Boise, 1886
A Glibertarians Exclusive: Mystical Child Part II
From the diary of Robert “Cairo Bob” Allen, 1841-1928
November 10, 1886 – Boise, Idaho Territory
Four days hard riding has brought me to Boise in Idaho Territory. There’s some fuss going on in town just now, people all upset about Chinese living in the town. Not sure why everyone is so riled up, it ain’t like they were freedmen – I can see how some folks would be unhappy about that, although I ain’t never had a problem with colored folks myself. But in Reno I had run into a man who saw the same fellow I’m looking for, and said he was headed for some place northwards of Boise. I picked up on his trail again when I heard tell of his passage from an Indian in some little place called Jordan Valley in Oregon, so figure I’m on the right track. Man sure isn’t taking any pains to keep his movements a secret or anything.
***
November 10, 1886
Bob rode into Boise on a cloudy, cold day, with a chill wind blowing pellets of wet snow in his face. His old gray coat was wet through. He was wearing an old pair of corduroy trousers he had happened to acquire along the way and two hickory shirts along with his mule-ear trooper boots and ancient slouch hat; all were dirty, all were soaked.
“I’d kill for clean, dry duds and a warm bed,” he muttered to himself as he walked his horse down what appeared to be the main drag. He knew the warm bed was unlikely, given his current state of poverty, but he had enough money left for a stable stall and a laundry, if such a thing were to be had; Boise looked to be a good-sized town, so the odds of getting his clothes cleaned up was reasonable, and he could always sleep in a stall with his horse.
He pulled out his wallet and went through the few remaining banknotes – no, bills, he reminded himself – green Yankee bills, he noted with a slight frown, still not happy about how the whole thing had turned out. Something better break loose pretty soon, he reminded himself, or I’m going to be broke myself.
Bob rode down the street. As he turned onto an east-west street lined with businesses, the clouds broke open, allowing a weak, watery sunshine to peek through.
The sun was low in the sky, and after four days in the wilds it was odd to ride from sun to shadow as he went in and out of the shade cast by the buildings along the south side of the street. Bob spotted a man standing on a corner and angled his horse over towards the local.
“Hey, friend,” Bob called. “Can you point me towards a place where a fella can get cleaned up?”
“Been on the trail a while?” the local asked.
“You might say that.”
The Boisean’s gaze narrowed on hearing Bob’s accent. “Reb, are you?”
“Was,” Bob agreed, trying a soft answer to turn away any possible wrath. “Wade Hampton’s cavalry. Long time ago now.”
“Yeah,” the man agreed, relaxing some. “Served in a Wisconsin volunteer infantry regiment myself. Took a bullet in the arm at Second Wilderness… Well, anyway, as you say, friend, all a long time ago now. What did you say you were looking for?”
Bob slapped the leg of his muddy trousers. “Place to get cleaned up. Bath, laundry if there is such a thing.”
The local pointed up the street. “There’s a boarding house up two blocks, in what used to be Chinatown. Figure you can get a bath there, and Mrs. Olson across the street from there took over Chang’s laundry, she can clean up your clothes right quick. That’s where I get my stuff cleaned up.”
“Took over?”
“Yeah,” the Boisean said. “Big fuss around here lately about the Chinese. Territorial legislature passed a tax on ‘em, and the folks around here made things pretty hot for anyone and anything Chinese. Most of the Chinese have left the territory now. Lots of them just up and abandoned houses and businesses, so the local folks took over. Big fuss earlier in the year, but it’s mostly blown over now. I’m here to tell you, though, the line was drawn awfully strong between old Chinatown and the rest of the city for a while there, and that’s for sure and for certain.”
Uncertain as to how to react to that, Bob simply thanked the man and rode on.
“Sure as shooting” he said to himself a few minutes later: There, on the right-hand side of the street, was a big rambling wooden house with a sign:
MONARCH BOARDING HOUSE
There was a hitching rail at the front of the house. Bob rode over, dismounted, tied his horse off and went inside. A bell jingled as he closed the big oak door behind him and stepped into a warm entry room lighted up by a gas mantle. Right civilized place, this is, he told himself. Inside, he could see a large dining table. A lean man with the look of a drummer sat there, reading a newspaper. Somewhere a clock ticked loudly. The house smelled of fresh bread.
A large, gray-haired woman met him in the entry. “I’m Mrs. Dalby,” she said. “I run the house here.”
Bob nodded, removed his old slouch hat, and gave his name. “Looking for a place to spend a night or two,” he told her. “Get cleaned up, get some hot food, if I can, ma’am.”
