“I can’t find the rest of these crystal glasses,” KK says, lying on the kitchen floor, one arm buried deep in a cabinet. There are rattling noises, and she keeps shining her phone’s flashlight deep into the Underworld of our kitchenware. “This is all the Rosenthal stuff.”
Two pieces of the remaining Rosenthal set. All photos by kajmeister, exc. Wedgwood medallion.
My mom received a set of Rosenthal china as a wedding present. When she died in 1997, I ended up with it. Most of it I stored, but I kept a platter out among our other fancy buffet dishes. A few holidays ago, when it was pulled out for use, the platter cracked neatly in half, which has made me loathe to use any other pieces.
As we were making Thanksgiving turkey and trimmings this year, pulling out the special bowl to mix stuffing and another bowl to sport cranberries, I realized that there’s a big gap between what I would use for a dinner party and what my mom would use. Not that strange these days, of course, my kids would say, “dinner party, WTF?” But the idea of hauling out a single set of matching delicate dishes for a meal seems bizarre, even on a special holiday with people you care about.
There is a history for things like Rosenthal china, a company history and a personal history. These things intersect and create waves of overlapping interference, like in a pond. This may explain why we have such a patchwork quilt of dishes when we serve dinner, all of which are precious.
Higher Education, photo of the Campanile at CAL by kajmeister.
If you had studied Economics, you would know why giving substantial tax breaks beginning in the 1990s for 4-year undergraduate degrees ultimately raised the prices of 4-year undergraduate degrees. If you had studied Communication Studies, you’d be able to spot the rhetorical fallacies of Ivy League graduates who now grouse about the decline of education. You’d know that the Wall Street Journal’s college ranking system based on ROIs uses circular logic. If you’d studied Statistics, you’d wonder why journalists only refer to data showing the last five years, and you’d quickly learn that “public confidence” is not the cause of the decline in enrollment. English major? you’d see how different motivations drive people’s choices. Gender or Multilcultural studies? You’d notice the change in who graces the mastheads of universities today. College is useful for a lot of reasons.
There has been a bunch of — academics might say a “plethora” — of articles recently whining about how people have decided college is a bad idea, how careerism is ruining college, and how it’s just no good (or fun) anymore. I beg to differ.
Sam Bankman-Fried is on trial this week for fraud in cryptocurrency, which seems like the perfect time to analyze why crypto is neither necessary nor sufficient for life in 2023. In other words, I don’t like it.
I’m supporting a couple of online investing classes that each had a whole module all about crypto, so I may have to “teach it.” One of my beefs is that explanation about a new payments process should not obsess about the technical aspects of how it works. If you start the discussion of “what is digital currency” by using the word “blockchain” and a set of Rubik’s cubes, then I know it’s already gone off the rails. Hope I don’t have to grade any assignments touting this nonsense er… technology still underdeveloped.
For those of you who don’t know the difference between proof of stake and proof of work or which Marvel movie featured the Scarlet Witch or how many points a ranger adds to their acrobatics D20 roll… in other words, if you’re not mesmerized by geekery over this stuff, let me see if I can detangle why digital currency’s time has not come. It has to do with 1) technological vulnerability; 2) lack of standardization; 3) volatility; 4) diffusion of purpose. Allow me to expound.
TechnoBabble
There’s actually a joke about crypto in the mystery series “After Party II.” The murdered guy made his fortune in crypto, and when one person asks what exactly he was doing, the official nerdy character jump in with, “Let me explain what blockchain is…” That’s how we know this is all silly. If you are explaining either an investment or a way to pay for a sandwich by talking about how the currency is built, we’re in trouble. Do I need to know what kind of special ink is used to make a twenty dollar bill or how they put the hologram on in order to know that it’s not counterfeit? If you ask me how a bank works, do I start by explaining what kind of reinforced concrete they use for the vaults?
Photo from Open Access Govt. Notice how you need digital art to create digital photos of blockchains.
Blockchain may indeed be quite secure. Encryption is pretty secure. Fort Knox, I suspect, is quite secure. The question of how digital currency works should not begin with whether or not it’s secure or how it’s secure. It should begin with how you use it. To my mind, there is vulnerability there. Why? Because digital currency can only be used from within a program.
Say I want to buy a soda at my local mini-mart with crypto. I need my phone, my password to the phone, my password to the app. And the phone needs service and to be fully charged. The mini-mart needs technology, too, as well as working access, service, etc. All of a sudden, this “so easy” process has several layers. Not convinced? One of the first folks to pay with crypto at Subway, which touted its willingness to accept payment, described this incredibly easy process as:
Once our subs were made the employee took out an iPad and opened Coinbase. She punched our total in the register and then in the iPad, which immediately generated a custom QR code linked to the store’s Coinbase account which was preloaded with our exact total calculated. I took out my iPhone, opened my Coinbase app, and scanned the QR code. Instantly the total popped up on my screen and gave me the option to leave a note about my purchase.
I’ll stop you right there. The employee took out an iPad? A separate piece of technology, disconnected to the register? That has to coordinate with the store’s accounting system? Who do you think is making these sandwiches at Subway? It’s not Chat GPT, I’ll tell you that much.
Photo at Coindesk.com.
By the way, googling this topic about Subway also led to story #1: Subway has just been sold to a giant conglomerate private equity firm that also owns a dozen other food service chains. Story #2: Subway-themed trading bot makes millions using ‘sandwich’ attacks! That means a digital pirate stole millions digitally using Subway as his villain name. And that whatever Subway wanted to do with digital currency acceptance may soon go out the window with the new ownership. Let’s see if crypto stays on Subway’s menu.
