The Peso Uruguayo has been slowly falling all month versus USD, but the Real and Peso Argentino fell more.
Peso Watch March 2019
March 27th, 2019More Future Sight In The Southern Cone
March 14th, 2019There's an emerging "Why the Republic" blogging trend. Now the bulk of English language Trilema consists of material to this end, but it is pointedly not enough for the words to be published once. Everyone has to engage them. As spyked offered:
It occurs to me, after circa three years of following the unfolding history of The Most Serene Republic, and about a year and a half of just beginning to participate, that this is by far the most interesting, intellectually challenging (and demanding), fun, promising, etc. project one could think of, or in any case, the only (as far as I know) serious thing happening while the world's busy derping about. So since it's finally occured to me, it's high time I set a (realistic, I hope) schedule for my short-term work, also taking into account saecular matters. Furthermore, I will have a glance into other future work and invite members of the Lordship to comment on priorities.
I came to what would become the Republic because after being broken by 8 years of US "Higher Education", the up and coming Bitcoin thing I'd heard of and failed to properly engage when I first heard of it was growing. By the time I'd started dipping my toes in, a large group of dominant and sophisticated in their estimation folks had just been humiliated. It took me still more months of reading and passive engagement before cautiously approaching #bitcoin-assets when I clearly understood that's where Bitcoin was happening. Over the next several years the number of people who came by and just didn't get it puzzled me.
Coming into the Bitcoin space it was pretty clear early on that much of the space was filled with marginal folks causing problems, and the efforts to properly marginalize the marginal were coming out of MPEx. As time went on part of me kept thinking humanity, could be lifted if only people stopped being stupid. During my last two years in the US I was heavily involved in a self help movement that offered people afflicted by a problem a solution. Some took well to it, but many came and went still suffering.
Some died suffering. People with a mortal problem from which they have to save themselves encountering a solution and then either rejecting it or delaying acceptance until the problem solves them first. Ok, so not everyone is going to lift themself up out of stupid, but a part of me, deep down, thought the capacity of people to lift themself was still there. The idea that the offensively stupid could be something else would not die so long as I remained in the US, in spite of reading Trilema and participating in the Republic's growth there was this filter. Being submerged in the US culture bubble reinforced the filter whether it was being fed by Rush Limbaugh or those 8 years of higher education that in the end left me in a worse position and generally less capable than I was the day I left high school by just about every metric.1
And Then I Moved
I used to think the merits of Uruguay and the Southern Cone were in how backwards this place is. It has taken me a lot of time to internalize how much further forward everything is here compared to the US. I read and re-read on Trilema how Argentina is the future of the US, but living here. Being here and not there, the point grows through lived experience. Unlike Argentina, the Uruguayos will readily and enthusiastically admit they have problems and live in a poor country. The culture in the city is refereshingly rural. This is not an easy country, but I am enjoying the resistance of the medium more than last year.
The minimum wage is roughly 500 present USD and a good local wage is roughly twice that. Independent living in a place with a kitchen requires nearly twice that so intergenerational households are the norm. Agricultural outputs are high in volume and of high quality which means that thanks to holy economy Asia gets to eat much of Uruguay's beef. Contrast to the US where agricultural outputs are high in volume and of low quality where estadounidenses and chinese pork get fattened on the US's agricultural output. Throw in the US deindustrializing while Uruguay never quite industrialized... Contrast the US being big while Uruguay is small... Those are big picture things.
Let's revisit the digging at the deflation thing:
These days the difficulty of feeding yourself in Albany has nothing to do with you being able to kill a turkey with a gun and a limited supply of bullets, nor is it you being able to find dry wood or start a fire because there's no turkey, there's no dry wood and it's not even legal for you to try and live off the land in Albany. These days the difficulty of feeding yourself has everything to do with you finding a restaurant and then finding a seat and then their having some food to serve you. The resources are so scarce that you need to have everything imported from miles and miles away. The burden you've put on your immediate environment is so great that there's not even a shadow of a hope of survival on your own. Should these supply lines fail for as much as a couple of days you are doomed.
