asciilifeform: they actually have this pyramid-shaped oddity there, i'm told
asciilifeform: or 'Лучше когда русские тебе отключат газ, чем немцы – пустят.' (better when the russians turn off your gas, then when germans open up the gas.'
asciilifeform: 'ruska joga' (russian yoga) - to drink and fall asleep in amazing positions
asciilifeform: re: belgrade: wonder how many americans would curl up and cry if given an uncensored tour of some place not inhabited by 'human lite' (orlov's phrase, not mine)
asciilifeform: how many folks here were armchair privates?
asciilifeform: (what's the word for what used to be a normal kid, who wants a time machine so he can get clobbered in stalingrad like a real man? 'armchair private' ?)
asciilifeform: i'm just a noob to the sheer magnitude of the apparent civilizational decay.
asciilifeform: i'm a stereotypical, unrepentant armchair general myself. even have a copy of clausewitz somewhere.
asciilifeform: i've nothing against armchair generals, so long as they don't labour under the delusion of commanding actual soldiers.
asciilifeform: it's gonna have to be something more subtle
asciilifeform: straight key escrow is a little out of fashion
asciilifeform: as soon as these folks figure out how to diddle the crypto
asciilifeform: national altchains are inevitable - just like the idiot national cryptosystems of the '80s-90s
asciilifeform: ThickAsThieves: hemp, gold, 100 other historical examples
asciilifeform: only reason the ban isn't official yet is that ft. meade hasn't finished the beta version of the IRSCoin that u.s. citizens will be asked to trade their TerroristCoins for.
asciilifeform: show people what fraction of their net crop medieval serfs paid, and no one believes you.
asciilifeform: in a few years the street is full of people like yourself and you pay the mandatory 1/2 of your money as rent.
asciilifeform: then the other programmers think you're clever and get the same idea
asciilifeform: so it works roughly like this. you're a programmer or whatnot, and live in a repurposed warehouse, with armoured doors. and life is good, you pay 1/10 of your money as rent
asciilifeform: just explaining for people who have never been to the u.s.
asciilifeform: this is called, for some reason, 'gentrification'
asciilifeform: but when people do it en mass, the landlords adjust the price
asciilifeform: you can squeeze into the rent zone of a different caste if you're willing to live where it lives
asciilifeform: in america, there are (de-facto) radically different 'tax rates' (not tax properly speaking, but rent) for different castes
asciilifeform: rtg can be built to happily run for centuries.
asciilifeform: that and, well, absence of solar panels.
asciilifeform: re: heat sinks: this is how the americans spotted the radiothermally-powered (Pu core) soviet satellites - enormous fins.
asciilifeform: and i'm sure virtually everyone is familiar with the use of morse code by prisoners, historically.
asciilifeform: so something resembling bitcoin (well, more like Hawala) could have worked even there.
asciilifeform: phun phact - in soviet prison camps, notes ('scribbles', roughly translated from the argot) went around freely from one end of the archipelago to another. (how? bribe a guard)
asciilifeform: (radiative only, if this is somehow non-obvious)
asciilifeform: channelling herr naggum: 'It is like going to a library full of books that took 50 man-years to produce each, inventing a way to cut down the costs to a few man-months per book by copying and randomly improving on other books, and then wondering why nobody thinks your library full of these cheaper books is an inspiration to future authors.'☟︎☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: (this tale has me in an especially dour mood, given that not long ago i sent a once-promising client packing because he brought in a mountain of artlessly cribbed open source code.)
asciilifeform: or just the usual 'work is too much like work, let's crib it all'
asciilifeform: was the cribbed source even interesting in some way?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: fascinating, to a point. children playing with detcord.
asciilifeform: not everyone into the jar. just them.
asciilifeform: perhaps these folks belong in a large glass jar. where they are to feed upon one another, and the last one remaining to be extracted and will perhaps be good for something.
