#coal scam involved

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Carbon neutral” Bitcoin operation founded by coal plant operator wasn’t actually carbon neutral

I'm at DEFCON! TODAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). TOMORROW (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Water is wet, and a Bitcoin thing turned out to be a scam. Why am I writing about a Bitcoin scam? Two reasons:

I. It's also a climate scam; and

II. The journalists who uncovered it have a unique business-model.

Here's the scam. Terawulf is a publicly traded company that purports to do "green" Bitcoin mining. Now, cryptocurrency mining is one of the most gratuitously climate-wrecking activities we have. Mining Bitcoin is an environmental crime on par with opening a brunch place that only serves Spotted Owl omelets.

Despite Terawulf's claim to be carbon-neutral, it is not. It plugs into the NY power grid and sucks up farcical quantities of energy produced from fossil fuel sources. The company doesn't buy even buy carbon credits (carbon credits are a scam, but buying carbon credits would at least make its crimes nonfraudulent):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/31/carbon-upsets/#big-tradeoff

Terawulf is a scam from top to bottom. Its NY state permit application promises not to pursue cryptocurrency mining, a thing it was actively trumpeting its plan to do even as it filed that application.

The company has its roots in the very dirtiest kinds of Bitcoin mining. Its top execs (including CEO Paul Prager) were involved with Beowulf Energy LLC, a company that convinced struggling coal plant operators to keep operating in order to fuel Bitcoin mining rigs. There's evidence that top execs at Terawulf, the "carbon neutral" Bitcoin mining op, are also running Beowulf, the coal Bitcoin mining op.

This is a very profitable scam. Prager owns a "small village" in Maryland, with more that 20 structures, including a private gas station for his Ferrari collection (he also has a five bedroom place on Fifth Ave). More than a third of Terawulf's earnings were funneled to Beowulf. Terawulf also leases its facilities from a company that Prager owns 99.9% of, and Terawulf has *showered * that company in its stock.

So here we are, a typical Bitcoin story: scammers lying like hell, wrecking the planet, and getting indecently rich. The guy's even spending his money like an asshole. So far, so normal.

But what's interesting about this story is where it came from: Hunterbrook Media, an investigative news outlet that's funded by a short seller – an investment firm that makes bets that companies' share prices are likely to decline. They stand to make a ton of money if the journalists they hire find fraud in the companies they investigate:

https://hntrbrk.com/terawulf/

It's an amazing source of class disunity among the investment class:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/#bullshit-walks

As the icing on the cake, Prager and Terawulf are pivoting to AI training. Because of course they are.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/09/terawulf/#hunterbrook

[jadecantcreate]

as an avid stardust rhapsody and once upon a witchlight enjoyer, I was thinking about how the characters would handle/fit into the other campaign’s plot, and this little idea festered from there

might flesh this out into an au, or maybe not, but its fun to think about ! contains many significant spoilers for both campaigns in their entirety

OUAW Cast in SDR (space au)

Kremy Lecroux — in OUAW, his connection to Remy Garou plays a big role in the plot (if he wasn’t indebted to him, the krew wouldn’t have a reason to find jobs, so they would’ve never went to the witchlight carnival or the feywild). the closest thing (and its pretty close) to Garou in sdr is the Boss….so, possibly, Kremy would have been under the employment of the Boss at space station 777 and he would’ve played rex’s role and stolen those same files from the Boss’ safe — parellels: rex maxim (^), kavir (powerful magic, impossibly powerful patrons; death)

Gideon Coal — he was abducted by the saurons and forced to work on powering / building their ships. maybe he would’ve learned about the archon of destruction (dandy, who, in this au, never was the dandy we know), but only bits an pieces. gideon broke his chains and fled still, maybe by stealing an escape pod and crash landing on the nearest space station/planet, where he met Kremy. they traveled together for a long while on the Rhapsody, running scams or bounty hunting and such, before meeting the rest of the krew. — parallels: rett (engineering, personality), pyke (fire / light theme), leboosh (anger)

Gricko Grimgrin — instead of stealing hootsie from the witchlight carnival, gricko stole her from space station 777 (it’s on brand for them to mistreat/borderline abuse animals). while the Boss probably didn’t care, it still ties him to Torbek and Kremy a bit. he left his planet behind to try to become a space rockstar (tm) or something like that, one thing led to another and he started traveling the cosmos with Frost, learning about and helping beasties all over — parallels: dandy (love for nature, druidic magic), chuckles (positivity, humor)

