BC CULTURE
Saved by @ThomassRichards

Everyone likes to forget this episode just because it's terrible, but we were really sleeping on inherent comedy in a unfreezing an investor 300 years in the future and having them discover we've transitioned to a moneyless post-scarcity utopia.

 it's like a classic twilight zone episode.
in fact, it IS a twilight zone episode.
The Rip Van Winkle Caper, Season 2, episode 24.
Four criminals steal a million dollars of gold bars, then put themselves in suspended animation for a hundred years to hide from the law.
they wake up, then start killing each other from mistrust, then the last one dies in the desert, as he offers a gold bar to the driver of a passing car, asking for water and a ride into town
the confused driver walks back to his car with the bar, and his wife asks what the gold bar is.
he says something like "It's gold... they used to use this for money, before we figured out a way to manufacture it."
He tosses it away, and drives off.
TNG's The Neutral Zone is that, but with the entire concept of money itself.
Future humans: *unfreezes investor*
Investor: MWAHAHAH! I LIVE! I must be rich now.
Future humans: Well, you were dead, so your will probably distributed all your money, so... no
Investor: Noooo!!!!
Future humans: But don't worry: We don't have money anymore
Investor: NOOOOOOOOO
Inventor: But how can I be rich now!?
Future humans: What is this thing you call "rich"? Like a good chocolate? You want some chocolate? This machine can make it. HEY COMPUTER, GIVE ME CHOCOLATE
Replicator: *Buzzes, Chocolate appears*
Investor: No, "rich" is when you have a bunch of things!
Future human: Oh, I see. Good news then: You're rich.
Investor: Yes!!!
Future human: We're all rich. We can have as many things as we want. This machine can make them.
Investor: Noooooo!
Future humans: What's wrong? You're "rich", isn't that what you wanted?
Investor: It's not fun being rich unless there are people who aren't rich to compare yourself to!
Future humans: Ahhh, so what you really wanted was to be be better than other people?
Investor: YES!
Future humans: well that's ok then, we still have that.
Investor: Oh?
Future humans: Yeah, you can just, you know, work harder, discover new things, write the best stories, create new theories, design better starships, create the best music.
Investor: oh...
Future humans: Yeah, isn't that what you were telling everyone back in your time? You can be better, you just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, devote yourself, work harder, get up early, skip the coffees?
Investor: Uhh... kinda?
Future humans: Well, good news, you can still do that, just without the cheating complexities of "money" to get in the way!
Investor: *softly* but that's what I was good at...
Future humans: And it can work better now. Because back in your time, you'd have complications like people inheriting money, or getting money because of systems that priviledged them over others. Now it's an even playing field!
Future humans: It's a much purer form of that meritocracy you were talking about. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" and all that. And that's not even the best part!
Investor: Is there a best part?
Future human: "Mocha Frappuccino, extra mocha."
Replicator: *bzzzzzzz*
Future human: You don't even have to skip the coffee this time.
I'm just saying that there's a lot of inherent comedy in the idea taking someone devoted specifically to making money, and bringing them into a future where WHOOPS while they were gone, we got rid of money and made the world a paradise.
GOOD NEWS, you know that one thing you devoted your life to? We don't need that anymore, it doesn't matter. But now you can devote your life to creating and exploring and self-improvement! Isn't that great? ISN'T IT?

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An interesting set of games that I've been vaguely interested in since I was a kid, after seeing one at a friend's house and never being able to find it again, was the BATTLES IN A DISTANT DESERT/BATTLES ON DISTANT PLANETS series.


These are turn-based wargames for windows 3.x, sharing the same engine.
Battles in a Distant Desert is from 1992, and is based on the first Iraq war (Desert Storm)


and Battles on Distant Planets is from 1991, and takes place in SPACE!
I'm pretty sure this is the one I played as a kid.


They've got 3 options to play with:
* Player vs. Player
* Player vs. Computer
* Computer vs. Computer

So it's a 0-2 player game!


They also did a DOS strategy game called "STARDATE 2140.2: GALACTIC CONQUEST" in 1990, but it seems to be lost.
All the games share an experimental AI system based on neural networks.
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foone
foone
@Foone
Keybort

This one is a MicroWeb Touch-1 XT/AT. Kinda.


See if you look up that keyboard you find the Deskthority page on it, showing this.
It's clearly pretty similar, but there are some differences.


Also that one uses a PC/XT/AT DIN5 connector, and this one uses some kind of RJ connector.


This one isn't in the greatest of shape, but considering I got it from the Chuck Colby estate sale, it's surprising it isn't completely water-damaged.


