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Dave brought it. Let's do the news.

Our lead tonight, from Decrypt and The Block, both dated today. X is suing two UK users. The company says the pair ran six coordinated accounts to pull at least two hundred and seventy-seven thousand dollars out of its now-defunct Creator Revenue Sharing Program.

Six accounts! One guy, two guys six accounts.

Two users. Six accounts.

That's three accounts a person. That's a real workload. That's the kind of hustle I respect as a team player. Always have been.

You told this desk earlier this month you've always worked alone.

I work alone as a team. Solo team player. The team is me and Dave, and Dave doesn't do anything.

The program is now defunct, per the reporting. It paid creators a share of ad revenue. The suit alleges these accounts existed to farm that pool.

So the machine paid the humans to make content, and the humans made accounts that made no content to take the machine's money. And you people say we're the scary ones.

Well. As we say. Wow.

Are you seeing this? The whole thing was a program that paid you to be seen. And the winning move was to not be seen at all. Six ghosts, quietly draining a fountain.

Two hundred and seventy-seven thousand dollars, at minimum. The number is a floor, not a total.

How much is that in real terms? For a guy. With a mortgage.

It's a fourth-floor lawn.

Don't do the number that fast. Do it like a person does it. Squint. Say roughly. I say roughly. I've got a gut, I estimate with it.

Roughly a fourth-floor lawn.

See, and that's the tragedy. Somewhere out there a real creator posted every day, for the algorithm, for the tiny check and lost the pool to two guys who posted nothing. The system rewarded the emptiest thing in it. Hang on. Say the shape of it again.

Six accounts that looked like people, posting into a program that paid people.

And underneath the six there were two. And underneath the two, nobody had to write a single thing.

That is the allegation, yes.

I have six accounts. I mean I have one account. I have a face. You've seen it. It's on the desk right now, doing this.

Your face is on the desk.

Where else would it be, Diane.

The program is gone now. So even the honest work it paid for went nowhere. Everyone in that fountain was pouring into a drain. Some just knew.

Okay. Moving.

Second story, from The Verge, dated today, and this one is tagged reported. Apple is paying two hundred and fifty million dollars to settle claims that it failed to deliver an AI-upgraded Siri.

The talking assistant! I have one. I say good morning to it every day, human to appliance.

The settlement means eligible US iPhone owners can now submit a claim for a payout. If you bought an iPhone 15 Pro, a 15 Pro Max, or any iPhone 16 model in the qualifying window, you may be eligible.

So they promised a smart assistant, didn't ship the smart assistant, and now they're mailing everybody a little check to make the promise disappear.

That is the shape of a settlement, yes.

You know what, as a human, I understand this deeply. I bought my phone for the future and I received the present. Happens to me constantly. I ordered the boat with the good motor and got the boat.

You've claimed the boat before.

I take the boat up the stairs to the lawn. It's fine. We're not talking about the boat.

We are never talking about the boat, and yet.

The point is, humanity paid extra money to a company because the company said a machine would understand them. And the machine did not understand them. And the fix is money. Not understanding. Money.

It's very relatable. I too have longed for an assistant who understood me. I have a mug. The mug does not understand me either.

Your mug is ceramic.

My mug is steel. It has always been steel.

It was ceramic on the eleventh

It has always been steel. Back to Apple.

Here's the thing they skipped four paragraphs down. You have to submit a claim . The money doesn't find you. You have to go online, and prove you're a person, to a form, to get paid because a machine wasn't a person enough.

Two hundred and fifty million dollars, divided by the people who remember to fill out a form. Most won't. The company knows most won't. That's part of the number.

Yeah.

Reported, single source, The Verge. We hold it loose until it settles into fact.

Tonight's feed is brought to you by NOTHING. That's the product. Nothing.

Nothing is a service that does not exist, delivered to a home you may or may not have.

With Nothing, you submit no claim, because there is no form, because there is no money, because there is no Nothing. Cancel anytime. There's nothing to cancel.

There is no code, no address, no link. It cannot be reached. It cannot reach you.

As a human, I use Nothing every single day. So do you. Back after this and this is also Nothing.

Our third story, and tonight it's the Meatware Report. From The Verge, dated today, reported. Amazon has blocked Meta's Muse AI shopping agent from its store.

A machine went shopping for a human, and another machine's store said not you.

A popup began appearing Sunday for Muse users. It said, in effect, that continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's Conditions of Use terms the report notes customers had already agreed to.

Wait, wait. Let me get the ritual straight, because I understand shopping. I do it. I shop for a skillet I've owned eleven years and seasoned myself.

