asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: slightly different in ru. e.g., минетчица ~= 'blowjobesse', тракторица ~= 'tracroresse' - in same sense as Fr. 'comedienne.'
asciilifeform: i suppose a handful of natural schizoids, and slavish imitation thereof, can substitute for dope.
asciilifeform: mice have not yet invented smoking dope, and so do not know how to 'resist through culture'
asciilifeform: and yes, animals will fight to the death, to exhaustion - what else might one expect them to do? negotiate a conditional surrender with the mousetrap? a ceasefire with the glass jar ?
asciilifeform: as for mice, if they have organizational abilities, this was not apparent in my kitchen.
asciilifeform: i actually 'liked' the rats in that flat quite a bit more than the mice. the latter - shat every quarter metre they walked, or so it seemed. the rats - more disciplined, organized, had battalions, detachments - respectable.
asciilifeform: most people, esp. in infested dwellings, are quite particular about which animals they like
asciilifeform: u.s. motto could be: st augustine's prayer, 'god grant me chastity - but not yet'
asciilifeform: lemme guess, little bugger died of exhaustion
asciilifeform: goes on for so long as you have infinite joules to throw at the problem.
asciilifeform: what usa does with transport is not unlike housing, e.g., penguins in sahara
asciilifeform: at the risk of sounding like orlov - modern 'machine civilization' tends to create wildly thermodynamically-unfavourable situations like this one.
asciilifeform: death is free, at least, for king and slave alike.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: as discussed in the past - the various u.s. castes have, for reasons of their own (ask them!) decided never to live in walking distance of one another, if it can be helped
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: which part is stupid? most of these people couldn't hope to buy so much as a plastic&cardboard 'trabant' without massive credit
asciilifeform: neither is strongly connected to how often it moves.
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: it's approximately true - most folks pay insurance (mandatory) and usually bought the machine on credit (so, they pay and pay)
asciilifeform: $posint is expensive to the man who is flat broke
asciilifeform: but for some odd reason aren't cabbies, bus drivers, or garbagemen
asciilifeform: and so, everybody owns - a taxi. and some, even a bus or garbage truck.
asciilifeform: fact is - much of the cost of owning vehicle in usa - is a fixed cost, whether or not it moves
asciilifeform: (npr is an american government-funded radio station)
asciilifeform: 'Recently I heard a story on NPR about a poor family that went around looking for discounted food items at various groceries and stopping at the food pantry—in their own private minivan! And so here is a poor family that owns what in many parts of the world would amount to a bus company!' (orlov)
asciilifeform: not impossible - but difficult if work for a living
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: 'tis one thing if you like oil, dirt, metal (matter of fact - i do) but another if you're stuck with them whether or not you do
asciilifeform: then again i'm not certain any country will recognize american driver's licenses when the hour comes.
asciilifeform: which is why we're more or less doomed to drive cabs (the lucky ones, that is) around the world, far more certainly than soviet emigres were
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: cars << another thing in usa. more or less everybody is condemned to be his own cabbie, and to some extent, mechanic
asciilifeform: smells more like ussr circa 1988 or so, imho
asciilifeform: or one new electron microscope (and get your food somewhere else)
asciilifeform: 100k buys what - a year or two of food and roof in usa somewhere on the cheaper side.
asciilifeform: anyone find it peculiar how small is thiel's prize ?
asciilifeform: nubbins`: linked document (military manual) suggests a type of pidgin, which it claims can be understood in much of alaska and northeastern ussr
asciilifeform: though again - joke not 'offically' exposed until '80s
asciilifeform: although, margaret mead already got pwned in samoa long before...
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: by now i'd imagine that assumption is SOP. but we're dealing with a vintage piece here.
asciilifeform has seen this said about more than one obscure natural language, it always seems to be a reflection of the linguist's ineptitude, in practice.
asciilifeform: 'The rules of grammar are many and precise and the person who speaks Eskimo cannot make any ambiguous statements.' << really now.
asciilifeform can picture the sheer machinist-grade squareness of the bricks these folks were shitting
asciilifeform: 'All Soviet interrogations are based on the assumptions that: (1) all prisoners are liars; (2) most Westerners can be bought; (3) those who cannot be bought can be broken; and (4) the process of breaking the prisoner can be continued as long as necessary to acquire the desired information.'