Morning Frost — maybe his hometown / homeplanet was destroyed when he was a kid by the empire for being ‘corrupted’ (with the same ailment that torbek, to some extent, carries) and he was taken in by the psionic order after that. it’d be interesting if psionic order had loose ties to the empire and he didn’t know (even more ways to involve them in the larger plot yk?). other than that he’s the same i think — parallels: kavir (personality, magic), dandy (preciseness, intelligence)

Torbek — a victim and the sole survivor of the doctor’s experiments. when the party unknowingly accepts a bounty from the Boss (the doctor one), they find torbek in one of those same tanks and they recognize him (maybe he worked in 777, like Kremy but in a much lower position, and he had been known for his resilience, hence his kidnapping and victimization). after a grueling fight (replacing the battle with the giant rhino and lion things), they elect to bring torbek along. in this au, the experiments would be, too, in enhancing humanoid bodies, but through witchlight instead of whatever the doctor had going on. witchlight could be renamed to starlight also? (to fit the ~aesthetic~) — parallels: leboosh and chuckles (corruption), dandy (naivety, corruption)

SDR Cast in OUAW (feywild au)

Pyke — instead of being a former spaceship racer (no clue what its actually called) he could be a horse racer? i mean pyke is somewhat cowboy coded and grew up being rivals with the most cowboy coded character ever, so i guess it works questionmark — parallels: gideon (fire / light themes, combat style), kremy (smoking, dubious morals)

Rett — normal dwarf and cyborg but instead of aether it’s just good ol’ magic i guess (im doing too much with witchlight). still an adventurer / bounty hunter with pyke. no rhapsody though, just…idk. legs? — parallels: gideon (temper, engineering)

Dandy — made by the hourglass coven as a weapon of destruction, but somehow slipped out of their grasp and fell to Avantris with no recollection of knowledge or her past. she was taken in by rett and the others — parallels: gricko (love of nature, druidic magic), frost (intelligence), torbek (corruption, naivety)

Chuckles — more similar to OUAW / NPC chuckles; a regular ol’ clown. still a sorcerer and bard but not a discordant. works for the witchlight carnival and accidentally crossed the portal between the carnival and Prismeer. he was irreversibly changed somehow (witchlight idk), and returned with no memory of his past life. — parallels: gricko (humor, positivity), torbek (corruption, humor)

Kavir — pretty sure nekhbet is a desert-y continent so avantris kavir would be from there. traveling under the guidance of his patron, he (and leboosh) eventually came across the rest of the party and team up. since the hags are themed around time (past, present, future), maybe there’s some connection between his patron and them? — parallels: frost (demeanor / personality), kremy (magic, death)

Leboosh — oozoid that was taught by kavir to speak and such, but maybe he was made sentient by fey magics crossed over from the feywild in his home where the veil between the realms is thin? the corruption thing happens, very similar to torbek except maybe its hourglass coven magic too? idk — parallels: torbek (corruption), gideon (temper)

[rametarin]

Seeing a lot of propaganda lately.

It's convenient that the astro turf environmentalists that schmoozed their way into business and regulation of it set up these oil companies and others with environmentalist paths and ways to get people to get involved in said environmentalism. That was effectively the compromise that would enable industry and progressive life to co-exist.

And now they're treating industrial environmentalism as if it was a scam concocted entirely by greedy polluting business heads. When people taught, trained and given careers in environmental science working with said companies weren't trained to do that shit.

It's just like the "OH MY GOD EVERYBODY PLASTIC STRAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWS!" fiasco, where the entire point of it was to have a goose stepping push for "change" imposed from the top down, get everybody into a hysteria about how straws were actually hurting the planet, and then come to find out.. No. 40-90% of the plastic in the environment, micro or other, is fishing nets. It was always fishing nets. And pollution from the developing world, or China. They knew that going into it and instead chose to do this campaign specifically to "have a convuhsayshun" by scaring the bejesus out of everybody and then pushing for low hanging fruit to drag you through the process of legislation thought to "change the world."

Those paper straws weren't even plastic free, as reusable as plastic straws, or very good.

So now the agritprops are spreading that anti-industry shit by acting like carbon footprints and home recycling was all a scam by the businesses to deflect from THEIR regulation or emissions, instead of what they really were: Deliberate demands by the environmentalists, whom regulate and oversee themselves as self-appointed experts and regulators of pollution, to micro manage everyday peoples trash and emissions. And make people ask, "Why aren't businesses getting poked with a stick?"

