More Of Money Malfeasance

Conrad Will Try To Make This Interesting

Money is always interesting, most especially so when you never have enough of the stuff.  When it gets into the realm of millions or billions, though, the enormity of the amounts involved tend to make it feel rather abstract.

     Well, let's have a bit of the concrete and actual to remedy that.  Art!

Chap here is from Erioperatsioonide Väejuhatus, their SOF

     Okay, the cast here is:  Gabe, an unpleasant pro-Ruffian troll.

     Kadi: pro-Ukrainian Estonian.

     Conrad:  Pro-Ukrainian internet gobs***e.

     Gabe likes to insult the Baltic States, and the Balts in general, by calling them the Barking Dogs, because he's probably troll paid by the FSB to pimp for the Ruffians on the internet.  His latest example of wit is to compare Estonia to a chihuahua, because both are small.  Art!

Isn't it strange that all the countries bordering Ruffia are pro-Ukraine?

  He also traduces the 0.25% of Estonian GDP to a mutual defence pact with Ukraine as 'pennies', perhaps because Kadi has a flushing toilet whereas he fell down the hole last time when the plank broke*.

     ANYWAY Kadi's rejoinder was to riposte that this 0.25% is in fact the equivalent of €95 million.  Art!

About  9 billion rubles equivalent

     You know Conrad.  Nosy and likes to prove a point.  So I got in there and posted.  Some people liked it.

Arianna

and

Mila

liked your reply

I did some quick and dirty calculations and if NATO as a whole did this, it would amount to $110 billion. How d'ya like them pennies, Gabe?

     For comparison, Estonia has a GDP of $38 billion per annum, and a population of 1,350,000 - I didn't realise it was that small! - giving it a Purchasing Power Parity per capita of $48,700 per person.  Art!

Tallinn, capital of Estonia

     Whereas Modern-Day Mordor has a GDP of $2,000,000,000,000 (to be taken with a large block of sodium chloride), and a population of about 140,000,000.  I say 'about' because a lot are now sunflower-fodder in Ukraine, a lot have fled to anywhere that's not Ruffia and a lot are living off the grid.  Their PPP per capita is $27,450.  About half of Estonia's for a country with a population 106 times bigger.

Moscow never looked so beautiful

     The Ruffian GDP pales into insignificance compared to the combined total of NATO - $46,000,000,000,000 - which is why even only a 0.25% commitment would utterly dwarf anything they can muster.

     To be fair, for a moment, that's not Moscow, it's the grim industrial Ruffian city of Norilsk, where one can bet the average wage is closer to the $10,000 norm outside Moscow.  

     When it comes to military expenditure, it's a question of how much Ruffia can increase it without destroying their economy in the short term, as it's already heading for disaster in the longer term.  Art!

"We will increase funding by 1000%!"

Do You Know Who Else Has Money Worries?

Yes, Donald Judas Trump.  His perpetual litigation is bleeding him dry because he has to maintain an army of attorneys and - surprise! - they won't work for you if you  don't pay them.

     Thus, anything that threatens his future funds is, in his eyes, A Very Bad Thing.  Art!

     As is clearly visible, the stock price had rallied last week and hit about $52 per share.

     Until he was found guilty on Thursday.  Excuse me GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY.

     Farron Balanced of "Farron Balanced" explained the price collapse pretty well.  A lot of investors bought the DJT stock because they thought "This guy is going to get into the White House in November and the price of this stock will soar! and I can sell it and make a killing!"  Then, after the verdict, they realised that Pumpkinhead getting anywhere near the White House rather than a prison cell was becoming less likely by the day.  So they dumped stock and drove the price down.  Art!

     Another very prescient point he made was that "Truth Social", the miserably unsuccessful "Twitter" knock-off that is the only asset DJT stocks are based on, only has subscribers or viewers because Grumpy Trumpy himself posts on it.  Frequently in all-caps unspellchecked rants into the small hours - but I digress.  If Pimpkinhead is sent to prison he won't have access to social media.  His posting on TS will vanish, and so will the platform.  Tee hee!

Conrad Is ANGRY!

I mean, I'm always angry, but now am even more so, because <drum roll> I've been doing the M.E.N.  Codewords again, which always stokes my Frothing Nitric Ire.  For many months I was solving the Codewords in a "Puzzler" book, which were all 3-letter solutions, making them a quantum level easier than the 2-letter ones in the M.E.N. 

     So here we are!

STUCCO:  You may well frown in puzzlement at this one.  Conrad was only aware of the solution because he's so widely read.  Allow me to put up a definition from my "Collins Concise": "A weather-resistant mixture of dehydrated lime,  powdered marble and glue, used in decorative mouldings on buildings."  Art!

     Bah!

JOINTURE:Neither you nor I can be expected to have known this word, as we are not trained up in minor points of arcane inheritance law.  To paraphrase, it's provision a husband makes for his wife for her inheritance after his death.  No word on whether there's a similar arrangement for the wife.  Surprisingly, none of these infidelity stories on Reddit (that I read far too many of) mention this word.  Art!

Cheating moves into the 21st century!

ACME: My eyes have narrowed menacingly - menacingly, I tell you, not migrainely! - for anyone who bangs on about Wiley E. Coyote.  "Acme" comes from the Greek "akme", meaning the pinnacle of achievement and perfection.  Still, it's not a word one would expect to see in modern English usage.  Art!

Why not?  It's a classic.

"City In The Sky"

Yes, under the right circumstances, a Donald Duck Super-Soaker can be an effective anti-personnel weapon.

A further quick spray of water into the Prison lock provoked a geyser of sparks that allowed the door to be dragged slowly open, bringing the Doctor face-to-face with the prisoners.

     Three Lithoi.  Not a human being in sight.

     Entering cautiously, the Doctor confirmed that he faced three lizards who were chained to the walls with heat-sealed plastic restraints around their torsos.  None of them wore the metal collars he’d witnessed on other Lithoi.

     The trio solemnly looked at him.  The middle prisoner opened it’s mouth and began speaking.

     ‘Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh - ’ it began, a single sound that went on for twenty seconds. 

     What’s this!  Has the TARDIS’ translation gimmickry gone wrong? He wondered.

     ‘Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-’ continued the long drawn-out speech.

     The Doctor leant forward and frowned.  Was this creature trying to communicate or was it suffering from hypologorrhea?

     ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-’

     Impatiently, he gestured in a universal “hurry-up” motion understood across the galaxy.

     ‘Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-’

     Yes – nearly there!  Come on, lizard, keep going –

     ‘Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-’

     The Timelord stood back, scratching his head before realisation struck.

     ‘ “Hoo arr you”.  Who are you!  Oh, I see!’ he replied, to complete incomprehension from the lizards.  He repeated the phrase as slowly as he could manage whilst still sounding comprehensible, and the middle lizard leaned forward in what seemed to be the Lithoi equivalent of a nod.

Blimey, I hope the author finds a way to move these conversations along a bit, this is tedious!

A Return To Reality

The Traffic counter on Blogger seems to have reset to a state approaching normality, rather than the ridiculously high stats from April and May.  Art!

     Having a glut of sardonic Tweets may be elevating my profile but certainly not to the level of 23,257 hits.

*  20% of Ruffian homes lack an indoor plumbed toilet, which is why so many Ukrainian ones have been stolen.  They still have to be connected to the mains, however.