knights overcame a two-goal deficit to win only twice, and they had never done it in the playoffs prior to this month. But this year through the round robin and the first round against Chicago, the Golden Knights have already done it three times.

Whats especially impressive: the teams against which the first two of those comebacks occurred. In the round robin, the Golden Knights fell behind 3-1 in the third period to Dallas and 2-0 in the second to St. Louis. The Stars and Blues were among the NHLs best in the regular season, in terms of both overall record and in closing out leads.

Overall, the Golden Knights have outscored their opponents 15-5 in the third period and overtime this postseason, a key trait as the playoffs roll on.

3. Their stars are shining bright. Coach Peter DeBoer said it best: This time of year, a teams best players need to be its best players. The Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP rarely goes to depth players, so for a team to make a Cup run, it typically needs its stars to play at their highest level. And thats been the case for the Golden Knights so far through 10 postseason games.

Mark Stone, Reilly Smith and Shea Theodore are all averaging a point-per-game or better during the seasons restart, and Alex Tuch and Jonathan Marchessault are two points back of that pace.

Stone, in particular, has elevated his game when the stakes are highest. Including last years playoffs, Stone has racked up 22 points in 17 VGK playoff games, a per-game pace higher than anyone else with the Golden Knights.

Smith has also been a constant. With 38 points in 37 playoff games as a Golden Knight, hes the only other player to exceed a point per game. Stone, Smith and the rest of the Vegas stars have continued to excel when the games matter most.

4. Theyve showed off their depth. Every team goes through injuries this time of year, but the Golden Knights havent skipped a beat when theyve lost key players. Max Pacioretty and Paul Stastny have missed a combined six games this postseason, and theyve combined to score just seven points in the 14 games theyve played. Yet it hasnt really mattered.

When Stastny went down, Patrick Brown filled in on the fourth line and scored a goal. Chandler Stephenson has been all over the lineup, from third-line center to first-line wing to first-line center to fourth-line center.

And as the stars do their thing at the top of the lineup, so do the players near the bottom. In the Chicago series, the third line of Nick Cousins, Nicolas Roy and Alex Tuch was superb. William Carrier entered the playoffs without a postseason point and already has two game-winning goals.

1. The power play. This was the Golden Knights biggest issue until the series finale against Chicago. In that game, defenseman Alec Martinez scored to tie the game 3-3 before Vegas went on to win, but it was the teams first goal in 10 power-play tries in the series.

The good news is that appears to be less of a systemic issue than a small sample-size one. In the three round-robin games, Vegas went 3-for-12 on the power play, a terrific 33% that, for context, would have led the NHL during the regular season. The Golden Knights are 2-for-7 (28.6%) in two games against Vancouver. Factoring in all 10 postseason games, Vegas has gone 6-for-28 (21.4%), which ranks among the upper half of the playoff teams thus far.

Still, against a porous defense like the Blackhawks, Vegas would have liked more from its power play. It has improved so far in the second round.

2. Finishing chances. The Golden Knights were a far better team than the Blackhawks, yet three of Vegas four wins came by just one goal. All the stats from the positives side of this story should seemingly have added up to a Golden Knights rout. And while a series that ends in five games can be considered a pretty good beatdown, it could have been more lopsided, game by game.

Part of that was Corey Crawford. Chicagos goalie was excellent and kept Vegas from filling the net with pucks, particularly in the Blackhawks lone win. He was the biggest reason Vegas differential between actual goals (15) and expected goals (17.44) was negative, and in Game 4 he held the Golden Knights to one goal, compared to 3.71 expected.

Still, as with the power play, Vegas finishing issues were limited to the Chicago series. In the round robin, the Golden Knights were the NHLs most potent offensive team, and thus far theyve looked very capable of making a deep run.

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Cool Las Vegas Valley treats to get you through the dog days of summer – Las Vegas Weekly

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Sul & Beans

At Shanghai Plaza in Chinatown youll find Sul & Beans, which specializes in Korean bingsoo. For the uninitiated, bingsoo is a bowl of shaved ice topped with various ingredients like condensed milk, fruit and cornflakes. Here youll find heaping bowls with sweet red beans and fresh fruit like watermelon, in flavors such as taro, green tea and chocolate. But stretch your imaginationand your palateand try unfamiliar flavor profiles, at least in treat form, like Earl Grey and black sesame. You might be pleased to discover that dessert need not be cloyingly sweet. 4284 Spring Mountain Road #D103, 702-473-9629.