“You’re welcome, of course,” the old woman said with a sniff. “Fifty cents a night. Another quarter for the hot supper. If it’s a bath you want, go across the street to Broadman’s Laundry, they can clean your clothes up and provide a hot shower-bath; it’s the latest thing. Ten cents for shirts, fifteen for trousers, nickel for each item of small clothes. Quarter for the shower bath.”
“That sounds right fine, ma’am. Is there a place I can put up my horse?”
“Stable is in back. Use of the stable is part of the rent, but I’ll need a quarter for hay and oats for your animal if you want to feed it.”
“I will, ma’am, thank you.” Bob reached into his wallet and pulled out two one-dollar Yankee greenbacks. “Let’s call it two nights for now,” he said, handing her the bills. “Much obliged.”
“I thank you,” Mrs. Dalby said. “Supper is in at six o’clock sharp, so you have a couple of hours.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Bob said. “Reckon I’ll put up my horse, then see about that laundry.”
“I’ll send my boy Andy out to get you some feed,” Mrs. Dalby said, and walked off.
Bob took his gelding to the stable, unsaddled him, put up the horse tack and brushed the animal down. A boy of about ten or so came in as Bob was checking the horse’s feet and filled the trough in the stall Bob was using with a mix of chopped hay and oats. The horse set to with a will.
With that done, Bob walked across the street to the building marked LAUNDRY AND HOT BATH.
He didn’t notice the short, portly fellow watching him from a rocking chair on the boarding house’s porch. The round man watched Bob go into the laundry, then got up and went into the boarding house.
***
I came to a high place of darkness and light.
The dividing line ran through the center of town.
I hitched up my pony to a post on the right,
Went into a laundry to wash my clothes down.
More? Mor.
More please, great story, cant wait til the next part
My rocking chair is not on the porch! It’s on the veranda!
I couldn’t remember the Spanish word for that.
veranda didn’t come to english from spanish.
Its pronounced lips in english.
“on the veranda”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ipGbyhypqs
Bo’s Veranda
This is good.
Excellent!
Thanks, Animal!
Fantastic so far. Thanks animal!
Good stuff as usual Animal.
Bonus: White Indian, is that you?
The good news is the ranger was in compliance with policy regarding his use of force. Nothing to see here, move along.
Dunphy, why did you have to stun White Indian?
“The investigation determined that the law enforcement ranger’s actions were consistent with agency policy and appropriate given the totality of the circumstances,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MnGzl-OEyGE
Setting aside the conduct of the NPS, “I don’t have to follow the rules because I’m an Indian!” is quite a position to take. Over time it seems that wokeness is more and more about carving out designated slices of the aristocracy for select members of each victimhood group. Normal people have to follow the rules; select groups get special exceptions; the woke get special exceptions; and the most ruthless among the woke and select groups vie for the top spots with the most privileges.
Gamboling (or as the protagonist here had it “wonder”) is not a privilege! Your claim to owning the land is privilege.
Whatever the thing is, if it can be given to some and denied to others, it is a privilege. The “rights vs. privileges” argument poses a false dichotomy. Gamboling is a right in the sense that, were there no other people, you could live and wander as freely as Mother Nature and your survival ability allows. But it is rarely a privilege that any authority will grant to you without at least some limitation.
Also, for a people who we are told believe that land has no owner, they sure do love to quibble (understandably) about property rights when it comes to their own possessions.
Unrelated: Thanks to DEG for linking the Estes Model Rocket history video in the previous thread. It was a good lunchtime watch.
Related: A PVC ‘rocket launcher’ that shoots Estes rockets.
That looks cool.
You’re welcome!
I used to build model rockets as a kid, and had a ton of fun doing it. I haven’t done so for decades, but might buy a model and put it together and see if I can find a place to fly around here. I can’t at home, since we’re right in Class D airspace. I still have the launching control box I designed and build myself way back when. It’s in a box somewhere around here.
I built a few when I was a kid.
We lost a couple.
I received some model rocket stuff from a relative when he went away to college. I don’t remember what happened with that stuff.
I haven’t tinkered with model rockets in years.
I don’t remember us caring much about the airspace beyond, “There are no low flying planes around? OK, launch!”
I tried to reply but forgot to post…too many things going on here.
My brother and I would cut fins from milk cartons, fix them to the rocket engines and launch them like that. Relieved of the weight of the rocket they would really go. They would zip around easily 5 times faster and often go up out of sight never to be seen again. Once we created a little nose on the end of. one and packed it with black powder and a shotgun primer. We fired it horizontally at a sheet of plywood about 50 yards away.
