"The funniest part to me was that they picked up the dimes using the vacuum trucks that are used to suck out sewage and water and stuff like that."

Said the mayor of Alvord, Caleb Caviness, quoted in "Millions of Dimes Spill and Shut Down Texas Highway for 14 Hours/Road lanes were closed after a truck overturned and spilled its cargo. Crews used vacuums, shovels and their hands to scoop up freshly minted loose coins" (NYT).

He said... that he had assumed that most of the coins had been collected, and that the remaining change had been washed away by the four inches of rain earlier in the day, which caused minor flooding in the town of about 1,400 residents.

I say get rid of nickels too. Let the dime be the smallest coin — not just physically but denominationally.

I saw Trump's Truth Social post: "For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let's rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it's a penny at a time."

Then I read the hand-wringing in the NYT — "Trump Orders Treasury Secretary to Stop Minting Pennies/Can he do that? It’s not clear. But President Trump is right when he says that pennies 'literally cost us more than 2 cents'" — because they can't just say Thanks, Trump, thanks for doing what we've known for 40 years we needed to do but we couldn't do because some people whine about the nostalgic and symbolic value of the Lincoln-stamped copper-plated disc.

The NYT article says: "[T]he elimination of the penny will increase the demand for nickels, which are even more expensive to produce and distribute at 13.78 cents per coin, the organization said. (The dime is the smallest coin whose face value is greater than what it costs to produce.)"

To that I say, get rid of the nickel too! It's always been absurdly oversized, especially compared to the dime. With the penny and the nickel gone, the size and the value of the dime will finally merge. So aesthetically pleasing.

I feel a little sorry for the sector of America that feels that whatever Trump does must be bad. Can't they at least celebrate his action eliminating the penny? 

Last September, the NYT published the column "Abolish the Penny? Inside an intractable problem inside America’s change purses."

Just say no.

 

Some pages of Bob Dylan's "Philosophy of Modern Song" are photos like this with a couple sentences isolated from the text.

I find that pretty amusing. You can buy the book here. I have the audiobook and the Kindle text, so I'm usually out walking around listening. I like Bob's voice, reading, and the various actors who read some of it are good too. I intersperse that reading with playing the songs. Here's a Spotify playlist of the songs. I have the Kindle so I can find quotes to blog, but in this case, I need the Kindle so I can see the illustrations, and then I also need the Kindle so I can contextualized those captions.

Here, in this case, it's:

She says look here mister lovey-dovey, you’re too extravagant, you’re high on drugs. I gave you money, but you gambled it away, now get lost. You say wait a minute now. Why are you being so combative? You’re way off target. Don’t be so small minded, you’re being goofy. I thought we had a love pact, why do you want to shun me and leave me marooned. What’s wrong with you anyway? I’m telling you, let’s be amiable, and if you’re not, I’m going to wrap this relationship up and terminate it. You’re asking her for money. She says money is the root of all evil, now take a hike. You try to appeal to her sensual side but she’s not having it. She’s got another man, which infuriates you no end. 

But no other man could step into your shoes, no other man can swap places with you. No other man would pinch-hit when it comes to her. How could it happen? I get it, she’s not in love with you anyway, she is in love with the almighty dollar. Now you’ve learnt your lesson, and you see it clear. Used to be you only associated with extraordinary people, now they’re all a dime a dozen, but you have to keep it in perspective. There’s always someone better than you, and there’s always someone better than him. You want to do things well. You know you can do things, but it’s hard to do them well. You don’t know what your problem is. The best things in life are free, but you prefer the worst. Maybe that’s your problem.

Now, what song is he talking about? 

"The agglomeration of legal talent on both sides of Twitter v. Musk is mind-boggling—as is the amount of money being billed on this case."