Black TapsDole Whip Cocktails

There was a time when Dole Whipthat creamy soft-serve pineapple swirl of perfectionwas only available at Disneyland. In fact, its rarity conferred upon it cultlike status, and the lines at the concession stands were legendary. About three years ago, the dairy-free dessert started appearing outside the Magic Kingdom. In town, you can find the adult version at Black Tap in the Venetian, in the form of two cocktails: the Raspberry Lime Margarita, made with Casamigos Blanco, Aperol, lime juice, makrut lime and raspberry Dole Whip; and the Mimosa, with Kendall Jackson Chardonnay, Absolut Vodka, blood orange and orange Dole Whip. Guess theres a new happiest place on Earth. 702-414-2337, blacktap.com.

Somisomi

Its literally impossible to resist the adorable taiyaki waffle cone that houses Somisomis soft serve ice cream. Taiyaki, a Japanese fish-shaped cake, is commonly filled with red bean paste. (Other filling options include Nutella, custard and taro.) Then pick a soft-serve flavormilk, matcha, milk tea, Oreo, horchata or ube (the ubiquitous purple yam from the Philippines), or a weekly-special swirlto add to your sweet-fish creation. The taiyakis are made on the spot, and they come out nice and warm. In fact, theyre so good on their own that you should take some to-go (minus the soft serve) to eat later. 4284 Spring Mountain Road #D104, 702-473-9628.

Paradise City Creamery

At Paradise City Creamery, the ice cream is as sinful as it is sweet. We aim to create engaging and curious experiences that encourage people to be the pleasure they wish to see in the world, says founder Valerie Stunning. While the adults-only treats have risqu monikers like the Worlds Oldest Professional and Birthday Sex, theres also a virtuous bent: All treats are 100% plant-based and gluten-free. Sure, you might blush a bit when you order, but cooling you down is exactly what these creamy concoctions are made for. Join the invite list at paradisecitycreamery.com for pop-up details, 702-780-9153.

Mora Iced Creamery

Downtown Summerlin frozen treat hot spots Gelato Messina and Cream were delicious, but they didnt last. Now the outdoor mall has the intensely flavoredyet lower in fat and cholesterolofferings of Mora, which focuses on fresh ingredients and storing its ice creams and sorbets individually at ideal temperatures. That means you wont browse a glass case full of colorful options, but you might maximize your enjoyment thanks to the unique methodology. Mora is a place where purists can enjoy their favorites, but you can also get sundaes and shakes or experiment with fantastic flavors like Mexican chocolate, blackberry, lemon bar, cheesecake with brownies and Irish coffee. Downtown Summerlin, 702-660-4380. Also at Town Square.

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Searsucker recloses on the Las Vegas Strip, laying off 52 employees – Eater Vegas

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Searsucker, the restaurant from Hakkasan Group that offers twists on American classics, reclosed temporarily on August 15 at Caesars Palace.

Hakkasan sent a letter to the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation as part of the WARN Act noting that it closed and laid off 52 people, including part-time staff, due to the unforeseen business circumstances caused by the spread of COVID 19, the Governor of Nevadas declaration of emergency and resulting executive orders which have required Searsucker to operate at a reduced capacity, the recommendations and/or orders regarding public gatherings issued by the CDC and various other government agencies and officials, and the resulting unforeseen economic impacts that the foregoing circumstances have caused to our business.

Normally, companies need to give 60 days notice that they are laying off staff, but Hakkasan says, Unfortunately, further advance notice of this cessation of operations was not possible due to the fluid and rapidly evolving nature of the COVID 19 pandemic.

The restaurant does plan to reopen at some point.

The restaurant originally reopened on July 2 at the resort on Thursday through Saturday nights with reduced seating, suggested reservations, and QR codes for accessing the menu. Employees affected included line cooks, servers, dishwashers, prep cooks, bartenders, hosts, and the general manager.

