That seems kind of harsh. I’d totally accept falling on his own sword, maybe seppuku.

My BS, unprovable hypothesis: The Golden Age of Piracy was actually a successful Socialist movement, with Nassau being a disruptively successful enclave of Socialism in action. The pirates deeply threatened the budding power structures in the US (not conjecture) and the entrenched powers in Europe. While some powers, most notably royalty, were willing to use pirates as mercenaries (privateers), there was an excess of democracy and human concern (somewhat my conjecture) among the Nassau pirates. The Nassau pirates had pensions, a form of worker’s comp, disability, democratic command structures at sea, and healthcare (such as it was given the era). According to the historical texts on the Nassau pirates, there were almost no written records, which strikes me as especially odd since they had so many long-running financial and governing processes.

Add another endorsement for the OE Lido, but we have the 3 after someone stole our Lido 2. The 3 is also slightly less hazardous on the sailboat when the weather gets bumpy. It’s also easier to bring with us since I have to travel a lot for work.

Because patents are now used as an offensive thicket and a way to parasitize businesses that actually do something.

Intellectual Ventures is one of the more notable patient troll companies: https://www.techdirt.com/2016/03/31/stupid-patent-month-mega-troll-intellectual-ventures-hits-florist-with-do-it-on-a-computer-scheduling-patent/

Ihttps://www.techdirt.com/2012/12/20/intellectual-ventures-dont-mind-our-2000-shell-companies-thats-totally-normal/

Relationships aren’t business deals. You don’t pay for sex with choirs and brownie points.

All relationships are transactional. There may not always be an explicit ledger with columns for AP/AR. Interpersonal relationships that repeatedly fail to provide the expected return on investment result in dysfunction and toxicity. We always pay for sex and companionship; the currency just probably isn’t money.

Came looking for this comment. It’s absolutely critical to know thyself, and understanding one’s attachment style is one of the easier bits of self-knowledge.

One of the most accessible books on the topic is “Attached” by Levine and Heller. For me, that book was such an eye-opener. I read it as my second marriage was imploding, and I was grabbing at everything to try to save it. The example conversations for my and my ex’s attachment styles were uncanny. I kept getting the feeling of “were y’all in the room with us for that argument?”

I’ve seen this from different angles of results. I like my place to be neat, clean, and dialed. I had a partner of eight years, and we had a mutually agreed division of house chores. She complained that her chores were sapping her libido, that my standards were too high. “I hear you honey. Would it help if I did everything, leaving you to focus on your graduate degree?” She confirmed that would be helpful all around. Yeah, except things got even worse.

And reacting to “I’m just not horny after [doing my share of maintaining our home life]” has, in my experience, been a trap. In retrospect, that late stage behavior has always been my wife/partner trying to bleed the relationship just a little more before throwing away the husk, all while weaseling out of any reciprocal effort. I also now understand that I was self-selecting whatever that personality archetype is.

Now, with my current partner, she loves being of service. When she had cancer, me trying to take over everything domestic made her feel worse. We negotiated that she could retain her share of chores, but I could veto for the day if I thought she was overextending herself. For the entirety of our relationship, the amount of chores I do has nothing to do with how much sex we have. I cook dinner? We have sex. She cooks dinner? Sex. Someone else cooks dinner? Believe it or not, sex.

I credit a lot of our success to strong communication and clear boundaries. The chores:sex ratio seems to go completely out the window in a healthy, communicative relationship. Again, in my experience.

I misspoke, and you raise a good point. I meant gift economies, and that error is on me. And those are pretty well-documented. I’ll stick to my firsthand experiences:

• Waianae, Oahu in Hawaii. The weekly take-what-you-need-bring-what-you-can food exchanges there are a huge stopgap for food insecurity and also spur community bonding
• Burning Man - TTITD, regionals, and much of the hippie festival circuit have a robust gifting culture

As a very young kid, I thought there was a very hungry monster that lived inside vacuum cleaners. The switch was just a lever to open a flap and expose the monster’s sucking hunger.

You are confidently incorrect on this. Currency == money. Money is, for we hoi polloi, a barely consentual conversion and exchange system for our labor, hypothetically allowing us to convert our labor into readily fungible exchange units. Money, at the Capital Class level, is debt, and therefore control, i.e. power. Money is just how they keep score.

There are plenty of barter gifting and Communist (“from those of ability to those of need”) economies, just on scales that fly below the radar of most economists. Your sweeping assertion leads me to believe that you may simply be ignorant of those non-monetary exchanges. Would you be willing to add more context to your assertion?

Edit: I misspoke; crashfrog raises a valid point, and I meant gift economies.

Wampum was used by Eastern Costal tribes as a storytelling aid.

In the Salish Tribes, dentalium shell necklaces were used as a status symbol/indication of social rank. Some tribes used the necklaces as a type of currency, but I’ve only heard the “some tribes did this” part; never anything about which specific tribes used dentalium as currency.

Obviously, anything that holds perceived value can be traded.

Source: went to junior high in a school that taught two full years of Haudenosaunee (also called Iroquois) history.

Salish source: I’ve been a volunteer naturalist in the Puget Sound for eight years with an annual training requirement, with entire days allocated to history of the original Salish tribe for the area where we’re working.

The Salish Tribes existed in the PacNW for over 13,000 years without money.

I see a lot of specific examples, but here is a good engineering guideline: do not skimp on physical interfaces. **Anywhere energy is changing form or if it touches your body, don’t skimp on those. **

For example

• tires
• bicycle saddle
• heaters/furnaces
• electrical inverters
• keyboard
• mouse
• engines
• shoes
• eyewear
• clothes (buy used if necessary, but always buy quality clothing)

Quality usually means more money, but sometimes one is able to find a high quality and low-cost version. In my experience though, trying to find the cheap version that works well means trying so many permutations; it would have been more economical to just get the more costly version in the first place.

Religion now throws a null pointer exception?

:( indeed. This got me right in the feels.

We hoi polloi think in money numbers and what we can afford to purchase. For the Capital Class, it’s all about power. Money is just how they keep score.

Ever see a toucan in person? I had an employee with a toucan he would sometimes bring into work. It could throw things, especially round fruit, with uncanny accuracy. Like it could easily play catch from at least 2m away.

Glaucous-winged gulls also seem to have uncanny accuracy with defecation, but that’s not quite throwing.

ADHD + tinnitus here, and my tinnitus frequencies shift around too. I made white and brown noise clips in Audacity, then notched out the frequencies of my varying tinnitus. I play it on repeat and found it very helpful. Although the tinnitus always comes back, I can focus while listening.

If you want help with creating your own files or just want me to make them for you, DM me.

I use a bar soda siphon.

According to Consumer Reports, Topo Chico consistently tested the highest for PFAS among carbonated waters. But they also said almost all store-bought carbonated waters tested positive for PFAS.