Because they wanted you to go, "GLAD YOU ASKED! Sign this paper that lets us suck great big sums of money out of businesses unless they reach these virtually unobtainable purity goals that are virtually required to function."

The only thing I'm glad about is that carbon sequestration and other forms of particulate management have improved as technologies to where machines capable of sequestering industrial emissions and doing something about storage and repatriation of the waste materials into other industrial applications, are much cheaper now. Eventually, these alarmists and blood suckers will run out of pollutants to use to justify a middle man to antagonize businesses about.

Because really, that's it. Once industries can manage and sequester 99.999% of their emissions until they're environmentally benign, and so are their products, there won't BE anything to tax or penalize for their pollution.

As is, if the UK itself cut its contribution to pollution each year by 100%, it'd put an end to a total of 2% of the global emissions of anything. The big drivers and movers of pollution driven climate change aren't western, they're East Asian, South Asian and African.

This revisionist propaganda where it was just business itself that made life suck for individuals when it "should've been raking business through the coals all along" is just that. It wouldn't have been possible to meet emissions standards of 0 in the west and be able to have any kind of industry.

But then the Inverted-Reds knew that. Which is why so many were gone off the deep end in environmentalism, talking about "getting back to primitive roots" and other nonsensical hippie shit. We're not going to forget that movement, yall.

[wandaluvstacos]

i'd like the pro ai-art people to explain to me how ai art improves art. cuz here's the thing-- the sewing machine improved sewing by a LOT. It didn't just make it vastly faster, it made it look 10 times better. The train didn't just make travel faster, it vastly improved the trip that would have otherwise happened by a rattling wagon over rough terrain. The computer didn't just do math faster, it did it more accurately and expanded what math could be done.

what art can ai create that humans cannot? What does it improve, beyond removing the involvement of an artist (and thus making art faster and cheaper). It doesn't actually improve upon the art form at all. It just replaces labor.

There are genuine AI applications that do improve human functions! AI is making great strides in the scientific field right now because it's really good at analyzing data. AI COULD make medical diagnosis better, but it won't-- because if they wanted to make it BETTER and not FASTER, it would alert doctors about any irregularities, and the doctor could take more time to consider possible diagnoses. Instead, it aims to remove the doctor altogether. That is how it will be used-- to remove humans from their jobs. That's it. No one with any money invented this machine to actually improve people's lives. Its main function is to make everything cheaper for the people who own companies.

I have yet to see any art that AI can do that humans cannot. So what is it really improving upon? Nothing. It's only making rich people richer. That was why it was done. Anything they try to tell you about "improvement of the human condition" is made up PR bullshit. They'll talk about the progress of society and all that, but what have we seen from it so far? A fuck ton of scams literally everywhere. Bots, dropshippers, scammers. It's showing up in Google Image search. In the short year or two it's been around, it's only made the internet worse. Do you want to live in a world where you can't trust any image you see on the internet? Is that the "progress" humanity needs? And for what? So you don't have to pay an artist on Fiverr $100 for an illustration? Now you'll pay $80 to a multinational conglomerate to light coal/gas on fire to make a 100 worse images to pick from. wow. Future sure looks great, guys! Progress!

It's all deeply fucked.

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

Oh my god the Mandalorian s3 decisions being a push to make Bo Katan more marketable for women makes so much sense.

I’ve been watching the flames of season 3 for afar wondering what possibly possessed them to sideline the wildly popular duo of Din and Grogu in favor of this Bo Katan stuff, aside from the obvious future content advertisement… it’s because it’s popular with women…

Like it’s a known pattern that corporations hate when something they’ve created aimed at men is disproportionately popular with women because they strive to keep a very distinct line between Boy things and Girl things. Anything Star Wars is for men, except the acceptable Girl Things like Leia and Padme and Asoka. But then the Mandalorian became wildly popular with women and they can’t just cancel a cash cow like the Mandalorian without milking everything they can from it so they’re like “well let’s bring in Bo Katan she’s for the Women now start making the toys”

I am so late to this but that meant time to simmer and seethe over Disney's decisions before and lately, and things I've read over the years about how corporations market to their target audiences, and how little things have changed.