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Las Vegas woman pleads guilty in 2000 crash that killed 6 teens – FOX5 Las Vegas

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Las Vegas woman pleads guilty in 2000 crash that killed 6 teens - FOX5 Las Vegas

Blockchain Bites: What Rising Inflation Could Mean for Bitcoin and the US Dollar – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

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Bitcoin is a tool to avoid police extortion in Nigeria, centralized social media is being censored amid Thai protests andFederal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said thecentral bank will readdress its previous 2% inflation target over the next decade.

Youre readingBlockchain Bites, the daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news, and why theyre significant. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesksnewsletters here.

Top shelf

Police-resistantTocombat extortion and coercive policingin Nigeria, some, like Nigerian programmer Adebiyi David Adedoyin, are turning to bitcoin. Human Rights Watch has documented a trend in the country where police detain citizens, determine their life savings through force entry to their phones and seize it. It almost happened to Adedoyin. The money they collected to let me go in that case would have been a lot more if I had more money in my account. But I had most of my money in bitcoin, Adedoyin said. Police are less likely to look for a bitcoin wallet, he said.

Bitcoin fundFidelity Investments chief strategist, Peter Jubber, islaunching a new bitcoin index fund. Disclosed in a Wednesday morning filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Wise Origin Bitcoin Index Fund I, LP has a $100,000 minimum buy-in and is the latest example of Wall Street veterans warming up to bitcoin. Wise Origin links back to Fidelity Investments via Jubber and Fidelitys brokerage service and distribution subsidiaries, both of which are set to receive sales compensation from the new fund. It also shares a Boston office building with Fidelity, Danny Nelson reports.

Centralized censorshipThailands anti-government protests highlight thevulnerabilities of major social media platformslike Twitter and Facebook, CoinDesks Sandali Handagama reports. On Wednesday, Thailands digital minister Puttipong Punnakanta said authorities will continue an internet crackdown including Facebook censorship and potential interference on Twitter in an attempt to limit a groundswell of distributed political action in the country.

Exchange extortionTheNew Zealand stock exchange has halted trading for the third dayin a row as a result of criminal cyberattacks. Targeted disruption from malicious actors have knocked the NZX exchanges hosting service Spark has knocked it intermittently offline. The criminals, potentially connected to the Amada Collective and Fancy Bear cybergangs, are demanding bitcoin in order to cease the attacks. Over recent weeks, the group has also attempted to extort bitcoin from PayPal, MoneyGram, YesBank India, Braintree and Venmo, CoinDesks Sebastian Sinclair reports.

Blockchain on the LINEMessaging giant LINE haslaunched a wallet for users to manage digital assets and a blockchain platformwhere developers can issue their own tokens, tokenize digital assets and run decentralized applications (dapps). The wallet services are only available in Japan, at launch, where LINE is particularly well-known. The company, whose messaging app boasts 84 million users, aims to leverage its existing network to jumpstart the development of its token economies and accelerate adoptions of many dapps built on its proprietary blockchain platform setting it apart from other messaging app blockchain experiments.

Quick bites

At stake

Inflation watchFederal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellannounced new measures to control inflationat his annual speech on the U.S. central banks policy approach during the Jackson Hole symposium Thursday.

The Fed has left itself flexibility to change its monetary policy plans in the future, including letting inflation rise above its traditional 2% target. In his speech, Powell didnt rule out any use of its monetary policy tools, such as a broader expansion of its balance sheet to keep markets from tumbling if the economy worsens and bankruptcies increase.

Its a speech that may have long-term implications on both bitcoin andether, given the dollars relatively precarious position in the global financial system.

The implication for crypto is that the Fed will likely let inflation run hot for a few years, which could theoretically weaken the dollar and boost prices for bitcoin.

Thursday offers a reminder of just how dramatically once-slow-moving monetary forces have accelerated due to the devastating economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic. The national debt now stands at $26.5 trillion. Digital currencies are now being studied and pursued by central banks in China, the U.S. and just about everywhere else. Goldman Sachs recently warned the dollar risked losing its dominant reserve status, CoinDesks Bradley Keoun reports.

