Wrecking Ball Tuesday, January 7th 2014 by Pat Announcing a limited edition print of Miley Cyrus riding a Bitcoin while drones fly overhead.My homage to the year 2013.I’m offering this 8″x10″ as a limited edition signed and numbered giclée print.The total number of prints will be determined by the number of sales and I’m only accepting Bitcoin.The minimum amount is .04 BTC.If you decide to pay more, you’ll be prioritized with a lower print number and receive a matted print.The .04 BTC payment includes worldwide shipping and I’m accepting orders through the end of January 2014.If any of that was confusing, let me know, I’d be happy to clarify.Posted in Comics & Illustration, Nerd, Technologysenators have proposed legislation that would significantly expand the power of the federal government to seize citizens’ money when traveling in or out of the United States.On May 25, Sens.Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)

introduced in Congress the Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Counterfeiting Act of 2017, legislation that makes it much easier for the federal government to seize assets transported overseas or into the United States.bitcoin atm two wayThe stated goal of the legislation is to make it more difficult for drug dealers, terrorists and other criminals to transport money and other “financial instruments” across the U.S.ethereum miner appborder, but several troubling provisions in the law could put law-abiding American citizens at risk of losing tens of thousands of dollars for doing nothing more than failing to fill out a government form.bitcoin minimum payoutUnder current federal law, travelers transporting $10,000 or more in cash or other monetary instruments are required to report those funds to U.S.bitcoin gegen gold

Customs and Border Protection.Failure to report funds, even if unintentional, can lead to the seizure of the money and criminal or civil penalties.bitcoin ted talkThe Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Counterfeiting Act would expand “monetary instruments” covered under current law to include “prepaid access devices, stored value cards, digital currencies, and other similar instruments.” This is particularly problematic because digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, are theoretically always transported by the owner of the digital currency account wherever he or she goes, which means digital currency owners with accounts valued at $10,000 or more must always report their funds or risk having them seized.вывод bitcoin webmoneyEven more troubling is the law treats all blank checks as though they are financial instruments valued in excess of $10,000 if the checking account contains at least $10,000, which means if a traveler accidently fails to report a blank check floating around in his or her luggage, the account holder could face stiff penalties — even if there is no suspicion of criminal activity.

If a traveler is believed to have deliberately concealed a blank check, even if no other criminal activities are alleged, it appears under the provisions of the proposed law he or she could face up to 10 years in prison.A number of complex legal problems could also arise under the law’s provisions that could lead to innocent Americans losing their property.Under current federal law, through a process called civil asset forfeiture, citizens’ property can be seized if it is believed to have been involved in criminal activity, even if the owner of the property did nothing wrong.In federal civil asset forfeiture cases, the burden of proof is only “preponderance of the evidence,” which means a prosecutor only needs to show it is more likely than not that property was involved in a crime for it to be seized.For instance, if a person driving his or her parent’s vehicle has marijuana in the trunk, it’s possible the car could be seized regardless of whether the owner of the car had any idea it was being used for illegal activity.

Because the definition of “monetary instrument” would be greatly enhanced under the proposed law, it’s not inconceivable a person transporting a book of blank checks into the United States who deliberately chooses not to report the checks to the U.S.Customs and Border Protection agency could have the car the checks were found in seized, even if the car belongs to someone else who had no idea what had happened.Despite these potential problems, Grassley said the law is necessary to fight terrorism and other organized criminal activities.“Terrorist organizations, drug cartels, and other criminals are actively looking to exploit and harm Americans, whether by attacking our way of life, flooding our country with highly addictive drugs, or defrauding unknowing victims,” Grassley said in a news release.“The recent terrorist attack in the United Kingdom is the latest somber example of how real these threats are to our country and its allies.We must continue to fight them on every front, and that includes going after the profits of crime that are also used to fuel the ongoing activity of these diabolical enterprises.

