Shitstorm Saturday:
The Kraken Unleashed!!

What a spectacle!

It’s Thursday evening in Colorado, Friday morning on the East Coast (you know, the place where the people think we’re just their frigging backyard live). So as I write this, I have no idea what happened on Friday. Hopefully the Kraken left some footprints around with tiny little squashed swamp dwellers in the bottom.

(Well, now the Kraken can get crackin’.)

So the hottest news in the last couple of weeks was the press conference, mainly by Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell, with a bit of YSM bashing by Jenna Ellis.

They mostly stated they had evidence, without actually showing it (which is entirely proper); though Giuliani read some affidavits from some brave people. So there is evidence. There is absolutely evidence.

And yet the YSM simply continues to assert there is none, and even Fox has shown itself to be controlled opposition, now.

Giuliani, and Powell, and Ellis all took those YSM ratfuckers to the woodshed.

There are tens of millions of people who will believe them, because they have seen nothing else.

They’re not evil, just ignorant.

I am reminded of some of the stories I heard about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, everyone in the USSR knew the media bullshitted them a lot. They’d read Pravda (Правда) back to front to glean real information. For instance, once there was a time when an airliner had crashed while taking a bunch of Communist Party mucky-mucks home from a Party Congress. The crash was never announced (socialist planes never crashed, you see), but the obituaries in the back, suddenly a hundred prominent people, gave it away. Now the point isn’t that Soviet airliners crashed. The point is that the people over there were so used to their media bullshitting them they had developed tricks to counteract it. They also had a joke, that there is no truth in Izvestia, and no news in Pravda. Izvestia, of course, is the Russian word for News, and Pravda is the Russian word for Truth.

So they thought they had a handle on the bullshit, because they could see the over-the-top propaganda (that we once-upon-a-time would satirize).

But the far more subtle propaganda was beneath their notice. They had been taught, every day in school and every day as an adult, about how the United States was evil, poorer than they were, and everything they saw supported that. So they didn’t question it. They’d question specific news items, but they didn’t question the things that everyone knows.

Just like tens of millions of Americans don’t question what the news feeds them every night. Trump has been portrayed as a pompous buffoon, an asshole who never admits defeat, and won’t admit he lost this election. And he has been portrayed, over the last five or six years, as having those personality traits. It would never occur to these people to question it. Because everyone knows Trump is a reality TV buffoon!

So going back to the ex-Soviets. What was their response when they realized just how deep and pervasive the lying was?

Absolute fury and outrage.

What will our YSM Bubble People’s reaction be?

Keep in mind that the YSM Bubble People don’t even have the sense that the jurinalists lie to them at all. They’re not like Soviet citizens, aware of lying but not comprehending how much and about absolutely everything. They are completely ignorant of the lies.

If and when they finally see the truth, be prepared for some very serious “I’ve been betrayed” outrage. Many of us will be tempted to laugh, but I would venture to say that would be the wrong reaction ninety percent of the time (the other ten percent of the time would be those specific people we have tried, unsuccessfully, to redpill).

Of course some small number of them are truly dedicated ideologically to Leftism, and will be OK with the lying since it was “necessary.” I’m not talking about them; I’m talking about the people who would be on our side if only they had any real knowledge of the world.

We don’t know when, or even if, the YSM’s grip will ever be broken. I just know these next couple of months are one of the most likely times for it to happen. And when it does, a lot of good people are going to need comfort and reassurance. Be prepared.

But by all means piss on the dedicated Leftists when THEY are outraged because their sheeple are furious with them. If you can arrange to pee red fuming nitric acid, so much the better.

Justice Must Be done.

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

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical 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. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

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

The Mandatory Coin

I’m going to step back a bit from coins.

The United States issued Continental Currency during the Revolutionary War, and issued some interest bearing notes during the War of 1812. But for the most part, we avoided government issued paper money until the Civil War.

Private banks could and did issue paper money, backed by their own financial soundness. You could, if you had a bank note from Mulligan’s Bank and Grill (h/t L. Neil Smith, who loathes the concept of paper money and not without a lot of justice), you could walk into that establishment and exchange it for silver and gold. As long as not too many people decided to do this the system worked; people confident in being able to exchange the banknote for real money at any time were happy to use the notes. Yes, there were more notes out there than there was real money at the bank; what backed the notes was the value of the assets of the bank; i.e., the loans the bank had made (money owed you is an asset, though getting your hands on it Right Now is problematic).

Of course, the further away you got from Mulligan’s Bank and Grill, the fewer people would accept the note, since they didn’t know the bank and they were too far away to just casually cash the note in. Or they’d take it at a discount, charging you eleven Mulligan bucks for a $10 item. Worse, if Mulligan went belly up, people far away from it might not know it. And if people had never heard of the bank before, who was to say it was till in business.