Market intel

Flat optionsBitcoins options marketforesees little price turbulence in the short term,CoinDesks Omkar Godbole reports. Bitcoins implied volatility on one-month options, a gauge of the markets expectations for price movements, fell to the lowest level since July 25. Short-term price expectations have declined sharply from 70% to 52% over the past two weeks. This wait-and-see approach is happening ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powells Jackson Hole address, in which hes expected to signal tolerance for high inflation a move that could weaken the U.S. dollar and propel bitcoin higher.

Tech pod

Back to the Baseline?Baseline Protocol, wherecorporates can use the Ethereum public mainnet as a common frame of referenceamong different systems of record, has released its Version 1.0. The way enterprise blockchains typically work is by running data on-chain like a traditional workhorse database a grave error of judgment, John Wolpert of ConsenSys said. Announced Wednesday, the Microsoft-backed project developed by Paul Brody, blockchain lead at EY, and Wolpert uses Ethereum only for hashing and ordering events, CoinDesks Ian Allison reports.

DeFi debateDeFi Pulse, run by the Concourse Open Community, has becomethe chief source of knowledge in the decentralized finance(DeFi) space, pionering a metric called, Total Value Locked. TVL represents the dollar value of all the tokens locked in the smart contract of a given decentralized lending project. While a convenient way to rank projects, it also raises controversies around the value in locked-in value.

Op-ed

NFT games?Leah Callon-Butler, a CoinDesk columnist and director of Emfarsis, reveals the unknown world ofFilipinos using non fungible tokens (NFTs) to earn a livingduring the coronavirus pandemic. A popular Ethereum-based game, Axie Infinity, where players breed, raise, battle and trade adorable digital critters called Axies, is providing pathways out of poverty and helping spread the word about novel technology, she said. Its food on the table, its money for their families and its saving them when they cannot even leave the house during this pandemic, Gabby Dizon, the Filipino co-founder of mobile app development company Altitude Games, said.

Podcast corner

Distributing dictators hordeRuben Galindo, CEO of the P2P network Airtm, joins the latest The Breakdown to discuss how thecrypto-powered network is teaming with Venezuelas opposition government to distribute $18 millionin funds the U.S. seized from the Maduro dictatorship.

Who won #CryptoTwitter?

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Blockchain Bites: What Rising Inflation Could Mean for Bitcoin and the US Dollar - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

Digital Dollar To Be In Competition With Bitcoin – Forbes

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Digital dollars and central bank digital currencies are fast becoming a reality, with China this month reportedly expanding a pilot program for its digital yuan.

While the U.S. has barely even begun thinking about a digital dollar, its potential implications have generated extensive debate, with a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan, saying bitcoin and Facebook's libra cryptocurrency may eventually be "in competition" with central bank digital currencies.

Central bank digital currencies, led by China, are poised to change the way countries distribute and ... [+] manage money, with some taking inspiration from bitcoin, Facebook's libra and other cryptocurrencies.

"I would like to think that [bitcoin and libra] are also in competition with the central bank digital currency," Rajan, who served as the International Monetary Fund's chief economist before taking the top job at India's central bank, told CNBCs Beyond the Valley podcast this week.

Central bank digital currencies, sometimes referred to as CBDCs, are expected to work just like regular coins and notes issued by central banks but exist entirely online, with the U.S. Federal Reserve potentially issuing digital dollars via Fed accounts.

The race to create a working central bank digital currency was kick-started by Facebook's announcement of its libra cryptocurrency last year, however the social media giant was forced to curtail its ambitious plans after central bank governors around the world balked at the idea.

"The worry with libra was that, in its early forms, it was on the one hand very ambitious in what it wanted to do but very vague in what the safety precautions would be," Rajan said, explaining Facebook wanted to "become a world currency" without telling anyone how data would be protected or what safety mechanisms it would use.

"That's the worst possibility for central bankers: something that's going to take over the world but we have no strong confidence in that risks would be contained."

Rajan expects competition between central banks will drive CBDC development over coming years, with countries worried rival currencies might displace their own if they don't keep upbut private currencies such as bitcoin and libra will continue to exist.

