#tobacco shops hudson

[scotianostra]

12th July 1834 saw the death in Hawaii of Botanist, David Douglas.

As promised last month a more detailed account of this not so well known Scot.

David Douglas was born in the village of Scone on June 25, 1799, just north of Perth he is much better known in the US state of Oregon, where their state tree “The Douglas Fir” is named after him Douglas was the son of stonemason John Douglas and Jean Drummond. He attended local schools, and by the time he was eleven, he was working as a gardener for local landowners, the Earl of Mansfield and Sir Robert Preston.

While working at the Botanical Garden in Glasgow, he became acquainted with the garden’s curator, Stewart Murray, and British botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker. Douglas attended Hooker’s lectures and had access to private libraries. Hooker later described him as a person of “great activity, singular abstemiousness, and energetic zeal.”

In 1823, on Hooker’s recommendation, the Royal Horticultural Society chose Douglas as a botanical collector. The Society intended to send Douglas to China, but arrangements fell through so he ended up going to eastern North America. In 1824, he found passage on a Hudson’s Bay Company vessel, the William and Ann, and arrived in Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River on April 7, 1825. Among his duties were keeping a journal of his activities and collecting seeds and plant specimens that might be useful as horticultural plants in England. Douglas visited North America four times, three times to the Pacific Northwest and California to look for plants, particularly fruit trees, forest trees, and oaks.

On his 1826 trip to present-day Oregon, Douglas took careful notes on the local vegetation as he traveled up the Willamette Valley. On September 30, he recorded one of the earliest descriptions of the Indian use of fire: “Most parts of the country burned; only on little patches in the valleys and on the flats near low hills that verdure is to be seen. Some of the natives tell me it is done for the purpose of urging the deer to frequent certain parts, to feed, which they leave unburned, and of course they are easily killed. Others say it is done in order that they might the better find wild honey and grasshoppers, which both serve as articles of winter food.“

In October, he traveled farther south to near present-day Roseburg on the Umpqua River, primarily to collect the cones of the sugar pine . On October 26, he described an encounter with a local man who led him to the “long-wished-for pines.” While shooting the cones out of a tall tree, which Douglas described as hanging at the tips of branches “like small sugar-loaves in a grocer’s shop,” he attracted several Natives who seemed “anything but friendly.” After a tense standoff, one man indicated that they wanted tobacco, and Douglas responded that he would oblige them if they brought him more cones. The men went in one direction, and Douglas with three cones and a twig went in another.

Douglas was interested in all aspects of the landscape, including animals. Those named in his honour range from the pigmy short-horned lizard to the Douglas squirrel ( . He shipped a number of specimens home for examination by leading scientists. Some species, such as the mountain beaver , were new to science. Douglas also reported seeing—and shooting—California condors on the Columbia River.

In 1827, Douglas traveled through the Northern Rockies and then to York Factory on Hudson Bay before returning to London. He worked on his collections until October 1829, when he again traveled to Fort Vancouver. He spent time on the California coast in 1831-1832, collecting plants and animals and making geographic observations. In 1832, on his return to the Columbia River, he made his first visit to the Hawaiian Islands. He explored the Fraser River district in 1833 and left the Northwest on October 18, 1833, for a return trip to the Hawaiian Islands and a planned return to London.

Douglas had been intrigued by Hawaii and wanted to continue collecting. Unable to get prompt transportation to England, he spent extra time in the islands. It was there, on July 12, 1834, that he met his end,apparently trampled by a bullock in a deep pit designed to capture cattle, although foul play has been suspected.

Douglas introduced more than two hundred Pacific Northwest plants home, many of them important in our gardens today, including Oregon’s red-flowering currant.

At Scone Palace, near Douglas’s birthplace, stands a magnificent Douglas-fir, grown from seed that he sent back from western North America in 1826. His introduction of Sitka spruce to Britain forms the basis of that country’s modern conifer forestry.

Douglas was a tireless botanist and natural historian whose name is honoured in more than eighty species of plants and animals. David Douglas High School in Portland is named for him, a peak in the Rockies as well as numerous plants, are also named after him.

Pics are of Douglas, his memorials at Scone, in Hawaii and Vancouver.

Read more on his life and death here https://keolamagazine.com/.../the-mysterious-death-of.../

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

The Mysterious Murder of the Beautiful Cigar Girl

The mysterious murder of Mary Rogers, known in the penny press as the “Beautiful Cigar Girl,” in the summer of 1841 remains one of New York City’s most infamous unsolved cases. Even Edgar Allan Poe took a crack at solving it, yet while her ghost is said to have visited the numerous suspects that the press circled after the beautiful young lady’s death, the truth of the grisly crime is still as murky as the Hudson River waters where her corpse was found.

In 1838, John Anderson, who owned a tobacco shop on Broadway in Lower Manhattan, hired Mary Rogers to stand at his counter purely to allure gentleman customers. It worked, and the dark haired beauty who was described as ”ethereal and hypnotically pleasing” made Anderson’s Tobacco Emporium one of the most popular in town. It had a regular clientele of notable figures like Washington Irving and, it’s stated, Poe himself, as well as a cavalcade of journalists, which would help to get her gruesome end its high profile in the press.

One day in October of 1838, Rogers went missing. Two weeks later, she suddenly reappeared, and many thought that Anderson had staged the disappearance for publicity. Rogers’ adoring fans swarmed the shop, and she soon felt overwhelmed and left to work in her mother’s boarding shop. Yet in July of 1841, she went missing again, and this time two men on the shore of New Jersey spotted her floating near Sybil’s Cave.

Built in 1832 to connect to a natural spring, Sybil’s Cave once offered cool water to visitors to the Hoboken shore. The visitors have long vanished, but in 2007 a new gate was built in front of the manmade cave. It’s here that many believe Rogers was murdered, although how is still a matter of speculation. The bruises on her body and ligature on her throat suggested gang violence or a vengeful lover (one of her many suitors, perhaps). From when her swollen remains were pulled from the water, each new clue or suspect was breathlessly reported in the tabloids, and the public loved it, buying the papers in an unprecedented frenzy.

