I would be interested to know if Fox News and the various other grifters are still encouraging goldbuggery, or if that eased off under Trump.
Right now the bitcoin people have launched a "dump gold" advertising/media campaign. Which is actually pretty good advice except they mean dump gold to buy bitcoin. It seems that bitcoin is goldbuggery for millennials.
There are places in Dubai where you can buy gold from vending machines. A lot of this is driven by the South Asian market and goes to wedding jewelry.
Honestly, it would just be churlish of a country as wealthy as Togo or Mali to begrudge a happy couple the royalties owed on their finery.
The nice thing about a wedding is that after it is over, you are legally forbidden from giving your spouse gold until you've been married 50 years. You're probably dead by then if you didn't get married right out of college or something.
legally forbidden from giving your spouse gold until you've been married 50 years
There's an exception in the law that permits gifts of Goldschläger, but only in West Virginia and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
What about Acapulco gold, now legal in Michigan?
2: Kind of illustrates the two wings of the Republican Party.
You people are like, so Eurocentric.
We're the generation that first blessed the rain.
Like, they need your permission?
You all suck. The link is literally golden.
It was a very informative link, which I read. I just don't know what to say about it.
Anyway, I get that my information on Africa is lacking, but my son is writing a report about Chad and I've picked up quite a bit.
Mostly I have to remind myself it's got nothing to do with Incels.
Great link! I had idea that artisanal gold mining was a thing
Run that by your son. If he doesn't get it his report sucks.
Or he has a more sophisticated sense of humor than a reprobate. In which case, tough questions for MobySpouse.
I explained the pee tape, but there's no way I'm going to explain Incels to him.
Gold is one of the few metals I can wear, so my husband actually has bought it for me (literally the two pairs of earrings I own). Of course, we do that super unromantic thing where I pick out the relatively inexpensive pair I want on Etsy, and say, "Here, buy me this for Christmas."
I blame Glenn Beck, probably!
I blame the oligarhs and the czars.
Of course, we do that super unromantic thing where I pick out the relatively inexpensive pair I want on Etsy, and say, "Here, buy me this for Christmas."
My wife and I do that, but there's a crucial extra step. After she tells me what to get, I hypnotize her so that she forgets everything, and then she is totally shocked and amazed when she opens the present, and sees I got her exactly what she wanted.
The UAE (and indeed the rest of the Gulf) never ceases to invent new ways to be horrible. I'm sure that some Gulf state must have done something recently that wasn't awful but I can't think what.
Oman negotiates hostage releases? But maybe they do it in some awful way.
They spilled the hostages on the ground.
Speaking of inventing new ways to be horrible in the Gulf my apartment's lease is due at the end of the month and I could use the advice of the Mineshaft. I currently pay 6,500 Arrakis Water Rings a month for a fully furnished 1 BR apartment in a new building, utilities are included up to 250 WR but I pay anything over that, WiFi is included. Prices is my area are around 5,000 to 5,500 a month WR (varies on the inclusion of the utilities) but not all those are new buildings. I looked at one today that was a bout 6 years old and there was pigeon poop on the window sills which is an automatic no deal. They want to increase my rent to 6,500 and I take on the utilities (which is a bureaucratic pain in the ass but would add maybe 300 WR a month to my nut) or I pay 7,000 WR a month all inclusive. I have an aversion to paying an increase (naturally) but it really sticks in my craw when the market is so depressed here. This is after I countered with the above about current market rates and how much friends pay (2 friends in the area had their rent spontaneously reduced by their landlord by about 2,000 WR, and it's a very nice 2 BR place with a balcony and a view in a new building. I'm considering actually increasing the amount I would pay and looking elsewhere in other neighborhoods, maybe a tower or something. But I have 3 weeks to find a place, move, and I leave for NY for 5 weeks on May 31st. They delayed answering my messages about renewing which I sent as far back as March.
I kind of like it here, the apartment is nice even though I have no view. And it's clean though I had a mold outbreak in January which seems persistent in some small areas of the apartment. And moving is such a monumental pain in the ass. But if I stay I'll feel like I've been had.
What to do?
27: I never think of Oman as a Gulf state, perhaps wrongly? They have mountains, and history, and small buildings, and a tendency not to treat people like shit absolutely all the time.
29: I hate to say it but that really sounds like you should move. It will be a pain in the ass but you will not regret it once you're settled in.
(Why the aversion to pigeon poop, incidentally? Implied noisy pigeons?)
Oh, and their last offer which was in return to my counteroffer and little better than the original was said to be 'final'. I should have included that they also offered 2 free weeks at the 7,000 WR.
ydnew and dq claxon alert (whose advice I've always found helpful for such things) and anyone else.