I saw rumors and theories that KKKennedy (y'all sorry I keep calling her that but iykyk) meddled a LOT with The Mandalorian and Jon even threatened to quit, but at the end of the day the Mouse House has the final say and we're stuck with their decisions. I really don't know how the final numbers will look, how it'll affect their merch sales, and what it means for the future seasons of The Mandalorian. Maybe the hard pivot to redeem Bo-Katan for the bajillionth time will be the new cash cow or the canary in the coal mine (for The Mandalorian; I'm sure Ahsoka will be a hit no matter what). Maybe they gambled right or they've lost too many viewers who wanted Din and Grogu to be the heart and soul and center of this particular show. It's called The Mandalorian after all. If they want to claim that it could be any Mandalorian who's The Mandalorian of these season, then maybe Season 2 should've followed a different Mandalorian and established this before scamming us with Season 3. They were already trying that with TBOBF before having Din and Grogu steal the show.

But now that I've seen those rumors and theories, I could not fucking stop thinking about what happened when the ST was rolling out and when Rogue 1 and Solo came out. I could not stop thinking about the casting choices for Rey, Jyn, and Qi'ra, could not stop thinking about how white and brunette they were. I could not stop thinking about KKKennedy and others talking about how they wanted to bring more female fans to Star Wars, acting like Star Wars was exclusively a male space, which, what a fucking insult. I could not forget pictures of her wearing "The Force is Female" shirts and pushing this message so fucking hard that it would keep showing up in critical reviews of TLJ/TROS/ST as proof that Disney didn't know what it was doing.

Rey, Jyn, and Qi'ra were lucky to not have the kind of long history that Bo-Katan already had in the gffa by the time she made her live-action debut. It didn't take much to google her involvement in TCW and Rebels, and see what she'd done. I've seen commenters say she redeemed herself in Rebels by rallying the Mandalorians but are you sure about that? Are we still having trouble with writing redemption arcs after the fucking horrible one Disney put Kylo Ren through to the detriment of every other character not named Rey?

I wouldn't have minded Bo-Katan having greater involvement in Season 3 if she didn't basically take charge of not just the COTW but also the entire show. Watch out for the new merch of her with the Darksaber now. Probably the most we'll get out of Din is whatever happens to him in the season finale because Disney gotta make more money, amirite? Grogu got a new accessory so that Disney can sell new versions of him, so why not Din?

I truly envy the poeple who are having a good time or don't need to have these thoughts constantly in their heads while watching. I didn't have a good time and I can never turn those thoughts off. I don't have the luxury so I'm never shutting up about this.

ftr I unfollowed Okiro after the billionth time he called Din, Grogu, and Bo-Katan "Clan of Three". what the fuck had she done to earn equal footing?

[news365timesindia]

[ad_1] GG News Bureau New Delhi, 28th Nov. The Supreme Court on Thursday extended the interim bail of Saumya Chaurasia, the former deputy secretary to Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, who is accused in a money laundering case linked to the alleged coal-levy scam in the state. Chaurasia, who has been in custody for over one year and nine months, was granted interim bail on September 25 by the apex court, with the observation that charges had yet to be framed. The court, while hearing her plea, noted that the trial had not yet commenced. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan asked about the current status of the case. Senior advocate Siddhartha Dave, representing Chaurasia, informed the court that the trial had not begun. The bench decided to extend her interim bail and posted the matter for a hearing in the last week of January 2025. It also directed Chaurasia to remain under suspension until further orders, despite her interim bail status. The court clarified that she must appear before the trial court when proceedings begin and cooperate fully. Chaurasia, a Chhattisgarh-cadre civil servant, was involved in the coal-levy scam that allegedly extorted Rs 540 crore over two years. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had opposed her bail, arguing that her release could compromise the trial due to her influential position. The case stems from an income-tax department complaint, with the ED alleging a conspiracy involving senior bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen, and middlemen in the illegal coal levy. The scam involved the extortion of Rs 25 per tonne of coal transported in the state. Chaurasia had previously been denied bail by the Chhattisgarh High Court, a decision she challenged before the Supreme Court. The post SC Extends Interim Bail of Saumya Chaurasia in Money Laundering Case appeared first on Global Governance News- Asia's First Bilingual News portal for Global News and Updates. [ad_2] Source link

[news365times]

