Digging through archives yields... lulz, shall we call it ?
Gather 'round, all ye whorey, gather 'round an' hear my story.
When a man grows old, and his balls grow cold,
and the tip of his prick turns blue...
Back in the day, back before Romania invented the MPEx-lite they called "Bursa de Valori Bucuresti"...
Many countless years ago, before the previous generation of ephemereal "experts" "figured shit out" "from context" there did still nevertheless exist a handful Romanians with actual stock trading experience. One of the nascenti Romanian stockbrokers at the time invited all of these it could find, on its own dime, intent on hiring them as the future brokers "of the country". Not all (though really, most) showed up ; among them, a boy. "What are you doing here ?" they asked him. "You tell me ; you invited me here after all". They could not imagine it, and the boy watched them deal with the usual, for him, the primordial, for them, experience of the encounter : when the formerly inconceivable becomes the present irreconcillable. What shall they do ? What can they do ? Wut do ?!
They couldn't hire him, for being underage, though they'd have dearly loved noting more ; he might've played along with their game, briefly, like a few years later he played along with the "teach a course at the university" game, briefly. This, the same boy who watched a judge issue an order granting his argument, in court, during proceedings he couldn't have, legally, participated in. But it did not occur to anyone to card him, because seriously now ; and moreover... what can it hurt to see how these actually go, in practiceii ?
Yet he always knew how they go. He always knew how they go and he never could quite be bothered to take them nearly as seriously as the half-men-riding-half-hares all around always seemed to. After all, he wasn't missing all the parts they did, and so he also didn't need all the crutches they couldn't leave the house without. Simple enough, no ?
Now gaze upon the header, and then tell me some things. Tell me, for instance, who do you know "among the early Bitcoiners" that was making money on the stock exchange before Bitcoin was a thing ?
Tell me, for that matter, who do you know that was making money trading options ?
Of all the people you know with direct, deliberate exposure to Lehman Brothers in Q2 2008 -- we're not talking here of all the idiots who were exposed "without knowing it" -- how many made money off of it ?
How many were exposed in the sense of holding CALLs ?
And what was this LEH thing anyway ?! What was 2008 ? Was it a year, exactly like any other ? It doesn't really seem credible, does it. 2008 is very much not at all like 2019 is right now, and even so much less than 2020. It's too long ago. So long ago, in fact, it might've never even happened ; and the things that were already the same sort of indistinct "ancient history" at that time appear to the helpless mind of the present moment about as distant, as remote, as imaginarily powerless as goings on contemporary with 8 Thermidor. Something to do with Napoleon or whatever, right ?
Yet there's firsts and firsts, you see -- but the only important property of the first-ers is that they either first once and then fizzle, or else first all the time.
Now tell me again about "engineering", and about things and matters ; gaze upon the header yet again and tell me your story yet again ; and again and again and for long as you have patience retell it -- I won't be listening, but in this I'll be consecvent : I wasn't listening the first time around, either. You just thought I was, in the usual sense of that term. You "thought" I was because... well... what are the alternatives ? I'd better be listening, right ? Or else!!!
For as long as the ticker keeps ticking, you have to retell it. Don't you ? If you stop talking the judge's gonna grant my motion, isn't he ? Your whole existence, its unlikely continuation such as it is, teeters precariously, predicated on supposedly successful filibustering ; if you shut up you die. Isn't it ?
Nevertheless : while the women gathered round the cows chew the cud together, talking the endless thread of traded moos, treading water traded for water... things happen. The men struggle with the hyenas for control of the cave ; and lose. The lions chase the hyenas away, then move. The men "discover" the hole, the same old hole that was always there ; the hyenas come right along... it's a whole world ongoing all the while.
———- The way these things are born in such situations -- some pre-existing people agree among themselves on a new nominative convention, "you know this thing you did ? we'll call it so and thus from now on". [↩]
- This, the same boy who showed up at the big deal maturity exam, the bacalaureat, one day early, and the organizing teachers, who all knew him, and his family, whom he all knew, personally, were befuddled. "What are you doing here [you weirdo] ?! Your turn's tomorrow! [Did you forget what day it is ?!?!]" They knew this, what his name is, where he belongs, they knew him. They thought they knew him well -- like mechanics know cars, mostly by the undercarriage .And he knew them, too. "Oh, I'm not here to take the exam" he said. "I'm here to observe".
And they were blown away, as he knew they would be, and then they read the copy of the law that he provided, and yes indeed, out of naive extension of long standing principles meanwhile long forgotten in practice the boy was well within his rights, as a citizen. He got to watch the oral examination in local "literature", by far his weakest spot, and for a day's watching aced it, because they didn't expect that vector of attack, because they were adults not fundamental thinkers and apparently at some point one's held to choose, can't have both, I guess ?
The same boy who, as a very little boy, in kindergarten, learned the whole quarterly theatrical show's audible output by listening to all the other kiddies try and fail to recite then proceeded to learn the "maturity exam" similarily, in the same way, a decade and change later. What is everything, after all, but a maturity exam ? How could he by whom maturity's defined fail such a thing ?! [↩]