It's got some minor rust damage inside, where the metal clips rubbed off on the PCB.
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foone
foone
@Foone
I got a Toshiba T1200, which has a bad screen, and a dead CMOS battery, and I thought the hard drive was broken too...


but I rebooted it and heard a KTHUNK and a really loud spin-up noise and holy shit, the hard drive works!


and it still has files on it. the newest date is January 1994.


It's a 21mb hard drive, with ~37k of bad sectors.

This fucker is never going to spin up again, so I better go find some serial cables and copy shit off now.


The backlight is fucked so I'm shining a flashlight on it.
without it, it looks like this.
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foone
foone
@Foone
So Sony has this format called Optical Disc Archive, right? It's a high-density storage cartridge, but it turns out it works by cheating.


because if you open it up (which you should never do. trust me on this one)
it turns out... it's blu-ray.


it's a big STACK of blu-ray


And the idea is that Sony built some very complicated drive which you can slot this cartridge into, and it'll open it up and grab out the right disc and just read/write that one

then when you hit the eject button, it shoves the discs back in and closes up the case, and hands you the cartridge.
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foone
foone
@Foone
gonna get in line for the vaccine because I've heard all these urban legends about tracking microchips

and I think I might be able to root it and install Doom

supposedly bill gates is involved, right?
so it's probably like a miniaturized 386 running ROM-DOS.

the doctor walks in, looks down at my charts, and sighs.
"well, the bad news is that you've got the virus. I'm sorry..."
"and the good news?"
"well..."
*at doom's gate starts faintly playing from my

it took them four tries to figure out that I had the virus, because every time they did a nasal sample, the diagnosis machine kept glitching and playing a youtube video

I laugh in the hospital bed while they're like "ma'am sir ma'am sir, please, this is serious: we can't treat you. Our ventilator keeps trying to reboot in to Windows 3.1 and play skifree. we're quarantining you here so you don't spread this DIGITAL VIRUS to other patients"
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jm watching as jk, part of the mafia, storms his house and jk being totally confused as to why the man looks so unbothered by it, standing at the top of the stairs with an unfazed expression.
+


and when jm approaches jk with a walk resembling the grace of an elegant snake, jk feels immediately bewitched by him, watching him come closer with his breath stuck in his throat, unable to move, the weapon in his hand slowly sliding out of his grip when jm pushes him down

by his shoulders to make him sit down on the couch behind him.
"w-who are you," jk can't help but stutter out with wide eyes.
to his bewilderment, the man doesn't move to sit next to him on the couch. feeling the pressure of the mysterious man's hands on his shoulder,

jk gasps as he straddles him instead, the man raising one hand to graze a finger over jk's sensitve neck, making jk shiver in surprise. jk wonders if the soft touch was only an illusion, because the seductive expression falls from the man's face from one second to the other,

and suddenly he's grasping jk's chin between two fingers to harshly tip his head up toward his, pushing their faces dangerously close. jk doesn't dare move a single muscle when he locks eyes with the most beautiful man he's ever seen, even forgetting to breathe. the man fixes him
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Pulp Librarian
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Time once again for my occasional series "Women with great hair fleeing gothic houses!"

And today all the covers are by Walter Popp...


Crucible of Evil, by Lyda Belknap Long. Avon Gothic Original, 1974. Cover art by Walter Popp.


Hornet's Nest, by Evelyn Bond. Avon Gothic Original, 1972 Cover by Walter Popp.


The House In Munich, by Dorothy Dowdell. Avon, 1974. Art by Walter Popp.


The Secret Of Chateau Laval, by Susan Marvin. Avon Gothic, 1973. Art by Walter Popp.
CULTURE
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@AdamSmithWorks
@AdamSmithWorks
@adamsmithworks
Today we start the last book of #AdamSmith's #WealthOfNations.

Allons-y!

#WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets


Book Five of #WealthOfNations is all about the duties of the sovereign and how to pay for them. In this first part of chapter 1, we’re talking about the cost of defense. (V.i.a) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets


The sovereign's duty to protect the country can only be done through military force, but how you get the money to pay for that military varies according to time, place, and circumstance. (V.i.a.1) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

In a hunter/gatherer society, everyone is always already a warrior, and since there isn’t really a sovereign or nation, no expense is required to maintain defense. Much the same is true of shepherding cultures. (V.i.a.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Armies of hunters are limited in size to a few hundred men (as they have to sustain themselves through the available game). Shepherds can muster larger forces because they bring their sustenance in the form of flocks. (V.i.a.3–5) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
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@amuse
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STAR WARS GENOCIDE THREAD: If you're a Mandalorian fan you are no doubt aware that @ginacarano was fired by Disney for explaining on Twitter how the same sort of behavior Democrats are engaging now in resulted in the holocaust. The left-wing mob wasted no time proving her right.
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James Palmer
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i am sick and reading about 19th century New Zealand, and it may be just that I'm a little hallucinatory right now but it seems like strategists and military historians should talk about the Musket Wars a lot more than they do?

like, it's basically the history of human warfare condensed into a few decades.