[ad_1] GG News Bureau New Delhi, 28th Nov. The Supreme Court on Thursday extended the interim bail of Saumya Chaurasia, the former deputy secretary to Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, who is accused in a money laundering case linked to the alleged coal-levy scam in the state. Chaurasia, who has been in custody for over one year and nine months, was granted interim bail on September 25 by the apex court, with the observation that charges had yet to be framed. The court, while hearing her plea, noted that the trial had not yet commenced. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan asked about the current status of the case. Senior advocate Siddhartha Dave, representing Chaurasia, informed the court that the trial had not begun. The bench decided to extend her interim bail and posted the matter for a hearing in the last week of January 2025. It also directed Chaurasia to remain under suspension until further orders, despite her interim bail status. The court clarified that she must appear before the trial court when proceedings begin and cooperate fully. Chaurasia, a Chhattisgarh-cadre civil servant, was involved in the coal-levy scam that allegedly extorted Rs 540 crore over two years. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had opposed her bail, arguing that her release could compromise the trial due to her influential position. The case stems from an income-tax department complaint, with the ED alleging a conspiracy involving senior bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen, and middlemen in the illegal coal levy. The scam involved the extortion of Rs 25 per tonne of coal transported in the state. Chaurasia had previously been denied bail by the Chhattisgarh High Court, a decision she challenged before the Supreme Court. The post SC Extends Interim Bail of Saumya Chaurasia in Money Laundering Case appeared first on Global Governance News- Asia's First Bilingual News portal for Global News and Updates. [ad_2] Source link

[gobeautifulnerdbouquetlove]

‘Britain had to colonise India because...’: Adani CFO mocks reports of group's involvement in alleged coal scam | Company Business News - Mint

http://dlvr.it/T7Gfnb

[blogynews]

"Mind-Blowing Twist as Union Minister Patel Fires Back on Explosive Coal Scam Allegations: Startling Notice Dropped on Ex-MP Opposition Leader Ajay Singh"

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Prahlad Patel, Union minister and BJP candidate for the upcoming Madhya Pradesh assembly polls, has issued a notice to former opposition leader Ajay Singh for allegedly implicating him in the coal scam. Patel, who is contesting from the Narsinghpur assembly segment, addressed reporters, stating that Singh claimed he was involved in the coal scam during his tenure as Union…

[blogynewz]

"Mind-Blowing Twist as Union Minister Patel Fires Back on Explosive Coal Scam Allegations: Startling Notice Dropped on Ex-MP Opposition Leader Ajay Singh"

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Prahlad Patel, Union minister and BJP candidate for the upcoming Madhya Pradesh assembly polls, has issued a notice to former opposition leader Ajay Singh for allegedly implicating him in the coal scam. Patel, who is contesting from the Narsinghpur assembly segment, addressed reporters, stating that Singh claimed he was involved in the coal scam during his tenure as Union…

[blogynewsz]

"Mind-Blowing Twist as Union Minister Patel Fires Back on Explosive Coal Scam Allegations: Startling Notice Dropped on Ex-MP Opposition Leader Ajay Singh"

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Prahlad Patel, Union minister and BJP candidate for the upcoming Madhya Pradesh assembly polls, has issued a notice to former opposition leader Ajay Singh for allegedly implicating him in the coal scam. Patel, who is contesting from the Narsinghpur assembly segment, addressed reporters, stating that Singh claimed he was involved in the coal scam during his tenure as Union…

[techahad]

Coal Smuggling Case: ECL chief and CISF inspector arrested, court orders four-day custody

Vasudev Chatterjee: The judge ordered four-day CBI custody of former acting CMD Sunil Kumar Jha and former CISF inspector Anant Kumar Singh, who were arrested in the coal case. The CBI on Thursday arrested ECL’s former Acting CMD Sunil Kumar Jha and former CISF Inspector Anant Kumar Singh for their involvement in the coal scam. On Friday, the arrested were brought to Asansol special CBI court.…

[gadgetsforusesblog]

Click to read Tangedco officials charged ₹908 crore coal handling scam

The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Directorate has arrested five senior officials of Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (Tangedco), including N. Palaniappan, then Chief Engineer, Mechanical Engineering/Coal, and V. Chellappan, then Director, Coal, in an alleged scam of ₹ 908 crore involving two private companies in handling coal shipments at Visakhapatnam shipyard. The alleged…

[handeaux]

17 Curious Facts About Cincinnati’s Ravenous Appetite For Oysters

Cincinnati Ate A Lot Of Oysters

In the 1800s, Cincinnati diners consumed something 200,000 gallons of fresh oysters every season, shipped in the shell on ice from the east coast. That works out to something like 2.5 million oysters per year. The volume is remarkably consistent between reports in 1852 and 1888. In the 1880s, 30 Cincinnati businesses either packed or served oysters.