"Different private currencies will do different things and it may be bitcoin has value going forward just as a store of value," Rajan said, with Facebook's libra perhaps used for "transacting" while bitcoin is used as a "speculative asset," similar to gold.

Bitcoin's value has soared over recent years, with the bitcoin price climbing to around $20,000 per ... [+] bitcoin in late 2017. While the bitcoin price has fallen by almost half since then, it is increasingly being used a store of value by investors.

This is a view echoed by many in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency community, with bitcoin investors often championing it as "digital gold" and investors increasingly flocking to bitcoin in times of heightened risk.

"CBDCs and bitcoin represent opposite ends of a spectrumfrom centralized extensions of the legacy financial system to a trustless, decentralized alternative that derives value from broad consensus," Diogo Monica, president and co-founder of Anchorage, a cryptocurrency custodian and member of libra's governing council, the Libra Association, said via email.

"While competition is inevitable, it wont be winner-take-all," Monica added. "Well likely witness the adoption of multiple assets all along the spectrum based on their utility, as well as other geopolitical factors."

Rajan also expressed concern that CBDCs could result in government overreachsomething else that bitcoin supporters argue cryptocurrencies help to offset.

"The beauty of the cash in our hands is that it's anonymous," Rajan said, asking, "even if you're not doing anything illegal should the government know the details of every transaction you make?"

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Digital Dollar To Be In Competition With Bitcoin - Forbes

Fidelity Is A 1000 Pound Bitcoin Gorilla In The Making – Forbes

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NEW YORK CITY, NY, UNITED STATES - 2020/02/17: A view of an american multinational financial ... [+] services corporation Fidelity Investments logo. (Photo by Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Yesterday, Fidelity filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to create a new fund dedicated entirely to bitcoin, which will require a minimum investment of $100,000.

CEO of Onramp Invest, Tyrone Ross, notes Fidelitys minimum investment size indicates they have no immediate plans to expand into retail offerings, but rather want to focus on the higher end institutional side of the business.

The likely logic behind Fidelitys decision is better margins and pre-existing formula for success via industry leader, Grayscale. Grayscales bitcoin trust caters to high net worth individuals and institutions, and has seen its assets under management balloon over the past few years, now topping almost $5 billion.

Tyrone Ross further comments that Fidelity also knows that they carry a brand legacy that other investment managers and custodians simply cant match. Fidelitys brand recognition could allow them to beat out first movers like Grayscale for the growing pie of institutional capital allocated to bitcoin and other digital assets.

https://www.coinbase.com/price/bitcoin

Additionally, the Boston investment giant has ~$8.3 trillion of assets under management, which in theory, if even a small portion of their clients bought into the new bitcoin fund, it would not take long before Fidelity would rival Grayscale. For example, 1% of client assets into their bitcoin fund would give it $83 billion in assets under management, i.e. greater than 16x Grayscale.

If Fidelitys fund proves successful, the price implications for bitcoin are quite clear. For example, back in June 2020, analyst Kevin Rooke determined that Grayscales trust was buying bitcoin faster than it could be mined post-halving.

Given bitcoin currently has a market cap of $208 billion and just underwent its third halving, the aforementioned scenario could easily happen again if Fidelitys fund gains traction.

Furthermore, it could be more potent this time around. Per GrayscalesValuing Bitcoinreport, only 37% of outstanding bitcoin are actually available for trading. The remaining amount has not been touched in over 1 year.

https://grayscale.co/insights/valuing-bitcoin/

There are numerous questions still unsolved from Fidelitys surprise announcement principally, can it gain demonstrable traction with its existing clientele? If so, Fidelity has the potential to be the next 1000 pound gorilla buying up more bitcoin than is being mined, thus a strong tailwind for price.

Disclosure: The author owns bitcoin and ethereum.

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Fidelity Is A 1000 Pound Bitcoin Gorilla In The Making - Forbes

Tyler Winklevoss says US Fed is the biggest booster of Bitcoin price – Cointelegraph

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Bitcoin (BTC) is getting most of its price support from the Federal Reserve itself, entrepreneur Tyler Winklevoss believes.