"But with stakes ranging from a $1 billion breakup fee on the low end to a $44 billion acquisition on the high end, with lots of room for a settlement in between, there’s plenty of cash sloshing around to cover the lawyers’ fees.... Who will prevail in the end? I agree with the conventional wisdom that Twitter has the upper hand. It seems to me that Musk simply got a case of buyer’s remorse, especially after the stock market (including Tesla’s share price) went south.... [T]he reasons given by Musk for walking away seem pretextual. Yes, specific performance is generally a disfavored remedy in contract law compared to money damages.... [but Delaware] Chancery has not hesitated to order specific performance of billion-dollar M&A deals in the past... [I]f Twitter v. Musk goes to trial, the spectacle will be incredible. I’m not big on scatology, so I tuned out Amber Heard’s testimony about poop on the bed. But Elon Musk testifying about his poop emojis? I’m here for it."

Writes David Lat (at Original Jurisdiction).

When are things melodramatic enough that we feel like watching? If we are lawyers, then maybe contracts worth a big enough amount of money are enough. I will never forget the way a partner — at the "biglaw" firm where I worked before I became a lawprof — overpronounced the "b" in "billions." If it's a "b" and not an "m," you'd better stand in awe. I wanted to work on cases that had interesting issues, and for that, in that place, I got called "an intellectual."

Speaking of "b" and "m," long ago, when I was growing up, the conventional word for the substance that is now called "poop" — when speaking around children and other delicate folk — was "b.m." At least in the region where I lived, the place with the famous Chancery Court, Delaware. People would say, "Oh, no, I stepped in dog b.m." or "This place smells like b.m." 

And as long as we are talking about Elon Musk and melodrama and scampering away from high finance to more lowly things, here's this new headline in the NY Post: "Elon Musk’s dad, 76, confirms secret second child — with his stepdaughter" ("Elon has not publicly commented on his father’s latest baby admission. The pair are still estranged, with Elon describing his dad as a 'terrible human being'...").

"The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point on Wednesday, its biggest move since 1994..."

"... as the central bank ramps up its efforts to tackle the fastest inflation in four decades. The big rate increase... has underlined that Fed officials are serious about crushing price increases even if it comes at a cost to the economy."

The NYT reports.

"Britt Ruggiero and Justin Giuffrida bought a 2002 Bluebird school bus in February 2021, with plans to convert it into a 30-foot home on wheels."

"At the time, diesel fuel prices in their home state of Colorado were averaging around $3 per gallon... [They] gutted their bus, which they’ve dubbed the G Wagon, created a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, and installed plumbing and solar power. They also mapped out an ambitious yearlong, cross-country trip.... They got on the road this March, only to realize quickly that gas prices were not what they’d expected. 'We drove to Florida basically all in one weekend.... We were estimating it to cost about $200 [to fill the 60-gallon tank] and lately it’s been about $300.' With... 8 to 10 miles per gallon... [the] first trip cost them nearly $2,000 on gas alone."

From "When #Vanlife Meets the $300 Tank/Remaining in destinations longer, using gas apps and signing up for fuel cards allows nomadic travelers to stay on the road" (NYT).

ADDED: At the comments over there:

"A jobsworth is a person who uses the (typically minor) authority of their job in a deliberately uncooperative way, or who seemingly delights..."

"... in acting in an obstructive or unhelpful manner. It characterizes one who upholds petty rules even at the expense of effectiveness or efficiency. 'Jobsworth' is a British colloquial word derived from the phrase 'I can't do that, it's more than my job's worth,' meaning that to do what is requested of them would be against what their job requires and would be likely to cause them to lose their job. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as 'A person in authority (esp. a minor official) who insists on adhering to rules and regulations or bureaucratic procedures even at the expense of common sense.'"

Wikipedia defines "Jobsworth," a word I just learned.

I encountered it in the context of a Reddit discussion of that Disney employee who intervened in a marriage proposal. (Video at the link.) Somebody commented: "What a jobsworth….karma will deal with his decision to destroy a once in a lifetime moment for that couple."

The OED finds the earliest use in print in the September 1970 issue of the magazine Melody Maker: "If you are a taxi-driver, jobsworth or policeman, you will now be able to understand hippie lingo." Oh, now I desperately want to read Melody Maker's guide to hippie lingo!