The attention, not surprisingly, took its toll on the people involved, particularly her fiancé Daniel Payne, who had a solid alibi, but was hounded by the press nonetheless. He was discovered near Sybil’s Cave dead from an apparent suicide by poison, with a note reading: “To the World - here I am on the very spot. May God forgive me for my misspent life.”

The rampant press also inspired Edgar Allan Poe, who had his own theories about the case. In his story “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” he not so subtly changed the details to Paris with a murder victim named Marie Rogêt. While his detective C. Auguste Dupin speculated on many suspects, he never settled on one, although Poe studiously kept updating the story with new evidence. It’s considered to be the first work of fiction that used a real murder as its source material.

One suspect, Anderson himself, was speculated to have had his amorous advances rejected by Rogers. Although he’s buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, he died in 1881 in Paris, claiming to his last days that he was being tormented by her ghost. Payne also claimed to have seen the slender Rogers as a specter.

A later theory came from the deathbed of a tavern owner near Sybil’s Cave, who, after accidentally being shot by her son, gasped out that Rogers had actually died from a botched abortion. Some have theorized that this was done by the infamous Madame Restell, an early abortionist who practiced while it was still a felony. Restell would cut her own throat in her bathtub in 1878, and she’s now interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

It’s likely the mystery of who killed Mary Rogers that summer night will never be solved, although you can retrace her last steps yourself at the ruins of Sybil’s Cave, and wander to the final resting place of her employer in Green-Wood Cemetery, where he is perhaps resting in fitful peace with the ghost of the girl who once bewitched the city to his shop.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries-movedd]

The Mysterious Murder of the Beautiful Cigar Girl

The mysterious murder of Mary Rogers, known in the penny press as the “Beautiful Cigar Girl,” in the summer of 1841 remains one of New York City’s most infamous unsolved cases. Even Edgar Allan Poe took a crack at solving it, yet while her ghost is said to have visited the numerous suspects that the press circled after the beautiful young lady’s death, the truth of the grisly crime is still as murky as the Hudson River waters where her corpse was found.

In 1838, John Anderson, who owned a tobacco shop on Broadway in Lower Manhattan, hired Mary Rogers to stand at his counter purely to allure gentleman customers. It worked, and the dark haired beauty who was described as ”ethereal and hypnotically pleasing” made Anderson’s Tobacco Emporium one of the most popular in town. It had a regular clientele of notable figures like Washington Irving and, it’s stated, Poe himself, as well as a cavalcade of journalists, which would help to get her gruesome end its high profile in the press.

One day in October of 1838, Rogers went missing. Two weeks later, she suddenly reappeared, and many thought that Anderson had staged the disappearance for publicity. Rogers’ adoring fans swarmed the shop, and she soon felt overwhelmed and left to work in her mother’s boarding shop. Yet in July of 1841, she went missing again, and this time two men on the shore of New Jersey spotted her floating near Sybil’s Cave.

Built in 1832 to connect to a natural spring, Sybil’s Cave once offered cool water to visitors to the Hoboken shore. The visitors have long vanished, but in 2007 a new gate was built in front of the manmade cave. It’s here that many believe Rogers was murdered, although how is still a matter of speculation. The bruises on her body and ligature on her throat suggested gang violence or a vengeful lover (one of her many suitors, perhaps). From when her swollen remains were pulled from the water, each new clue or suspect was breathlessly reported in the tabloids, and the public loved it, buying the papers in an unprecedented frenzy.

The attention, not surprisingly, took its toll on the people involved, particularly her fiancé Daniel Payne, who had a solid alibi, but was hounded by the press nonetheless. He was discovered near Sybil’s Cave dead from an apparent suicide by poison, with a note reading: “To the World - here I am on the very spot. May God forgive me for my misspent life.”

The rampant press also inspired Edgar Allan Poe, who had his own theories about the case. In his story “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” he not so subtly changed the details to Paris with a murder victim named Marie Rogêt. While his detective C. Auguste Dupin speculated on many suspects, he never settled on one, although Poe studiously kept updating the story with new evidence. It’s considered to be the first work of fiction that used a real murder as its source material.

One suspect, Anderson himself, was speculated to have had his amorous advances rejected by Rogers. Although he’s buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, he died in 1881 in Paris, claiming to his last days that he was being tormented by her ghost. Payne also claimed to have seen the slender Rogers as a specter.

A later theory came from the deathbed of a tavern owner near Sybil’s Cave, who, after accidentally being shot by her son, gasped out that Rogers had actually died from a botched abortion. Some have theorized that this was done by the infamous Madame Restell, an early abortionist who practiced while it was still a felony. Restell would cut her own throat in her bathtub in 1878, and she’s now interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

It’s likely the mystery of who killed Mary Rogers that summer night will never be solved, although you can retrace her last steps yourself at the ruins of Sybil’s Cave, and wander to the final resting place of her employer in Green-Wood Cemetery, where he is perhaps resting in fitful peace with the ghost of the girl who once bewitched the city to his shop.

[alles-ueber-alles]

American Notes

2023-03-04

I've just finished reading Charles Dickens's "American Notes". I'm not a huge fan of his lengthy Victorian novels, but I really enjoyed this account of his 1842 visit to the USA.

I was fascinated by the details of the various modes of transport he used, beginning with the 18-day Atlantic crossing on the steam packet "Britannia" in January and ending with the return trip on the sailing vessel "George Washington" in June. With the Great Railway Boom just beginning, train was the preferred mode of land transport where available. There was also a well-developed network of steamboats that conveyed Dickens and his wife all the way from Pittsburgh down the Ohio river and up a section of the Mississippi all the way to St Louis; subsequently from Cleveland via Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence to Quebec City via Toronto and Montreal; and finally from Montreal via Lake Champlain and the Hudson river to New York City. Dickens was understandably nervous of the high-pressure steam engines as explosions were not unheard-of.

In the absence of railways or waterways, travel was by stagecoach or by so-called "extras" - privately-hired coaches.