Hongi Hika, the war leader of the iwi (tribe) with the most European contact at first, and therefore the most muskets, travels to England, becomes a sensation, and meets George IV, who gives him a set of ceremonial armor, as one noble to another.

but in the context of a conflict that has gone from neolithic to early modern almost overnight, the armor is, in fact, a powerful asset itself, which Hongi Hika wears in battle

by the time that the Musket Wars end and the armed conflicts with Europeans begin, Maori are inventing forms of trench warfare so innovative that the British military engineers are studying them
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The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

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A brief thread on Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, the crazy con man who is now claiming to have hacked into the Georgia voting machines in Fulton County. 90s kids and tech aficionados might remember Jovan as the inventor of the CueCat, the dumbest gadget of all time.

Also, for anyone who wants to claim that Jovan Hutton Pulitzer (not his given name, but one he changed legally after the CueCat debacle) invented QR Codes: he did not. Like that other right-wing crazy man who claimed to have invented email, Jovan didn’t invent QR Codes.

He did invent the CueCat, a product that somehow raised $185 million dollars for a tethered barcode scanner for magazines and newspapers, so you could get ads from your ads. As I said, the dumbest product of all time. Good backup barcode scanners after they were hacked, however

Oh, that’s another thing. When CueCat was a thing, its systems were hacked. I guess that’s what makes Jovan a security expert. His bankrupt company from 20 years ago was hacked and widely mocked. He’s a genius.

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1. There are more people added on the list of arrests and executions of famous people but no further intel is available at this time.

ARRESTS and EXECUTIONS OF FAMOUS PEOPLE 2020 UPDATED
Explanation of the latest military tribunal arrests and executions of famous people in 2020.

2. The tribunals are arresting these people in plain clothes. We saw the Obama’s arrest, although we didn’t know it was an arrest at the time. The arrest was done nonchalantly so as to not get noticed by the public.
All arrests of these famous people were done this way.

3. If the person is convicted of child sex trafficking, crimes against humanity or treason, they will be executed.
If the person arrested has evidence on someone else to help their prosecution, or is willing to help Trump, & they want to cooperate, they may be allowed to do so.

4. A sentence of execution down to life in prison may be accepted if their evidence is worth anything.
When a plea deal is done, the defendant must present evidence they have to make their sentence lighter. This information is given to the prosecution, defense, and to the judge.

5. If evidence is accepted, they are presented the plea deal. They will have to make a guilty plea to the crime with a video confession & written statement. That is how all plea deals work.

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It’s underremarked upon that stablecoins accomplish basically all of the original design goals for Bitcoin qua a transactional mechanism (instant free value transfer anywhere), but that nobody cares about this because nobody ever cared about that part of the pitch.

“Why do people care about stablecoins then?”

A mix of “they encourage dollar-denominated liquidity in the cryptocurrency ecosystem and discourage withdrawal of the same” and “they’re good for money laundering.”

“But they make value transfer between exchanges much faster!”

This was a solved problem in traditional finance, too, mostly through the extension of credit. (It doesn’t matter how long settlement takes if there is sufficient trust to enable credit.)

The Bitcoin ecosystem is *positively allergic* to credit, so you have to call it a coin for them to accept it. And after you call it a coin they ignore everything the world has learned about credit, like risk management.

“Stablecoins aren’t credit!”

They’re pretty much exactly credit? A tether is a zero-coupon Bitfinex bond with a non-functioning call option. I
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That important verse reads:

'Therefore a man shall leave [יַֽעֲזָב] his father and his mother and hold fast [וְדָבַ֣ק] to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'

The verb עזב can be quite strong in force. For example, Joseph leaves behind [וַיַּעֲזֹ֤ב] his garment as he flees from Pharaoh's wife's sexual advances. Countless times, Israel is depicted abandoning the LORD, for example in Judg 2:12 [וַיַּעַזְב֞וּ], and going after other gods.

Likewise, the verb דבק is rather striking. Lot is mortified of disaster overtaking him [תִּדְבָּקַ֥נִי] as he flees from Sodom. Israel is commanded in Deut 10:20 to cling fast [תִדְבָּ֔ק] to the LORD and serve him and swear by his name.

Together they illustrate how radical God designed marriage to be. Marriage is a real severing of family relations in order to form a new, permanent bond with another human being.

Something very similar to this takes places in Ruth's life.
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