Oysters Inspired Better Transportation

As early as the 1810s, Cincinnatians consumed oysters, pickled or spiced, shipped in hermetically sealed canisters. By the 1830s, entrepreneurs had worked out a system of speedy wagons to get fresh oysters from Baltimore to Wheeling, where steamboats could haul the tasty molluscan cargo to Cincinnati. From Chesapeake Bay to the Public Landing, the entire trip took just five days, with new ice added along the way to keep the oysters in prime condition. Within a few years, railroads shortened that run to just hours.

Mrs. Trollope Was Appalled

Pretty much everything about Cincinnati disturbed Frances “Fanny” Trollope. The acerbic British lady vented her displeasure in her 1832 best-selling “Domestic Manners of the Americans,” where she whined about Cincinnatians: “In eating, they mix things together with the strangest incongruity imaginable. I have seen eggs and oysters eaten together; the sempiternal ham with apple-sauce; beefsteak with stewed peaches; and salt fish with onions.”

Oysters Delayed The Mail

Mail runs were profitable for stagecoach lines, but not as profitable as oysters, and barrels of iced blue points were shoved into every available space on wagons departing Baltimore. The Daily Gazette [5 February 1846] reported that mail deliveries to Cincinnati were arriving late because the postal coach had broken down from being overloaded with oysters.

Oysters As You Like Them

How did Cincinnatians eat their oysters? An 1859 menu preserved by the Gibson House offers a single course at an elaborate dinner consisting of Oysters Baked in Shells, Escallops of Oysters, Oysters Baked with Fine Herbs, Small Oyster Pies, Raw Oysters, Oysters Baked in a Form, Oysters Stewed with Champagne, Oysters Baked with Cheese, Fried Oysters and Pickled Oysters. A later course included Aspics of Oysters in a Form of Jelly.

Heaven To A P.O.W.

S.B. Nelson’s 1894 History of Hamilton County recounts the tale of Columbus Bennett, a school teacher in Anderson Township who enlisted early in the Civil War. He served with distinction for several years until captured by the Confederates. Eventually paroled, on reaching Union territory the famished prisoner consumed his “first square meal in eight long months, consisting of thirteen dozen raw oysters.” He survived to teach another 30 years.

Romance On The Half-Shell

The Enquirer [2 December 1874] recounts local speculation about William “Billy” Stolpp, the keeper of an oyster house at 159 West Fourth Street, and his extended trip to Baltimore. His friends and customers assumed his long absence involved acquiring a stock of fresh bivalves for his shop. In fact, Billy soon returned to Cincinnati with his new bride, the former Miss Lizzie Evans, of Baltimore, whom he had wed in that city.

Six Words And $700 Created A Legend

James A. “Jimmy” Shevlin was no dummy. He was working as a bank teller when he noticed the substantial and regular deposits from the Central Oyster House on Sixth Street. “There’s money in that game,” he said and borrowed $700 to open his own oyster house on the same block. Jimmy’s advertising slogan was, “If it swims, I have it,” and Shevlin’s Oyster & Chop House became a hangout for Democratic politicians and celebrities of the baseball, boxing and horse-racing worlds.

Oysters Paved Cincinnati Roads

The WPA “Guide to Cincinnati” reports that, in the 1880s, Boudinot and Wardall avenues in Westwood were part of what was known as Shell Road. “The story goes that one winter a landowner sent his hired man almost daily to Cincinnati hotels and restaurants – to obtain wagon loads of oyster shells. These shells were then scattered over the roadway. Horses’ hoofs ground them fine and created a shining white roadbed.”

Pushcart Deliveries

If Cincinnatians didn’t feel like taking a streetcar to their favorite restaurant or walking to the local fishmonger, they could just wait until the oyster hawker pushed his wagon past their residence. In the 1880s and 1890s, Cincinnati streets were crowded with pushcart merchants offering to mend umbrellas, sharpen knives and scissors, grind some fresh mustard, slice watermelon, shovel coal and, yes, shuck a dozen oysters from an ice-laden cart.

Queen City Condiments

No matter how Cincinnati diners ordered their oysters, whether fresh out of the shell, or steamed, or breaded and fried, they usually added some sort of flavoring. If the condiment of choice was a hot sauce, odds are it was brewed right here in the Queen City. Two brands of locally concocted chili sauce in particular, Snider’s (1900) and later Frank’s (1918) had wide distribution outside the Tri-State region.

