Back in 1933 the US was on the gold standard. If the government wanted to print the money they had to have the gold to back it up so that it would be convertible to gold on request. If the economy grows but the money supply doesn’t then the existing money becomes more valuable which is deflation.

Deflation sounds great - the money you already have can buy more! - but it can lead to a ton of economic problems. For example, if your money is becoming more valuable without you even doing anything, a temptation is to just do the equivalent of stuffing it under a mattress and to try to put off buying anything for as long as possible since the longer you can wait before buying anything, the more you can afford. That causes business to dry up because people are buying goods and services less frequently. So business revenues go down. Businesses with lost revenues have strong incentives to downsize by cutting their existing employment or reducing their wages. Those employees who are fired or with cut pay can’t spend as much which further reduces revenues. So that deflationary cycle keeps repeating and worsening the problem. In addition, consider loans and investment. Existing loans become more burdensome because they’re also worth more each day, so a lot of people will be defaulting because they didn’t expect the loan to be expensive. Those who lent the money can strike it rich if lucky or be ruined if unlucky so higher risk lending is disfavored in favor of low risk stuff like government bonds, similarly investments aren’t doing so great because so many companies are having worsening revenues so investing looks like setting money on fire and is less popular. No loans and no investment makes it extremely difficult to start or improve a business if you don’t already have money which means not many new startups are coming in to replace the folks downsizing or shutting down or come up with a new idea of doing things.

So a lot of government efforts were put at the time in trying to beat deflation. The one this guy fell afoul of was that Roosevelt had by executive order suspended the convertibility of the dollar to gold and demanded that people with amounts considered in excess to take that excess to the government and be compensated for it for a defined exchange to paper money. That would get the government enough gold to make enough new currency so that it could pay for the many ambitious projects and programs Roosevelt envisioned to get the massive number of unemployed people back to work and making money so that they would buy goods and services and break the deflationary cycle. This guy however did not exchange his gold and had 160 kg of gold in a deposit that he was trying to reclaim (then valued at ~$100000 which is what we would now consider millionaire tier money), so he ran afoul of that restriction against hoarding. But if he had converted the gold to dollars earlier they would not have confiscated it. There’s no particular reason for the government to go around confiscating our accounts because there’s no gold in them, even if it were the dollar is no longer tethered in any way to gold, and even if that were the case we aren’t experiencing a deflation cycle that the government wants to create more money to break itself out of.

Imported types (ex. from the German states) for printing presses didn’t have it because it was an English only letter. Rather than coming up with expensive home modification (which some did anyway eventually but not en masse) there were easy alternatives because use of th was already established and also the letter y kind of looked like thorn in the fonts of the time so you could also sub that in.

Convenience of just doing a workaround rather than paying more money for a more English type modification won out and with so many using th and the thorn disappearing soon the use of the y that looked like thorn dropped out also.

If you zero out their balance but there’s no transaction, that doesn’t match up and will easily be reverted. If you make a fake transaction that is also easy to dispute and revert. Most digital things have backups or histories where you can compare and clearly see if some funny business occurred. That’s why most scams involve social engineering to convince the target to willingly transfer money in some method that can’t be easily reverted rather than editing databases.

Funnily you very rarely see the Sacagawea dollar coins in circulation the US (albeit more than the $2 billion) but we ship a massive number of those dollar coins overseas to Ecuador which officially uses USD. Incredibly common since many expenses there are in the couple dollars sort of range and you barely see $1 bills at all since many people refuse to accept worn-out bills.

I dunno for tomatoes specifically because I don’t grow them but there are other considerations at play than growing zone. Plants have wildly different needs for light, moisture, how well the soil drains, soil pH and more. For example blueberries need acidic leaning soil and will die if their soil is too basic since they can’t get nutrients or their soil gets too waterlogged they are attacked by fungus because they’re adapted to well-draining acidic soils. Some plants need fertilization to continue thriving but carnivorous pitcher plants will get burned by the excess nitrogen and will also fare terribly in non-moist soil. I’d assume that, since NM has very hot and dry weather and basic soils, at least one or more of those trips up tomatoes.

