Things you can learn playing Tradle

Today in Tradle — hey! Don’t read this until AFTER you do today’s Tradle!

Really odd economy, diversified but small — integrated circuits, packaged medicaments, refined petroleum and a lot of other stuff that is smaller but various. But 6% was something I didn’t even know what the hell it was: “Documents of Title (Bonds etc) and Unused Stamps”. WTF? Is there some market there in bonds? Do paradise of stamp collecting? I mean, after that whole Niue thing with the New Zealand mint (private), anything seemed possible.

But the more I poked at it — and, honestly, I’m prone to suspicion when it comes to island nations, especially when they are trading with other island nations with dictator-ish types, and when your non-island trading partners include Sudan and Turkmenistan, I mean it _might_ be that you are running refineries, but who knows.

I think this might be the explanation, however.

https://tlcp.law.uiowa.edu/sites/tlcp.law.uiowa.edu/files/wysiwyg_uploads/azzopardi_-_final_version.pdf

I also feel like when your country generates commentary from frustrated EU regulators along the lines of, hey, they say they don’t really know who is in charge of fraud and etc., that’s probably a bad sign.

I learn _so_ _much_ from Tradle.

So, the article linked above is dense and a bit long (30ish pages) but really worth while. It’s _not_ dated — these are current issues and important ones. And in particular, the offending treaty between the US and Malta that created this massive tax haven / money laundering opportunity was signed in 2011. This isn’t an orange guy era thing. The people who passed that thing for the most point had no idea what they were creating (except probably a few people who were cackling quietly to themselves — unless it truly was an accident and then some sharp eyed person went, hey, wait a minute . . .).

Along the way, mention was made of the very high daily fine on Poland, so I went and looked at that for a bit.

Why Starbucks and, Those Are Actually NOT Scrubs

That’s kind of ambiguous.

I saw this yesterday or maybe the day before, read a paragraph, my surreality meter pegged and I gave up in favor of other things. Today, I was telling K. about it while on the phone, and decided to go back and read the whole thing.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-20/starbucks-spends-billions-to-slash-wait-times-with-faster-orders

I have so many questions, and I don’t subscribe to Medium so one of my better shots at an answer is minimally available to me. Maybe Reddit? Like, do certain age/gender/job/wtf combinations order certain types of drinks? The last time I paid any attention to screwy coffee drinks, it was all about insane levels of caffeine. Clearly, I have missed a few trends.

I’m still trying to figure out what a reverse French press is, altho I have definitely looked at things online.

Earlier this year, apparently Starbucks released a new drink, the Oleata, which runs right along the lines of other trends this year in weight loss. I understand why people might want olive oil in their coffee beverage in the morning. I applaud journalists for writing articles and posting videos and so forth explaining in some detail for people who maybe were just trying the new thing without understanding how the human body and olive oil and caffeine interact.

When R. and I went out to dinner in West Concord a couple days ago, I saw a very attractive young woman through a shop window who I initially thought was wearing the nicest, best fitting scrubs I had ever seen in my life. I realized yesterday evening, when I saw another attractive young woman walking along the sidewalk who _also_ appeared to really nicely fitted and nice fabric scrubs. Those Are Actually NOT Scrubs. That Look is monochromatic fashion in a tunic/t-shirt slim pant combo that initially reads as scrubs for people who don’t pay enough attention to fashion trends.