The Pig Is Still King In Porkopolis

A 1905 “Dictionary Of Slang And Colloquial English” by John Farmer and William Henely defined “Cincinnati Oyster” as “a pig’s trotter,” in other words, a pig’s foot. The prevalence of pigs in the Queen City inspired many saloons to offer pigs feet as a regular component of their free lunch buffets.

Blame The Kaiser

World War I did nothing to abate Cincinnati’s hunger for oysters, even though wartime conditions hiked the cost of their favorite bivalve. In 1917, most Cincinnati oyster houses raised the price of oyster stew from 20 cents a bowl to 25 cents. Restaurateurs blamed the war and the customers blamed the Kaiser for starting the conflict.

Oysters For The Jury

Among the most sensational trials in Cincinnati history was the land-scam scandal of Roy Van Tress. At the conclusion of the court proceedings, resulting in Van Tress being sentenced to federal prison, the court received a bill of $848.46 from the Havlin Hotel for housing the jury, and a bill for $1383.75 from Shevlin’s Oyster House for feeding them. At that time, an oyster dinner with all the trimmings cost about 35 cents. That’s a lot of oysters!

Free Oysters For Life (Version 1)

In addition to newspaper reports, there are witnesses who attest that William Whipple Symmes, great-grand-nephew of John Cleves Symmes and prominent Cincinnati attorney, earned free oysters for life at the Central Oyster House. In one version, reported by Alfred Segal in the Cincinnati Post [22 June 1946], Jacob Rosenfield, the proprietor, realized that Symmes had been a regular customer for 30 years and presented him with a free pass for the remainder of his days.

Free Oysters For Life (Version 2)

Another Post columnist, Si Cornell, reported [16 March 1971] a different rationale for the free oysters, and cited W.W. Symmes’ law partner, William Busch, as the source. According to Busch, Symmes heard that Cincinnati was paralyzed by an “oyster scare” – rumors that oysters “weren’t much good and maybe worse.” Symmes contacted the Central Oyster House and offered to sit in the front window, eating Jacob Rosenfield’s oysters for everyone to see. Business picked up and the proprietor repaid his customer with “on-the-house” oysters ever after.

Still A Lot Of Oysters

Jacob Rosenfield’s old Central Oyster House was demolished in 1958 to make way for the new Federal Building on Government Square. The owner at the time, Rosenfield’s grandnephew Jake Spicer, proclaimed that the Central Oyster House would reopen nearby. Business was too good to close – averaging 4,000 hungry customers a day. One of Spicer’s employees calculated that she had served 32,260,000 breaded and fried oysters during her 40 years at the restaurant.

[andmaybegayer]

I know about the Dutch Tulip craze, but what were the rest?

The South Sea Company Bubble

is a messy one that involves a lot of Stonks and Econony, and if you want a really well researched but digestible video summary I would recommend the Extra History series on it. Really I highly recommend Extra History if you want an easy way to get a shallow but not dumbed-down introduction to a wide swathe of history.

Brief Summary: In theory, the South Sea Trading Company was a private trading company that would operate in the South Sea, which is basically the ports of South America. This was because the English government at the time was flat broke, so they intended to raise money by selling shares in the SSTC to their creditors in exchange for the debt they held. This consolidates the debt in the SSTC, allowing it to be paid at a much lower interest rate and on more favourable terms. The SSTC then makes money by trading and pays out dividends to the people who traded in government debt for shares. Because the stock the SSTC issues is theoretically equal to the debt of the government, this means everyone is happy and it all balances out.

There was just one problem: There was absolutely no way for the SSTC to actually do trade in the South Sea. All those ports were Spanish controlled, because of all the colonialism Spain did to South America. And Britain was at war with Spain, because, of course they were. Britain was at war with everyone. Using some political chicanery, they managed to end the war with Spain, but as a result of said chicanery, they got a terrible deal on trade to the South Sea. One ship per year per port (also they were exclusively trading slaves. Oops, I guess!) which is, of course, nowhere near enough to pay back the shareholders.

Ever more ongoing insane economic jockeying in an attempt to keep this company afloat long enough to pay off the English debt resulted in it basically being supported by the government that was supposed to be paying it, and its stock price rose dramatically. The value of SSTC stocks now exceeds the value of the debt being traded in for it, so now shares can be sold at market rates to anyone. Said jockeying involved consolidating even more government debt into the company and also putting members of the Royal Family on the company board, which eventually put The Fucking King, Yes The King on the board. So you can imagine, when The King, That Guy, owns a company in the 1700′s, you definitely want to put money in there! I mean, what could go wrong! The King literally cannot fail, he’s too powerful!

