Chef Rasmus Munk of Alchemist restaurant in Copenhagen has announced that he's partnered with “private astronaut training” company SpaceVIP and vessel builders Space Perspective to host a "holistic dining experience in space." There's no menu yet, and only vague details about how and where the food will be cooked, but there is a price tag — 3.5M Danish Krone, or around $500,000 — and a tentative date. Jaya Saxena explains her thoughts on the plan for @Eater. If you had a spare $500,000, would you spend it on a fancy space meal?
#Money#Economics#EconomicHistory#Capitalism: "The world of bumbling cavemen trying to exchange mammoth tusks for necklaces is a crude stone-age replica of a modern capitalist economy built in the mind of an economist. They simply take their their own situation - dependence on large-scale networks of people who trade specialized goods with strangers - and set it in world where it didn’t exist.
These presentist histories of money are also closely associated with functional descriptions of money. Functional descriptions are dodgy for a number of reasons (see How the 'Functions of Money' blind us to the Structure of Money), but one of those reasons is that they bolster the idea that money was created to solve some pre-existing problem. It treats money as if it were a tool we’ve ‘decided’ to use.
The classic ‘functions of money’ are - reputedly - medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account. These are badly-worded descriptions that conceal more than than reveal, but, regardless of their accuracy, there’s just something icky about laying out a list of reasons for why we use money, because - let’s face it - nobody ‘chooses’ to use money. We use it out of an animal instinct, because everyone knows, and feels in their body, that if they don’t use it they’ll be totally and utterly fucked. Trying to describe this inescapable infrastructure with reference to rational choice is just weird. We are created by money. Of course we’re going to use it. It’s the catalyst for what we have become." https://www.asomo.co/p/money-as-addiction
Did you know that #algorithm based platforms like #insta have "tools" for creators to know when their audience is usually active so they can plan when to post for more "engagement?"
Guess who can't access those kind of "helpful tools" because it's inaccessible - cognitively broken me
More in this hoot train
Love a #Mastodon rant from my janky insta posts...
While I'm in #fear of losing my home because of lack of income or #eviction or general lack of stability I am constantly on a roller-coaster; I never know when something will rip down my low #threshold of tolerance
It could be a minor time zone confusion, a friend explaining their personality or needs, an email from people to whom I owe #money, a text promoting a sale for my #merch store, a tone from someone I'm speaking to - really anything
I just love it when #Activitypub is a walled garden. Who thought it was a good idea to only give the formatted HTML of each person's post? They contain internal links to the original instance, so they make a lot of sense if you want to lock someone in to the original instance, and draw others to it like flies to honey. There's no way to get the original text, and so I'm going to have to parse and undo things like <p><a href="https://pdx.social/tags/test" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag"><a class="mention hashtag" href="https://fedicy.us.to?t=<" rel="tag">#<</a>;span>test</span></a></p> if I don't want my instance linking to some other instance just for a hashtag.
This problem goes deep, in fact. HTML hyperlinks were always intended to be a #capitalist money trap. Ted Nelson's original Xanadu concept in the 60's would have you making a micropayment for every link you clicked, putting in an inherent incentive to trap you into clicking a given site's links, and make them moolah. The whole idea of a #URL is a location that someone owns, controls, and can charge #money for. A URI is the resource indicator for things other than that, but URLs were always about market control, by design.
Trying to get any money I can to order food for my family of 5 with nothing to eat until tomorrow morning.
Simply put, my family is completely broke until tomorrow morning and we have nothing here. My father has MS, so his blood sugar is crucial and he is in immense pain at the moment.
Thank you for reading. Hope you're doing well. :neocat_heart:
Andrew Egger asks what we're to make of "Trump’s gobsmacking about-face on banning TikTok, which he himself tried to ban via executive order just three years ago?"
His conclusion: Trump can be bought. He's very hard up for cash right now. And "the distinction between Trump’s personal and political finances has essentially collapsed." Anybody donating to his PACs is putting money directly into Trump's pocket.
"Your recurring reminder that Trump is doing to the Republican Party what he wants to do to America. Any schadenfreude you may feel should be tempered by the knowledge that Trump would leave the country a husk of its former self, hollowed out by nepotism, cronyism, and graft.
Trump has promised a purge of the federal government if he is re-elected, and he’s practicing on the RNC."
The Outrage Industry is talk radio, cable news shows, and political blogs.
The #outrage#industry dictates the behavior of elected officials (particularly conservatives) who are terrified of getting on its wrong side because they know if they do, they will be #primaried.
Outrage discourse, as a rule, ignores complexity and nuance. It is not about conveying accurate information or stimulating meaningful discourse.
♦️Outrage arose because it was #profitable
♦️Outrage created or exacerbated the problem of #polarization, not the other way around.
Because of the fragmenting of media and the clutter of outlets, blogs, and talk shows, there is a lot of noise.
There is also a lot of #money in the outrage business.
🔸Outlets or pundits in search of an audience need to break through.
🔸The easiest way to break through is to be an “agent provocateur."
Both sides use the same tactics but #conservative#outrage is more outrageous, more hyperbolic, and more prone to misrepresenting the facts.
The conservatives are better at all things outrage–including making money.
Welcome to Earth, where trade is the main practice that everyone is a follower of, willingly or not. Where humans care mostly, if not entirely, about trade and how to maximize their advantage.
How can we get ourselves out of this shit, unless we start by understanding what the shit is made of!?
First: understand the problem. TRADE. The fact that we've built a society where you cannot survive unless you trade this for that. Once we understand this, hopefully we can tackle it. Give people a way to have a decent life, access to at least their basic needs as trade-free, and then try to replace more and more trade-based services (like say transportation) with trade-free alternatives.
Volunteers plus trade-free goods/services can create more of them, replicating over time and replacing the cancerous trade-based practices.
BANK OF AMERICA IS BACKING DESTRUCTION OF THE RAINFOREST
The #Amazon rainforest is at a critical tipping point — and the world's largest butcher, #JBS, is pushing the world's largest rainforest over the edge, and setting up a global #catastrophe.
In fact, right now, JBS is being sued for lying to consumers about their #EnvironmentalImpact, #ClimateGoals, and their pseudo-plan to achieve net zero carbon #emissions by 2040 —
The truth is, for Bank of America, it's not about the existential threat that JBS poses to the Amazon — and all of life on earth — it's all about the #money.
Writer #KateWagner may have seemed like an odd choice to cover the luxury world of FormulaOne. …FormulaOne races…have become pit stops on the jet-set circuit, where the cheapest general-admission tickets start around $500. Still, #RoadAndTrack mag commissioned Wagner to cover a FormulaOne race in Austin last fall, sending her on a trip funded by British petrochemicals co INEOS. https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/03/05/formula-one-road-track-kate-wagner/
…It’s possible that #KateWagner’s piece ruffled more feathers in the #AutomotiveIndustry than the typical Road & Track story. …Wagner’s is the kind of grand, impolite story that is increasingly rare in the struggling #magazine industry, where surviving outlets depend on not offending the #advertisers or #celebrities they feature.