Back when North America was the land of opportunity, one could live off the fat of the land in a very literal sense. The land held a bunch of fat critters and all you had to do was bag and butcher one. The ecosystem that made that possible was done in. It does not persist in the lower 48, even in the rural areas. Is it any coincidence the vegan/vegetarian trend in the US is getting pushed harder and deeper now that it ever has before? Nevermind that animal proteins offer a lot of what the body wants in a way the body can use. Great Inca in New York and DC has decided the US must move forward to a more historically congruent slave diet for New Inca's slave population.
While old country had a lot of plasticrap and shiny trinkets imported to separate consumers from the money passing through them and old country has less, there are still chump siphons as evidenced by ham, bacon, and other fiambres existing as luxury goods instead of ways to stretch the life of cheap pork.
The Movement Up North
One of the bigger, younger, more energetic populist blocks supporting Trump has renounced him. They renounced him for a Pantsuitist named Yang promising a 1000 USD income if he gets elected. Their though is if their world is going to shit they should at least embrace they guy offering them money while things go to shit. Their socialist resignation, however nationalist they may profess to be, is now driving their memes. Never mind dollars and pesos were once coins of standard composition and weight. That the Latin Monetary Union was once a thing and foreign exchange not a particular problem in the civilized world of the time. Or that in today's fiat system "Which Peso?" is a thing that needs to be specified. How are they to know that things happened to create the present environment where dollars and pesos are no longer materially similar things?
Labor activists in this part of the world will tell stories about how they heroically shuttered a factory with their demands. That jobs here were lost in favor of jobs in Mexico or Paraguay does not much matter to them. Plenty of valuables in the dumpsters to recollect. What, someone else had to make the judgment the item in question is trash before discarding it? Surely the kids up north will manage to reinvent this on their own.
- Other than getting a couple sheets of paper which I had spent my entire childhood being told were the most valuable things I should pursue early in life. [↩]
Ceviche Theory And Practice
March 8th, 2019Obscured in the mess of nutrition pseudoscience wank is the apparent truth that human beings thrive on a mixed diet that includes animal proteins. Here in the land of excellent beef, it is very easy to eat a lot of beef. But as great as beef is, there are are a number of non-bovine animals that deserve at least the occasional honor of becoming dietary protein. One way to get that protein is ceviche.
Ceviche is a simple thing. You take clean protein from one or more sea creatures. You cut the protein into smaller pieces, add salt, and then bath it in organic acids. The salt is critically important for powering the violation of the protein by the acids that will cook it. The protein's already arranged into an engine that will embrace this violation, the salt's simply here to activate the pumps.
In the smaller picture there is a local retailer that reliably stocks vacuum packed frozen cuts of tuna. This is clean, attractive protein, but it simply isn't from the prime part of the fish which would make it a good candidate for sushi or sashimi. For the acid, a dozen limes will do. add chopped garlic, red onion, and a bit of hot sauce made with "ají" because the peppers themselves aren't locally available in a reliable manner.
Hygeine is important! Any fish or seafood that is unsuitable for sushi due to concerns about cleanliness is right out. This means working with big chunks of whole muscle that were in a sterile space when the critter was alive. After safely thawing the tuna it gets cut into smaller pieces roughly the thickness of a pencil. While cutting, it is important to look for signs of exceptional parasites. In the case of this tuna this was a remote possibility of low concern. On the other hand, this has been a concern with the locally available farmed salmon of Chilean origin, and for that reason the salmon was passed over.
With the cutting done it is time to place the fish into a glass1 vessel. Salt and mix in your onion, garlic, parsely. Finally cover with the juice of many limes. The cooking begins immediately. After 20-30 minutes it hits a delightful medium rare. After an hour it hits well done. Since this is a chemical process the cooking cannot be stopped, but it can be slowed through refrigeration and by discarding some of the delicious juice.
After 24 hours the leftovers look like:
Visually the tuna has taken on a bit of a canned or cat food appearance, but unlike heat cooked tuna it still tastes like delicious ceviche. That the texture has moved into "overcooked" territory, but still tender. I can't speak to time horizons beyond 24 hours nor do I expect to become capable of doing so. If there's ceviche in the fridge approaching the 24 hour mark, I'm going to eat it.