Of course, there are many other lists of hippie lingo, but I want one written in 1970. Here's something from 2021, informing us of the too-obvious: bread, dough, bummer, dig, downer, flow (in "go with the flow"), fry, the fuzz, grok, groove, groovy, hang-up, head, hit, heavy, the man, the establishment, mellow, primo, psychedelic, threads, trip, trippy, vibe. 

And then all the phrases, like "blow your mind." Too numerous to type out here. But they left out my favorite: "Do your own thing." 

That's the problem with being a jobsworth. You're quite specifically not doing your own thing.

I was just rewatching the movie "The Times of Bill Cunningham," about the street fashion photographer. At one point, he says: "You see, if you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid. That’s the key to the whole thing. Don’t touch money."

"The federal commission charged with commemorating 250 years of American independence in 2026 is at war with itself over allegations of featherbedding, favoritism and misappropriation of taxpayer funds."

The Wall Street Journal reports, in "Planners Battle Over Marking U.S. 250th Anniversary/The federal effort to commemorate 2026, mired in dissension, faces allegations of impropriety."

Featherbedding, favoritism, and the misappropriation of taxpayer funds? That's America! Perfect concept for this celebration.

By the way, had you noticed this thing was coming? I lived through the buildup to the bicentennial in 1976, so it's déjà vu for me. I don't remember its being corrupt, just commercial and tedious. I certainly remember they got Warren Burger to step down from the Chief Justice position to run the event, which seemed crazy at the time. Maybe John Roberts can be wooed into a reenactment of that misguided job change. That would be cause for celebration in some quarters.

ADDED: From the morning texting at Meadhouse:

CORRECTION: "I certainly remember they got Warren Burger to step down from the Chief Justice...." No, that's not right. He left the Court to take the lead position celebrating the bicentennial of the Constitution. It did seem crazy at the time.

"A plan announced in 2015 to replace Founding Father Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill was reversed a year later, due in part to the massive success of Broadway musical 'Hamilton.'"

"Instead, the Treasury Department announced that a vignette of suffrage movement leaders would appear on the back of the currency — a redesign that will not enter circulation until 2026. Another effort under the Obama administration to replace Andrew Jackson, the president responsible for the 1830 Indian Removal Act, with abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill was shelved by the Trump Administration. After taking office last year, President Biden pledged to revive the plan and 'speed up' the process, but Tubman is still not set to appear on the bill by the end of Biden’s first term, or a potential second term, The Washington Post reported. Production for new paper currency faces major holdups, driven by a need for new anti-counterfeiting features and court injunctions calling for bills to include 'meaningful access' for people who are blind or visually impaired. Coins, on the other hand, have seen frequent redesigns...."

From "U.S. quarters will feature 5 new women. What happened to other plans to change currency?/News of the program, which makes Maya Angelou the first Black woman to be featured on a quarter-dollar, was met with both cheers and criticism" (The Lily).

The "heads" side of the coin still has George Washington (as is legally required), though they've switched to a version of him facing in the other direction — sculpted by a woman. So these new images of women are on the "tails" side. I hope this doesn't lead to any arguments over coin flips. Call "heads" to be safe.

"Question: When will we put Dr. Seuss on the twenty?"

That's a question I wrote in this page of the sketchbook I drew when I was in Paris. (It was some time in the 1990s. I forget when. I blogged this page in 2004, the first year of this blog, after St. Exupéry's plane was found in the Mediterranean Sea, 60 years after he crashed and died.)

I loved that France had put an artist on its money, and I felt a little sad that we Americans don't put our artists first. So I must feel elated that we've done it at last. We've put an artist on our money:

I got my wish, so I'm just going to be happy about an artist on the money, not argue about the particular artist chosen. 

When I wrote in my sketchbook, I picked the name Dr. Seuss not only because he wrote accessible words and drew charming drawings, which is what St. Exupéry did. I picked it because I thought virtually all Americans could get behind the choice of Dr. Seuss. We all know him and have enjoyed his work. Who can't like him? But 18 years have passed, and... is Dr. Seuss cancelled? He's somewhere on the road to cancellation.