In a tweet on Aug. 25, the Gemini exchange co-founder argued that Fed policy is and will continue to bolster Bitcoins fortunes.

The reason, Winklevoss said, is that the fallout from coronavirus containment measures across the United States economy will mean that the central bank accidentally makes Bitcoin more appealing and the dollar less so.

On Thursday, Fed chairman Jerome Powell will deliver a speech that commentators expect will contain an announcement on letting inflation rise dramatically.

This alone makes Bitcoin, which has a fixed unalterable issuance and supply, instantly attractive.

The Fed, under the leadership of Jerome Powell, continues to be Bitcoin's biggest booster, Winklevoss wrote.

On Thursday, he will deliver a speech about how the Fed will begin targeting higher inflation.

As Cointelegraph reported, anticipation around the Fed inadvertently plugging safe havens such as gold and Bitcoin has been building as both assets see price surges in line with rises in central banks balance sheets.

Earlier this month, Edward Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, said that heightened inflation targets would be wildly bullish for precious metals.

Bitcoin price, inflation and stock-to-flow chart. Source: Woobull

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that interest rates should remain near zero for five years, with the potential for longer periods not ruled out.

That would mimic behavior following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, which saw rates kept unchanged at near 0% until the end of 2015.

I wouldnt be surprised if interest rates are still zero five years from now, ex-chief White House economist Jason Furman told the publication.

Fed interest rate historical chart. Source: Bloomberg

The Fed has so far steered clear of negative interest rates, diverging from a practice that has been present under the auspices of the European Central Bank (ECB) for several years.

In May, a report argued that Bitcoin was a natural focus for fund managers aiming to mitigate the impact of such a financial policy.

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Tyler Winklevoss says US Fed is the biggest booster of Bitcoin price - Cointelegraph

New Binance Exclusive Reveals The Bitcoin Exchange Might Have A Serious Problem – Forbes

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Bitcoin, despite its growing mainstream popularity, is a favourite tool of cyber criminals, with one ransomware variant, known as Ryuk, thought to have stolen $61 million since it was created in 2018, according to the FBI.

Ransomware hackers, who encrypt their victims' files before demanding bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to unlock them, began increasingly targeting hospitals and healthcare providers during the coronavirus pandemic, Interpol reported in April, with criminals taking advantage of an influx of remote workers.

Now, researchers who say they are concerned by this trend have compiled information that could be damaging to Binance, one of the largest bitcoin exchanges in the worldsuggesting the exchange is failing to prevent Ryuk hackers from turning the stolen bitcoin into cash.

Binance, now the world's largest bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange by volume, was created by ... [+] Changpeng Zhao in 2017.

Researchers found that bitcoin worth over $1 million from several addresses connected to Ryuk ransomware attacks made its way to a wallet on the Binance exchange over the last three years, with the wallet still active as of this month.

"Out of the 63 sampled transactions worth around $5,700,000, it was found that over $1 million was sent from the hacking team wallets to the Binance exchange platform to cash out their ransom payments," the researchers, who asked to remain anonymous, wrote in a document seen by this reporter and shared with Binance.

"Thirteen other bitcoin addresses associated with Ryuk, containing a total of $1,064,865, followed a similar pattern. All were sent from the hackers wallets to several other addresses, and eventually to Binance, enabling them to cash out their ransom payments."

The remaining $4.7 million worth of bitcoin traced by the researchers is currently still being held at various off-exchange addresses, suggesting Binance is the cyber criminals' exchange of choice.

Asked about the report's findings, the Binance security team said that "fighting money laundering, ransomware, and other malicious activities is a never-ending endeavor at Binance."

"It is our top priority to ensure the safety of our customers and the integrity of the broader crypto space," Binance said, pointing to a number of "security features" and "engineering techniques" it uses to identify illicit activities, including "detection algorithms to flag potentially malicious activities."

"Unfortunately, when it comes to tracking illicit activity on-chain, attribution is not always black and white," Binance added, explaining "the recipient may be completely unaware of the fraudulent source of the transaction" and the exchange "has a wide variety of customers operating on its platform."