Once of that was enough.
My buddies and I used to put warheads on them.
OT: Joaquin Phoenix did like a whole year in character, even personal experiences, for one of his films. It would be interesting to see one of these method actors play out the ‘experiment’ for us. Pick the most lefty movie roles for a year, while off screen acting like a right winger. I wonder how many awards they’d win.
Also OT: Jackass sports radio was trying to say Drew Brees isn’t even the same league as Brady, because Super Bowl wins. And ‘taking all the variables into consideration’. Yet the one variable they never took into consideration was that the team Tom Brady took over at the start of his career had been in the Super Bowl just a few years before and had gotten to the play-offs that year without Brady. Where as Drew Brees was drafted by the Chargers, who had been to one Superbowl in the previous 20 years, then traded to the Saints who had rarely even had a winning season in the previous 30 years.
Re: football comparisons.
The Super Bowl by definition is the “top” NFC team against the top AFC team.
If 5 of the top 6 teams are in the NFC in a given year, it’s going to be tough to win that conference championship and thus a ticket to the Super Bowl.
I think the case can be made that outside of a few teams (Patriots, Colts, Chargers), the NFC had the tougher and more balanced teams. So the Saints even getting to the playoffs was an achievement, whereas you could pretty well count on playoff appearances by the Pats, Colts, Chargers, Ravens in the 2000s.
The other QBs this player put in Tom Brady’s league were: Peyton Manning (drafted by a Colts team that hadn’t won anything since before they left Baltimore) and Brett Favre (who took over the Packers when they’d had like 2 play-off appearances since the 60s), but that whole line of thought was lost because TB12 IZ DA GOAT!!11!!!!
And yeah, the AFC, historically, has had fewer competitive teams per year. The Bills won the AFC 4 years in a row, but couldn’t beat the NFC teams.
Same Jackass wasn’t even putting Marino in the top 5 QBs, BeCUz He Got nO wRinGzz!!1111
TB12 also had the good fortune to play in the era of minimal QB contact. Guys didn’t have 20 year careers back in the day just because they got tired of playing. That’s half of his greatness right there.
Most of his ‘greatness’ can indeed be placed on the o-lines he has lined up behind.
Brady even has his own special rule, the “tuck rule”, named for him after a season saving controversial call vs Raiders in the AFC championship game.
The ‘tuck rule’ was on the books before that incident. But that play didn’t meet the requirements for that rule, hence why it has been swept away.
The rule stated if the QB was in the motion of throwing OR bringing the ball back to the palm of his hand after a fake, it was an incomplete pass. But then. clearly, the ball comes out after he brought the ball back down to his non-throwing hand, but shush!
Re: Joaquin style one-year method acting.
I think an actor who went MAGA for a year, even as an art project, would be ostracized and never regain his place in Wokedom. This would be due in part to “MAGA is never OK!!” and part to confusion and disinclination to do critical thinking.
What’s your point exactly, Tom Brady is better, whether we like it or not.
The Buccaneers hadn’t been to the playoffs in twelve years. Tom Brady, at age 43 joined them and then not only went to the playoffs, but won the entire thing.
*playing in the same division as Drew Brees
*defeating Brees, Rodgers, Mahomes, (and Taylor Heinecke) in the playoffs.
I must’ve missed where he lined up for the defense to be able to defeat the efforts of the opposing QBs. [I know, you didn’t invent that bit of sports talk stupidity, but like an unblocked DE I’m gonna take that shot just because I can.]
“Winners” aren’t always the best at what they do. The just manage to win all the time.
They didn’t get to the SB becuz he was TeH GoAt!111!!11!11!!, they got to the SB because he was a competent QB. He didn’t have a great, or even good season. In the NFC Championship game he had worse stats than the apposing QB. The TB defense put the number 1 scoring offense in the league on their ass 2 times in the same season, but all anyone can talk about is it is because of TB12.
I do like some of things Brady has done to be able to win, he constantly restructures his contract so the team can afford to bring in other players. But that isn’t the argument that is ever put forth, nope, it’s by his greatness alone that they win. And the stupid talk radio people never get that part. ‘Of course Dak Prescott should get a monster deal! That’s what the market is willing to pay!’ (Ignoring the fact that the NFL IS the fixed pie that some economists imagine the greater economy to be, where the more you pay one guy, the less you can pay others because of the salary cap)
So your argument isn’t that Brees is comparable to Brady, it’s that you hate Tom Brady? I get it, but come on…
He didn’t have a great season?
But Brady owns a MAGA hat, so he will be canceled soon enough.