We learn that "the journey from New York to Philadelphia is made by railroad, and two ferries; and usually occupies between five and six hours". Philadelphia to Washington was a 12 hour steamboat-trip. There was a "macadamised road (rare blessing!)" from Cincinnati to Columbus, allowing coaches to travel at a speed of six miles an hour - but the onward journey from there on a road made by "throwing trunks of trees into a marsh, and leaving them to settle there" was much heavier going.

Dickens's comments and observations are also often entertaining. He enjoyed Boston, where he stayed at the Tremont House. He writes that the city is beautiful, the private houses mostly large and elegant, the shops extremely good. In New York he describes pigs running wild, singly and in groups, on Broadway. Speaking also of New York, "the ladies are singularly beautiful". He was less impressed by Washington DC, writing that few people would live there who were not obliged to do so.

Making interesting reading today are general observations such as: "In all modes of travelling, the American customs, with reference to the means of personal cleanliness and wholesome ablution, are extremely negligent and filthy". The then-prevalent use of chewing-tobacco, which users would spit out after use, he condemned as an "odious practice". On the positive side, he writes - hard as it may be to believe today - "Nor did I ever once, on any occasion, anywhere, during my rambles in America, see a woman exposed to the slightest act of rudeness, incivility, or even inattention."

Dickens strongly disapproved of slavery, and noted the particular irony of such a practice existing in a nation founded on the principles of equality and liberty. He altered his originally-planned itinerary so as to minimize time spent in the slaver states, and devotes an entire chapter to criticism of the abhorrent practice. A large part of that chapter is harrowing reading, consisting as it does of verbatim quotes from contemporary newspaper adverts by slave-owners seeking the return of "runaways": a catalogue of brandings, disfigurements and other mutilations that we assume were inflicted for identification purposes by the "owners".

A postscript to the book is an extract from an address given by the 56-year-old Dickens in New York to two hundred journalists during his second American trip, twenty-five years after the first. He notes with a tone of excited approval the gigantic changes that have taken place: "changes in the amount of land subdued and peopled, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in the graces and amenities of life", and pays tribute to the magnanimity and generosity of the American people. It is an optimistic and up-beat ending to a fascinating book.

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[conradscrime]

The Mystery of Mary Rogers

July 13, 2022

Mary Cecilia Rogers was born in 1820 in Lyme, Connecticut, though there is no official birth record available. She was described as very beautiful, and she was an only child to her widowed mother. Her father had died in a steamboat explosion when Mary was 17 years old. 

Mary worked as a clerk in a tobacco shop owned by John Anderson in New York City, and at age 20 she was living in a boarding house that her mother run. It was said that John Anderson paid Mary a generous wage partly because of her beauty and how it would draw many customers to the shop.  

On October 5, 1838, the newspaper the Sun reported that Mary had disappeared from her home. Her mother claimed that she found a suicide note which the coroner analyzed. The next day, October 6, the Times and Commercial Intelligence reported that the disappearance had been a hoax, that Mary had only gone to visit a friend in Brooklyn. 

On July 25, 1841, Mary told her fiancé, Daniel Payne, that she was going to visit her aunt and other family. Only July 28, three days later, the police found Mary’s body floating in the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey. 

In the papers she was known as “the Beautiful Cigar Girl” and her death received national attention. The details suggested that she had been murdered or her body had been dumped in the river by abortionist Madame Restell after a failed abortion. 

 A few months later, with the inquest into Mary’s death still ongoing, her fiancé Daniel committed suicide by overdosing on laudanum while drinking heavily. A note was found on him where he died near Sybil’s Cave on October 7, 1841. The note read, “To the World - here I am on the very spot. May God forgive me for my misspent life.” 

A popular theory was that Mary was the victim of gang violence. In November 1842, Frederica Loss swore that Mary’s death was the result of a failed abortion, though police refused to believe this. 

Eventually the interest in Mary Roger’s death died down, as a lot of attention was going towards the unrelated murder case of Samuel Adams, which John C. Colt was convicted of in 1842. 

Mary Rogers murder went unsolved, but was fictionalized by Edgar Allan Poe as “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” in 1842. In Poe’s version of the story, the murder happened in Paris and the body was found in the River Seine. There’s never any murderer named in the story.

[scotianostra]

12th July 1834 saw the death in Hawaii of Botanist, David Douglas.

David Douglas was born in the village of Scone on June 25, 1799, just north of Perth he is much better known in the US state of Oregon, where their state tree “The Douglas Fir” is named after him Douglas was the son of stonemason John Douglas and Jean Drummond. He attended local schools, and by the time he was eleven, he was working as a gardener for local landowners, the Earl of Mansfield and Sir Robert Preston.

While working at the Botanical Garden in Glasgow, he became acquainted with the garden’s curator, Stewart Murray, and British botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker. Douglas attended Hooker’s lectures and had access to private libraries. Hooker later described him as a person of “great activity, singular abstemiousness, and energetic zeal.”

In 1823, on Hooker’s recommendation, the Royal Horticultural Society chose Douglas as a botanical collector. The Society intended to send Douglas to China, but arrangements fell through so he ended up going to eastern North America. In 1824, he found passage on a Hudson’s Bay Company vessel, the William and Ann, and arrived in Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River on April 7, 1825. Among his duties were keeping a journal of his activities and collecting seeds and plant specimens that might be useful as horticultural plants in England. Douglas visited North America four times, three times to the Pacific Northwest and California to look for plants, particularly fruit trees, forest trees, and oaks.

On his 1826 trip to present-day Oregon, Douglas took careful notes on the local vegetation as he traveled up the Willamette Valley. On September 30, he recorded one of the earliest descriptions of the Indian use of fire: “Most parts of the country burned; only on little patches in the valleys and on the flats near low hills that verdure is to be seen. Some of the natives tell me it is done for the purpose of urging the deer to frequent certain parts, to feed, which they leave unburned, and of course they are easily killed. Others say it is done in order that they might the better find wild honey and grasshoppers, which both serve as articles of winter food.“

In October, he traveled farther south to near present-day Roseburg on the Umpqua River, primarily to collect the cones of the sugar pine . On October 26, he described an encounter with a local man who led him to the “long-wished-for pines.” While shooting the cones out of a tall tree, which Douglas described as hanging at the tips of branches “like small sugar-loaves in a grocer’s shop,” he attracted several Natives who seemed “anything but friendly.” After a tense standoff, one man indicated that they wanted tobacco, and Douglas responded that he would oblige them if they brought him more cones. The men went in one direction, and Douglas with three cones and a twig went in another.

