What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[Silver]

In about 600 b.c. Lycurgus, the famous Spartan lawgiver, put into Sparta’s constitution a provision that banned the circulation and possession of gold, silver, or other precious metals as a means of transacting business and replaced these forms of money with an iron currency, variously reported as being in the form of disc or bars. This provision was part of a plan of social reform intended to spare Sparta the evil consequences of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few citizens.

https://encyclopedia-of-money.blogspot.c...y.html?m=1

[Anomalocaris]

In about 600 b.c. Lycurgus, the famous Spartan lawgiver, put into Sparta’s constitution a provision that banned the circulation and possession of gold, silver, or other precious metals as a means of transacting business and replaced these forms of money with an iron currency, variously reported as being in the form of disc or bars. This provision was part of a plan of social reform intended to spare Sparta the evil consequences of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few citizens.

https://encyclopedia-of-money.blogspot.c...y.html?m=1

They replaced it with the evil consequences of turning 4/5 of the population into helots that can be murdered for sport by the remaining 1/5 of the population, which became a notably unwashed (except in times of war) soldier aristocracy called spartiates.

Btw, the said soldier aristocracy nonetheless managed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few citizens despite the Lycurgian code after Sparta discovered having lots of wealth is essential if Sparta were too do more than seasonal thuggish hoplites brawls, and conduct real long term campaigns against powerful states with deep pockets that can deploy wealth as part of compressive spectrum of state power.

The cult of Spartan pure warriorism only persisted down to the present age because, paradoxically, Spartan soldiers were unexpectedly smashed by an hitherto unheard of second tier Greek city state called Thebes.  As a result Sparta sank into obscurity before the Spartan solder state can be fully transformed by the torrent of gold flowing into Spartiate hands because, to be blunt, Sparta used generous Persian financial subsidy to defeat Athens and rule Greece.

which brings me to the myth of Spartan warriors fighting against any odds and always fighting to the death as perpetrated by the legend of the last stand of the 300 Spartans against 100,000 Persians at Thermopylae (10-20 times more than 300 stood and most of those who stood to the last were not Spartans) does not conform to general reality.   Anciemt sources agree the Spartans were notably casualty averse, and would usually call for truce and negotiate to extricate their men and in the process leave their Allie’s in the lurch if there were serious danger of high casualties to the Spartiates.

[Fake Messiah]

That trashy movie "After Earth" was intended to be followed by a sequel, a live action television series, an animated television series, webisodes, mobisodes, a video game, consumer products, theme-park attractions, documentaries, comics, an educational program collaboration in partnership with NASA, cologne and perfume lines, and a social media platform.

I mean, "a social media platform"! So Will Smith thought that the movie was going to be so big that it will have its own version of Facebook!

Will Smith's ego knows no bounds.

[Rev. Rye]

Inspired by this old comic randomly popping into my head, I decided to absent-mindedly see if anyone actually decided to trademark the word Anus. It turns out someone in India (specifically in Karnataka) actually did. And it's apparently a brand of food there.

[Silver]

Apparently, the new Xbox is as difficult to get as the PS5. Therefore, best to just stick with attempting to get the console to which I'm loyal.

[Angrboda]

AFAIK, there aren't a lot of advantages to the new XBOX like exclusive games or features. IIRC, the main difference is the storage.

[brewer]

Apparently, the new Xbox is as difficult to get as the PS5. Therefore, best to just stick with attempting to get the console to which I'm loyal.

You'll play with the PS4 and like it young man.

[polymath257]

Learned how to use the equation editor in Microsoft Word.  (I'm taking a math course online and want to make my homework look nice.)

I worked in the document department of a biomedical firm in the late 80s.  We had Wordstar.  We composed the formulas used in manufacturing the product with a combination of ascii characters, sub and superscripting, and backspacing over previous marks.   You don't know how good you have it.

I typed my mathematics dissertation on a manual typewriter, exchanging font balls whenever I needed a math symbol.

Almost all professional mathematics is written in LaTeX, which is a typesetting program written in the 1970's. it has a number of front and back ends, but it is still very far from WYSIWYG.

It does make things look nice, though.

[Angrboda]

I worked in the document department of a biomedical firm in the late 80s.  We had Wordstar.  We composed the formulas used in manufacturing the product with a combination of ascii characters, sub and superscripting, and backspacing over previous marks.   You don't know how good you have it.

I typed my mathematics dissertation on a manual typewriter, exchanging font balls whenever I needed a math symbol.

Almost all professional mathematics is written in LaTeX, which is a typesetting program written in the 1970's. it has a number of front and back ends, but it is still very far from WYSIWYG.

It does make things look nice, though.

I've yet to have the patience to learn how to use LaTeX. Hell, I haven't even bothered to learn nroff/troff. There was a point in my life when such would have been useful. For good or ill, that time has passed.

[The Grand Nudger]

Turns out we own a fraction of a percent of the county market for our products- i put our poor performance down to bad management. Here's to crushing our enemies, seeing them driven before us, and hearing the lamentation of their women in the coming year.