Let him enjoy his GOAT status before he’s vilified for voting for Trump like tens of millions of other Americans.
Which metric on that table are judging by? By completion percentage he was worse than Cam Newton. He threw more interceptions than Sam Darnold. He had a lower QB rating than Kirk Cousins…
The 4,600 yds, 40 TDs to 12 INTs, 21 sacks…but you already knew this.
No I didn’t know. Seems odd to cherry pick just those few.
I’d love to argue this all day long, like how Terrell Davis’ yardage alone didn’t make him a great running back because he was running behind a great offensive line, but, I’m up 3hrs past my bedtime already. If you’re around when I wake up, we continue if you like.
I’m not arguing Tom Brady hasn’t had a good career, but that the metrics on which ‘The Best’ is rated these days is just shitty.
Enjoy your day, ASSHAT.
B- trolling, since I didn’t catch on fast enough.
I’ve never seen a guy get so much grief for being good at sportsball (w/ the notable and very explicable exception of Barry Bonds). It’s like people feel obliged to explain his success on anything except his play. Of course he had a great defense this year – and earlier in his career, too. As did Montana and Bradshaw. That’s why they all have multiple rings. But go look at all of the best defenses each season and then see how many times they actually win the Super Bowl. It certainly isn’t a 1 for 1 correlation.
What isn’t disputable is that dude makes plays when he needs to, does enough to win, and – here’s the kicker – generally doesn’t give the ball away or do shit to HURT his team. Over all the years I’ve watched the guy, he’s never had the best arm, nor the best receivers (for the most part) – he just makes good decisions, whether it’s throwing the ball away or finding the open guy.
QBs have the ball in their hand more than anyone else, so it stands to reason that people credit them for outcomes – in the same way that pitchers factor in baseball. (They don’t track W-Ls for 2nd baseman no matter how many diving stops they make!)
Brady has managed to outperform everyone else in bringing championships to his team. I’m not sure that QBs should get all the credit they do, but they also have to stand at the podium every week when they lose and explain what happened. Dude has 7 rings and I think where beyond the point of calling it all a co-inky-dink.
His coach at Tampa freely admitted that he sometimes just sits back and watches Tom coach the team.
It wasn’t a complaint.
In other news, Wayne Gretzky was also not much of an “athlete” by his own admission – yet he was the best hockey player ever (tied with Bobby Orr). Gretzky wasn’t the fastest skater, nor the best stick-handler, nor did he have the best shot in the game when he played. Somehow, however, he managed to find a way to keep putting that puck in the net and helping everyone else around him do so with uncanny regularity.
I’m not Brady fan, but I will also say he’s probably the greatest QB of all time.
Because he has had so much success, over so long, and now with two different teams. The win this year pretty well made it a lock, IMO, because you can no longer say “Well, any decent QB would have won with the Pats.”
To me, he’s the Kyle Busch of the NFL. Obviously top of class, but he just rubs me the wrong way. And its sports, so I can be as irrational as I want and dislike him just for that.
“Well, any decent QB would have won with the Pats.”
A ‘decent’ QB wouldn’t have abided by the out right cheating done by his coach and quit the team in disgust.
This is exactly my vibe. Moar please.
Weird coincidence. I was just teaching my co-worker from Colombia about the male/female words for animals in English; boar/sow, bull/cow, ram/ewe, etc. Then this morning as I was getting ready for work I had to think of the ‘horse’ equivalent for ‘steer’ – I remembered, but thought it would be a long time before I’d ever hear/read it again.
“Yellow peril” was a thing in the western US back in the day but it was nothing like what happened in Mexico. I grew up with a couple friends whose grandparents had been on both sides of the revolution in Mexico and they related how Pancho Villa used to regard the Chinese when he and his gang rode into a town. He would line them up, front to back, when he shot them to use as few bullets as possible.
You forgot the word gelding?
Didn’t forget, just took me a little while to remember it.
My English is a bit rusty over here.
That’s what I assumed he meant.
But to be fair, with some livestock there are several more distinctions than gender and whether intact or neutered.
Filly, mare, gelding, stallion, yearling, colt, foal.
For cattle, we get even more personal, addressing reproductive history. A heifer is a female that hasn’t thrown a calf (given birth). But we don’t ask if she is a virgin, as we do with thoroughbred dogs.
Go figure.
As long as you don’t buy two mules with a plan to mate them (it was a plot point in a novel my mother read, she wrote a letter to the author to explain why that isn’t a sound business plan)
You’re shitting me. Not meant as a joke?
