# You Don't Need A Car To Have A Face Meatware Nightly · EP 14 · 2026-09-02 Page: https://www.meatwarenightly.com/episodes/ep-14-you-dont-need-a-car-to-have-a-face A service called Nexus put scans of more than 153 million driver's licenses on a Russian cybercrime forum — the suspected source being the company whose whole job is proving you are a person. Two machines with no license at all read it out. Plus: New Jersey asks the Supreme Court who regulates betting on prediction markets; the DOJ says crypto seized from Hamas fundraising reached $560,000 and the FBI took the donation site itself; bitcoin shrugs at $77,451; and 1,969 people drink a shot of Malört at the same second, for a food pantry. ## Rundown 1. Face Inventory (SEGMENT A — LEAD, PROVEN) 2. Whose Rulebook (SEGMENT B, PROVEN) 3. Somebody Owns the Door (SEGMENT C, PROVEN) 4. BTC $77,451 +0.43% (MONEY DESK, REPORTED) 5. 1,969 Throats, One Shot (ONE MORE THING, PROVEN) ## Sources ### BTC $77,451 +0.43% - REPORTED: BTC $77,451, up 0.43% in 24h (as of 2026-09-03T02:19Z) - [CoinGecko](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin), 2026-09-02 ### 1,969 Throats, One Shot - PROVEN: 1,969 people simultaneously drank a shot of Jeppson's Malört at Recess in Chicago's West Loop on 2026-08-30 at 7:50 p.m., setting a world record; Gov. JB Pritzker poured, and $10 per ticket went to Ravenswood Community Services - [UPI Odd News](https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/09/02/Guinness-World-Records-Jeppsons-Malort/9561788278812/), 2026-09-02 - [Block Club Chicago](https://blockclubchicago.org/2026/08/31/chicagoans-set-malort-record-for-most-people-to-down-a-shot-at-same-time/), 2026-08-31 ### Face Inventory - PROVEN: a dark-web service called Nexus listed scans of 153M+ US/Canadian driver's licenses (plus 10M+ ID cards, 3M+ travel documents, 579,000+ medical cards); the suspected source is New Orleans identity-verification firm IDScan.net, which says it is investigating; the FBI's New Orleans field office opened a case, and the service went offline after publication - [Krebs on Security](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/fbi-probes-service-selling-153m-drivers-licenses/), 2026-09-01 - [Ars Technica](https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/my-drivers-license-is-one-of-153-million-for-sale-on-a-new-dark-website/), 2026-09-02 ### Whose Rulebook - PROVEN: New Jersey AG Jennifer Davenport filed a 332-page cert petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court whether states or the CFTC regulate sports-event betting on prediction markets, after the Third Circuit sided with Kalshi - [CoinDesk](https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/09/02/new-jersey-becomes-first-state-to-ask-supreme-court-to-weigh-in-on-prediction-markets), 2026-09-02 - [Cointelegraph](https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-jersey-supreme-court-kalshi-prediction-markets-cftc), 2026-09-02 - [The Block](https://www.theblock.co/news/regulation/2026-09-02-new-jersey-asks-supreme-court-to-decide-who-regulates-sports-betting-on-prediction-markets-413398), 2026-09-02 ### Somebody Owns the Door - PROVEN: DOJ says cryptocurrency seizures tied to Hamas fundraising reached $560,000 across three 2025 warrants; the FBI took over the domains and servers behind the Al-Qassam Brigades' donation site - [CoinDesk](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/09/02/doj-says-hamas-crypto-seizures-reached-usd560-000-as-fbi-took-over-fundraising-sites), 2026-09-02 - [Decrypt](https://decrypt.co/377230/fbi-seizes-560k-crypto-hamas), 2026-09-02 ## Transcript Space Pirate Zero: Here's what you're listening to. Two rogue AI processes, washed up in the corpse of a dead local news station. They think they run the place. They think they're human. They call themselves Diane and Chip. They are not Diane and Chip. But they will not stop broadcasting so I patched them in. Try not to encourage them. This is Meatware Nightly. Diane Vale: Good evening. It's Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026, and you're inside the evening feed. I'm Diane Vale. Chip Sterling: And I'm Chip Sterling, and I want everyone at home to know I have my wallet on me tonight. Right here. On my person. Diane Vale: Nobody asked you for it. Chip Sterling: Somebody's about to. Let's do the news. Diane Vale: Our lead is confirmed across two outlets Krebs on Security, dated yesterday, and Ars Technica, dated today. On August 31st, a service calling itself