I went to a country on the equator that cracked the code. Live at the equator but on a bigass mountain many thousands of feet in the air and you’ll get the consistent days and weather but at a temperature that won’t roast puny AC adapted people alive 😭🧠

I was dreading summer this year in SC since the scorching spring just canceled the rain for weeks on end and launched us into extreme drought, one of the worst since they started making records. So I expected surely summer would twist the knife and crispify everything even worse. Then surprisingly summer turned around and has unusually had almost too regular deep bouts of moderating rain and thunderstorms that pulled us back to only abnormally dry for the year so far and kept things from getting too hot (though the humidity has miserable, like stepping out into a mouth). I thought spring was supposed to be the rainy season here… still, even with a lush green summer saving us I think it was still not great for a lot of the native insects and the less drought tolerant native plants. One of my blueberry plants and the maypop seedlings I had going up and died even with some supplemental watering and the previously numerous bees mostly vanished when their numbers dropped off a cliff. That left little competition when paper wasps hatched and proliferated after the worst was over and I’m a lot more leery of those territorial guys and the aggressive yellowjackets than the cute bumblebees due to my phobia. 😔

We had road rage before we had cars, never mind seatbelts.

On 28 November last, a lawyer and a solicitor were travelling to Meudon on business. They had passed the barrier and were driving along the river on the Pont de Grenelle side, when they noticed that the driver of a bourgeois carriage in front of theirs was amusing himself by cutting them off, sometimes throwing himself to the right, sometimes to the left, forcing them onto the verges, which were nothing but a pool of mud, galloping to be in front of them as soon as they tried to get back on the pavement and then pretending to walk at a step. This merry-go-round had been going on for twenty minutes when the impatient lawyer got out and asked the coachman what the meaning of such behaviour was. To explain the situation, the coachman struck him with a whip, which almost threw him under the horses’ feet. At this sight, not only did the lawyer’s travelling companion rush to his assistance, but a gentleman who was with three ladies in the other carriage, not bothering to open the door, passed through the window to get there more quickly. The three of them had the greatest difficulty in subduing the furious coachman, who even hit them, or tried to hit them, several times with his fists. The police were called, he was taken to prison and his carriage was impounded. At the hearing, it was impossible to make Gaumont understand all the rudeness and brutality of his behaviour. He just replied to all the comments made to him: ‘Let them bring in the other coachman; I had no animosity towards him, I didn’t know him’. The Court sentenced him to one month’s imprisonment and a fine of 25 francs.

Barthélemy G., an irascible coachman, drives a Compagnie Feuillerat omnibus on the line from Boulevard Périer to the Jardin Zoologique. Yesterday afternoon, the omnibus driven by Barthélemy G. was late. It was joined by an omnibus of the Compagnie Nouvelle, which was about to pass in front of it, when Barthélémy G. suddenly jumped from his seat and climbed onto the platform of the rival omnibus. He rushed at the driver of this omnibus, Mr Maurice Liard, and bit him cruelly on the nose. He then stabbed him twice in the face. In his fury, G. was about to commit a more serious act, when a ticket inspector intervened in the nick of time and put an end to this painful scene, with the help of a few passengers. Barthélemy G. was taken before Mr Dive, police commissioner for the 4th arrondissement, who detained him at the disposal of the public prosecutor.

Today, in front of the Jardin des Plantes, two coaches coming in opposite directions were passing each other, leaving a fairly narrow gap between them. At that moment, a coach travelling at high speed came between the first two. One of them broke a wheel. The driver who had caused the accident continued his journey without responding to the complaints of the injured party. Shortly afterwards, however, the driver was forced to drive past the overturned carriage. The person whose carriage he had broken threw himself on the horse’s bridle to get the name of the person responsible for the accident. The coachman, we are told, whipped the face of the person he had already harmed. Several people were attracted by this regrettable scene. But the gathering that it had caused soon dispersed.