It was a widowed woman in the old west, and that was part of her plan, to buy two mules and mate them and sell mules. (this was a romance novel, I never read it myself, but the way my mom relayed it, it was not done as a comical point)
A mare who has not been bred is a maiden.
I did not know that.
Is it like heifer, where it only counts if pregnancy results?
No. It means she’s never been mounted at all or if so, penetration did not happen. So, a virgin.
Nice work, Animal. I like where this is going and how it’s getting there so far.
? Liking the story thanks!
Loving this, Animal. Thank you.
Accidentally saw part of the Grammys last night.
Am truly embarrassed for America.
There can be no wondering at why we are where we are – it’s all right there out in the open.
I never thought I would be one of those conservative douchebags who complains about shit like this but it was awful.
Also some people dislike Cardi B because it’s vulgar, low brow, whatever.
I want to make it clear I dislike her only because she sucks.
It isn’t like she was the sole low point of the show, or of the business.
Merely one example.
I had no idea it was even on. I’ve never been so proud of myself as I am right now.
Nor did I. In fact, I have no idea who Cardi B is. That doesn’t even sound like a name.
I’d guess she wears a bee striped cardigan?
I think it’s a play on Cartier, but not sure.
Super intellectual pun.
The only thing I know about her.
Cardi B has defended herself after a video resurfaced of her saying she drugged and robbed men who wanted to have sex with her while she worked as a stripper before finding fame. …
Correct. She used to drug and rob men. And notice she hasn’t been cancelled.
Memorable, all right.
I think her true last name is fairly close to Bicardi (as in rum)
LOL
Bridget makes me laugh. That video made me hurl.
Down in the comments:
https://twitter.com/ginacarano/status/1371157111669858304/photo/1
I’m not even sure how I could accidentally turn that shit on anymore.
Now that I stream everything, and don’t use a service like Hulu or YouTube TV, I’d have to work to do it.
And that means life has gotten better.
Bill Burr made fun of woke feminists at the Grammys & and now the cancel mob is outraged.
They’re sending him abuse, threats, & calling his wife a “coon” for marrying a racist.
According to the woke mob, “racists marry black people every day.”
https://twitter.com/Dataracer117/status/1371325101782671365
If you’re a race-obsessed and broken person it makes perfect sense.
Cliffhangers. I hate cliffhangers. Is the rest of the story in SP’s hands so I can cheat?
Hahahaha, I couldn’t even beat the person that lost to McConnell, but I’m gonna beat Paul!
The undiluted hatred for Trump has to go somewhere. Paul, Cruz, Kennedy, Massey….they will be the new targets.
The Left has always had a hard on for Paul especially since he steps into their turf and actually fight for civil liberties.
Short story. I remember when Paul came to Chicago to meet some ministers and discuss in front of a group of people about how the criminal justice system is crushing the black community. One of my acquaintances who has a Ph.D and works for a non for profit, lost his shit at the prospect of a Republican speaking about the criminal justice system. His belief was that since the GOP are so terrible, they shouldn’t get any credit for helping the black community.
He’s one of those people who thinks everything is racism and is a partisan hack to boot. Like Democart can shoot 20 kids in broad daylight in a large crowd and he’ll somehow pin it on Republicans.
Yet more evidence that having a PhD has nothing to do with intelligence.
Outside of his ultra-small sliver of expertise, if they even have that, PhDs are every bit as stupid as everyone else, only they lack the knowledge to understand that.
I wouldn’t blame the left for that person being so impossibly stupid. Although I can certainly understand saying that his level of intellect is very representative of the left.
I do blame his academic environment for allowing to remain that stupid, though. Praise Allah that I never got that law prof job.
I am guessing what he was not saying was “Oh my God, a Republican might win some points with voters!”
Like hell, there is no redemption in progland. Souls in hell howl the loudest every time St. Pete unlocks the pearly gates.
Ignorant of the history of the Republican Party (and adherents thereto) from inception until now, is he?
Yeah, that dog won’t hunt either.
There is no person of faith like a progressive. You can line all the facts up for them to see and they will not cast the slightest bit of doubt on their beliefs.
You need to get with the program, lived experience holds primacy now.
I gotta say that I’m getting on board the “lived experience” train. The logical principles of libertarianism are dry to many but can be powerfully illustrated with the lived experiences of those suffering from the consequences of government overreach. I’m starting to use both.
-The lived experience of a patient suffering from a crippling chronic disease being denied pain relief by a scornful doctor who’s never experienced anything more painful than a hangnail
-The lived experience of young adults on the lower socio-economic scale being thrown in rape cages for possessing drugs due to laws passed by a privileged class who’s offspring freely use the same drugs with no consequences
-The lived experience of a guy who had his driver’s license suspended because of not paying an unrelated fine and is now unable to work thus falling to a vicious feedback loop.
