The Thrill Of Giving

Hal doesn’t like it when people point out his idols have feet of clay, is all.
Uh huh . . . . noting, of course, just one more thing . . . Aside from, by the way, my not having any idols, what feet of clay?

Heh. Good stuff.
It does, I think, capture the flavour of academia’s Clown Quarter. From supposedly racist gardening programmes and racist flat-pack furniture to the evils of reading to your own children. Oh, and a report on litter inequality that demands something be done but doesn’t address, even once, how the litter actually gets there. And note that the academics concerned seemed unaccustomed to mockery or any kind of challenge.

Then they came for the Artists:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/destroying-neighborhood-15485.html

If “the revolution devours its own,” as the saying has it, then anti-gentrification activists in Boyle Heights, a heavily Latino district just east of downtown Los Angeles, have been feasting. They have greeted liberal artists and hipsters with racial taunts, vandalism, boycotts, and mask-wearing demonstrators.

Boyle Heights was originally a predominately Jewish neighborhood. Once the last of the old Jews died or moved away / were driven out, and their shops closed down, they changed the name of the main street in the area from Brooklyn Avenue to Cesar Chavez Boulevard. I recall recently the LA Times wringing their hands about vandalism in the old Jewish cemetery…

“I recall recently the LA Times wringing their hands about vandalism in the old Jewish cemetery…”
But rainbows are beautiful! Diversity makes us stronger! /sarcasm

the Moist von Lipwig books
My impression of Making Money was less that it was an indictment of the supposed flimflam and chicanery in a free market system of capital, nor an indictment of the irrationality of markets per se, but an acknowledgement that flimflim, chicanery, and irrationality are natural parts of the market and it’s better that they limit themselves, or that a savvy person can use them to achieve things without great force.
Of course, there is something of the same dichotomy as the Ankh-Morpork government. An internal conflict between minarchism/hand-off at the highest level and the *ability* to exercise absolute power as a tyrant, the minimal application of universal law vs. enabling excess in guilds as proxies for government power, and local legislation with its many foibles.
which is to say, I think many of the books take the form of an argument Terry’s having with himself, and sometimes he doesn’t appear to have come to a ready conclusion.

expertise in “social justice.”
Sounds like a job for our host.

Sounds like a job for our host.
What jolly times we’d have.

I take it adjustment of the blow/blow harder/stop dial was also such a perk, before it had to go to the shop?

. . . an acknowledgement that flimflim, chicanery, and irrationality are natural parts of the market and it’s better that they limit themselves, or that a savvy person can use them to achieve things without great force.
Absolutely . . . “It’s the only way to make progress..”
Pucci gets arrested, prolly joined by the rest of the Lavishes, in time . . . .
****************************************************
. . . . And I’ve taken a look inside them, too! Your father took the gold and sold it and forced him to hide it in the numbers! And that’s not the half of it!”
. . . .
“Oh, this is so silly,” said Pucci, strutting forward with a clatter of heels. “We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. It’s our gold, isn’t it? Who cares what he wrote down in his books?”
The phalanx of Lavish lawyers rose very cautiously to their feet, while the two employed by Pucci began to whisper urgently to her. She ignored them. Everyone was staring at her now, not her brother. Everyone was paying attention to her.
“Could you please be quiet, Miss Lavish?” said Moist. The stillness of the blade worried him. Some part of Cosmo was functioning very well indeed.
“Oh yes, I expect you just would like me to shut up, and I’m not going to!” said Pucci gleefully. Like Moist confronted by an open notebook, she triumphantly plunged on without a care: “We can’t steal what already belongs to us, can we? So what if Father put the wretched gold to better use? It was just sitting there! Honestly, why are you all so dense? Everybody does it. It’s not stealing. I mean, the gold still exists, yes? In rings and things. It’s not as though anyone’s going to throw it away. Who cares where it is?”
Moist resisted the impulse to look at the other bankers in the room. Everyone does it, eh? Pucci was not going to get many Hogswatch cards this year. And her brother was staring at her in horror. The rest of the clan, those who weren’t still engrossed in decustarding themselves, were contriving to give the impression that they had never seen Pucci before. Who is this mad woman? said their faces. Who let her in? What is she talking about?
. . . . .
Moist . . . went to grab a Times before they were all stolen.
It must have been another bittersweet day for the editor. After all, there can only be one front page. In the end he’d stuffed in everything—the “I do believe it is pineapple” line, with a picture showing the dripping Lavishes in the background and, oh yes, here was Pucci’s speech, in detail. It was wonderful. And she’d gone on and on. It was all perfectly clear, from her point of view: she was right and everyone was silly. She was so in love with her own voice that the watchmen had to write down their official caution on a piece of paper and hold it up in front of her before they towed her away, still talking…

Hal, how does one post an image? Does one do nothing more than post the URL of the image?
Also: Your two excerpts from “Making Money” were rather long.

how does one post an image?

As above, with the .jpg or .gif or .png inserted snugly between the quotation marks. Just make sure the image isn’t too big for the comments space here. Because then I have to start resizing things and it’s an enormous faff.

Thanks for some great reads (and some great threads). Tip jar has been hit.

“Just make sure the image isn’t too big for the comments space here.”
If the image is too large, one can use a simple editor to resize it.

A blog site with an adult vocabulary and attitude. I aspire to be worthy. Please post no pictures of the blogging thong.

A first attempt:

Personal growth. It’s a wonderful thing.

I’m not mocking. Well, not much. I’d been doing this for years before it even occurred to me that adding images to comments was a thing that could be done. In my defence, this thing didn’t come with a manual.

I didn’t think you were mocking, David. I liked your comment, and it inspired me to have a little more fun.
Are there any pickled eggs left in that jar behind the bar? The brine is rather cloudy.

“It adds an element of… intrigue.”
I was concerned that I might confuse it with the jar of eyeballs you keep for that raven that hangs around.

Played around with PostImage and it seems like a nice place to store stuff. Tentative “Thumbs Up.”
Though David, you may come to regret providing the HTML photo tutorial at some point when people start going OT to post photos of “Aunt Myrtle’s 89th Birthday Party.” Some knowledge is better kept to one’s self.

*ping*

This is one of my favourite blogs. Have a drink of something on me.

Here in North Carolina, the pickled eggs are pink:

Except the Jalapeno Pickled Eggs.

Left an envelope behind the collection of pickled egg jars.