Fire in Alabama, let's make the most of it.

This article joins together two unrelated parts.

Part One :

Joseph Weisenthal ‏@TheStalwart
While everyone stopped paying attention, Bitcoin went on another insane surge. http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-158-2013-4 …

Dawn Kopecki ‏@Dawn_Kopecki
@TheStalwart Do I have to pay attention to this? I've been ignoring bitcoin in the hopes that it will be a flash in the pan.

Mircea Popescu ‏@Mircea_Popescu
@Dawn_Kopecki @TheStalwart I love virtually anonymous twitter nicks going on about how they've been "ignoring" things.

Dawn Kopecki ‏@Dawn_Kopecki
@Mircea_Popescu @thestalwart So mean...

Mircea Popescu ‏@Mircea_Popescu
@Dawn_Kopecki @TheStalwart Yeah, kinda known for it. But anyway, #bitcoin is not optional, #bitcoin is mandatory.

This then moved into a conversation between me and the chick. She has since deleted all her replies, because this is what the "respectable" press does with public information these days. I can summarize it anyway (but note that she's not quite as stylistically able, so I'm replacing her drab boring prose with my own more palatable version) : she wanted to know if Bitcoin is not just some fake currency played by rich instagram kids and followed by geeks, to which I pointed out that by this reasoning Bloomberg (where she works) is a sort of fake HuffPo, which seemed mean to her. She then pointed out that of course I realise this all ends when Bitcoin gets regulated. Isn't this smarmy "let me suggest things for you to believe" attitude obnoxious ? Talking heads...

Anyway, I replied that "right after gravity gets regulated", to which she pointed out that Bitcoin is an unregulated something "favoured by the black market and tax avoiders" and wanted to know if I'm high (in the sense that it couldn't stay that way). I responded by pointing out that I'm just not that superficial, that there exist absolute limits to regulation and pointed to the cannonical piece on governmental irrelevance, ie Stage n: Bitcoin exists (which tweet got some retweets etc). She obviously went at least a coupla paragraphs in, because she wanted to know if my argument seriously rests on a document calling Obama mulatto-in-chief. I pointed out to her that only the superficial confuse argument and notation, then went to bed.

While I slept and did other things™ she must have read and maybe even re-read that a few times, profoundly disliked the results and decided to erase the whole episode from her feed, from her memory and therefore (of course!) from existence. This is culture shock at its finest, person that fully, completely and unquestioningly believes reality is a spawn of consensus (and who better to represent this braindamage than some blondy newswomanⁱ ?) runs into person who couldn't care less what people think, and generally makes it his job to show the heretics that in any disagreement between reality and belief, reality always wins. You wouldn't think this needs much showing, you would think this is painfully obvious and tepidly banal, and yet...

Then this morning, fierce beauty strikes :

Mircea Popescu ‏@Mircea_Popescu
Mayor says they'll let fire be to prevent further injury. Why no regulation against this type of thing @Dawn_Kopecki ? theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/24/fuel-barges-explode-catch-fire-in-mobile-ala/

So... yeah. Why haven't they regulated against this type of thing yet ? For that matter, why's the crisis not regulated, why are so many niggers poor and so many kids stupid these days ? Don't they have a law for that yet ? A trillion dollars worth of college loans is not ever getting repaid (out of a total one trillion worth of college loans out there). About half of it is in deferment or forbearance already. Kids leave college unable to write, let alone think. Isn't there a law of some sort ? Why don't they make it already, don't they realise without a law fixing these problems the Union is practically at an end ?!

Part II :

But anyway, leaving these problems aside : the unregulated fire (through a criminal explosion) created some unlawful damage to one of Alabama's oldest forts. This one :

That's right, I've been to Alabama. I guess that puts me in that vaunted 1% of Americans who have ever visited Alabama without being born thereⁱⁱ. To tell you the truth, I'm glad I have, back when the country was merely careening dangerously towards the Abyss. Peering across the pond I feel this secret "thanks god I've visited it already" satisfaction, perhaps not unlike what the average Greek or Egyptian felt as Atlantis was sinking. Thanks Isis&Athena we ate all the oricalcum we could take, they were probably thinking. I certainly had my fill of alligator leg and hushpuppies.

On it goes.

1. "She wants to be an actress...or a, uh, model...or a dancer...or a...news woman." [↩]
2. If I ever end up being US President in spite of having been born in Romania I think I shall be born in Alabama. Before you laugh consider that this has happened already, and certainly Romania is a better source than Kenya. At least Romania is not in Africa. It just looks like it were. [↩]