Douglas was interested in all aspects of the landscape, including animals. Those named in his honour range from the pigmy short-horned lizard  to the Douglas squirrel ( . He shipped a number of specimens home for examination by leading scientists. Some species, such as the mountain beaver  , were new to science. Douglas also reported seeing—and shooting—California condors on the Columbia River.

In 1827, Douglas traveled through the Northern Rockies and then to York Factory on Hudson Bay before returning to London. He worked on his collections until October 1829, when he again traveled to Fort Vancouver. He spent time on the California coast in 1831-1832, collecting plants and animals and making geographic observations. In 1832, on his return to the Columbia River, he made his first visit to the Hawaiian Islands. He explored the Fraser River district in 1833 and left the Northwest on October 18, 1833, for a return trip to the Hawaiian Islands and a planned return to London.

Douglas had been intrigued by Hawaii and wanted to continue collecting. Unable to get prompt transportation to England, he spent extra time in the islands. It was there, on July 12, 1834, that he met his end,apparently trampled by a bullock in a deep pit designed to capture cattle, although foul play has been suspected. Douglas introduced more than two hundred Pacific Northwest plants home, many of them important in our gardens today, including Oregon’s red-flowering currant.

At Scone Palace,  near Douglas’s birthplace, stands a magnificent Douglas-fir, grown from seed that he sent back from western North America in 1826. His introduction of Sitka spruce to Britain forms the basis of that country’s modern conifer forestry.

Douglas was a tireless botanist and natural historian whose name is honoured in more than eighty species of plants and animals. David Douglas High School in Portland is named for him, a peak in the Rockies as well as numerous plants, are also named after him.

Pics are of Douglas, his memorials at Scone, in Hawaii and Vancouver. 

Read more on his life and death here https://keolamagazine.com/then-now/the-mysterious-death-of-david-douglas/

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ant, Uber, and the true nature of money

The US election news has largely overshadowed a seismic moment in global finance: Ant, a fintech company that spun out of Alibaba/Alipay, was scheduled to have the world's largest IPO, topping even Aramco, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

Then Chinese regulators canceled it.

As Yves Smith writes in her excellent Naked Capitalism breakdown, the consensus narrative on this is capricious Chinese regulators changed their minds and jerked the rug out from under Ali's billionaire owner Jack Ma.

The reality is a lot chewier.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/11/china-takes-step-against-securitization-consumer-borrowing-with-suspension-of-ant-ipo.html

To understand it, you need to understand the difference between the Chinese and American "money story." In the US, there is widespread, unquestioning faith in the fairytale that money predates the state and is separate from it.

In this story, people come together to trade but are plagued by disparate goods: if I want to pay for your chickens with a cow, how do you make change? They spontaneously decide that something (gold?) is money and price their cows and chicks in it.

Then, governments come along tax our gold away, and then to add insult to injury, governments abandon gold and insist that paper is as good as gold, print too much of it and crash the economy!

This probably sounds familiar to you, but it's just not true.

The actual historical reality, supported by history, archaeology and anthropology, is that governments created money by creating tax. The first "money" was the Babylonian ledgers that recorded how much of their crops farmers owed to the state and their creditors.

Money took a leap forward with imperial conquest: emperors solved the logistical problem of feeding and billeting their occupying soldiers by charging the occupied a tax that had to be paid for in coins stamped with the emperor's head.

They paid the soldiers in these coins, and demanded that their conquered populations somehow get the coins in order to pay their tax, with violent consequences if the tax wasn't paid. So the people sold food and other necessities to soldiers to get the coins.

Money, in other words, is how states provision themselves, and it derives its value from the fact that you have to pay your taxes in it. Governments spend money into existence by buying labor and goods from the public, and then tax it out of existence once a year.

The money the government spends, but does not tax, is the public's money - the money left over for us to transact. All the money in circulation is the sum total of all the money the government spent but didn't tax - that is, the government's deficit is the public's asset.

When governments run "balanced budgets" (or budget surpluses), they remove money from the economy, leaving the public with less to spend. That can be a good thing - a way to fight inflation, which is when too much money chases too few assets.

Low government spending slows growth by taking away the private sector's ability to spend. When the private sector is at full employment, when it is buying all the stuff that's for sale, you need to do something to keep inflation at bay.

During WWII, the USG competed with the private sector for stuff and labor. Uncle Sam spent lots of new money into existence, paying people to build munitions - but then convinced people to buy war bonds, burying that new money for years to come.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/07/taxes-for-revenue-are-obsolete.html

But when governments run so lean that there isn't enough money in the economy for the private sector to buy the stuff it needs, it seeks out other forms of money, like bank loans (which generate interest income for shareholders - one reason the market likes austerity).

In theory, bank lending is tightly regulated. Banks are the government's fiscal agents, creatures of the state, only able to trade because of a government charter. But when there isn't enough money in the system, unregulated banks spring into existence.

Another word for "unregulated bank" is "fintech" (h/t Riley Quinn).

And now we're back to China and the money story. Chinese finance regulators have always treated money as a public utility, to be spent or withdrawn to accomplish public purposes.

During the country's rapid industrialization, regulators loosened the flow of money to allow for rapid capacity-building, directing the country's productive capacity to building factories that would multiply that capacity.

But when they shut off the spigot and told factory owners that their future growth would come from making and selling things, the wealthy rebelled and sought out money from unlicensed banks or banks that were willing to break the rules.

This led to a string of subprime debt crises over the past five years, as regulators crushed these wildcat money-creators as fast as they popped up.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-02-17/china-s-600-billion-subprime-crisis-is-already-here

China's 1% fought back. They emigrated:

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/08/rich-chinese-flee/

They used cryptocurrency (aka fintech) to evade capital controls, inflating the Bitcoin price-bubble and the Vancouver/Sydney/etc real-estate price bubble as they laundered their money and stashed it in safe-deposit boxes in the sky:

https://www.ft.com/content/bad16a88-d6fd-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e

As China's shadow economy ballooned it also grew in criminality. There was the wave of Chinese debt-kidnappings, which became so widespread that hostage-taking was described as "China's small claims court."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/08/chinas-police-think-hostages-arent-their-problem/

No wonder regulators fought back.

