Just how much do you know about washing diapers ?

The backdrop is that I've started a laundry list of LLCs and assorted corps here in Argentina for various purposes, one of which in partnership with a friend from the US. Which friend had previously been in contact with various English speaking groups interested in Argentina, mostly online-based, which groups further arrived through the usual means at various consensuses and nonsensuses, orthodoxies and dumbfuckeries held as truth by the lot. One such being that you have to be a resident to incorporate a business here. Fortunately I tend to select and hire actual counsel rather than rely on the "wealth of information"ⁱ that is the web and/or "dedicated" communities, and so I don't suffer from the numerous limitations average Joe Web picks up.

Her You know, being all over the place with you today, I mean, reading the articles of incorporation the lawyer drafted, the fact that the notary didn't bat an eye at our being foreigners, the fact that her clerk immediately knew to ask for the passports, it all clearly shows that there's nothing exceptional or at all rare about foreigners making companies here. It's common, common enough to be familiar. And yet, to hear these derps go, it's simply impossible.
Me Impossible, perhaps, or "just not done", maybe. At any rate, for them it is : English speakers have meanwhile reverted to womanhood. If you think about your proper lady of 1814 - it's certain that people could commission a boat and go sailing to India, or start building a country house, or purchase a set of slavegirls and train them to juggle eggs and eggplants. Or go to college, or go to the Wyoming Territory and try to start a law practice.ⁱⁱ Nevertheless, a woman couldn't. Why couldn't she ? Well.. Yeah. Why couldn't she ? "Just not done".

Her That's sad.
Me I'll tell you what's even sadder than that : you remember Mr. Babbage ?

Her The guy with the confusion of ideas that could yield such a question ?
Me Precisely. That's not the only thing he's said. He also pointed out that whenever he'd take the time to explain to an Englishman how his machinery worked, that Englishman promptly engaged in a protracted battle to explain to him, Babbage, the maker of the damned thing, why such a thing could never exist and if it did exist could never work, and if it worked could never be useful. Meanwhile whenever he'd take that time to explain same to an American, that fellow'd spend all his time trying to come up with tasks to which the machine could be applied and means through which this could be made to work. So now : England has prevailed. The US used to be known, back when it used to be powerful, and important, for the exact opposite of the spirit it displays today. These used to be the shocking go-getters, the offensive yanks that couldn't be bothered to even inquire as to what's "just not done" and how's it done that which is done. The people that didn't use to have no time for that are today the exact opposite of their former glory.

Her Now that's sad.
Me Quite. But hopefully they find a good man soon and have lots and lots of babies.

In closing, I would like to end with an hymn :

That'd be Columbia : she's got the stripes an' she's seein' the stars.

1. The Internet is very useful in some situations and entirely useless in other situations.

   The type of situation where it's useful squarely centers on verifiable source. The verifiability requirement is not absolute, but merely relative to the incentive to falsify. For instance, if I wish to know the actual address of a bar called Derpitude in County Cork, Ireland, searching for the website of such a bar and taking down the address therein offered works just fine - because the source is verifiable. It's not verifiable absolutely, clearly any troll could have made a fake website of such a bar solely to give out the wrong street address. Nevertheless, the potential benefit for such an attack is virtually nil, and so the identity has been relatively verified.

   The type of situation where it's not useful roundly surrounds... people. Everything that you may pick up on any sort of source bereft of authority, such as a forum, or wikipedia, or the collected opinions of any club of online derps, is fundamentally and universally wrong, mistaken, misguided and misleading. Everything. You may think there's exceptions to this, mostly because you've probably bought into the entire "social media" pipe dream and so perceive the emotional costs of setting yourself straight too high. Nevertheless and irrespective of the emotional costs you perceive reality to pose, this is a fact : any judgement, opinion, agreement, whatever it may be that's built upon the social derpage of nobodies is about as useful for any practical purpose as whitening is useful for generating random numbers : if you're into the appearance of having resolved your problem then by all means, live superficially and be happy. It's not like you don't have illustrious antecessors in the bureaucracy. [↩]

2. Seen The man who shot Liberty Valance, by the way ? Who's more the girly-girl, the early Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) or the early Hallie Stoddard (Vera Miles) ?

   And as a subquestion and our daily double-jeopardy : does "marriage understood as the union between a man and a woman" specifically exclude boys, ie, youthful males of a certain kind, like say the exact kind the US produces ? Because they're really a lot more like girls than men ? I could easily see the argument that it does. Now what ? [↩]