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The infamous Internet meme Pepe the Frog will be immortalized in non-fungible token (NFT) collectible form by the frogs original creator Matt Furie. Of course, Pepe has been featured in blockchain art before and a series of cards were created via Counterparty in 2016. However, despite the number of NFT rare Pepes on the web, Furie says when it comes to his famous frog, Everything else is a bootleg.

Nothing beats the real thing, the creator of the notorious Pepe the Frog Internet meme told the Washington Post (WP) this week. Matt Furie is well known for creating Pepe the Frog back in 2005 in a comic called Boys Club. When the picture hit the web, it went viral on Myspace, Reddit, 4chan and Tumbler, and later was recognized as one of the most popular memes of the last decade. Now Furie is getting into the non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles game and hes bringing Pepe with him.

Furie has launched a web portal called pegz.fun and it features animated 2-D and 3-D creatures that Furie crafted. Users can even sign up for plops which seem to be an airdrop of some kind featuring Furies NFTs. One of the NFT pegz features a colorful depiction of Furies famous Pepe the Frog character. While speaking with WP, Furie said a lot of NFT artists were creating interesting pieces.

The NFT world is new, and there are a lot of optimistic people creating cool things, Furie said during his interview. Pepe does not have the baggage here that he does in the real world, and I like working with utopians and optimistic freethinkers. There are so many possibilities, the Pepe creator added.

Now, Pepe is no stranger to blockchain as Bitcoin.com News has reported on the crew who created a series of Rare Pepe blockchain-based trading cards in 2016. The creation of these cards on Counterparty was after the Anti-Defamation League deemed Pepe as a hate symbol.

When NFTs started making headlines again in 2020 and into 2021, an NFT called Homer Pepe sold for $320,000 in February 2021. Furie briefly touched upon the flurry of Pepe NFTs that were invoked before his pegz concept during his WP interview.

Everything else is a bootleg, and Im very inspired by bootlegs in my life and in my art, Furie said. But nothing beats the real thing, he added. Pepe the Frogs creator further noted:

This new space is laying the groundwork for the Internet 3.0. In the future, youll be able to trace memes back to their source.

The popular NFT artist Matt Kane spoke about Furies entrance into the NFT space and applauded the meme pioneer. Matt Furie created Pepe, which inspired Rare Pepes, which provided us the proof-of-concept on which the modern NFT scene became based, Kane remarked. So for Matt to have had such a successful entrance to NFTs, it created a beautiful circle.

Of course, Furies other colorful pegz designs are just as fun as the frog, according to the Internet meme creator. We want to throw a rave in the metaverse for disco Pepes, lizards, tongue-waggling-whachamacallits, blobbies, gooies, pricklies and everyone, Furie concluded. Viral media is inside of our heads, our subconscious. It never ends. Its best to make friends with the worms in our minds and to dance with them.

What do you think about Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie jumping into the world of NFTs? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

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Pepe the Frog Creator Launches NFTs Featuring the Infamous Internet Meme Blockchain Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has launched a tirade over the Cyprus issue saying he was the only one still living, along with one top former EU official, who really knows what went in during the high-level negotiations in Burgenstock, Switzerland in March 2004.

In an interview with Turkish channel TRT on Tuesday night, Erdogan spoke on several topics such as Turkey-US relations and the situation in the eastern Mediterranean, also touching on the Cyprus issue and Ankaras often fraught ties with the EU.

Answering questions from journalists Erdogan said: Every now and then you bring before us the eastern Mediterranean, every now and then you bring before us Cyprus. Believe me, within the EU, no country in recent times knows how this division came about.How was the division made?How did the talks in Burgenstock take place? Nobody knows that.The only one who knows this is me.

Erdogan said when other politicians talk about Burgenstock, not even Greek premier Kyriacos Mitsotakis knows what really went on there at the highest level.

He referred to the fact that former UN Secretary-General, the late Kofi Annan, presided over the 2004 talks, though Erdogan failed to remember that Annans special envoy Alvaro de Soto was also in at the highest level. De Soto aside, he was also likely referring to the fact that the leader on the Greek Cypriot side at the time, Tassos Papadopoulos is also deceased.

There was one other person at the talks, he said, who participated on the part of the EU, and that was Gunther Verheugen who was the EU Commissioner for Enlargement at the time. Wherever he went he was telling the truth, said Erdogan. But no one gets up to ask him now.

Indeed, after Greek Cypriots rejected the Annan solution plan in late April and a week later joined the European Union on May 1, 2004, Verheugen publicly accused Cyprus of cheating its way into EU membership.

