Crack the Safe

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• Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
  Consequently the Graun is unreliable on certain topics. Any recommendation for a countervailing news source on those topics? For an American who understands the distinction between England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, and...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re vaccine developments--I haven't the technical expertise to evaluate the claim, but Walter Reed Army Institute of Research is apparently well along on a multivalent vaccine for coronaviruses, a "soccer-ball-shaped protein" with 24 faces that can be used to attach...
• Commented on Because I am bored ...
  Our host: when money stops moving it has no value, much like the current in a copper wire goes away when the electrons stop moving. Michel2Bec: I think all economists will disagree with you...[one property of money is] a store...
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  Scott Sanford at 185-- I didn't mean to imply that one can't create a commodity currency using a perishable and variable commodity; obviously it has been done. Thanks for the links, by the way; I should learn more. It's not...
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  Heteromeles at 110: ...this hemp-buck system is a local area currency. It works great for IOUs,... Yes, agree. Seattle has a couple local currencies, Fremont Dollars and the like (named after the Seattle neighborhood of Fremont). Most local shops will...
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  Greg Tingey at 95: ALL banknotes are "promissory Notes" - or they are in the UK at any rate - it says so right on the tin. See also: "Bills of Exchange" ( Cheques are one form of these )...
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  Heteromeles at 87: Re hemp-bucks (HBs), I'm not sure I follow. It sounds like HBs are a commodity currency where the commodity, hemp, is highly unstable. Hemp is available only seasonally, is perishable, and can only be produced in a...
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  Heteromeles at 57: The big banks weren't liquidated at this point, even though they were beyond screwed up. So far as I can tell, the feds allowed their assertions of mortgage ownership to stand unchallenged. Those assertions became their assets,...
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  Greg Tingey at 44: All money is "fiat" money - why does nobody notice this? Gold is only valuable, because people believe it to be so - ditto Silver, or Cowrie Shells, or any other supposedly valuable medium of exchange....
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  Bill Arnold at 38: Please use the word "cryptocurrency" or "cryptocurrencies" (instead of "crypto"). Quite right--apologies for getting sloppy....
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  I need to re-read Neptune’s Brood now, so apologies if this contribution gets the "medium money" concept wrong. I only have the one-sentence Wikipedia description available right now. Approaching from a different angle--for purposes of interplanetary exchange, or any exchange...
• Commented on Books I Will Not Write #8: The Year of the Conspiracy
  Greg--Yes, the Alec Guinness film is the one I'm thinking of--the director was Carol Reed. Alec is always watchable and I thought the film version did reasonable justice to the book. On a total derailment of topic--I would love to...
• Commented on Books I Will Not Write #8: The Year of the Conspiracy
  Greg: Our Man in Havana--A classic Greene! Always good to hear someone mention his work. I spend too little time among litr'ry types I guess--get excited when someone name-checks a favorite author. I thought the Carol Reed film of it...
• Commented on Dead plots
  gasdive: If you're worried someone might turn off your power, buy a generator and relax. Every element of power supply from the point where they're removing the overburden above the coal to the switches on the powerlines that run down...
• Commented on Dead plots
  The origin of this discussion was my expressed thought that Lost Cause tropes would, hopefully, become a thing of the past. Clearly I was wrong. This bad-faith parsing of "Oh, slavery reasons, you're so right, but I'm just talking about...
• Commented on Dead plots
  Charles H @282: [T]here was a lot of anti-slavery opinion in the North and pro-slavery opinion in the South, and that polarized things quite significantly, but still states rights was the principle [principal] cause of the war. After significant pushback...
• Commented on Dead plots
  whitroth: Control capital. It doesn't stop people from starting small-to-medium sized businesses. If they grew past a certain size, the government starts owning a part, depending on size. Yes, this. At a certain point accumulations of economic power accumulate too...
• Commented on Dead plots
  JBS: I don't believe "Lincoln had taken no steps" can be part of the "Lost Cause" narrative. If anything, it is antithetical to it, because there is, at that point, NO CAUSE to be lost. I think we are trapped...
• Commented on Dead plots
  Maybe I'm missing something, but John Carter's story just doesn't sound like a Lost Cause narrative. His side lost the war. He gets transported to Mars. Doesn't he just stay there? Perhaps I overstated without meaning to. I didn't mean...
• Commented on Dead plots
  And Lincoln had taken no steps to restrict or eliminate slavery, and there's no evidence that he intended to. By the way--totally backwards timeline. Multiple states seceded before Lincoln took office. Hard for Lincoln to "take steps" when his feet...
• Commented on Dead plots
  At that time if Lincoln had been willing to allow states to leave the Union if they wanted to there would have been no Civil War. Seriously? That is an argument to show that slavery was not the primary cause...
• Commented on Dead plots
  Greg-- Smart meters, internet of things, etc.: exactly. The borderlands of privacy shrink, and the borderlands of autonomy and personal control over one's home as well. The notion that having multiple methods available of external access and control to features...
• Commented on Dead plots
  From about the time of the War of 1812 up through the 1820s there were various threats by New England states to secede because the south was thwarting Congress from enacting tariffs to protect their nascent industry. I have read...
• Commented on Dead plots
  ...states rights was the principle cause of the war. That is confusing the cover rationalization for the actual motivation. The "state's rights" trope is basically a "Lost Cause" trope. It seeks to evade, once again, the central fact that the...
• Commented on Dead plots
  Resistance to smart meters--arg. We opted out ourselves (we live in Seattle, Washington), for reasons of security primarily. It bugs me no end to think that I'm being lumped in with the tinfoil hat crowd. Re Seattle's implementation of smart...
• Commented on Dead plots
  Only recently did I realize how much of US TV and Movies rely on this trope. In the 50s into the 70s for TV. Earlier for movies. Yes, exactly, me too! I mean, I was aware of it, and it...
• Commented on Dead plots
  Your touchstone for that trope is the Western, which was riddled with distressed former southern gentleman-soldiers righting wrongs on the frontier. Amen. I am not a big reader of Westerns but can hardly have grown up in the U.S. (with...
• Commented on Dead plots
  JBS: You may well be right, that ERB had no intent to inject an express "Lost Cause" trope into the Barsoom books. But again, it's a cultural background shift that I was trying to describe. The American background culture has...
• Commented on Dead plots
  How about Double Star? Or Time for the Stars? Or Glory Road? Or the second, maybe, real sf story I ever read, the one that really pushed me, Have Spacesuit Will Travel? How could I have forgotten Double Star! I...
• Commented on Dead plots
  I haven't watched Lovecraft Country; neither wife nor daughter are interested and I have few opportunities to watch something by myself. But I love the premise and I hadn't heard about the Princess of Mars shout-out--love it! As it happens,...