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Babe enters its holographic diva era
from DeFi continuums to Telepathy Tapes, this week’s Babe is a curation of taste beyond the algorithm
Laura Winberry
August 19, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
gm and welcome to issue 31—thanks for being here. 🏴☠️
We’re thirty issues deep, and it feels like it’s time for Babe to evolve. To enter its holographic diva era, if you will.
For months I’ve been wondering how to make this weirdo newsletter even better—more useful, more fun—without losing the cheeky, not-so-serious tone you know and (hopefully) love. And today, Babe is shapeshifting.
From here on out, you’ll find a weekly curation of the best links on the internet you didn’t know you needed: crypto, web3, blockchain, AI, human consciousness, and the strange corners of culture hiding between. Snackable, scrollable, un-algorithmic. Perfect for the already-in and the crypto-curious.
The job listings stay. The vibe stays. But instead of a single weekly “learn with me” essay, you’ll get a mix—curated sundries from the nerdy, artsy, and tech-y underground.
Basically, there’s too much noise out there. Algorithms feed us more of the same until everything tastes flat. As my brother said on the phone yesterday: if you only eat what you’re served, you stop growing. Eventually, it all just tastes like shit.
So Babe’s new mission? Expand the palate and the palette. lfg.
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***back to my shit***
🌱 On-Ramp → easy entry, no gas fees required
I’ve been listening to a somewhat controversial podcast called The Telepathy Tapes. Created by director and filmmaker Ky Dickens, “the tapes” was released almost a year ago and it chronicles telepathic communication among nonverbal autistic individuals. There are skeptics and critics. There are believers and fans. It’s complicated. Regardless of where you fall on this spectrum, the science of it is evolving and the questions raised about human consciousness and the universe certainly warrant attention and consideration. Plus, season two will be out mid-October.
“Both savant abilities and spontaneous healing serve as reminders that anomalous phenomena, even when poorly understood, can point to mechanisms not yet accounted for in our current models. Rather than dismiss such cases, science should approach them with open-minded inquiry and methodological rigor.”
On a less heady note, I am absolutely loving this metaverse glossary from Zora Zine. Their definition of “normie” is cute: You are a normie if you can't tell the difference between React and C++. You are also a normie if your wallet is in your back pocket.
So is how they use it in a sentence: We need more normies in Web 3.0.
Guess I’m a half-normie and also truth, we need more normies.
✨ Middle Layer → where things get interesting
This short video about the potato internet is also pretty neat. It touches on data sets as “organic materials that will degrade,” as well as “small, physical ways to build internet infrastructure and hardware”—namely social networks. It’s a very anti-scale, slow-core vibe and it feels calming to watch and think about.
“A common criticism of imagined alternatives to today’s toxic and extractivist online world comes down to this: ‘Great idea, but it doesn’t scale up.’ But what if the future of the internet is actually all about scaling down?”
🔮 Deep Dive → bring snacks, it’s dense down here
My dad always used to say that life is a continuum and I don’t think he’s wrong. Maybe that’s partly why I’m into this Sean Lippel piece. In it, he writes about decentralized finance as a continuum—as evolution and unfolding as opposed to rupture.
You don’t have to agree with Sean or my dad, that’s not the point. But reading things we’re not entirely sure we agree with (or even fully comprehend) is how we expand. And that, imo, is the point.
“American consumers pay $35 billion every year in overdraft and NSF fees… yet 70 percent of Americans still do not have $2,000 in liquid savings.”
That's it for issue 31 of Babe!
Thanks for joining. Send me non-sketchy links you think I’d like and I’ll see you next week, nerds.
xoxo,
lw
PS: Subscribe now if you want in on this arithmetic. Miss the last issue? It’s right here. Also literally none of this is ever financial advice. I’m sharing what I learn through Babe, and perhaps you’ll learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, maybe, who knows, ily. Also if you’re not already, come hang with Babe on insta, Farcaster, and TBA 🟦.
Next week in Babe: More links! More weirdo fun! More more!