Binance chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, often known simply as CZ, has previously said the exchange relies on mixture of in-house "blockchain analysis" and social media reports to prevent hackers and cyber criminals using its services.

Cracking down on unlawful use of bitcoin exchanges is "truely a tough balance," one widely-respected blockchain industry expert said via Telegram, prefering to speak anonymously.

"If you clamp down with policies and procedures in order to try to slow these bad actors, it negatively affects all the innocent users. [There's] no easy answer."

Binance's own analysis of the fund flows found the Singapore-based bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange Huobi received around 400 bitcoin indirectly sourced from a combination of ransomware campaigns with the now defunct exchange BX Thailand also receiving some 140 bitcoin from the Ryuk ransomware.

Meanwhile, Binance this month helped Ukraine authorities take down a group of criminals involved in a global $42 million ransomware and money laundering operation.

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New Binance Exclusive Reveals The Bitcoin Exchange Might Have A Serious Problem - Forbes

Explanation of the Stock to Flow Model as Bitcoin Pulls Back – Market Insights – TradeStation Market Insights

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Bitcoin is having its worst week in over three months. Is it a bargain? Lets review a common valuation model for perspective the stock to flow model.

The Stock-to-Flow model attempts to value BTC in a way similar to other scarce assets like gold and silver. Its basic concept is that widely produced commodities like oil, wheat and copper arent good stores of value because new supply is always coming online. But only small amounts of new BTC, gold and silver are regularly introduced. This theoretically makes their value more stable.

Also known as S2F, the model quantifies scarcity by taking the total global supply of a commodity and dividing it be annual production. A higher value means that less new supply is entering the market. That translates into more scarcity and less inflation.

An unnamed Dutch investor using the moniker PlanB released the initial S2F model in on the website Medium in March 2019. Its gained widespread following as a paradigm for valuing BTC, which has appreciated more than 300 million percent from its launch in January 2009.

The cryptocurrencys S2F is now about 56 times. Approximately 18.5 million BTC currently exist, and roughly 900 new coins are created each day. That translates into about 328,500 per year.

In comparison, golds S2F is about 62 times. Thats based on about 185,000 tons of existing supply and 3,000 tons of annual production. Silvers S2F is about 22 times, according to PlanB.

The S2F model then looks at historical values of BTC and projects where it might go over time. This brings us to the most important part of the model: limited supply.

BTCs claim to fame is that only 21 million coins can ever exist. This is totally different from fiat currency created by central banks. Its somewhat different from precious metals because gold and silver production can increase over time. (Mining is relatively stable but not fixed.)

Satoshi Nakamoto designed Bitcoin to ensure that new supply will shrink over time. Every 210,000 blocks, or about four years, the reward issued to miners get cut in half. The last of these so-called halving events was in May.

As a result, the flow portion (denominator) in the S2F model gets smaller. That increases the S2F ratio, making BTC more scarce as time goes on.

Based on historical prices, the S2F model originally estimated BTCs total value should be about $1 trillion. That would translate into more about $55,000 per coin about 5 times its current value. PlanB updated the model on April 27, 2020, to include more calculations based on gold and silver. He or she then raised their price forecast more than fivefold to over $288,000.

Due to the limited historical record of cryptocurrencies like BTC, were not able to assess the effectiveness of PlanBs Stock to Flow model. And, none of this article should be viewed as a recommendation of any kind. We simply wanted to outline a key concept being used for the worlds biggest cryptocurrency at a time when more investors are considering blockchain assets.

Keep reading Market Insights for more news and education on cryptocurrencies. Next time well dig into Decentralized Finance (DeFi), a key activity associated with Ethereum the second-biggest crypto.

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Explanation of the Stock to Flow Model as Bitcoin Pulls Back - Market Insights - TradeStation Market Insights

Here’s Why Bitcoin Is A Must In Your Portfolio – Seeking Alpha

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Thesis Summary

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) is seen by many as a dangerous and volatile asset. While there is a truth to this, given the current state of the financial system and economy, I argue it is more irresponsible not to have any exposure to cryptocurrencies. Allocating a small percentage of your portfolio to cryptos could help reduce overall volatility and potentially yield incredible returns. There is no true price of Bitcoin, but there is certainly a value, and we have to believe this will be reflected in the long term.