This basically continues, ever more hare-brained schemes are made up to keep the share price climbing because as said before, there’s no actual money in the South Seas, the only thing keeping this place afloat is selling stonks. Eventually the schemes got too hare-brained: selling stocks at ludicrously inflated prices but with loan and buy-now-pay-later deals that would make a we-finance-used-car-salesman cringe. The stock price collapsed almost tenfold in a single week, and kept going, resulting in colossal losses for share buyers, especially those who had taken out loans to get in on the action, loans which in many circumstances were actually offered BY THE SOUTH SEA COMPANY.

I’m not 100% on this statement but I believe this was one of the earliest share-based bubbles, rather than a commodity bubble like the Tulip Mania.

The Paris Stock Exchange Optical Telegraph Scam

is a particularly niche one, in that as far as I’m aware the only authoritative English language document on it is literally this YouTube Video by Tom Scott, where he paid a translator to go over the original French documents, which can be found here. The summary is: there were optical signalling towers across France that were used to transmit information very quickly, by signalling with oversized mechanical semaphore flags with rules for relaying information, and they were only for official government use.

In the 1830′s a pair of brothers in Bordeaux paid off some operators to transmit information about the movements of the Paris stock exchange, and made some smart decisions to make sure that the information they sent was not recorded by marking it as a mistake. The rest of Bordeaux would only get this information by messenger on horse, so few other steps later, the brothers had information about movements of the Paris stock exchange before anyone else, and they made bank by making what appeared to be shrewd investments.

This is notable for being very similar to how modern high-frequency trading companies will base their offices as close to where offshore fibre lines make landfall as possible and communicate with lightspeed microwave beams to ensure they have the most up to date information they can get.

The Cash for Ash scandal

was a perfect example of Perverse Incentives: The Northern Irish government wanted to push a renewable energy target, namely the use of wood pellets instead of coal or gas for heating, by offering to subsidise the cost of running a wood-pellet fired heating system. The fault was that they were paying at equal or more than the cost of burners, boilers and fuel in incentives, so in practice it wasn’t a subsidy, it was straight up paying people to run heaters. Several groups who owned buildings or land saw this and started running as many wood-pellet fired furnaces as they could get into a site, heating empty buildings and offices because they were making a profit on it, hence “cash for ash”.

[seriousbusinessforhumans]

Since Trump took office, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson has overseen the filing of nearly 100 lawsuits against the administration, either led by Washington or with Washington joining coalitions of like-minded states. Of those, most are still in progress, which means as Washingtonians we’ll be taking a lead role in cleaning up Trump's mess for years, in courts across the country.

So far, the litigation has been going very well indeed: We’ve won 22 cases, with 17 more victories that are still working their way through the appeals process. (And the federal government is far less likely to put up a fight in those cases, now that there’s been a regime change.)

Among our victories, the travel ban is the big one; in part because it spawned multiple lawsuits. We won the first one, and put the second and third on hold when the ban was halted. Biden wiped out the ban on his first day in office, so that should settle that matter.

Then we have the immigration-related lawsuits. To use a legal term, Washington freaked the fuck out about the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and we’ve already won some of our lawsuits on that issue: The federal government was required to turn over thousands of pages of documents relating to ICE. But many cases are still pending, including the Trump administration’s policy of kidnapping children at the border; arresting immigrants at courthouses; and the policy that allows immigrants to be deported if they need food assistance.

We’re also embroiled in a ton of lawsuits over environmental protections, including one about energy standards for ceiling fans—we won that case, forcing Trump’s EPA to implement rules that will save billions in energy costs. Yes, that’s right, billions saved because of more efficient ceiling fans.

But we’re still working our way through a case regarding the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which attacks the nervous system and poses a dire risk to farm workers. We’re also suing the federal government over plans to lease coal-mining rights on public land; plans to reduce penalties for car manufacturers who violate fuel-efficiency standards; the EPA’s failure to require reporting of asbestos exposure; revisions to Washington’s clean water standards; and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

And then there’s a handful of cases that fall into a sort of “miscellaneous” bucket: Various motions involving the Trump plan to get rid of the national archive in Seattle (covered in detail here); rules about minimum staffing on trains to prevent more catastrophic crashes; and a lawsuit over a Department of Education plan that would have let scam-colleges issue expensive worthless degrees. 

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A Timeline of All the Times Attorney General Bob Ferguson Has Sued Trump

• Jun 27, 2018