Thank you for reading today's Republican capture of culture from Inca.
- Ceramic can be fine, but we are dealing with acid here. Metal and plastic are right out. [↩]
Ham Is A Scam
March 4th, 2019The title poem which is both the poem and its own title comes out of a conversation with an Anglophone nomad passing through Montevideo. The fellow had been eating a lot of ham sandwiches, and made a number of other new arrival mistakes trying to eat inexpensively in Montevideo by eating in a manner cheap in much the rest of the world. This lead to a meet up centered around walking Tienda Inglesa on Sunday afternoon and discussing lessons learned feeding myself and the local peculiarities.
Ham is a scam
Now there are many good reasons to eat ham, all of them involve ham being what you want to eat. However in Uruguay while pork is cheaper than beef, after the pork is transformed into ham they get mighty proud of it. Even the fucking square US-style lunchmeat salt ham runs 300 to 500 pesos a kilo, but deli counter practice is showing the price for 100 grams when it comes to fiambres. Then there's the imported Spanish and Spanish style cured hams which are outside of the staple protein discussion.
Now over in raw meat land 1 kg of ground beef is 189 pesos, lean ground beef a bit more, and fucking entrecot can be had for 315-325 pesos per kilo. The local favorite "Asado de tira"1 can do anywhere from 170 pesos to 500 pesos per kilogram depending on the bone to meat ratio.
Little business and a lot of Uruguay was discussed. Maybe the fellow makes a key and joins the future?
As to my own dietary habits, during the days Gloria the Peruana isn't here to work the kitchen I have accumulated a lot of practice making burgers. Of course the method of doing so popular with the locals is acquiring frozen preformed and preseasoned patties for a permium over over the cost of ground beef in a situation very reminescent of the scam ham. This local norm means they buy less meat for more money which will require more cooking energy to render edible all because the package looks so much more convenient.
- Beef ribs cut so that you have a strip of connective tissue with a lot of connective tissue and some variable amount of meat. [↩]
Prototype Pizarro Marketing Payloads
March 2nd, 2019While I have spent the last four year contributing to and then later operating the Republic's wire service and writing up 1697 pieces doing so, writing copy for the purpose of marketing is new to me. This means having a hook, which I have little experience crafting. An early attempt at marketing Pizarro sent to the "Proud Boys" contact email was met with silence. The effort looked like this:
Subject: Considerations regarding censhorship and your fraternal organization's outlaw status
If you are interested in the future of online censorship resistance and
opposition to the totalitarian femstate, you are welcome to check out
PizarroISP. You may find us on the Freenode IRC network in the channel
#Pizarro and browse our website http://pizarroisp.net/ to see what we
offer. Our operating jurisdiction is The Most Serene Republic of
Bitcoin whose proceeding you may read here: http://btcbase.org/log/
while Pizarro's physical presence is in Montevideo, Uruguay.In light of the outlaw status being forced upon your organization, it
is advisable to begin to operate accordingly.
There was no reply to this dispatch, but it is hard to tell of the inadequacy was on the part of the recipient or the absence of a great hook. I am inclined to believe both are at play. This sample begins with a polite invitation follows with links the politely invited may follow down the rabbit hole which in the best case may lead to a spyked type epiphany:
It occurs to me, after circa three years of following the unfolding history of The Most Serene Republic, and about a year and a half of just beginning to participate, that this is by far the most interesting, intellectually challenging (and demanding), fun, promising, etc. project one could think of, or in any case, the only (as far as I know) serious thing happening while the world's busy derping about.
Then there's the good cases where Pizarro gets a customer and in time the customer later comes to find that no, there really isn't anyone outside the Republic doing anything seriously. To this end I submit the following attempts at adding a hook for review, comment, and hope an informed in WoT recommendation for a copyrighting text to read comes forward.