China's regulators didn't win a decisive victory, but they retained enormous control over their money-supply, and that REALLY paid off when the pandemic hit and they suspended all debts, rents, and taxes and mothballed the entire productive economy.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/01/cant-pay-wont-pay/#jubilee-now

Contrast with the US where the finance sector is an industry, not a public utility. Finance flexed its political muscle and diverted nearly the whole stimulus to itself, then crushed the productive economy by demanding debt service and rents.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/09/michael-hudson-how-an-act-of-god-pandemic-is-destroying-the-west-the-u-s-is-saving-the-financial-sector-not-the-economy.html

The ability to use finance as a utility is one of China's crucial assets, and it defends that asset ferociously. And THAT'S why the Ant IPO got killed. Ant's major source of income is short-term, high-interest lending, what Chinese regulators call "pawnbrokering."

China's pawnbrokers are a $43B shadow banking sector, and the country's regulators have been cracking down on them for the past year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-12/china-is-said-to-scrutinize-43-billion-pawn-shop-lending-boom

$43B is a drop in the bucket of China's shadow economy (valued at $9T!), but it has real metastatic potential.

Ant's innovation is to fintechify the pawnbroker industry, by tying it to apps (on the front end) and to a US-style debt-brokerage (on the back end).

IOW: Ant's business model is that desperate people use an app to request and quickly receive high-risk, high-interest loans.

Then Ant sells the loans to "investors" (AKA "securitization"). Converting debts into income streams for third parties is the true basis of the finance industry. It's the means by which socially useless intermediaries extract ever-mounting rents from the productive economy.

And as Smith writes in her breakdown, the fact that Chinese finance regulators weren't going to let Ant explode his mass-scale, app-based payday-lending pawnbrokerage is not a surprise. They've been telling Jack Ma this for MONTHS, publicly and privately.

Ma thought he could simply bull his way past the Chinese regulators - that because he runs Alibaba and its subsidiaries, that they would defer to him. But the whole point of a finance regulator is NOT to let the finance sector write its own rules.

That's because bankers will cheerfully set the whole economy on fire to turn a buck (see, e.g., America).

Ant was on track for the largest IPO in world history due to investors' appetite for converting Chinese money from a public utility to a private enrichment vehicle.

So yeah, you're goddamned right the Chinese regulator wasn't going to let him do it. Their whole JOB is to not let him do it.

If you read this far, you may be asking yourself why, if governments don't need taxes to fund programs, they bother to tax at all?

There are two important reasons. The first is to fight inflation, by removing existing money from circulation so that when the government spends new money into existence to pay for the things it needs, that money isn't bidding against the existing supply.

But the other reason is to deprive the wealthy of the power that money brings, lest they use that power to pervert policy. Jack Ma's billions are what got him to the brink of a disastrous IPO for his unregulated bank.

And the US election demonstrates just how badly public policy fares when concentrated money is brought to bear on it for parochial purposes. Take Prop 22, the California ballot initiative to allow Uber and Lyft to misclassify their employees as independent contractors.

No on Prop 22 is a no-brainer. Vast numbers of gig workers are full-time employees, not contractors, and Lyft and Uber and other gig economy companies have pioneered labor misclassification as a tactic for paying literal starvation wages.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#prop-22

And yet, Prop 22 passed, thanks to the largest-ever spending on any ballot initiative in California history: $205 million ($628,854/day!), spent pn 19 PR firms (including Big Tobacco's cancer-denial specialists).

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/proposition-22-california-uber-lyft-gig-employee/

The spend included a bribe to the NAACP Chair's consultancy that made sub-minimum wage jobs with no benefits for people of color (the majority of gig workers) seem like a blow for racial justice.

All told, Uber/Lyft's campaign outspent 49 out of 53 CA House races COMBINED.

And it was a bargain. Lyft and Uber have stolen $413m from California's employment insurance fund since 2014 - and that's just one cost they ducked through this victory. Far more important are the savings they'll realize on worker safety and job-related death claims.

The gig economy companies are the epitome of the financial economy destroying the productive economy. None of these companies turn a profit, after all - all they do is destroy actual, profitable businesses.

Currently the entire restaurant sector is being laid to waste by Postmates and Uber Eats (even as both lose vast sums):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/19/we-are-beautiful/#man-in-the-middle

And the workers who lost out with Prop 22 are being "chickenized" - having all the risk of operating a business shifted onto their side of the ledger:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poesy-the-monster-slayer/#stay-on-target

(No surprise, one of Prop 22's signature achievements was denying workers the right to unionize).

The desperation of chickenized workers is downright dystopian:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/02/free-steven-donziger/#phone-trees

and chickenization (not automation) is the major cause of falling wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/17/on-face-interaction/#zombie-robots

Lyft, Uber, Postmates, and the whole gamut of gig economy companies are all haemorrhaging money. Uber alone lost $4.7B in the first half of 2020. That's how you can tell they aren't tech companies: tech companies profited during the pandemic.

Gig-economy companies aren't part of the productive economy - they're part of the finance economy. They rely on investors, not profits from delighted customers, to stay afloat. They make nothing. They destroy everything: workers' lives, productive businesses.

They will never be profitable. Ever.

Take Uber. The company only exists because the Saudi royals amassed so much money that they could bend reality. The "Saudi Vision 2030" plan calls for the creation of new sources of post-oil wealth.

To that end, the Saudis have poured money into the Softbank VC fund, which then supported global-scale, money-losing, predatory businesses in the hopes of securing a monopoly (or, failing that, unloading the company onto dazzled suckers).

When the company IPOed last year, it had already lost $10b. It loses $0.41 on every dollar you spend on your fare. And yet, the Saudis got away clean, off the backs of investors who assumed that a pile of shit this big must have a pony under it somewhere.

