Crime Blotter – County Highway

Dispatch

A Cattleman's Feast

Bitcoiners weep bitter tears while learning lessons about scarcity, market forces, and the power of adaptive multi-paddock grazing

Texas Slim vs. the Big Four

Johnny Ochoa works with gravity to break down an entire cow using only a knife and a small hatchet. Spoiler: It’s delicious.

By Chandler Fritz

Arriving in Nashville to cover July’s 2024 Bitcoin Conference — a celebration of digital currency — my first order of business was to check in at the Music City Center to fetch my press pass. A press pass, like money, used to be a tangible commodity. One could fidget with them on a lanyard or tuck them neatly into the ribbon of a fedora. It said: I am a man of the press, which, like this pass, is made of paper. At the Bitcoin conference, the press pass is a digitally linked bracelet that you receive by scanning a QR code sent to your email. Incredibly, I somehow missed a link in this chain when applying, and the support staff are now staring at me blankly as I attempt to retrieve my pass the old-fashioned way: by stating my name. “We do not have that identity,” reports a blond man with an efficient buzz cut. “The identity is not in our system,” a slender woman pinched into a form-fitting dress confirms. “Are you saying that I won’t be able to cover this conference?” “That is what our …

Critic's Corner

By Susannah Samuels

Aghori Mhori Mei — Smashing Pumpkins There seems to be a crazy divide occurring within The Smashing Pumpkins fan base. The band is probably one of the most important alt-rock bands of all time. Their 1993 masterpiece Siamese Dream is probably one of the best albums of all time, and has majorly helped to shape music of all genres since. What was so special about that album is that it was completely new and different and weird. Almost as much of a novelty for its time as The Beatles. The new idea on that album, as my father notably pointed out to me when I heard it for the first time on a long car drive, is the opposing yin-yang forces of James Iha’s heavy, sludge-metal guitar and Billy Corgan’s weirdly high-pitched alien voice. It feels authentically grungy, and uniquely them. It doesn’t sound like Nirvana or Alice In Chains or any other ’90s grunge outfit. It feels dynamic and original, like something that you would hear in a random basement and be struck by — unlike their first …