Erdogan said that in the middle of the Burgenstock talks Greece and the Greek Cypriots were ready to leave the table and only Kofi Annan stopped them, saying: You cannot leave, according to the Turkish president.

Annan told them I gave my word to Erdogan. We will finish the work here and then we will leave. They [the Greek side] came back and sat down. And after that meeting a referendum was held. They said yes in the north and then they [the EU] allowed the south to join, said Erdogan. They are not honest and now they come and without shame they tell us we have no rights over the gas and oil around Cyprus? he added. Erdogan said if it was up to Brussels, they would ask Turkey to disappear from the region altogether.

Referring to French President Emmanuel Macron who in late 2019 said Nato was becoming brain dead, Erdogan said that without a strong Turkey, the transatlantic military alliance was not strong.

In this context, Erdogan had harsh words for US President Joe Biden ahead of the upcoming Nato summit on June 14. At the meeting, we will ask why the Turkey-US relations are going through such a tense period, said Erdogan who added that he has worked with a number of former US presidents including Barack Obama and Donald Trump. He did not have such a tension with any of them, he said. The anger towards Biden however has more to do with the US recent recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Those who corner Turkey this way will lose an important friend, said Erdogan.

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Erdogan: I'm one of the few who knows what really happened at Burgenstock - Cyprus Mail

That may be an overstatement. Mr. Wizner, who runs the A.C.L.U.s free speech project, has represented the National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden and rattled off important cases his lawyers handled. But FIRE, he acknowledged, has taken a strong lead on campuses, where so many consequential battles are fought.

FIRE does not have the same tensions, Mr. Wizner said. At the A.C.L.U., free speech is one of 12 or 15 different values.

Traditionally, the A.C.L.U.s state affiliates monitor and argue free speech cases, but in recent years some shied from such fights. Here are a few examples:

In 2015, University of Missouri students protested racism and established an encampment in a campus quad. When a student journalist tried to take photos and talk to protesters, students and a journalism professor physically blocked the reporter from doing so. The A.C.L.U. of Missouri applauded the courageous leadership of student activists and faculty members, and two national A.C.L.U. officials wrote columns about the protests. They did not mention First Amendment rights.

Four years later at the University of Connecticut, two white students walking home late at night loudly repeated a racial slur. In the ensuing uproar, the university police arrested and charged the students with ridicule on account of race.

The A.C.L.U. of Connecticut demanded that the university hire 10 Black faculty and staff members and require a freshman course on ending racism on campus. It made no mention of the arrests, other than to opine that the police force is an inherently white supremacist institution.

Two days later, Mr. Cole issued a corrective: The students conduct is not criminal, he stated. The First Amendment protects even offensive and hateful speech.

Even the New York Civil Liberties Union, traditionally an independent-minded A.C.L.U. affiliate that has produced several national executive directors and stood at the forefront in defending free speech cases, did not want to talk about those issues. A spokeswoman for its executive director, Donna Lieberman, said, We dont feel well have anything to add.

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Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis - The New York Times

Throughout my life, conservatives have believed the U.S. Constitutionmeans what its authors intended. While it can sometimes be challenging to apply the document's verbiage to modern times, conservatives know that when the founders wrote, "Congress shall make no law" they meant that, "Congress shall make no law." Easy peasy, as the saying goes.

By contrast, liberals have often championed a"living and breathing"Constitutionone that evolves with the times. They don't mean proper change via amendment, but through "enlightened" court interpretations. Like shamans, liberal justices don't obsess over the founders' intentions, but on truths found in penumbras. Go figure, but their divinations usually conform to their own biases.

In a bizarre twist, conservatives are now sounding like liberal jurists rather than traditionalists on some key constitutional questions. Let's take theFirst Amendment, which the founders viewed with particular significance given that they placed it, well, first in the Bill of Rights. These days, conservatives are busy reinterpreting its meaning and have been quite creative with their new interpretations and divination.

For instance, Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed alawthat applies governmental moderating standards to social-media companies. It fines tech companies if they suspend political candidates prior to elections, lets the state attorney general and even private citizens sue these companies if they believe they've been treated unfairly, and gives online publishers a list of enforceable editorial conditions.

That's obviously a government restriction on speech given that the government is mandating that private publishers behave in a certain way. Yet writing inAmerican Spectator, the Heartland Institute's S.T. Karnick has discovered such a novel method of interpreting that law that he would have made former Justice Thurgood Marshall, the late justice who was known for his creative constitutional gyrations, quite proud.