Some believed the company's lies about the imminence of self-driving cars. Uber is not going to make a self-driving car.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/30/death-to-all-monopoly/#pogo-stick-problem

Some believed the company's lies about profitability via growth. It can't grow to profitability. By its own disclosures, profitability depends on every public transit system in the world shutting down and being replaced by Ubers. #Nagahappen.

https://48hills.org/2019/05/ubers-plans-include-attacking-public-transit/

The Saudi strategy - and its punishing, economy-destroying reality-distortions - are exemplary of what happens when government let too much money accumulate in unaccountable, private hands. Prop 22 will kill and starve workers, and the public will pick up the pieces.

The businesses that profit from these deaths and immiseration will fail anyway, but not before their major backers and top execs make hundreds of millions or billions.

Recall: the Ant IPO was set to smash the existing record: Saudi Aramco (AKA the money behind Uber).

Meanwhile, all the blood and treasure squandered on Prop 22 - the $205m spent on the Yes side, the $20 spent by unions on the No side - won't save Uber or other gig economy companies.

Not only are they bleeding money, but as Edward Ongweso Jr explains, "Uber is losing legal challenges in France, Britain, Canada, Italy," turning drivers into employees or allowing "lawsuits reclassifying them as such."

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3annmb/proposition-22-passes-in-california-but-uber-and-lyft-are-only-delaying-the-inevitable

And other US states - NY, MA, NJ - are working to end the misclassification of Uber drivers and other gig workers.

Permitting Uber and other gig economy companies to flout the law did not make the economy better. All it did was transfer more money to the wealthy.

And the money they wealthy amass is converted to political power, usurping money's role as a public utility and converting it to a means to seek private gains at public expense.

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[femalehistories]

Mary Rogers

Mary Cecilia Rogers born c. 1820 – found dead July 28, 1841 Mary Rogers was an American murder victim whose story became a national sensation. Rogers was a noted beauty who worked in a New York tobacco store, which attracted the custom of many distinguished men, clearly on her account. When her body was found in the Hudson River, she was assumed to have been the victim of gang violence. However, one witness swore that she was dumped after a failed abortion attempt, and her boyfriend’s suicide note suggested possible involvement on his part. Rogers’ death remains unexplained. She inspired Edgar Allan Poe’s pioneering detective story “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”.

Mary Rogers was probably born in 1820 in Lyme, Connecticut, though her birth records have not survived. She was a beautiful young woman who grew up as the only child of her widowed mother. At the age of 20, Mary lived in the boarding house that was run by her mother, although it was her amazing beauty that made her the talk of the neighborhood. Her father James Rogers died in a steamboat explosion when she was 17 years old, and she took a job as a clerk in a tobacco shop owned by John Anderson in New York City. Anderson paid her a generous wage in part because her physical attractiveness brought in many customers. One customer wrote that he spent an entire afternoon at the store only to exchange “teasing glances” with her. Another admirer published a poem in the New York Herald referring to her heaven-like smile and her star-like eyes. Some of her customers included notable literary figures James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and Fitz-Greene Halleck.

First disappearance

On October 5, 1838, the newspaper the Sun reported that “Miss Mary Cecilia Rogers” had disappeared from her home. Her mother Phoebe said she found a suicide note which the local coroner analyzed and said revealed a “fixed and unalterable determination to destroy herself”. The next day, however, the Times and Commercial Intelligence reported that the disappearance was a hoax and that Rogers only went to visit a friend in Brooklyn. The Sun had previously published a story known as the Great Moon Hoax in 1835, causing controversy. Some suggested this return was actually the hoax, evidenced by Rogers’s failure to return to work immediately. When she finally resumed working at the tobacco shop, one newspaper suggested the whole event was a publicity stunt managed by Anderson.

Murder

On July 25, 1841, Rogers told her fiancé Daniel Payne that she would be visiting her aunt and other family members. Three days later, on July 28, the police found her corpse floating in the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey. Referred to as the “Beautiful Cigar Girl”, the mystery of her death was sensationalized by newspapers and received national attention. The details of the case suggested she was murdered, or dumped by abortionist Madame Restell after a failed procedure. Months later, the inquest still ongoing, her grief-stricken fiancé Daniel Payne committed suicide by overdosing on laudanum during a bout of heavy drinking. A remorseful note was found among the papers on his person where he died near Sybil’s Cave on October 7, 1841, reading: “To the World – here I am on the very spot. May God forgive me for my misspent life.”

The story, much publicized by the press, also emphasized the ineptitude and corruption of the city’s watchmen system of law enforcement. At the time, New York City’s population of 320,000 was served by an archaic force, consisting of one night watch, 100 city marshals, 31 constables, and 51 police officers.

The popular theory was that Rogers was a victim of gang violence. In November 1842, Frederica Loss came forward and swore that Rogers’ death was the result of a failed abortion attempt. Police refused to believe her story, and the case remained unsolved. Interest in the story waned nine weeks later when the press began publicizing a different, unrelated murder case, that of John C. Colt’s murder of Samuel Adams.

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Be sure to stop by these locations and pick up a twelve pack of Bud Light Seltzer Ugly Sweater Cans.