So I couldn't get my precise wish.

When you wish upon a Star-Bellied Sneetch/Makes no difference who you reach/Something like your heart desires/Will come to you....

So I got my wish imprecisely. I got Maya Angelou! 

***

Like a songbird, her legs are invisible as she flies, arms outstretched/Darting into the slots of vending machines/Across America.

"Professor Put Clues to a Cash Prize in His Syllabus.... Tucked into the second page of the syllabus was information about a locker number and its combination. Inside was a $50 bill, which went unclaimed."

The NYT reports.

“Free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five,” read the passage in the syllabus. But when the semester ended on Dec. 8, students went home and the cash was unclaimed.

“My semester-long experiment has come to an end,” [Kenyon Wilson, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga]  wrote on Facebook, adding: “Today I retrieved the unclaimed treasure.”...

Tanner Swoyer, a senior studying instrumental music education, said that he felt “pretty dumb, pretty stupid” when he saw the professor’s post... Mr. Swoyer immediately texted his classmates, who also felt “bamboozled,” mostly because, he said, this was something Professor Wilson would do....

I see no bamboozling here. I've already blogged about the word "bamboozle" — complete with a quote from "The Life of Pi" — here. But, briefly, to "bamboozle" is to trick. There's no trick here. The students didn't lose or risk losing their own money. It was the professor's money, and he put it where anyone could easily take it, if they were sharp enough to see. 

Let this be a lesson to everyone: What fine benefits are right there for you to take that you do not see? Jesus said:

[T]heir ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart.... But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.

"If cash were replaced with a digital dollar... the Fed could impose a negative interest rate by gradually shrinking the electronic balances in everyone’s digital currency accounts..."

"... creating an incentive for consumers to spend and for companies to invest. A digital dollar would also hinder illegal activities that rely on anonymous cash transactions, such as drug dealing, money laundering and terrorism financing. It would bring 'off the books' economic activity out of the shadows and into the formal economy, increasing tax revenues. Small businesses would benefit from lower transaction costs, since people would use credit cards less often, and they would avoid the hassles of handling cash..... A digital dollar could threaten what remains of anonymity and privacy in commercial transactions — a reminder that adopting a digital dollar is not just an economic but also a social decision.... With proper preparation and open discussion, we should embrace the advent of a digital dollar."

From "Cash Will Soon Be Obsolete. Will America Be Ready?" by trade policy professor Eswar Prasad (NYT).

Do you still use cash? I carry around some cash, but it seems to be the same cash I've had for the past year. It was an unusual year, but still.... 

A highly rated comment over there comes from hb in the Czech Republic: 

Cash is essential for privacy. Without privacy, there is no freedom. Thankfully Sweden recently backtracked on it's march to go cashless, citing the needs of the poor, the elderly and the non-tech savvy. I don't want to live in or bequeath to future generations an Orwellian world where the government and corporations and every hacker knows every time I buy a pack of gum.

"With no daily obligations and no children around, the challenge was 'to profit from the present moment without ever thinking about what will happen in one hour, in two hours'...."

"In partnership with laboratories in France and Switzerland, scientists monitored the 15 team members’ sleep patterns, social interactions and behavioural reactions via sensors. One sensor was a tiny thermometer inside a capsule that participants swallowed like a pill. It measured body temperature and transmitted data to a computer until it was expelled naturally. The team members followed their biological clocks to know when to wake up, go to sleep and eat. They counted their days not in hours but in sleep cycles. 'It’s really interesting to observe how this group synchronises themselves,' [project director Christian] Clot said earlier in a recording from inside the cave.... Two-thirds of the participants expressed a desire to remain underground a little longer to finish group projects started during their stay.... "

From "15 French volunteers leave cave after 40 days without daylight or clocks/Deep Time project investigated how a lack of external contact would affect sense of time – and two thirds wanted to stay longer" (The Guardian). 

