2020·08·01 KMAG Daily Thread

Saturday Again!

I keep hoping to be able to describe the day as “Shitstorm Saturday” but it hasn’t quite happened yet.

Which saves me from the dilemma of trying to decide whether I should call it a “fecal tornado” to be more polite.

Edit to add: Colorado Statehood Day

Just realized today is Colorado’s Statehood Day. August first 1876, we became the 38th state. And Old Glory had 38 stars on it for the next thirteen years (nearly a record at the time, though the interval between Missouri and Arkansas being admitted with 16 years, and we stuck with the 15 star flag for a lot longer than we should have–long enough for it to be “the flag [that] was still there”). And we picked up one of our nicknames, “Centennial State.”

So we’ve now been giving 144 years of service to Californians and Texans as a place to go to when they realize their mistake. Though at least Texans usually go home after tourist season ends. Californians inflict their bad political choices on us.

A Reminder Of Today’s Issues.

Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People...Our campaign represents a true existential threat, like they’ve never seen before.

Then-Candidate Donald J. Trump

Needs to happen, soon.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

Please note that our menu has changed, please listen to all of the options.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Political correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. The gun is always loaded.
4a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
5. Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
6. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
7. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
8. Social Justice Warriors, ANTIFA pukes, BLM hypocrites, and other assorted varieties of Marxists can go copulate with themselves, or if insufficiently limber, may substitute a rusty wire brush suitable for cleaning the bore of a twelve or ten gauge.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Coin of The Day

I realized today that the dollar is five hundred years old this year.

We didn’t invent dollars, the Bohemians did. There was a major silver strike in the town of Joachimsthal in the early 1500s, and the only way, politically, to export that silver was to make it into big coins–about the size and weight of the silver dollar, and this became a joachimsthaler. This got shortened to thaler in due course, or even taler. (Pronounced like “taller” not “tailor” or “tailer,” that last being Slick Willie’s only possible interest in it.) The Dutch, who traded with the 13 colonies, especially during the French and Indian War (a/k/a the Seven Years War, which really was the first true world war with fighting on at least three continents), called coins this size daalers, and they had a lot of them, from trading with Spain. There the denomination was the eight reales, hence the piece of eight, and a reale we called a “bit” (so now the origin of the slang “two bits” for a quarter is clear).

Trying to find a good image of one of these coins is a bit of a challenge, and the best one I could find was tiny, so here goes:

Russia didn’t have large silver coins at the time. The ruble was a bookkeeping unit only, consisting of two hundred dengas, but there was an attempt in the 1650s to introduce a ruble coin. It was seriously underweight (weighed less than 200 dengas), so it didn’t go over too well, and the Russians were in any case trying to use an outdated (even then) technology to strike them.

I bring this up because those coins were known as yefimoks…because instead of dropping the first part of the word joachimsthaler, they dropped the last part, and Yefim is the Russian equivalent of Joachim (Jonathan). Russia went through many rounds of inflation in the 1700s, to the point where the proper weight of a ruble was now less than a thaler, not more, and they tried to introduce a “heavy ruble” to combat inflation, and also issued 1.4 and 1.5 ruble coins periodically, about the right weight to match a thaler.

The English “Crown” of five shillings was also considered roughly the same, in fact large silver coins about the weight of a dollar are often called crowns as a generic class by people who collect foreign coins–some even specialize in the size, collecting coins of that size (but very different denominations) from countries all over the world. (Pesos, rubles, crowns, thalers, dollars, yen, guilders, florins, five mark pieces…those large silver coins turned out to be pretty popular.) The man most famous for popularizing that line of collecting was named John S. Davenport.

Of course NONE of these units of money are worth what they used to be; the US Dollar has probably eroded less than the others, certainly less than the yen, ruble, and peso, but it has still eroded quite a bit.

But returning to Joachmisthal.

When the Curies were doing their investigations of the radioactivity present in uranium ore even after the uranium had been removed, they got their ore from a place called Jachymov, in Bohemia. Ultimately that line of research led to people discovering atomic fission, and thence to the Bomb. And when the Nazis tried to pursue their own version of the Manhattan Project, their source of uranium was Jachymov, which after all was in the Sudentenland, which they had seized in 1938.

What does that have to do with Joachimsthal? Jachymov is merely the Czech name (and thus the current best name) for the town once known as Joachimsthal.

So it turns out the Dollar and the Bomb both came from the same place.

Standard disclaimer: Neither these, nor any other coins I show here, are ones I own. In some cases I own a similar coin or coins, but by no means all or even most of them. [At least one place didn’t appreciate me linking to their images a couple of weeks ago. We’ll see how this one goes.]

Obligatory PSA/Reminder

Just one more thing, my standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!

Remember Hong Kong!!! And remember the tens of millions who died under the “Great Helmsman” Chairman Mao.

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

For my money the Great Helmsman is Hikaru Sulu (even if the actor is a dingbat).