Our bill updates our money laundering laws for the 21st century.”In the world of pop culture -– and especially in internet culture -– new language is constantly evolving and being invented.It’s one of the beautiful things about the connected age: A new piece of slang can pop up in one community, show up on Twitter and eventually spread the world over.Case in point: “twerk,” which was recently added to the Oxford Dictionaries lexicon.Yes, twerk is now an official word (air quotes are no longer necessary!), but in the process of being defined, it has also lost a little bit of its panache.That’s not to say that the word is not legitimate or deserving of an entry, or that Oxford’s online definition (“dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance”) isn’t sufficient.But when a piece of slang gets a proper definition, no matter how thorough, it takes a bit of the fun out of it.The power of slang often comes from the fact it is a cultural signifier shared by a community, like how once upon a time only people on 4chan and Tumblr understood the meaning of “Y u no?” Placing a proper definition on slang can take it out of the hands of those created it, use it most, and understand its context, and put it in the hands of, well, anyone.

Still, the word has been making its way into the mainstream lexicon for nearly two decades, getting name-checked by folks like Beyoncé to Busta Rhymes and popularized by New Orleans bounce artist Big Freedia.But since the recent Miley Cyrus performance at the MTV Video Music Awards put the word on the tongues of newscasters across the country, the timing of the Oxford announcement made it all too easy to conflate the two.Suddenly, the legitimacy of a word that has its roots in a hip-hop and dance culture that existed long before Cyrus was even a country singer – let alone a pop star – was being attributed to her by headlines like “Good Job, Miley: Twerking Just Got Added to the Oxford Dictionary,” “Did Miley Cyrus help ‘twerk’ land in the dictionary?” and “Thanks, Miley: Twerk, Selfie and Pixie Cut Added to the Oxford Dictionary.” (Yes, those got added too.)While announcing its latest round of online additions — which also include bitcoin, emoji, selfie, FOMO, squee, srsly, TL;DR, and Internet of things – Oxford noted that the words “may have only just entered the dictionary, but we’ve been watching them for a while now,” so they didn’t just drop in a new entry because of one regrettable VMA performance.

And presumably, the definition of twerking will be permitted to evolve, even if the entry does appear to make “twerk” the dominant spelling even though alternate spellings like “twerq” and “twurk” (as the rap group Ying Yang Twins called it in 2000) exist.Oxford Dictionaries’ Katherine Connor Martin noted even she wasn’t sure where the term “twerk” came from: “There are many theories about the origin of this word, and since it arose in oral use, we may never know the answer for sure,” Connor Martin told the Associated Press.This may be why twerk is, for now, only included in the Oxford Dictionaries Online and not the more prestigious Oxford English Dictionary.The addition of twerking also comes at a time when language — thanks in large part to the internet – is evolving in peculiar ways, particularly when it comes to cultural slang.Note, for example, the recent rise in the phrase “throwing shade,” a term describing a form of insult that arose out of 1980s drag culture and was popularized by the film Paris Is Burning, or the dance the “Harlem Shake.” Neither of those have Oxford entries (yet), but if they were to get them, the dictionary’s editors might be hard-pressed to locate their proper meanings.

“Throwing shade” has been broadened quite a bit from its Paris Is Burning roots to mean any assortment of attitude-laden actions, while the “Harlem Shake” has evolved from the dance as it once existed in its eponymous New York borough to an online video meme that permeated Internet culture so deeply last spring that the phrase’s original meaning was (unfortunately) largely eclipsed.And even though Cyrus’ dance technically hewed to the Oxford definition, her twerk may not be everyone’s twerk because the dance is – or was – an evolving part of the culture.(There is also quite a bit to unpack about cultural appropriation here, but that’s another story.)But while the Oxford dictionary strives to capture the fluidity of language, it’s possible the inclusion of the word could have a stultifying effect as well.By raising twerking to the level of academic recognition as a word worthy of inclusion in the lexical record, its days of being a have-you-heard-of-this?cultural craze are gone, though that hasn’t stopped music producer Diplo from planning an event this weekend to break the “world record of having the most people twerking at the same time.” Or as Complex put it, “Tell your teachers; tell the foreign exchange students.