And even worse, there was no standardization of designs. The banknote you were being presented might not even be genuine, or it might have been raised (altered to show a higher denomination). If you are presented a ten dollar bill with a train vignette on it from Mulligan’s Bank and Grill, how likely are you to remember that Mulligan’s put the train on their one dollar bills, but not their tens?

A lot of the headaches can be alleviated with standardized designs and clearing houses that know the notes from far away and will accept them at par (providing the bank is in fact solvent).

This is one of the things the Federal Government started doing in 1862, when paper money was created, and this time it was here to stay. “National Bank Notes” were of standardized design with only the name and charter number of the bank differing, they were printed by the Federal Government, and their issuance was strictly regulated. The Federal government also issued demand notes, backed by nothing but a promise to eventually redeem them (which they eventually did do), and a host of other things.

[Of course, there are people who collect paper money. It tends, in general, to be far, far rarer than coins, because a piece of paper would wear out quickly. Large denominations ($50 and up) from the 1800s tend to be extremely rare, with deep-into-five figure pricetags the rule rather than the exception, with, in some cases, no known survivors and pictures you see in catalogs are off of specimen notes. In many cases, because the government tracked them when they were redeemed, we have upper limits on the number of notes that still exist (i.e., we know how many were never turned in), and in many cases even for fairly “common” stuff there are only a few hundred out there.]

Before I continue, I should mention something you may not know. Before 1928, US paper money was of a larger size than it is today. In fact, it was the same size as those old “computer cards” (or Hollerith Cards). Or rather, the other way around; the cards were the same size as the paper money. When Hollerith invented his cards, he made them the same size as the paper money, so the same machinery that banks used to handle the notes could be adapted to handle his cards. No dummy, he!

Another thing they began to do, in 1878, was issue silver certificates. (There were also gold certificates, identifiable by bright orange/yellow (not green) print on the back.)

Each silver certificate was essentially a receipt for silver dollars deposited in the US treasury. As such they were 100% backed by real money, unlike a bank note, that was backed by loans on the books of the bank. (Of course, by 1878 the price of silver had fallen so far that a silver dollar itself wasn’t worth a dollar intrinsically, but those, in turn, were backed by gold, which was itself by definition equivalent to dollars at a certain ratio.)

In 1878 and 1880, two different series of silver certificates were issued, of very similar design (denominations 10, 20, 50, 100, and $500). Another, quite different issue came out in 1886 (1, 2, 5, 10 and $20). This one is famous for actually showing five silver dollars on the reverse of the five dollar note.

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wtAbM3KKmZE/U9qnX_mcwBI/AAAAAAAABDY/iFxKulzqtHY/s1600/1886+$5+Silver+Certificate+Silver+Dollar+Back+Note.JPG

There yet another series in 1891 with the same fronts as 1886 where possible (in 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and $1000), and then there was another series in 1896.

This series was only issued in $1, $2 and $5 notes. And it is famous. They are called the “Educational” notes. They have the most magnificent artwork ever to appear on US paper money. And this is our destination tonight.

The notes’ artwork actually has names. This one is “History Instructing Youth.” The woman is a personification of history, and under her foot you can see the name of the work of art.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hj5G8vvEEeQ/U9qfvdRvt3I/AAAAAAAABBk/hvfJNbI-qKc/s1600/1896+$1+Silver+Certificate+Educational.JPG

This note should endear itself to us all. It’s loaded with detail. In the background the capitol, and the then-newly-constructed Washington Monument. There is a fasces, this was about forty years before the Fascists stole the symbol and tarnished it forever. The names in the wreaths are politicians, generals, and writers, and a couple of inventors.

It’s worth right clicking and opening the picture in its own window. But in case you can’t, from lower left clockwise, they are: Longfellow, Sherman, Lincoln, Irving, Cooper. Fulton, Calhoun, Clay, Jacksonson, Adams. Jefferson, Washington, Franklin. Hamilton, Webster, Marshall, Perry, Morse. Hawthorne, Bancroft, Grant. Farragut and Emerson. A veritable who’s who of American history up to that time.

And, just to top all of that, what is History pointing to? That open book. What’s in the book? It’s the preamble and part of the first article of the United States Constitution. And–I’ve seen this with my own eyes–it is perfectly legible under a magnifying glass! How about that, a note that puts it in your face that the US Constitution was written by people who had studied history and learned many lessons from it. Which they did, so any Leftist lurker reading this wanting to argue about those men can just fuck right the hell off.

The back of the note is a pair of portraits of Martha and George Washington, not terribly interesting (usually the backs of those old notes are more interesting than the fronts, but not in this case).

The $1 is much more affordable than the $2 and the $5, you should have no trouble finding a presentable specimen for well under a thousand bucks.