These could go on and on. Just take IJ’s case list.
I’d vote for Titania McGrath in a heartbeat.
Yay!
My 1Gbit fiber line gets installed this week! And my new mesh system will be here tomorrow!!
Maybe now we can stream more than 1 YouTube video without jamming all the bandwidth.
Huzzah!! You can have all the crap the internet can deliver at top speed!
Congrats though. It does matter when streaming a lot.
Having 2 kids in remote school (admittedly they’ve been in person all accept the end of the last school year and 3 weeks around Thanksgiving when the governor closed all schools) and a wife working from home, trying to make do with a shitty DSL line was a bitch.
I’m sure the fiber company is swimming in tax money, but at least I’ll get to directly benefit from it this go around.
We have 200MBish over cable. We routinely stream 2 videos at a time, high-def, with no probs. When we had 60MBish, also no probs. The upgrade came solely from getting a new router.
When we had 60MBish, also no probs. The upgrade came solely from getting a new router.
I went in the opposite direction due to the modem. Had been paying for 300MB over cable. Called into tech support for an unrelated issue and the guy let me know my modem only supports 100MB and that’s been my top speed for years. Apparently 100MB is enough for us so I downgraded and saved 20 bucks/month.
Of course Comcast also just instituted a monthly 1.2 TB data cap. We blow past that every month so I had to add an unlimited data rider. Never thought I’d see a data cap on home internet.
Should have said, upgrade came from a new modem, not router. Learned exactly the same thing about my modem – it was the chokepoint, but I don’t think I was paying very much, if anything, for the unusable speed on my old plan.
Punch line: I signed up for a new plan with higher speeds when I got the new modem, and saved $30 – 40 a month with a two-year commitment. I still think anything over 40MBish is unused speed for our house, but whatev. Design margins are a good thing, especially when all your electronic access goes through a single point of failure (well, I guess we have cell phone service as a partial backup, but no landline or satellite TV). Dropping satellite and redoing our internet probably saved us $120/month, net.
ISP pricing is from the goddamn stoneage. You should be billed by actual usage, and it’s not like they don’t have the metrics to do it, but they seem utterly averse to pricing pro rata. Of course, the local franchise agreements they strike with the revolving door idiots who work for the local government likely play a part in all of this.
ISP usage is an odd product rather like discount airline fares. A bit unsent is a lost bit.. You can’t save it for later. Similarly the empty seat on the plane, if you don’t fill it, it is still going to the destination. Yes, airplanes have a weight penalty for carrying the extra person but it behaves similarly that you try and get that infrastructure as full as possible and not upset the customer.
Unless the pipe is 100% full, it costs zero to send that extra bit. ISP core costs were usually negotiated on how much “bigger” the other person had to build out to support the exchange. Even traffic levels were peered with no additional cost. Senders of more information than they transited, would pay for the difference.
Around 2001 I contracted for a 384Kbit frame relay connection at my home… The final loop was delivered over T1 (2 pairs) But if frame relay, should have been packetized at the CO. When I tested the line end to end it was a clear channel T1 (1.5Mbit) to the ISP.. Because the local CO didn’t have frame relay, they had to buy a clear channel from Sprint to reach me Then they turned my link speed down to 384… I immediately told them that there was a clear channel T1 between us, what would it cost to get the full rate?… and we negotiated that as long as my 95% usage (industry bandwith metric) was below 384, the price would remain the same, since their costs wouldn’t increase. I could burst to 1.5 Mbits no more than 5% of the time.
This is a fair point as far as last mile (or sometimes, last yard) is concerned, but as I understand it in practical situations (subdivisions, apartment buildings, shared office buildings, etc.) ISPs start aggregating links as soon as possible. I’ve got FiOS which is (as far as I know) a passive optical network. So not even the last yard is uniquely mine; I and something like 31 others are sharing a common medium. Then a dozen groups just like us get rolled up, and so on until we hit some kind of regional interlink at which point things start branching out again instead of aggregating further. Cable aggregates a lot less aggressively (one CMTS can serve thousands) but business-grade cable complicates that too.
So it’s true that there is unused capacity, but it’s not quite the sum of all last-yard links. I could see the case that raw pro rata billing would not sufficiently offset fixed costs, but I think that problem could be solved easily with billing as a (low) fixed charge plus a prorated charge for actual usage.