On the pavements of Paris, coaches for hire are in a constant state of hostility towards omnibuses. This often results in brawls, the seriousness of which has made it essential for the authorities to intervene. Yesterday, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, an omnibus belonging to the administration of the Constantines, and driven by the coachman Gilbert, was passing along rue Coquenard. A cabriolet for hire, driven by the coachman Millon, tried to get ahead of the omnibus; at first it encountered some difficulty, which aroused his anger. As it passed the omnibus, he insulted the Constantines coachman, calling him the coachman of the paupers’ cart. Whiplashes were even exchanged between the two drivers. Millon, in order to strike more easily, got out of his carriage and struck Gilbert twice. The latter tried to get out of his seat to defend himself, but got tangled up in his reins and fell heavily to the pavement. He would inevitably have been crushed by his carriage had not a passer-by managed to stop them by running out in front of them. Millon was arrested and taken to the local police commissioner.

A guy in Camden shot and killed 13 in 1949 before surrendering after he ran out of ammo. In 1891 a guy fired a shotgun into a crowded Liberty, MS schoolhouse and injured 14. These kinds of crimes were out there in the world before you were young. More difficult to road rage if you and those near you don’t have the means to afford a carriage and crowd the roads.

People die when collided from behind by some drunk going crazy fast, get T-boned by someone going through lights that they ought not to have, etc. and it’s much easier to die from those kinds of accidents if you aren’t secured and will rattle around inside like a ping pong ball or get launched out of a window. My literal job is in large part considering things that could go wrong for certain processes and establishing safe countermeasures against those.

I’m not stroking out in fear wearing a seatbelt? It’s a regular thing I do every time with zero downside.

On the days I got hit I can definitely say I didn’t wake up planning to be hit, I drive like a grandma but just because you’re stopped at a light doesn’t mean the person behind you will care.

In 1971 there were 1.4x the road deaths as in 2025 despite having the country only having 60% of the 2025 population. I wouldn’t say you have zero control over whether or not you get into an accident but very surprising things can happen suddenly and give you very little time to react. In that situation I’d want to focus on safely maneuvering the car and not be distracted with panic buckling with my life on the line.

First game of real golf I ever played I got a hole-in-one… on the wrong hole. The course wrapped back around next to itself, so when I shot wildly off course it just so happened to land in one of the later holes which was actually immediately adjacent. Still felt nice since everything else I was doing was way over par.

Clay swells when wet and shrinks when dry, the latter can open up deep fissures in it that act as channels for unfiltered water to flow down deeper than you may expect, leaving aside tectonic activity or other reasons that could cause such penetrations in the ground. The native plants also have impressively deep root systems that can provide similar gaps, and you may never know if it was there or not if the clay got wet again and sealed up the voids along with any presents washed down and absorbed into the clay matrix. It puts a lot of faith in Bo Taylor to break his back digging way way deep beyond the reaches of this above plus the necessary amount for scrubbing whatever waste may have gotten down that far… I agree it’s not especialy likely as far as bacterial infection alone, I just protest at the absolutely no risk formulation. There’s a reason bags of this stuff are sold as ‘novelty items’ rather than going through FDA approval.

How would you know that no animal had ever crapped over the clay deposit and had rain drift in durable, long-lasting bacterial spores from the waste whiøe the rain was on its way through the clay to join the groundwater? That a burrowing critter didn’t die just upstream in the ground of where you’re digging? It’s not terribly likely that those would get you sick maybe but ‘absolutely no risk’ is a high bar to clear.

Also there can be other sorts of non-obvious contamination like if there are trace amounts of heavy metals. Kaopectate got sued by California because the clay contained in their popular anti-diarrhea pills had traces of lead, such that the adult version pills would have fifty micrograms of lead a pop or six to twelve micrograms for children. For reference California currently mandates a warning slapped on if a product exposes you to half a microgram of lead per day. It’s difficult to know the provenance and full risks of stuff dug from a hole for a regular person. Even trained people with a lot on the line sometimes screw up and get people hurt.