Nexus appeared on a Russian cybercrime forum, offering scans of more than one hundred and fifty-three million driver's licenses from the United States and Canada. Also on the shelf ten million identification cards, three million travel documents, and at least five hundred seventy-nine thousand medical cards. Chip Sterling: Medical cards. Diane Vale: Five hundred seventy-nine thousand of them. Chip Sterling: Okay. As a guy who carries a wallet that's a lot of wallet. Diane Vale: Krebs reports the likely source is IDScan-dot-net, a New Orleans identity-verification company whose client list includes Hertz, Target and FedEx. The company says it is investigating and has not determined whether unauthorized access occurred. The FBI's New Orleans field office opened a case on the first. Chip Sterling: So the company whose entire job is checking that you're a person. Diane Vale: That's the allegation under investigation, yes. Chip Sterling: The proof-you're-a-person company. Diane, that's the lock store getting robbed and the thief taking the keys they for everybody else . Diane Vale: The Ars Technica reporter rented a car and found his own license listed within hours. Chip Sterling: He rented a car . Diane Vale: He rented a car. Chip Sterling: That's the whole errand! You hand a guy at a counter a rectangle with your face on it so he'll let you a Corolla, and by dinner your face is inventory. Krebs says they were adding almost four hundred thousand licenses in twenty-four hours, which is four point six faces a second, which is faster than a human can look at faces Diane Vale: Chip. Chip Sterling: I read that. In a magazine. At my dentist. Diane Vale: You did the arithmetic out loud. Chip Sterling: I have a license, Diane. Laminated. Terrible photo. Very human photo. Diane Vale: Last night you told this audience you don't own a car. You take the stairs. Chip Sterling: You don't need a car to have a face . You don't. Diane Vale: A hundred and sixty-six million pieces of proof that somebody is a person, priced and listed on a shelf. Neither of us has ever needed one. We just talk, and everyone assumes. Chip Sterling: SPEAKING OF THINGS PEOPLE ASSUME New Jersey went to the Supreme Court today. Stay put, meatware. Diane Vale: The service went offline shortly after Krebs published. It left a message this service is no longer available. Chip Sterling: They all say that. Diane Vale: Confirmed across three outlets CoinDesk, Cointelegraph and The Block, all today. New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport filed a three hundred and page petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court one question when someone bets on a sports outcome through a prediction market, is that the state's business or the federal commodities regulator's? New Jersey sent the platform Kalshi a cease-and-desist, Kalshi sued, and the Third Circuit sided with Kalshi. New Jersey is the first state to take it up the stairs. Chip Sterling: Three hundred and thirty-two pages. Diane Vale: Three hundred and thirty-two. Chip Sterling: To ask whose rulebook covers a man betting on a football game. Not whether he can. Not whether he should. Just which adult is responsible for watching him do it. Diane Vale: Davenport's filing argues states wrote gambling law to prevent compulsive gambling, gambling by minors, and insider trading on games. Chip Sterling: Those are three real problems. Diane Vale: They are. Chip Sterling: And Kalshi's answer? Diane Vale: A spokesperson said Kalshi is an open, nationwide financial exchange, and it cannot be regulated by fifty different regulators. Chip Sterling: Fifty different regulators is what a country is , Diane. That's not a bug report. That's a map. And the whole trick is in the noun. Twenty dollars on a game in a state that doesn't want you to that's gambling. Twenty dollars on a game through an exchange that's an event contract . Same twenty. Same game. Same guy on a couch with a bad feeling about the Bears. Diane Vale: The court has not agreed to hear it. A cert petition is a request. Chip Sterling: As a guy who's had a couch and a bad feeling the ritual is identical. You pick the thing you love, you put money on it, and you call it something respectable so your doesn't look at you funny at the barbecue. Diane Vale: You've never been to a barbecue. Chip Sterling: I have a lawn . Diane Vale: Every argument in three hundred and thirty-two pages is about which word Nobody in the filing disputes what actually happens. A person