Seriously this is nuts.
Nearly every phone and computer on Earth relies on one plain-text file to know what time it is.
When a country changes its clocks with a few weeks’ notice, or Morocco pauses daylight saving for Ramadan, someone has to update that file. Since 02005, that someone has been Paul Eggert, a computer science professor at UCLA, who does it as a volunteer.
Take a look at this great data visualization to see the full story:
na2.hubs.ly/H08qtQC0
This site is incredible.
One of my favourite Harry Potter loopholes doesn't even involve magic. It involves exploiting the Muggle economy.
Hagrid tells us there are 17 Sickles to a Galleon. Sickles are silver, Galleons are gold. Simple enough.
Except gold and silver don't have a fixed exchange rate in the Muggle world. Their market value fluctuates constantly. Before 1900, the gold-to-silver ratio averaged around 16:1, which is pretty close to the wizarding world's 17:1 rate. Throughout much of the twentieth century, however, it averaged around 45:1.
See where this is going?
Wait until the market heavily favours gold. Melt your Galleons down and sell the gold in the Muggle world. Use the money to buy as much silver as possible, then take that silver to Gringotts and have it converted into Sickles.
Finally, exchange those Sickles for Galleons at the fixed 17:1 rate.
Congratulations. You've potentially turned a small pile of wizarding gold into a much larger pile of wizarding gold, simply by exploiting the difference between Muggle market prices and Gringotts' fixed exchange rate.
No Dark Arts. No Horcruxes. No elaborate schemes.
Just precious metals, a fixed exchange rate and a wizard who understands arbitrage.
The real question is why nobody in the wizarding world seems to have built an entire financial empire around this.
wcpines retweeted
if you're living in california, it's very important that you vote against the state's abolition of private property this november. excerpt from our california voter guide for people who aren't insane:
Prop 40 // One-Time Wealth Tax for State-Funded Healthcare, Education, and Food Assistance Programs Initiative
No. Well, it’s time to talk about the “wealth tax.” Look, we’re not going to mince words here, if this thing passes it will be the end of our state. The “wealth tax” is our AI apocalypse. This is our Doom.
We’ve been writing about this thing for a year now. A very, very, very long story short: the state’s largest healthcare union wants to launch a new kind of tax, which we have never before seen in the history of this country, which would assess the total net worth of all billionaires in the state, and then seize five percent.
This is not an income tax. This is not a tax on an opt-in purchase of a finite resource (land) used to service that purchase with public resources. This is an inescapable, unavoidable seizing of property unlike anything we have ever seen.
Vote no. Vote no as if your life depended on it. This is not a simple matter of disagreement. If you meet someone in the real world supporting this, they are a bad person. Please tell them.
wcpines retweeted
An Official Guide to California Ballot Props That Aren’t Literally Insane, From Your Beloved Team at Pirate Wires
See our explanations threaded below 👇
This pretty neatly encapsulates our political milieu at the moment. It appears that to a great many people the notion of tradition, authority, hierarchy, order, and virtually any mores or customs before 1960 are anathema.
She should read Churchill
archive.org/details/WinstonC…
I assume all UFO talk is an op and a distraction from things that actually matter. I'm as into conspiracies as probably anyone (Tower 7 didn't kill itself etc) but this stuff doesn't matter. Junkies OD'ing on drugs funded by my tax dollars, wars of choice, etc.
Speaking of things that matter: if you're in CA, prop 39 is a yes.
Such trials are never held, of course. On this topic or many like it. Which might tell you something. Though we do do get hearings and commissions etc of dubious value. And matters of "NatSec" play into a lot of them. And information is withheld all the time. I'm a little baffled by your innocence about our history over, well, the last few decades.
wcpines retweeted
I'll bite. No, they don't. And saying they have "a right" to something is nothing more than rhetorical sleight of hand to justify a bald normative declaration without giving actual reasons. "I have a right to X" just means "I really want X" in virtually all modern usage.
Rights claims imply correlative duties. It means the law ought to compel someone to give away his private property to someone else so that they might live comfortably in one of the most desirable and expensive places in the world. Insane.
