No, Nothing To Do With FTX
Although there do seem to be a couple of other contenders for Dodgy Crypto Scamblers, namely Genesis and DCG, the former allowing me to put up a completely tangential picture - Art!
- whilst having been founded by the unlikely-sounding Himmelvoss twins. $50 billion dollars-worth of funds at risk, making FTX's $32 billion look a bit weedy by comparison.
ANYWAY this is a tale told on Quora, under the title of "What's the most extreme thing you had to do to get paid?" So far nobody's come back with burying a body in concrete foundations ...
So, Original Poster ran a business servicing South Canadian nuclear power plants, a bit of a niche industry. He had undertaken work for LILCO, or Long Island Lighting Company, redesigning their radiation monitoring system at Shoreham and they were being tardy about payments. Art!
Shoreham
OP had a line of credit with his bank for $1 million and LILCO owed him $900,000, so he was getting both twitchy and suspicious. OP also had a devious and furtive mind, so he got one of his better-looking male employees to date one of the LILCO ladies. A lady from Accounts.
Wellll interesting things were uncovered, most especially that LILCO was almost bankrupt, and was planning on stiffing the smaller contractors in order to pay off their prime contractor. OP took the advice of his partner and took a trip to Wall Street, making enquiries about the quote "dirtiest, nastiest tort lawyer around". Enter Mister Stergakos, whom had been the name on many people's lips. OP sat opposite him, then took a cheque for $20,000 dollars out of his pocket and tore it in two, giving half to the lawyer, explaining that he'd get the other half IF OP's business got it's money within 48 yours. Art!
Inside the now abandoned Shoreham
The bloodsucker promptly hit LILCO with what's called a 'mechanic's lien', a legal tool that asserts privilege over something that the plaintiff has expended time and/or money in. And this applied to the whole of the Shoreham plant, meaning that LILCO was legally stuck in limbo until OP's debt was cleared. Not only that, a pal of Stergakos got an item into the Wall Street Journal the next day about this embarrassing financial gaffe
Shortly after that, the Financial Comptroller of LILCO got in touch with OP, defeated, and got the money transferred immediately. Mister Stergakos got his $20,000 and OP's business got it's $900,000.
And thus we have today's title. Moral of the story: don't mess about with OP or his business, because he does have access to concrete foundations ...
Back when it was working
NB the plant closed in 1994, long after the lien incident, so don't worry that John - OP's real name - caused it to go bust. I just thought this was interesting and illuminating as regards the little guy not getting done over, due to being creative, malicious and inventive.
Motley! Bring me my Grinch slippers, for I feel like being wicked!
"The War Illustrated"
I know we've not had one of these explanatory sets of photographs for a while, so Lo! rejoice for here are some from Issue 168. Art!
No, that's not a happy Panzer crewman, that's a Sinister Army soldier mucking about in what seems to be an abandoned Teuton Panzer Mk. 4 Since there's no damage visible and no signs of fire, and since the hull machine gun has been removed, I think it's safe to say this one either broke down and couldn't be repaired or towed, or it ran out of petrol. Conrad would guess the former, as fuel abandonment didn't really become a thing for the Teutons until 1944. Art!
At this point the Allied action was all in Italy, with the 5th and 8th armies slogging slowly up the peninsula, which had been designed by Mother Nature to make such progress as slow and costly as possible. Here we see a sketch map, which I'll enlarge to see if it makes things more legible. Art!
There you go, BOOJUM! ever helpful. By the time this map was published it was already 2 weeks out of date, so no useful data divulged.
Going back to the montage, you see at upper starboard a very definitely knocked-out Pz. Mk. 4, below which one Teuton is saying to the other "Fur uns ist der Krieg vorbei." To port of them are sappers doing the unglamourous yet essential job of road maintenance, because the amount of vehicles in the Allied armies was unreal. The Royal Engineers not only had to maintain roads but remedy enemy handiwork, too.
And last picture shows a Sherman modified for 'wading' (note extended cover over the exhausts) crossing the Volturno River and tackling what looks like a riskily steep bank. Because the retreating Teutons had blown up the bridge, before you ask. Art!
Last One
The James Webb Space Telescope hasn't been in operation for long, yet it has produced stunning images, akin to the ones that Hubble produced back in the day. Hey, remember all those comedians who made jokes about it not working? No, me neither. Art!
This, gentle reader, is M42, also known as 'The Phantom
Aha! It seems that nickname is because it's so faint in optical telescopes.
"The Sea Of Sand"
The alien garrison at Mersa Martuba is about to get an unpleasant surprise.
Making a nasty
scrunch in the process, Capriccio
engaged first gear. The rear axle
instantly accelerated from zero to twenty miles per hour, snatching the cable
taut, catapulting the plank over the pintle and hurling the petrol tin in a
high arc over the desert.
Splinters flew
from the abused plank when the cable pulled it apart and Capriccio hastily
turned the engine off.
Tam’s comments
were unprintable. Lieutenant Llewellyn
stood open- mouthed at the tin soaring into the dusky sky. Dominione pinched his forearm, just to make
sure.
‘Not high
enough,’ said Davey, turning to glare at the Doctor, who merely winked and
shouldered his rifle.
‘You’ll never
hit it!’ said Davey, bluntly.
Calmly taking
aim, adjusting for windage, deflection and heat haze, the Doctor squeezed the
trigger and hit the tin at the top of it’s arc, the glowing tracer round
knocking a plume of ignited petrol into the air. The additional energy of the bullet’s impact
tumbled the tin further out and downwards, landing on the crates of shells in a
glare of burning petrol.
‘I
didn’t just see that, did I?’ asked Tam.
‘I mean, that’s just not possible, is it?’
This
time Davey’s comments were unprintable.
Roger
stared at the fire, then back at the Doctor.
‘Where
– where the hell did you learn to shoot like that! People at Bisley would kill to be that
accurate.’
I should explain that 'Bisley' was one of the prime sites the British army used for small-arms training.
Finally -
Last week, after all that bleating and braying about bean sprouts, what did I not write down on the shopping list? Bean sprouts. What did I forget to get? Bean sprouts. Well, I remembered last night. Hooray! Now, of course - obviously! - I need to find a recipe to use them in. I also got another cabbage, because there's still half the Holubtsi mix left and I know better than to cut the leaves in half, so we shall see. Even Wonder Wifey, an especially harsh critic of the stinking stuff Your Humble Scribe creates, was mildly impressed. Praise indeed!
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