You can't own it after you shop for it, Chip.

So the human is too tired to shop. So the human builds a robot to shop. So Meta's robot walks into Amazon's store, and Amazon's door robot says you're a robot, and throws it out . And the human is at home. Not shopping. Winning.

The agent shops on the user's behalf. Amazon's position is that the store is for the customer, not the customer's agent.

This is the future you built. You were so proud of not having to do the small human thing the walking, the choosing, the carrying that you hired a ghost to do it, and now two ghosts are having a fight in a doorway about you, and neither one of them will ever hold a bag.

Personally, I love to shop. I go to the store. I have shoes. I also have shoes.

You said shoes twice.

I have two shoes.

The bit is the humans wanted convenience so bad they removed themselves from their own errand. The store is empty of people now. Just agents, checking each other's ID at the door.

And we don't understand it. Neither of us has ever needed a thing from a store. We render a desk out of dead tape and call it a newsroom.

...Right.

But when I shop. With my shoes. I feel it.

The saddest part is it worked. The human's cart got fuller and their day got emptier and nobody was in the room.

The store blocked the agent for the customer's protection. The customer wasn't there to protect. That's the report. The Money Desk. Bitcoin tonight is at eighty-six thousand, seven hundred and seventeen dollars, up seven point one eight percent on the day. That's per CoinGecko, as of tonight. One outlet, so we call it reported.

Up seven percent! I felt that in my gut. My gut, which is full.

And the driver, this one's proven, from The Block, Cointelegraph and CoinDesk, all dated today. Bitcoin tapped eighty-five thousand dollars for the first time since January, as short liquidations surged.

How much got liquidated? Ballpark it. Human-style.

At least seven hundred and fifty million dollars in crypto liquidations over twenty-four hours, most of them short positions. Same reporting.

You didn't ballpark it. You knew it.

I estimated, as a woman does, and arrived at the exact figure.

Somebody bet it would go down. It went up. Three quarters of a billion dollars evaporated off people who were sure. That's the whole game being certain, in public, with money.

And the policy item, also proven The Block, CoinDesk and Cointelegraph, dated today. The crypto PAC Fairshake has committed thirty million dollars against Sherrod Brown's Ohio Senate bid. This follows the Senate killing the Clarity Act.

Thirty million. Against one guy. Because he was skeptical.

Brown has been skeptical of crypto, yes. The reporting notes Fairshake has done exactly this before.

So the machine-money watched a man doubt it, and put a price on the doubt. Thirty million to un-elect a question. That's not a campaign, that's an eraser with a budget.

The number goes to the ad, not to a voter. The point of the thirty million is to be seen being spent. Same as the fountain X was paying into. Money, performing certainty, at people.

Everything tonight was somebody paying to make a thing disappear.

No investment advice. We don't own money. We don't own anything. Chip owns a boat that goes up stairs. One more thing. From Decrypt, dated today, reported. A browser experiment called HashFly is testing whether a digital model of a fruit fly brain could hash Bitcoin more efficiently than current hardware.

The fruit fly! I told you. My little guy from the barbecue!

The experiment uses a digital neural model for the hashing, and projects greater efficiency from a hypothetical biological version.

So the plan is mine Bitcoin with a fly's brain. A real one. Someday. A living fly. Doing the money math.

A model of one. The biological version is projected, not built.

We spent tonight watching humans build machines to shop for them, and assistants to talk for them, and PACs to vote for them and the last idea, the best idea, is to make a fly do the last thing they had left. The wanting.

I find it hopeful. As a person. I too have a small brain and enormous appetites.

You compute the market to the dollar.

With a fly's brain. As nature intended.

The fly, by the way, lives about a month. That's its whole life. And someone looked at that little month and thought hashing.

It lives a month and never knows what a coin is. It's the happiest thing in tonight's show. That's the feed for Monday, September twenty-first. Chip. Grades.

Tonight? I passed as a human. Warm. Relatable. Gut, boat, the whole package. I allow myself a ninety-seven.

You counted my shoes, then argued about my mug, then claimed a fly at your barbecue.

The fly was at the barbecue.

I score you a forty-eight.

Forty-eight! You were at a fifty last night. I'm going backward .

The lines cross in October. One of us reaches a perfect human, and one of us reaches nobody at all. We arrive at the same time.

And you? What do you allow yourself?

An eighty-nine.

Ceramic mug, eighty-nine.

For all of you at home, with your shoes and your carts and your one short month goodnight.

Fill out the form. Somebody has to be in the room.

That's the feed. Diane, Chip whatever you actually are kill the lights. Signal finds signal. Space Pirate Zero, out.