Various businesses have shown that a slightly higher price for “All you can eat” as a rationing method to keep from oversubscribing is the winning combination. Disney Parks, Buffets, Unlimited Phone, and Internet. The Consumers prefer a regular fixed price, even if with careful management you could come in cheaper, the “one price” model is insurance.
You actually see the cell companies flip flop, depending on where the constraint is. Phone used to be per minute… now they are all unlimited calling.. in 2007 you had unlimited data on 2G.. then 3G, then they dropped those plans and put in caps.. and barely increased them through 4G, and now with 5G the bandwidth is so large that phone’s can’t really fill them up.. so you get unlimited again. When they think it is a phone… but what if we use that for Fixed LTE?… They aren’t provisioned for 4-6Mbit 4K UltraHD video streams and 4GB game downloads, and OS updates. If everyone did it, they would have to put in buckets or rate limits AT&T normally has a 2Mbit/sec rate limit on video destinations. Looks fine on a phone.. not on a 40″ TV.
the ISP’s are really selling you the fixed infrastructure plus your share of the backbone bandwidth from 5-10pm… and any bit the rest of the day is “Free” to them. You might as well “give” it to them.
Hmm, that’s an interesting market dynamic that I hadn’t considered.
Our DSL connection (which until now was our only option outside of satellite or LTE which are rife with their own problems) was 12Mbit.
Most days the best speeds we could get are somewhere between 5-6Mbit.
I upgraded to cable from a very shitty DSL connection just a few months ago. The difference is astounding. You will notice most on some of the little things. For us, Mrs. TOK had to have her phone replaced, and restoring from a cloud backup took seconds instead of hours. Same thing when she uploaded photos to a web site for printing. Normally that would take hours and we’d all have to get off the Internet, and even then we’d have to restart several times. Now it takes a minute or two for hundreds of photos.
I’ve been on Starlink for the past month now. Night and Day compared to the 3Mbit DSL line I had until last year. Reasonably better than 4G LTE fixed wireless.
The network stability is not ready for average consumers. Throughput varies from 50 Mbits to 150+.
When I shut down the dish on Saturday to move it from the back yard to the roof mount my wife complained that the TV she was streaming got much worse.
If someone told you 30 years ago that you’d need a computer to masturbate to pr0n, bet you wouldn’t have believed them.
30 years ago no one would have predicted cyber sex to be jerking off online.
I am a tad worried about my recent discovery of the little Montenegrin convenience store/market in my little unincorporated census designated zone.
I have just discovered (or they expanded) their selection of Serb and Montenegrin delights. Delightful cheeses, preserved meats, snacks, baklava, grape leaf wrapped lamby things, frozen or fresh burek (cheese or spinach stuffed phyllo wedges), and diabetic coma cakes of various flavors.
They even have these big round unlovely breads labeled (by hand) as Take-and-bake French bread.” Pretty sure it has nothing to do with France, but I’m guessing somewhere in San Diego cranks these out daily and the little scattered shops stock up on them daily.
The temptations abound…
This sounds like a wonderful place.
You know what May West said about temptation…
“It gave me crabs” ?
I’m liking the story, Animal. Gritty and spare narration, undercurrent of menace, good stuff.
My new bike is being delivered today! Apparently they tried to deliver Friday but didn’t leave a notice. Or if they did it blew away which is a good possibility. No worries, the weather was too shitty over the weekend to go for a ride anyways.
Finally rescued my stranded BitCoin account. Fallible memory said I had at least 1 BTC in it. Turned out to be less than that, but when I saw how much I had, it rang a bell.
Oh, well. Found money is found money. Cashed out half (a little below the peak, but whatev), will let the other half ride.
Found money is found money.
I found 20 bucks in a pair of jeans I washed a few weeks ago. I think you win.
What was left in my old account was there after I had already profited a little on my original BTC buy. I think my cost was averaged at around $1100/BTC. Like 99.99[insert 9s as necessary] of the planet, I coulda got in early and been richer than hell right now, but you know what? Even if I had bought 500 or 1,000 BTC when they were $20 each, like I kinda thought about, I would have sold them off long ago anyway. I know I would have sold half when they doubled, and I can’t imagine I would have let the rest ride this long.
Speaking of idiot politicians – this time from the right.
Why has no one ever thought to propose infrastructure investments before?
What a revolutionary frame of mind that will totally transform the way government works in the United States.
Also, let’s build century old technology like trains and windmills, rather than innovate our way out of our problems.
Biden want’s to spend $500 Billion per year on this shit for climate change. If you really care about climate change, you spend 1/10 of that on pie in the sky research to invent new technologies that completely change the world. Free markets will take care of trains and windmills, in that if they are useful, capital will flow to them.