FROM THE EMAIL: ALP writes:

I found this very interesting - the fact that so many wanted to stay in the cave. Like you, I don't do "real travel" - the kind that involves airports and exotic places. Prefer ordinary days as well. My ideal vacation is one in which I have a stretch of days where I do not have to look at the clock. I am constantly worried about time passing when I'm on the job; such is life in Big Law. Just listening to traveling types describe their plans, designed with near military precision to fit it all in, is annoying. Of course the Cave People want to stay in the cave - we are so linked to the passing of time it is such a nice change to be divorced from it. I totally get it.

You're reminding me how much I hated working "billable hours." It's something I only did for a couple years after law school, but I've never forgotten how much I appreciated moving into a job where my time wasn't connected to the money. The money flowed in over there, and nothing about the way I did my work made me feel that time equals money. I know some people prefer to feel the connection between work and money. It can be quite motivating! But I love the disconnect. 

AND: SGT Ted emails:

The experiment of the cave dwellers is interesting but seems like contrived science to me, by removing normal activity that is required for survival, like finding food, raising the next generation and living in a natural diurnal environment. Maybe as an application towards living in outer space it has some merit. But they could just as easily have done that with a sealed building instead of underground caves.

"The multimillionaire former CEO of online shoe store Zappos died on Friday, nine days after he was dragged unconscious by firefighters from a blazing Connecticut house..."

"... in the middle of the night. Tony Hsieh, who was worth an estimated $840 million, had retired three months earlier from the billion-dollar business he helped found, and was just 46 years old. The alarm was raised at 3:30am on November 18 and firefighters forced their way into the New London home after being told someone was trapped inside.... He insisted on a $36,000 annual salary... and he sat in an unassuming cubicle among the other employees. When Zappos set up a new warehouse in Kentucky, the paper said, he packed a pickup truck with materials, drove to Kentucky and got to work bolting together shelves and unpacking shoes.... Hsieh, who had a passion for llamas and alpacas, had a pet alpaca named Marley and dog Blizzy. He lived in an Airstream trailer, part of a village... known as Llamapolis... [I]n 2014, he transformed a parking lot in the city into a 'micro-living oasis', made up of around 30 RVs. He also had two pet llamas which lived in the trailer park community with him. As of 2020, he was still living in the tiny trailer, unmarried and with no children."

The Daily Mail reports.

Here's a view inside Hsieh's Airstream:

The $2 bill.

"You have someone who is not afraid of anyone and only afraid of God... and is at a 132 I.Q. genius that literally went to the hospital because his brain was too big for his skull...."

"… We are all equal in God’s eyes. Sometimes, people are controlled by demons. Sometimes, people are controlled by the environment that we are in, but we are all God’s people. There’s no bad people. There are lost people, but we are all God’s people. There’s not left, right, red, blue. That’s why everybody here is purple today.... But when God calls Moses, he has to leave his comfy job working for the Egyptians and free the people. And the freedom does not come from an election. The freedom comes from you not loading up pornography. The freedom comes from you not taking the Percocet. The freedom comes from you not doubting your brother and your sister. The freedom comes from you putting that gun down and not shooting people at the gas station. It has nothing to do with this election. It only has to do with God and God’s people... He set pause for us to take a moment and breathe and not TikTok ourselves out. He sent pause for us, now we have a moment to breathe. It has nothing to do with black, white, rich, poor, red, blue, Native American, pilgrim. It has to deal with being truthful to what God has."

Said Kanye West at his rally yesterday. He's running for President. Do you think he's out of his mind enough to be President?

Here's the part about abortion:

"Now I don’t know what brought this up but I have no intention of hopping around the world ogling natives and peasants or whatever you had in mind."

Said Benjamin Braddock, the main character in the novel "The Graduate," which I read after reading the obituary of the author Charles Webb. I picked out that quote because of my longstanding critique of travel. The character says that after his love interest, Elaine, tells him, "Before you tie yourself down to being married you should do other things... But wouldn’t it be exciting?... To see all the different lands and the different peoples and so forth?"