Do you want to take your internet back from the Mommy State? In the face of online censorship resistance and opposition from the totalitarian femstate, you are welcome to check out webhosting and servers from PizarroISP. You may find us on the Freenode IRC network in the channel #Pizarro and browse our website http://pizarroisp.net/ to see what we offer. Our operating jurisdiction is The Most Serene Republic of Bitcoin whose proceedings you may read here: http://btcbase.org/log/ while Pizarro's physical presence is in Montevideo, Uruguay.
[optional]In light of the outlaw status being forced upon us all, it is advisable to begin to operate accordingly.
This may be a hook, but I am underwhelmed though it is stronger than the initial effort.
Do "they" keep banning all your favorite places online? Tired of Silicon Valley dicking you around? Need a place to plant your flag online? You are welcome to check out webhosting and servers from PizarroISP. You may find us on the Freenode IRC network in the channel #Pizarro and browse our website http://pizarroisp.net/ to see what we offer. Our operating jurisdiction is The Most Serene Republic of Bitcoin whose proceedings you may read here: http://btcbase.org/log/ while Pizarro's physical presence is in tranquil Montevideo, Uruguay.
Or for target audiences that are, in the contemporary pop lingo "Woke on the JQ" a variation could be tried with triple echo Jew quotes.
There's also a discard pile. An there's the knowledge I can spin my wheels unproductively without a deadline. Thoughts, comments, other angles to try hooking?
Peso Watch February 2019
February 28th, 2019
One USD buys 0.15 more pesos than last month. The peso Argentino and peso Europeo held steady versus the peso Uruguayo. The Real Brasilero moved just a little bit.
Mundane Shit I Took For Granted That Is New
February 19th, 2019To continue the exercise started earlier:
Laundry Machines
The way laundry works here is you have a laundry machine in your residence and air dry your clothes. Not having a half dozen children to cloth and an aversion to fitting too many things in the habitation module that I cannot easily carry or roll to a new location, I started out availing myself of the local lavaderos. Back in old country there were businesses called laundry mats where you fed a coin operated machine anywhere from 5 to 16 quarters and it carried out its task. In Uruguay where consumer and capital goods are precious and no one has cared enough to develop a way to automate coin handling we have laverderos instead. Your lavadero rents a space that could have otherwise been a kiosko and stuffs it full of washing and drying machines. Read the rest of this entry »
Just About Everything I Grew Up Understanding To Be Normal Is A Recent Invention
February 11th, 2019Following last week's consumption of some serious food for the soul, much of my past week has been immersed reading Trilema, following links, and reading all manner of Pantsuitist produced histories. Some Trilema pieces I might have read recently before the re-reading, but others have been a while. Pantsuitist histories were read to get the cancer's perspective on the its own metastasis. For my own reference, several points about how the world works are collected below. Read the rest of this entry »
Fire In Montevideo
February 8th, 2019So, an insula unit in the Edificio Panamericano1 complex was engulfed in flames.
From another angle:
In the second photo it appear a second higher insula may be on fire as well. My eyes left the scene unsure if there was one big fire or one big fire and a smaller fire. The smell for a couple blocks leaving was burning plastic. Walking up Luis A. Herrera I saw the first fire truck on its way.
It was moving with sirens and everything:
This was followed a block and a half later by four bomberos on their motocicletas sin sirens. They were too fast and hard to see for photographic capture.
[Firecycles not pictured]
The AfroUruguayan culture parade is going on in another barrio at this same time.
- Not the one facing the River identified as "Edificio Panamericano" in the photos, the nearly identical construction catty corner and facing Luis A. Herrera. The nearest intersection where Luis A. Herrera meets the Rambla as it changes from being "Rambla de la Republica de Peru" to "Rambla Armenia" is about as high traffic as traffic gets away from Tres Cruces. [↩]
Ring Lardner And Confronting My Own Inner Hayseed
February 4th, 2019This weekend I was struck by a text I should have read at 13. Ring W. Lardner's " You Know Me Al: A Busher's Letters as has been established in the logs as the definitive tract on the American. The master anthropologist already posted on this text, but his headcase is not mine and my exposure to this text has absolutely dominated my weekend. Lardner, a man with the benefit of great exposure tells the story of Jack, a hayseed of little exposure through Jack's epistles to his buddy Al back home. Read the rest of this entry »