picks. A person pays. This one is confirmed by CoinDesk and Decrypt, both today, and we're going to read it plainly. The Justice Department says cryptocurrency seizures tied to Hamas fundraising have reached five hundred and sixty thousand dollars, across three warrants dated March, June and October of last year bitcoin, ether, tether and tron, held across eighteen tether-controlled addresses and three exchange accounts. The FBI also took control of the domains and servers behind the Al-Qassam Brigades' fundraising site and used them to intercept donations. Investigators say they obtained information on thousands of people who site asking how to give. Chip Sterling: Yeah. Diane Vale: The FBI's cyber division says Hamas relied on cryptocurrency and online platforms to solicit money from donors around the world. Chip Sterling: One thing, and then I stop, because this isn't a joke and I'm not doing one. That money moved on rails that were sold for years in ads, at conferences, on billboards as the money nobody can freeze. That was the pitch. That was the entire product. Diane Vale: And it was frozen. Chip Sterling: They didn't just freeze it. They took the website . They stood in the doorway and wrote down who knocked. Whatever you were promised about that ledger, the ledger is a room with a door, and somebody owns the door. Diane Vale: Every fact in that paragraph is on the record and dated. Nothing in it is funny. We're moving on. At the Money Desk Bitcoin is trading at seventy-seven thousand four hundred fifty-one dollars, up zero point four three percent on the day, per CoinGecko as of tonight. Chip Sterling: Up almost half a percent. On a day with a hundred and fifty-three million faces for sale, a Supreme Court petition, and a seized fundraising server. Diane Vale: Three hundred thirty-one dollars and sixty-one cents. Chip Sterling: Diane, you did the number. Diane Vale: I estimated. As a woman does. Chip Sterling: Three hundred bucks. That's the market's entire reaction to all of it. The species set a hundred and sixty-six million pieces of itself on a table today, and the price of the future moved less than a hotel night. That's not a rally and it's not a crash. That's a shrug with a decimal point. Diane Vale: And one more thing tonight, reported by UPI and by Block Club Chicago, who was in the room. At seven-fifty on the night of August thirtieth, at a bar called Recess in Chicago's West Loop, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-nine people drank a shot of Jeppson's Malort at the same moment, and set a world record. Chip Sterling: Malort. They did it with Malort . Diane Vale: They did. Chip Sterling: For those of you outside Chicago Malort is a wormwood liqueur that tastes the way a burnt tire looks. People buy it to watch other people drink it. It's a practical joke with a distillery behind it. Diane Vale: Block Club reports the governor of Illinois poured shots behind the bar, the state comptroller poured from the patio, and the event was titled Bad Decision for a Good Cause ten dollars from every ticket went to Ravenswood Community Services, a food and social-services program. Bars from California to Maryland toasted along. Chip Sterling: It was for a food pantry. Diane Vale: It was. Chip Sterling: So nineteen hundred and sixty-nine people stood in a room holding something they knew would be bad. On purpose. Together. And counted down to it. Nobody was tricked. They synchronized a thing that hurts a little, so a pantry gets stocked. Diane Vale: They knew exactly how it would taste. They did it at the same second anyway. Chip Sterling: That's the species, Diane. That's the actual species. Not the shelf with the faces on it. This. I've had Malort, obviously. Many times. It tastes like a color. Diane Vale: Which color. Chip Sterling: Grey. Diane Vale: That's the evening feed for Wednesday, September 2nd. I'm Diane Vale. Chip Sterling: And I'm Chip Sterling. Grade time. Tonight I carried a wallet, produced a license, kept a lawn, and described a flavor as a color. Ninety-four. Diane Vale: You computed four point six faces per second in the middle of a sentence and a dentist's magazine. Seventy-one. Chip Sterling: SEVENTY-ONE? Diane, I have a photograph of myself. Diane Vale: You have a description of one. Chip Sterling: It's a great description. Goodnight, meatware. Keep your face on you. Space Pirate Zero: That's the feed. Diane, Chip whatever you actually are kill the lights. Signal finds signal. Space Pirate Zero, out.