(cover image by Leo Pastel)
Hello my fellow grass enjoyoors! Welcome to the latest edition of Touch Grass. For those of you that just got here, Touch Grass is a space where we celebrate artists, we reflect on what happened within the crypto community, we read exciting stuff, we welcome newcomers, and we enjoy memes. A terror of wholesomeness, I know.

This week has been another eventful year in crypto. This past Saturday, Pavel Durov, the Founder of Telegram got arrested in France (here’s Mikko’s thread on the event). Brazil is finally blocking access to X in the country because Elon Musk forgot to pay a bill, or something like that. Meta announced the shutdown of Spark AR, and 600k creators are feeling left behind, and concerned, as for many many years they gave Meta a lot of data hence money, and while of course, they are all free, talented people that totally save files on their computers, their social capital will be staying very much with Meta and only Meta, because that’s simply how it works. What an excellent week to explore web3 social, and an even more excellent week to understand what level of ownership, decentralization and openness you should be looking for when it comes to safeguarding your social capital. The Fed also decided that moneyprinter will once again go brrrrr so it’s also an excellent week to crypto, even if the market doesn’t really agree with it. Hoard without limits, anon, time is of the essence.

But not all is rosy on the crypto side of life - exhaustion is also creeping up, especially on the creators’ front. Last night GRLKRASH, Leo Pastel and Jamee Cornelia got together for their regular Twitter spaces and DRAGGED. They asked us to make crypto make sense for creators, beyond the narratives. As someone working on DeFi and decentralized social, I felt humbled. As someone that has been working with creators and trying to explain technologies that creators know we’re using them, i felt validated. They are using us back, no worries about creators. They’re sharp. It’s a bit of a dysfunctional theater at the moment.

This week Stina, Cezar and Katherine,  launched their Orb Club /aurabonding  with a release that questions the lifeless nature of artificially generated nature. As artificial as the “creators initiatives” that populate the many blockspaces around us. In /aurabonding we search for more, we enquire, and we have fun well, aurabonding because most things in this space are just auratic manifestations of our digitalness translated through transaction histories. /aurabonding also happens to have fantastic art of two very favorite artists of mine, Katherine and Cezar, so please check it out, comment, mint, and bond.

Now, how can it be our time, and at the same time, so not our time? How can we be so connected and simultaneously disconnected? How can we do better? Open questions to the fine readers of Touch Grass, would love to read you so don’t be shy and share your thoughts! 

Before I forget, some of these questions can be folded nicely into an essay for the Kiwinews x Lens x t2 new writing initiative - where we ask you to reflect on the pluralistic future of L2s. The contest concept is so good that even Vitalik prompted a new question. 

Culture: 

• Blondetourage’s drop… I’m just a girl.

• The Paul G. Allen auction of technology artifacts and space race memorabilia living rent free in my head

• Power Couple Jah and Latashá’s vintage but aging like fine wine video

• Chloee has been creating some amazing art lately. Here’s one I liked, but just visit her profile, she has so much to say.

• Nadezhda again. I love her. 

• Vanezuva’s stunning piece

• Yoshiro’s absolute grail

• Efdot just joined ahead of the /allships residency! 

• Speaking about /allships, Roya just started hers! Follow her process

• Have we shared this STTM already? If so, that’s all good, it’s amazing, so listen to it twice.

• In case you need this - we all need this, to be honest - some deliciously good deep house from Sonny

• Agoria’s new release
  

Winners of the week

• This time I had to choose one and only one, because it really hit the spot: Robin shatposted and won

Read/ watch

• Stani on network resiliency

• Tim also commented on resiliency

• 50mmcollective’s CULTURE SHIFT

• Puja Ohlaver at ETHBerlin on proof of personhood

⭐️HOT NEW LENS USERS⭐️

(note - I usually share Hey or Orb links because of personal preference but you can follow and welcome people from the Lens client of your choice)

• Sonny

• Trish

• Sartocrates

• Debbie

• HUG

• Efdot

• Roya

• Katherine

• Awkwarian (is back)

• Proof of Vibes

• Cartesse
  

Thank you for reading, or scrolling through - see you next week!