COOP'S BAR & GRILLE, 520-530 WASHINGTON ST., QUINCY

6-11 VARIETY, 466 LOWELL ST., METHUEN

A & B PACKAGE, 161 PELHAM ST., METHUEN

A & P SPINNERS MKT.& LIQ., 2 W. PRESCOTT ST., WESTFORD

A PLUS MINI MARKET, 150 PELHAM ST., METHUEN

ACTON WINE & SPIRIT, 305 MAIN ST., ACTON

AL PRIME ENERGY, 2083 BRIDGE ST., DRACUT

ALEXANDER'S WINE, 755 GALLIVAN BLVD., DORCHESTER

ALL STAR LIQUOR MART, 1220 CHESTNUT ST., NEWTON

ALLSTON WINE SHOP, 1065 COMMONWEALTH AVE., ALLSTON

AL'S BOTTLED LIQUOR, 226 WEST BROADWAY, SOUTH BOSTON

ANDOVER LIQUORS, 209 NO. MAIN ST., ANDOVER

ANDREW SQUARE LIQUOR MART, 605 DORCHESTER AVE., SOUTH BOSTON

ANTHONY'S LIQUORS, 269 SPRING ST., MEDFORD

ARSENAL STREET LIQUOR, 111 ARSENAL ST., WATERTOWN

ASHMONT MARKET, 630 ADAMS ST., DORCHESTER

ATLAS MEDFORD, 156 MYSTIC AVE., MEDFORD

AYER PACKAGE STORE, 48 MAIN ST., AYER

AYER SHOP' N SAVE, 22 FITCHBURG RD., AYER

BACON’S LIQUOR FRAMINGHAM, 624 WAVERLY ST., FRAMINGHAM

BACON'S LIQUOR HUDSON, 234 WASHINGTON ST., HUDSON

BAYSTATE LIQUORS, 345 MAIN ST., READING

BLANCHARDS ALLSTON, 103 HARVARD AVE., ALLSTON

BLANCHARDS REVERE, 286 AMERICAN LEGION HWY., REVERE

BLANCHARDS 418 LAGRANGE ST., WEST ROXBURY

BOSTON ROAD MARKET & LIQUOR, 871 BOSTON ROAD, GROTON

BRIGHTON GOURMET & CELLAR, 569 WASHINGTON ST., BRIGHTON

BROADWAY CONVENIENCE, 14 BROADWAY ROAD, DRACUT

BURTONS LIQUOR, 355 WASHINGTON ST., NEWTON

BUSCEMI'S CONVENIENCE, 275 COX ST., HUDSON

CAPITOL LIQUORS, 500 BOSTON POST RD., MARLBOROUGH

CENTRE LIQUORS, 391 CENTRE ST., JAMAICA PLAIN

CHELMSFORD ST. QUICK MART, 299 CHELMSFORD ST., LOWELL

CHE'S BEER & WINE, 300 ELIOT ST., ASHLAND

CHOICE MART, 181 MASSACHUSETTS AVE., BOSTON

CLOCKTOWN PACKAGE STORE, 68 UNION ST., ASHLAND

COLONIAL SPIRITS, 87 GREAT RD., ACTON

COPELAND PACKAGE STORE, 273 COPELAND ST., QUINCY

DANNY'S LIQUOR, 474 BOSTON POST RD., SUDBURY

DORCHESTER SUPREME, 540 GALLIVAN BLDV., DORCHESTER

DORGANS PACKAGE STORE, 664 EAST BROADWAY, SOUTH BOSTON

DRACUT TOWN VARIETY, 1734 LAKEVIEW AVE., DRACUT

DRUM HILL LIQUOR MART, 83 PARKHURST RD., CHELMSFORD

DYER LIQUORS, 40 MT AUBURN ST., WATERTOWN

EAGLE LIQUORS, 936 DORCHESTER AVE., DORCHESTER

EAST WOBURN PACKAGE STORE, 287 MONTVALE AVE., WOBURN

EASTGATE - NO. READING, 20 MAIN ST., NO. READING

EASTGATE LIQUOR STORE, 211 LOWELL ST., WILMINGTON

EXCEL PACKAGE, 613 MERRIMACK ST., LOWELL

FIELDS STATION LIQUORS, 500 GENEVA AVE., DORCHESTER

FLINTS MARKET & LIQUORS, 150 WESTFORD ROAD, TYNGSBORO

FUENTES LIQUOR, 680 PARKER ST., ROXBURY

GEORGIO’S LIQUORS, 480 BOSTON ROAD, BILLERICA

GORDON'S LIQUOR, 591 MOODY ST., WALTHAM

GORDON’S LIQUOR, 894 MAIN ST. WALTHAM

HANCOCK TOBACCO, 1500 HANCOCK ST., QUINCY

HIGHLAND’S LIQUORS, 12 BRIDGE ST., LOWELL

HUNTINGTON MARKET, 1795 COMMONWEALTH AVE., BRIGHTON

HUNTINGTON WINE & SPIRITS, 301 HUNTINGTON AVE., BOSTON

JAY'S MART, 1266 LAKEVIEW AVE., DRACUT

JAY'S WINE & SPIRITS, 77 COMMERCIAL ST., MALDEN

JERRY'S LIQUORS, 329 SOMERVILLE AVE., SOMERVILLE

KAPPY'S LIQUORS, 10 REVERE BEACH PARKWAY, MEDFORD

LAKEVIEW PACKAGE STORE, 49 STEWART ST., DRACUT

7-11, 1217 MAMMOTH RD., DRACUT

LINCOLN LIQUORS, 1 NICHOLAS RD., FRAMINGHAM

LINCOLN LIQUORS, 199 BOSTON ROAD, BILLERICA

LINCOLN LIQUORS, 170 GREAT RD., BEDFORD

LINCOLN LIQUORS, 10 MAIN ST., TEWKSBURY

LIQUOR AISLE, 99 CHARLES ST., MALDEN

LIQUOR JUNCTION, 14A MCGRATH HWY., SOMERVILLE

LIQUOR JUNCTION WOBURN, 345 WASHINGTON ST., WOBURN

LIQUOR SHACK. 815 LAKEVIEW AVE., LOWELL

LIQUOR SHOP, 1201 BRIDGE ST., LOWELL

SAV-MOR SPIRITS 48 BROADWAY, MALDEN

LUCKY'S LIQUORS, 66 NEWBURY AVE., QUINCY

LYNNWAY LIQUORS, 702 LYNNWAY, LYNN

MACKIE'S ALL IN ONE, 391 TEXTILE AVE., DRACUT