I wanted to read "The Graduate" to prepare to read another book by Webb, "Home School," in which he tells what he and his wife (≈ Ben and Elaine) did with their life.

Here's the note, "About the Author," that's in "The Graduate":

Charles Webb seems to have taken the message of his book very seriously and has spent his adult life avoiding the sort of traps that materialism lays for people. Since the success of The Graduate, has shunned the limelight. Both he and his wife have sought to avoid the celebrity and the expectations that success could have brought them. Webb gave away most of the money he made from the novel and reportedly sold the film rights to the book for a mere $20,000.

The novel "The Graduate" is very close to the movie, which I've seen twice, though not recently. It's a very quick read, full of dialogue, but it does help you understand the characters a bit more than in the movie. The main difference is that the huge laugh line from the movie, "Plastics," is not in the book, and in the book Benjamin converts his sports car to cash as soon as he gets to Berkeley, so he's not chasing Elaine in that cool car.

Anyway. Travel. I thought the translation of the bourgeois view of travel into "hopping around the world ogling natives and peasants" was very nice. The character never knows what he wants to do (other than marry Elaine), but other people keep wanting him to do things, and you get the message that he's more advanced just having eliminated all their bad ideas from his life. Traveling is just one of them.

"The decision to have the paper checks bear Trump's name, in the works for weeks, according to a Treasury official, was announced early Tuesday to the IRS's information technology team."

"The team, working from home, is now racing to implement a programming change that two senior IRS officials said will probably lead to a delay in issuing the first batch of paper checks. They are scheduled to be sent Thursday to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service for printing and issuing."

According to The Washington Post (reprinted at The Hour, linked by Drudge). This is, we're told, "the first time a president's name appears on an IRS disbursement."

ADDED: The sentence quoted in the headline is poorly written. "The decision to have the paper checks bear Trump's name" was suddenly announced on Tuesday. It was not "in the works for weeks." The paper checks were "in the works for weeks," and this new decision caused delay. This is the kind of writing mistake that happens when you try to crush a lot of information into one sentence.

ALSO: Is it so odd that a leader would put his name on the money? It made me think of the Biblical story where Jesus figured out how to answer an attempted gotcha question from his antagonists:

If it's a good idea to put Harriet Tubman's image on U.S. currency, why isn't it also okay to use her on this debit card? Is it that the user is a bank? Or is it that hand gesture?

Our limited-edition Harriet Tubman Visa Debit Card is a symbol of Black empowerment. Don’t miss out! #GetTheCard today! #HarrietTubman #BlackHistoryMonth #BankBlackhttps://t.co/LWbOmRjNcy pic.twitter.com/okLTuJskXC

— OneUnited Bank (@oneunited) February 13, 2020

I'm reading "This Black-Owned Bank Put Harriet Tubman on a Debit Card and Social Media Lost It/OneUnited president and artist stand behind the design" (AdWeek).

AdWeek quotes 2 tweeters:

• "Harriet didn’t die for this" — Didn't die for black people to own banks and to have their own money and to spend it conveniently? What is freedom? Does it not include the freedom to amass wealth and to engage in commercial transactions and to do so with the convenience of a debit card?

• "Let me guess. A white marketing executive from Beverly Hills came up with the idea of a Harriet Tubman Visa Debit Card doing the Wakanda Forever salute" — But, we are told, the artist, Addonis Parker, says he started the painting before the movie came out and intended the gesture as "love" in American Sign Language. Compare:





The president of OneUnited Bank, Teri Williams says:

“When the decision was made to delay putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, we said we think that we have a role to play here because we can actually put her on a global payment instrument.... We put out many images that are unapologetically black... [b]ecause we believe that it’s important for us to celebrate our culture and to communicate to the world that Black money matters.... This is who we are. We’re black all day, every day.... We’re here for our community, and our focus is really on being unapologetically and authentically black."

You might think the image should look more like what the Treasury Department proposed for the $20:



But the black-owned bank — "unapologetically and authentically black" — chose an image painted by a black artist.