Source: Forbes.com

The most frustrating thing about explaining cryptocurrencies to people is that they are never concerned about how they work, but rather what the price will be. Should I buy it now? How much will Bitcoin be worth in 6 months? The truth of the matter is no matter how hard people try to determine the future price of Bitcoin, nobody knows. It may be worth nothing in 5 years. However, I recommend owning Bitcoin because, ultimately, it has value.

The same principle applies to stocks. Nobody knows for certain where stock prices will be in six months, but the principle of owning stocks is sound because you are buying a share of something that produces value. Companies are complex systems that use tools and human labor to create things we want. Likewise, Bitcoin can be seen as a tool, which does indeed fulfill people's needs to some degree.

While I struggle to understand the nitty-gritty of the matter, Bitcoin does have the functionality to replace a great deal of our monetary and financial system. Through blockchain technology transactions can be made quickly and accurately no matter where you are in the world.

In Zimbabwe and Venezuela Bitcoin has aided thousands if not millions of people to protect their wealth and even transact through bitcoin. To Americans, this may sound like a moot point, since we have incredibly liquid and deep capital markets and a financial system that sits at the center of the whole world. But does this mean we don't "need" bitcoin?

While the stock market has provided us an incredible rally over the last two decades, it has become increasingly clear to economists and regular fold alike that the system upon which this is built is on very shaky foundations. What was once labeled "extreme" and "temporary" has now become commonplace (ZIRP and QE). What before were levels of debt only ever seen during wartime periods, have now become normal, with many western countries including the U.S. surpassing 100% debt/GDP ratio.

The bottom line? The only way out of this much debt is either default or inflation. Given that the U.S. can print as much money as it wants, the latter is a much more likely scenario. Gold has already reached an all-time high, and the Fed even came out today and openly admitted it will happily "tolerate" higher levels of inflation. Inflation, however, may only be the tip of the iceberg. The backbone of the monetary system, banks, could soon face a systemic collapse much like in 2008. This could come from several places; derivatives, corporate debt, sovereign debt, and also emerging market debt.

Bitcoin acts as a "hedge" against inflation. It is naturally deflationary since the amount is limited. But Bitcoin can also act as a means of exchange, which is something we might also need one day if the financial system collapses. In other words, it acts as a hedge against a systemic collapse. This seems farfetched, but banks closed their doors in Greece in 2008, and in the U.S. during the 1930s.

Circling back to our stock comparison, it is not enough to buy a single cryptocurrency. The best option is to diversify your holdings amongst a few. Here are my top three picks:

First and foremost, Bitcoin remains the most popular and useful cryptocurrency by far. When it comes to currencies in general, widespread use is an important factor, and it is likely that if today the world were to turn around and start using cryptos daily, Bitcoin would sit at the base. Bitcoin can also be seen as the gold of cryptocurrencies. Other cryptos may be quicker in terms of processing transactions, but Bitcoin has the perception of being the most secure.

The second most important crypto to own is Ethereum (ETH-USD). If Bitcoin were to ever be displaced, Ethereum would be the one. This cryptocurrency can be seen as much more than an exchange mechanism. Ethereum is built on a much more robust platform which hosts thousands of decentralized apps and "smart contracts". Ethereum's uses go well beyond the monetary space, which makes it a must-own in my portfolio of cryptos.

Lastly, why not leverage the technology of cryptocurrency with the intrinsic value of an age-old store of wealth? This can be easily done with PAX Gold (PAXG). These can be seen as digital gold tokens backed by 1 troy ounce. Paxos is a New York-based company and the tokens are redeemable for LBMA-accredited London Good Delivery gold bars.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have made many people millionaires. While it will be hard for these coins to experience the same exponential gains, they have now become a viable and real alternative to centralized fiat currencies. They are the ultimate hedge against systemic collapse and incredibly secure ways of storing wealth if kept properly. (cold storage)

Disclosure: I am/we are long BTC-USD, ETH-USD. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Here's Why Bitcoin Is A Must In Your Portfolio - Seeking Alpha