[And one good thing about paper money is that the grade is mostly applied to the condition of the paper. Having been folded once is a huge penalty, for instance. But the artwork doesn’t become seriously impaired until you go all the way down to very fine or maybe even fine (12-35 on a scale of 70). You can pay BIG money for the nosebleed grades, but the design won’t look all that much better. Just avoid paper that has turned dark. Since a large part of my motivation to own coins and paper is to be able to see the designs, that means I typically collect uncirculated coins–the design is the first thing to go on a coin–but I will happily take unstained circulated notes with no significant damage to the artwork.]

OK, so here is the $2 1896 “Educational” Silver Certificate.

https://dygtyjqp7pi0m.cloudfront.net/i/31456/27192631_1.jpg

This one isn’t as rich in little details as the $1 note, but the message is nonetheless profound. (OK, we’re here because of politics, and this is not politics. The $1 is cooler. I understand.) It is probably about ten times rarer. It’s not hard to find the $1 at a coin show; you’ll have to walk a lot more to find a $2.

A century earlier, the Industrial Revolution was just getting underway. There were people alive in 1896 who remembered what it was like not to have railroads. And scientists and engineers had tamed steam power, making it possible to cross the continent in days, and ship goods worldwide in a timely fashion. Just a few decades earlier, in 1861, they had “cracked” electricity, learning how to turn motion into electricity (generators) and electricity into motion (motors). The effects of steam power had already proven to be profound; electricity had made communications almost instantaneous and since 1878, was expected to light the nights as never before. But electricity was just getting started; think of the profound effects computers have had on the world in the last 30 years–all dependent on electricity.

The reverse is portraits of Fulton and Morse, indeed two inventors who worked with steam and electricity. And the two who were named on the $1 note.

http://www.antiquemoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/1896-2-silver-certificate-extremely-fine.jpg

So finally on to the $5 note.

http://www.usrarecurrency.com/WebPgFl/25566562/1896$5SilverCertificateSn25566562.jpg

Being able to flip a switch and have light. A commonplace thing today. The dawn of a new age, then!

Light before that day involved outright open flame (candles, gas) or flame that was just barely protected, or rather, flame you were just barely protected from. Who can ever know how many disastrous fires were started by lanterns? Electricity was safe and cheap…and brighter. No more going blind trying to read and write at night!

Yes, electricity again.

I mentioned that scientists and engineers had “cracked” electricity in 1861-2. I’m referring of course to Maxwell who wrote equations relating electricity to magnetism, showing how magnetism could be used to create electricity, and vice versa. And then it turned out that light…plain old light…was actually an electromagnetic wave!

And chemistry turned out to be electrical interactions between atoms. Gravity doesn’t hold molecules together; it’s ridiculously weak for that task. Electrical forces do.

Those equations of Maxwell essentially govern everything that happens in your life, other than gravity. And unless you took a lot of math in college you will have no idea what they could possibly mean (I on the other hand took nine credit hours in college playing with them).

(I’m not sure why Wordpus did that to me). By the way the bold face is significant, and the fact that some things aren’t in bold face is significant, too. Oh and the X signs and dots don’t mean the same thing like you might think if you stopped after algebra.

Add to those equations a fifth one, Newton’s law of gravitation (much easier to understand), and you’ve got a handle on everything visible that happens in the universe. Except for the minor detail that these formulae don’t explain the existence of atoms other than hydrogen, and because they don’t explain that, they can’t explain why the stars shine.

In any case, I think those four equations should have shown up somewhere on that $5 bill.

So what happened? The hope was the elaborate artwork would deter counterfeiting. It actually had the opposite effect. People couldn’t drink in all that detail, so when counterfeiters didn’t supply it, few noticed. And bank tellers complained that the bills were so busy it would take an extra split second to identify the denomination, so they were hard to count.

One site claims Mrs. Grundy complained about all the scantily clad figures and that’s why the series was killed off after only a couple of years.

A $10 was in the works, but never actually issued. Apparently this is a picture of a specimen deliberately printed in the wrong color. I know nothing about it, other than its name is “Agriculture and Forestry” (along the bottom center of the design).

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QRSJrkJZ4vk/VH8T9AcMgpI/AAAAAAAAEvg/tYpfIrehcRw/s1600/10%2BDollar%2BSilver%2BCertificate%2BEducational%2BSeries%2B1896.jpg

Standard Disclaimer: These are not my notes. In this particular case, though, I will admit to owning examples of all three of the notes that were issued.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

Just two more things, my standard Public Service Announcements. We don’t want to forget them!!!

How Not To Find Yourself In Contention For The Darwin Award
(Nothing to do with bearded dragons)

It has been pointed out that all of the rioting is nominally on account of criminals who resisted arrest in one form or another, and someone suggested schools ought to teach people not to resist arrest.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8%3F

Granted an “ass kicking” isn’t the same as being shot, but both can result from the same stupid act. You may ultimately beat the rap, but you aren’t going to avoid the ride.

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Important Reminder

To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!

Remember Hong Kong!!!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L3tnH4FGbd0%3F

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