"Defenders of Big Tech routinely argue that these companies have a right to do whatever they want because they are not government entities. That is false," Karnickwrote. "The fact that they are in the private sector does not change the definition of the word" censorship. If we erase the distinction between private censorship (which we all do) and government censorship, however, we essentially erase the First Amendment.

The Constitution forbids Congress specifically from regulating private speech, but then the 14thAmendment applied most of the Bill of Rights to the states and their governments. Karnick alsoarguesthat the 10thAmendment gives Florida the right to exercise its authority on this basic-rights issue, which is a rather odd position for a conservative.

If the10thAmendment, which vests many powers in the states rather than the federal government, can be justified to obliterate constitutionally protected rights, then California can ban firearm ownership, despite what the Second Amendment says. If you don't think rights should apply to tech companies whose decisions anger you, then they might not apply when your decisions anger others.

The"Fairness Doctrine,"which mandated equal time for political views on "public" airwaves, offers a template for what conservatives now are suggesting. Its elimination allowed for the proliferation of conservative talk radio, given that such imbalanced programming previously was verboten. What would happen if the Biden administration could force broadcast outlets to balance the views of Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson? Take a guess.

Many of these conservatives are like liberals in another important way. They seek to control private-sector companies because they don't like how they operate. For instance,David Marcuscomplained in a Fox News column last week about the media's Johnny-come-lately coverage of the theory that the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese laboratory.

Yes, the media mostly treated that story as a conspiracy when Donald Trump had postulated itbut are treating it seriously now that Trump is gone. So what? Publications can print whatever they choose, some do a lousy job and all of them are biased. My conclusion is the media should learn from its mistakes, but Marcus' take is more draconian.

"Nobody is checking the fact checkers, and it is time that changed," hewrote. "It's time for government to regulate the fact checking industry." He named Politifact and Associated Press as examples of organizations that need government oversight as they advise social mediaeven though they are journalism organizations.

Marcusclaimsthe First Amendment forbids regulation of "in-house" fact checkers, but he carves out the exception for independent checkerssomething he appears to have pulled from thin air just like the living-and-breathing jurists. "This may seem antithetical to traditional conservative values of small government," he says, but we ought not be "slaves to orthodoxy."

Perhaps the Biden administration should appoint a regulator to fact-check Marcus' writing for the next few weeksand then he can report on the experience. Thanks to First Amendment "orthodoxy" that won't happen, but it's time for conservatives to grow a thicker skin and stop attackingthe constitutional protections all of us enjoy.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

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Conservative Attacks on 'Big Tech' Are Turning the Constitution on Its Head - Reason

Mike Pence seen sheltering only 100 feet from insurrectionists in video from Capitol riots

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Former Vice President Mike Pence lauded his and former President Donald Trumps administration in a speech Thursday, but he said the two may never "see eye to eye"about the Jan. 6 insurrection.

To a crowd of Republicans in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, Pence called the Capitol riot a dark day in American history. The attack saw thousands of pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol and left five people dead.

President Trump and I have spoken many times since we left office, Pence said. I dont know if well ever see eye to eye on that day. But I will always be proud of what we accomplished for the American people for the last four years.

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Trump insisted Pence had the power to block congressional certification of Joe Bidens presidential election win in November. Pence repeatedlydenied the false claims, saying only lawmakers can decide whether to accept the Electoral College votes won byBiden.

Mike Pence: What to know about him after being VP

Video: Mike Pence Says He 'May Never See Eye-to-Eye' With Donald Trump on January 6 Riots (Newsweek)

Mike Pence Says He 'May Never See Eye-to-Eye' With Donald Trump on January 6 Riots

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Back home: Pences buy house north of Indianapolis

Mike's brother:Rep. Greg Pence votes against commission

During the riots, chants to hang Mike Pence and bring out Pence erupted in the crowd, according to video shown during Trumps second impeachment trial.

But Pence on Thursday immediately cast blame on Democrats and news media for what he called an outsized scrutiny over the day.

I will not allow Democrats and their allies in the media to use one tragic day to discredit the aspirations of millions of Americans, he said.

Thirty-five House Republicans,including Indiana Rep. Trey Hollingsworth, voted in favor of a bipartisancommission to study the insurrection, butSenate Republicans blocked the commissioneffort last week. Neither Indiana senator voted in favor of the commission.

Contact Sarah Nelson at sarah.nelson@indystar.com or 317-503-7514.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Former VP Mike Pence: Trump and I may never 'see eye to eye' on Jan. 6 Capitol attack

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Former VP Mike Pence: Trump and I may never 'see eye to ...