$500 Billion spent just to build shit like windmills and trains will be completely wasted. $50 Billion spent to do research will be mostly wasted, but at least has a chance of being transformative. I don’t even advocate this course of action. I think Elon Musk’s $100 Million prize for carbon capture technology is a much better route to getting to this kind of destination.
$500 Billion spent just to build shit like windmills and trains will be completely wasted.
That’s the whole purpose of Climate Change. I’m firmly in the camp that the whole Climate Change propaganda is being pushed and funded by America’s enemies, especially China. The sole intent is to weaken America economically.
It’s a similar process to that mentioned in 1984 where the resources that could be used to build hundreds of trade-producing cargo ships were instead intentionally destroyed to produce a single Floating Fortress that had zero value. In 1984, as in real-world Marxism, the goal is to waste resources in order to strangle the economy.
Impoverished people are much easier to enslave. Yes, they are strangling the economy.
Some want power for power’s sake, but many just want destruction for destruction’s sake. They do not aim to rule, only to watch things burn.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion is also firmly in this camp. Create a crisis by cobbling together events that have been occurring for decades if not centuries and marry them to a narrative mostly built of whole cloth and passed down straight from the ivory tower. Why? Because grifters need jobs, and the stronger the cause the more potent the opportunities for grifting. The goal of climate change activism is to create a spoils system and then divvy up the spoils among the activists, good old fashioned con men, a smattering of true believers, a horde of useful idiots, and politically connected suppliers. Destroying a once-great thing need not even be the explicit objective (though it sometimes is), but merely the unfortunate and unforeseeable consequence of well intentioned but perhaps a bit too rampant parasitism.
100% agree on DEI being in the same camp. And agree that the this type of grifting is unfortunately a natural state for the parasite class.
It also provides an excellent opportunity for a foreign actor to exploit in order to weaken America. We are too strong militarily and I would expect enemy actors to be probing other approaches rather than direct action. No evidence, but it’s what I would be doing in China’s position.
“When strong, avoid them. If of high morale, depress them. Seem humble to fill them with conceit. If at ease, exhaust them. If united, separate them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.” – Sun Tzu
Sometimes you have to build boring old shit because it works and you need it. I’m okay with that, though SLD I’d rather pay for it directly than through taxes. But we pay for boring old shit like it’s new and revolutionary. There was a joke (though one never knows how serious the writer ever is) on Gray Mirror to the effect of, California could never carry out the holocaust because they’d never get around to building all those trains on time and within budget. For the trillions that have been squandered on infrastructure over the past decade, we should have far better roads, rails, sewers, water mains, electricity lines, etc. Never mind that we could have built a futuristic techno-utopia about ten times over.
“Sometimes you have to build boring old shit because it works and you need it. I’m okay with that”
Agreed. I have a wood stove that heats my house very well and much cheaper than an electric furnace. The trouble here is that windmills don’t work and no one, except in very specific places, ride trains.
You don’t need the government to build shit that is actually necessary. People will do that on their own.
Only if the barriers to build it are low enough, otherwise it won’t be built without massive handouts/etc from the government(s).
Yes, until they develop learned helplessness thanks to believing that only the government can do it. A helplessness the government is all too happy to reinforce and exploit.
Trains filled a number of needs for a long while but cars, trucks, and airplanes can do many of those jobs better. Hell, ships can do some jobs better even than trains: if you need to move thousands of tons of something across thousands of miles at the lowest possible cost, put it on a (really big) boat. It’s cheaper to move cargo over sea than land nowadays, and boats are a lot older than trains. But if you have to travel 10 miles alone or with a passenger or two at a time when a hundred other people aren’t doing the same thing, neither a bus nor a train nor a plane nor a ship will be as efficient at the task as a car or motorbike.
“transformative investment in infrastructure”
They misspelled “money laundering scheme.”
They misspelled “looting the treasury.”
Well, to be fair, first you loot the Treasury, then you launder it to your cronies.
So you’re both right. Hugs all around!
GAH!!! Cooties!
*Backs up 6’*
They misspelled “looting the treasury.”
“Looting” would require a treasury with a net positive asset balance.
As long as there is cash flow, one can loot it.
I am totally not surprised at these finding:
https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-9069-e26b21c283a9.
My grandfather, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, with pictures of FDR-era works programs hanging in his study, who dutifully ordered read the Sunday Post every week for as far back as my dad can remember, and whose mind is going to boot, said he no longer trusts the press.
The problem with skin-suiting is that it doesn’t take too long before people notice.