asciilifeform: iirc mircea_popescu had a spiffy article, re 'grifters', and where specifically 'lenin played the lure sucker for stalin's grift'
asciilifeform: dispensed because folx in the driver's seat are, as a rule , never so dumb as to actually drink the 'left' hokum. it is a lure.
asciilifeform: this was a lunacy dangled as a lure for idjits ('abolish rank in army!' 'abolish money') and dispensed with more or less immediately during ru civil war .
asciilifeform suspects that apparatchiks are ~same in ~all times/places
asciilifeform: in su -- not ( for the most part, managerial caste is separate convo ) not permitted.
asciilifeform: on top of this, there is the choice of whether to permit illiterates to strut about and pretend to civilization.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: largely replaced , on same trains, with pnoje-gazers in recent decade
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: in late-gosplan days also had competition. ( life is a bit moar complicated than the cartoon su )
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: people -- read. ( and to some extent even in modern ru, this survives, it is actually possible to stay afloat economically there as a non-crown-anointed - i.e. not-'bestsellerlist' writer, even today )
asciilifeform: the diff is that the us folx are bonsaikittens and, for the most part, actually believe in their bunkum. and can't read, write, count, feed selves without ~short~ (oh noez, 3km walk -- death!11) path to mcshittrough
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the last one in my list recently evaporated. but will file for future ref
asciilifeform: ^ these tend to keep 'banker's hours' tho, and the next time you come back, there's a carpet shop in there, because d00d finally died...
asciilifeform: ( once in a veeeery long time, asciilifeform runs into some land-that-time-forgot where a greybeard owns the building and there are motherfucking blisterpacked z80's, 6502's, etc. hanging there, in dark yellowed plastic, since 1982... )
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: astronomical rents, i suspect, also play a part. it is ~impossible to stay open if you stock anything that doesn't move continuously. specialist shops are the first to die.☟︎
asciilifeform: i assume we're speaking of a iso power cord ?
asciilifeform: recall how ratshack co. finally died, despite charging first 10x and then 20 and then 50x... for parts
asciilifeform: and they're right. it can't be had , i suspect, on this entire shore, in shops. ( for various values of 'it' )
asciilifeform: the message i got errywhere was, unspokenly, 'you gotta be deeply mentally ill to be buying this not on www'
asciilifeform: shops ? dun make me laugh. they have nfi re inventory of $thing-nobody-bought-in-20yrs even if you walk in. AND they automagically list 'orderable online only' in same catalogue as what is physically present.
asciilifeform: ( incidentally, if you think m3 ~screw~ is impossible to find in shops here -- try a ~tap~. one time asciilifeform broke a m3 tap and wanted a replacement quickly, and like complete idiot tried to buy ~in shops~. result : wasted weekend )☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: contented mooing, naturally is what cattle do. people -- grumble and build things
asciilifeform: to the nearest whole number -- definitely
asciilifeform: ~nobody buys such thing from walkable-in shops, around here
asciilifeform: lobbes: even something like, e.g., m3 screws, is (afaik) sold in ~exactly 1~ physical shop in wash dc region .
asciilifeform: oh hey BingoBoingo , recall the power cable in BingoBoingostan ? where we had to splice it , because in whole country (apparently!) the correct one could not be had ?
asciilifeform: undergoing a public security audit which will be released soon".' etc
asciilifeform: 'The "electrum dot com" scheme is taking that attack further: the scammers have managed to take control of the dot com domain, and they have developed a website with a slightly different design and logo. The authors have been claiming that they are developing a legitimate fork of the Electrum project, and that they are trying to improve user experience. The owners of "electrum dot com" went as far as to claim that they are "currently
asciilifeform: ( ftr asciilifeform suspects that 'debianized' primes are sometimes emplace by ~current-day~ proggies; the debianization is 'deniable cover' of the exact kind usg luvvvs like delish candy )
asciilifeform: ( i still have nfi, fwiw, who/where linked to it, to which heathens, possibly from mircea_popescu's logs later we will know some of it )☟︎
asciilifeform: hm i misremembered, the most famous incident, in kramatorsk ('80s) involved a cs-137 brick.
asciilifeform: not as if the idjit who dropped it into the cement, had to pay
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: aaa the radar thing. funny story with these, the old-world version of this was the gamma-radiograph. in su they used them to evaluate cured cement prior to finishing a block of flat. aaand sometimes they'd forget the sr-90 brick inside the wall, and roast several generations of tenants☟︎
asciilifeform: always it is the ersatz, instead, with the charcoal filter (that gives out in coupla months)
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: believe or not, none of the places i've ever lived in, had a 'honest' kitchen exhaust (i.e. with actual pipe to the outside world)
asciilifeform: what does such a thing do ? or is this the mechanized dowsing rod thing
asciilifeform: the one where 'boeck confirms, not true!' etc
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: re bank cards : it gets funnier : in usa, many folx dun actually qualify to ~borrow~ moneys, and their cards are imitations, they have to pre-fill'em at specially designated places, in exchange for ordinary money; and it actually ~costs~ something, on top of the fill
asciilifeform: cubicle hells still cement, for nao, but i already spotted a few new constructions with gypsum outer walls
asciilifeform: errywhere they turn into 'space for lease' (never gets filled, as prices are deliberately kept at lunar heights to keep rent up for remaining tenants)
asciilifeform: physical shops selling nonperishables , are visibly dying off, nuked by lulazon☟︎
asciilifeform: ( and this is speaking merely of asciilifeform's locale )
asciilifeform: was palpably different place, 15y ago.
asciilifeform: ( and if you are certain places, like petrol station, you will stand for 20+min in a queue which cc users never see )
asciilifeform: in us it is worse : cachiers are often met with who cannot count, and if you pay with money, you will wait
asciilifeform: funnily enuff i got stuck behind one of these in a little shop in BingoBoingostan : the lulz was in that the modem in the register was slow enuff that cc folx were ~slower~ than ones paying with ordinary money
asciilifeform: ( witness the neverending supply of lost souls who still demand 'pgptron built into email reader' or even automatic signing of this or that )
asciilifeform: certain chores repeatedly invite disastrous attempts at mechanization.
asciilifeform: this is quite related to the 'subkeys' thread also.
asciilifeform: some things are not mechanizable, and whoever tries -- will pay the price.