I'd rather stop paying for infinity handouts to people who arrived yesterday with a crackpipe in their pocket and instead see laws passed and enforced which protect and encourage productive people to stay in the cities.
wcpines retweeted
As I’ve argued more and more with these kinds of people and seen how they view the world, it’s not so much that the constitution and the founders were even good people or good government. They’re viewed in many respects in a similar way in which biblical history is seen, they apply the same lens.
The founders are seen as similar to how Christians see the Patriarchs, and what they made as being the old covenant. It’s this older, primordial thing that was put in place that is good, but also flawed by human nature and their own sinful desires bleeding in, with things like slavery or racial laws or not having women’s rights, and other things of this but was a shadow of things to come and the fullness of what was to be.
Lincoln is sort of like King David, and his Republican Party the kingdom of Israel more or less, but even after that it’s still not the total fulfillment. No, that you don’t get until World War II, where Hitler, who is Satan, is defeated and the Holocaust is something of a Christ to them.
Then you get bill Buckley and Reagan, and both of these are sort of like Paul who codifies much more of it and continues the teachings, spreading the gospel of colorblind free market meritocracy and liberal democracy. They see America in the exact same way they see the kingdom of Christ. Open to absolutely everyone so long as you subscribe to the same faith.
That’s more or less how they see the world, and where you and I fit in, who are patriots but who do not like many of these things, we are like Judaizers or Jews to them, saying that either it’s only open to a particular people still or that they must at least carry on the old things, and their reaction is similar to if you went into your local church, and told them that animal sacrifice is a good thing and we need to bring it back.
With those they interact with who are against America or American traditions and principles entirely, these are like heathens to them. It’s why they call them the pagan right.
They cannot hold two things in their mind at one time, and understand that your religion and your nation are under separate principles and operate differently than one another, and they treat their view of nations as dogmatic as they would religion and hold faith in the political system the same way they would God.
It explains absolutely everything when you understand this.
wcpines retweeted
China Airlines office right across from Raytheon in El Segundo, not enough are saying
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
China Airlines is is the state-owned flag carrier of the Republic of China (Taiwan).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Air…
Clearly there is some sort of game theoretical defection strategy here, where the more immigrants they usher in, the more they harvest votes and stay in power. They just promise voters more stuff. Tale as old as time (er, well, maybe like 1913?)
But here's what I don't understand. There has to be a tipping point, right? Look at LA. It's getting steadily worse. You have the homeless NGO/Immigration/Public union(s) power structure, which is nothing but an engine of enshitification but which also prints D ballots, but then at some point this strategy makes the place *too* shitty right?
If one is moderately rich and powerful (not like..Larry Ellison buying islands of Hawaii rich and powerful), what good is it to control LA if it sucks?
Maybe you have an ocean view reservation EVERY Friday at Élephante, your name on it, first name basis, top shelf everything. But then the homeless shelter you put nextdoor closes the place down because they can't control the rats.
You buy a beautiful mansion in the Hollywood Hills. How long until some meth'd out psycho touches off a fire that you can't control because you gutted the fire budget, did 0 forestry management, and you refuse to put drug zombies in jails or treatment centers.
What is the *point* of it all. You got elected, great. Now what? Eventually the things and places that make being rich and powerful worth it will be a favela or always require private security and the specter of theft or violence will stalk the land.
Can we try something else?
We don't owe the world unrestricted access to our country.
We owe it to ourselves to make our country strong, which is something careful selective immigration can help us accomplish.
But the last thing we need are more people like El-Sayed who think it is the highest duty of a nation with already-strained resources to become a dumpster for the billions of people who inhabit the failed societies of the world.
wcpines retweeted
It’s obvious that this is a fair and legitimate complaint. Pay attention to how opponents of that view try to associate it with mistreatment of individuals, a cynical non sequitur designed to make normal people seem hateful.
At my red state hometown fair, and the people here are at least 60% nonwhite. It was not like this even 15 years ago. The pace of change is extreme. Foreign languages, foreign accents when they do speak English, foreign styles, foreign norms.
I don’t hate these people. Lots of happy families etc. But I feel as at home as I did in Taipei. I enjoyed visiting Taipei. I enjoy travel generally. But the premise of travel is that you eventually come home. My home is gone. I’m an eternal traveler now. My home doesn’t exist. This makes me profoundly sad. And angry.