More specifically concerning: money
the ugly byzantine
2 October 2008, around 1.43.
Byzantine diplomacy was very expensive. Dowries, gifts, subsidies to whole nations, all involved the treasury in enormous sums. Even economic blockades, sometimes effectively employed towards the Saracens, were costly for the Empire also. The Government was moreover perfectly willing to pay its enemies direct not to invade its territory. Lawless princes across the frontier thus […]
sov
9 December 2010, around 12.08.
We look in the taxi. If there is a meter: fine. If there is not: ‘do you have a meter?’ ‘No – it’s a hundred dram a kilometer, we’ll go by the odometer.’ ‘Well how much is it to point B from here?’ If he says: ‘I don’t know, we’ll go by the odometer’ – […]
Adversaria (13)
30 April 2024, around 7.15.
‘Hunger is hunger, but the hunger gratified by cooked meat eaten with a knife and fork is a different hunger from that which bolts down raw meat with the aid of hand, nail and tooth.’ —Marx (Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus, p. 92) ‘Works of fiction should be seen as responses to obsessions, instincts, and tensions […]
social currency
7 August 2024, around 18.18.
The name of a thing is entirely external to its nature. I know nothing of a man if I merely know his name is Jacob. In the same way, every trace of the money-relation disappears in the names pound, dollar, franc, ducat, etc. The confusion caused by attributing a hidden meaning to these cabalistic signs […]
Adversaria (17)
31 August 2024, around 4.11.
‘Karl knows something of every handicraft, and in addition he has teh ability, peculiar to nearly all Norwegians, to tackle any situation with the most meagre equipment. He is what the Norwegians call for short an altmüligman—an everything-possible-man’ —Christiane Ritter (A Woman in the Polar Night, trans. Jane Degras, 52%) ‘…the heart of man is […]