MANNING'S LIQUORS, 427 BRIDGE ST., LOWELL

MARKET ST. MARKET, 95 MARKET ST., LOWELL

MARLBORO WINE & SPIRITS, 44 BOSTON POST RD., MARLBOROUGH

MB SPIRITS, 120 MARKET PLACE DRIVE, WALTHAM

MCALOON'S PACKAGE, 531 CHICKERING ROAD, NO. ANDOVER

MCCARTHY BROTHERS, 9 MOULTON ST., CHARLESTOWN

MERRIMACK LIQUORS, 439 MERRIMACK AVE., DRACUT

METHUEN PACKAGE STORE, 462 LOWELL ST., METHUEN

MISSION HILL LIQUORS, 1623 TREMONT ST., ROXBURY

MUDDY RIVER CONVENIENCE, 197 MERRIMACK AVE., DRACUT

MULDOON LIQUORS, 312 PLEASANT ST., DRACUT

NABNASSET LIQUORS, 31 NABANSSET ST., WESTFORD

NATICK WINE & SPIRITS, 7 WATSON ST., NATICK

NATIONAL WINE & LIQUOR, 101 FALLS BLVD., QUINCY

NAVY YARD LIQUORS, 3 HAMPSON ST., DRACUT

NEEDHAM WINE & SPIRITS, 1257 HIGHLAND AVE., NEEDHAM

OAKDALE LIQUORS, 1900 MAIN ST., TEWKSBURY

O'BRIEN'S PACKAGE STORE, 420 FRANKLIN ST., FRAMINGHAM

ONE STOP LIQUORS, 265 MAIN ST., NO. READING

ONE STOP LIQUORS LITTLETON, 340 CONSTITUTION AVE., LITTLETON

PEMBERTON FRUIT MARKET, 2225 MASS AVE., CAMBRIDGE

PLAZA LIQUORS, 222D EAST MAIN ST., MARLBOROUGH

PLAZA LIQUORS, 182 HAVERHILL ST., METHUEN

PRESIDENTIAL DISCOUNT LIQUORS, 25 SCAMMELL ST., QUINCY

PUMPSY'S LIQUORS, 271 HIGHLAND AVE., MALDEN

QUALITY MART, 21 MASS AVE., BOSTON

QUICK 6 OF WEYMOUTH, 321 BRIDGE ST., NORTH WEYMOUTH

RESERVOIR WINE & SPIRITS, 1922 BEACON ST., BRIGHTON

REX LIQUORS, 68 MAMMOTH RD., LOWELL

RICKY'S LIQUORS, 212 MAIN ST., READING

ROSTRON'S PACKAGE STORE, 471 BROADWAY, METHUEN

ROTARY LIQUORS, 295 OLD COLONY AVE., SOUTH BOSTON

RUSSELL'S CONVENIENCE, 193 MAIN ST., MAYNARD

S & L LIQUORS, 4 SALEM ST., WOBURN

SAV-MOR DISCOUNT LIQUORS, 15-17 MCGRATH HIGHWAY, SOMERVILLE

SHIRLEY PACKAGE STORE, 217 GREAT RD., SHIRLEY

EXCHANGE, HANSCOM AFB, BEDFORD

SIMMONS LIQUORS, 210 CAMBRIDGE ST., BOSTON

SMITTY'S LIQUORS, 1091 MAIN ST., TEWKSBURY

SOUTHIE LIQUOR, 399-401 WEST BROADWAY, SOUTH BOSTON

SPERRY'S, 17 EAST MAIN ST., MARLBOROUGH

SQUARE LIQUORS, 13 HIGH ST., READING

SUN CITY VARIETY, 240 LAKEVIEW AVE., TYNGSBORO

SUPREME LIQUORS, 598 MASSACHUSETTS AVE., CAMBRIDGE

SUPREME LIQUORS, 615 HANCOCK ST., QUINCY

SUNNYS LIQUOR, 123 MAIN ST., PEPPERELL

SUNNYSIDE PACKAGE, 7 POND ST., ASHLAND

TARGET, MYSTIC VIEW ROAD, EVERETT

TARGET, 550 ARSENAL ST., WATERTOWN

TARGET, 564 MASSACHUSETTS AVE., CAMBRIDGE

TARGET, 1345 BOYLSTON ST., BOSTON

TARGET 210 BALLARDVALE ST., WILMINGTON

THE DAILY MARKET, 110 SAVIN HILL, DORCHESTER

THE HUB, 604 EAST BROADWAY, SOUTH BOSTON

THE LIQUOR JUNCTION, 1 GENERAL WAY, READING

THE WINE PRESS, 1022-1024 BEACON ST., BROOKLINE

THE WINE VAULT, 2 FAIRBANKS ST., FRAMINGHAM

TIPSY'S LIQUORS, 739 PARKER ST., ROXBURY

TOTAL WINE & MORE, 321 SPEEN ST., NATICK

TOTAL WINE & MORE, 1 MYSTIC VIEW ROAD, EVERETT

TOTAL WINE & MORE, 34 CAMBRIDGE ST., BURLINGTON

TOWN LINE LIQUORS, 1524 VFW PARKWAY, WEST ROXBURY

TRAFFIC CIRCLE LIQUORS, 2 LITTLETON RD., AYER

TURNPIKE MARKET & LIQUOR, 509 MIDDLESEX TURNPIKE, BILLERICA

TYNGSBOROUGH LIQUORS, 24 MIDDLESEX ROAD, TYNGSBORO

UNIVERSITY CONVENIENCE, 102 UNIVERSITY AVE., LOWELL

UPPER FALLS BEVERAGE, 150 NEEDHAM ST., NEWTON

VAHEY'S LIQUOR STORE, 405 MAIN ST., WATERTOWN

VALLEY LIQUORS, 291D MERRIMACK ST., METHUEN

VINEYARD, 63 PARK ST., AYER

WEGMAN’S, 53 3RD AVE., BURLINGTON

WEGMAN'S, 200 BOYLSTON ST., NEWTON

WEGMAN'S, 3850 MYSTIC VALLEY PARKWAY, MEDFORD

WEGMAN’S, 1245 WORCESTER ST., NATICK

WESTFORD WINE & SPIRITS, 9 CORNERSTONE SQ., WESTFORD

WILMINGTON PLAZA WINE & SPIRITS, 252 MAIN ST., WILMINGTON

WINE BASKET AND SPIRITS, 1441 COMMONWEALTH AVE., BRIGHTON

WINE RACK, 210 BOSTON RD., CHELMSFORD

WOLLASTON WINE, 54-60 BEALE ST., QUINCY

WOODY’S LIQUORS, 1035 SARATOGA ST., EAST BOSTON