Maybe you should convert the apartments into animal analogues.
30.1: IDK. Oman, AFAIK unlike the other GCC states, has this 18-19C history as a pretty vicious sub-imperial maritime power. Like, Gwadar, current jewel of the shitty BRI crown, used to be an Omani enclave? No idea how to evaluate it all overall.
33 The Qawasim in modern day Ras al-Khaimah/Sharjah were a pretty vicious piratical maritime power until the early 19th century (in 1809 the Bombay Marine, the naval wing of the British East India Company found and sunk the Qawasim fleet at anchor and then landed and reduced the town, there is a very pretty serious of watercolors painted by one of the British officers. The entire region's history here in the 18th and 19th centuries reads like the wild West.
Sometime in the late 19th century the Bani Yas raided outside of Doha to steal some agricultural slaves. The Qatari shaykh's son was killed in pursuit of the raiders. The shaykh called his banners, as it were, and marched inland towards the Liwa oasis, killing every man, woman, and child they came across. They were maritime peoples predominantly but the British Resident in the Gulf pretty strictly enforced the General Maritime Truce which forbade piracy and maritime raids, if they'd done that the British would have reduced Doha/Bidda, but they cared little about what happened inland other than wanting to know what was going on (they'd tell the shaykh's it was a bad idea but wouldn't get involved otherwise).
I highly recommend Charles Davies The Blood Red Arab Flag, if you can get your hands on a copy, whenever one comes up on the market the Shaykh of Sharjah, himself a PhD historian (U of Exeter I think) buys them up.
But yeah, the Omanis were pretty powerful and kicked a lot of ass back in the day.
One of the things I love about the Bani Yas is that they occur on many old maps as the Bani Ass.
30.1 It's definitely a Gulf state, even if it is situated primarily in the Arabian Sea, it's always projected power (when it had it) northwards into the Gulf and has had a long presence here.
30.2,3 Thanks for the advice. I'm going to be looking like crazy at new places tomorrow and Saturday. Ramadan somewhat complicates matters for my move but I also get off work 2 hours earlier which I can put towards apartment hunting.
Pigeon poop is disgusting. As are pigeons. I don't want pigeon poop dust blown into my apartment with all the sand storms. Also they land on your ledge and coo and wake you up in the morning.
I've been going out into the desert a lot more over these last few months, on ecological trips with an ecologist friend of mine (and potential romantic interest, we shall see...) and with an archeologist friend of mine who's also been a drinking buddy these last couple of years. One one of the ecological trips I discovered an archeological site, broken pottery on a 'mountain' near an old cistern and went last weekend to look at it again with the archeologist friend. We discovered some more sherds, a grave, some remains of structures, he said the pottery was very likely Hellenistic (though he deplores the term) so anywhere between about 200 BCE and 150 CE. The week before I went with him and a Lebanese Syriac specialist looking at old 8th and 9th century Christian sites here. There's a ton of pottery and other stuff right on the surface. We'd find some pieces and he's like 'that's a jar handle stump, 8h century from such and such a place' take a pick and then we'd toss it back on the ground. There are visible walls of small towns. He's been looking for a church since we have Christian texts in Syriac from monks who lived here back in the 8th and 9th centuries who later moved to Mesopotamia. I'm learning from him how to read archeological sites. Wild stuff.
Hi Barry, do you also recommend any books about the Pirate Coast that might be available for less than $70?
39 It's that cheap? I should pick up a copy, I've seen it for upwards of 700 USD. Sultan al-Qasimi is slacking. I'll have to get back to you on other cheaper books. BTW, Al-Qasimi's book is good. But he leaves out a lot. His main thesis is that what the Qawasimi were doing wasn't piracy, they were a proto-state exerting tax authority and resisting European encroachment in the Gulf. The story of the Blood Red Arab Flag is that he employed a historian as a researcher and suppressed all of the documentation of the blatant piracy in his book so the historian was motivated to use all of that research and put out his own book which pissed Sultan al-Qasimi no end. I think the Shaykh has a bit of a point, but otoh, they were pirates.
Aw, thank you! Is there a (major) penalty if you break a lease early? How soon would you need to decide whether you won't renew? Could you sign a new lease, take the inclusive deal with two weeks free, then terminate prematurely at some future point? That might be the best path, assuming it's not cost-prohibitive, given the price differences. Really, though, assuming you aren't hurting for money, I would suggest you stay even if it is a full year and hunt for a better place when you aren't rushed, particularly if you're thinking of moving neighborhoods. It sounds like it would be hard to find a place you like at least as much as this one on that kind of timeline, assuming (a) apartment rentals don't tend to be seasonal, eg a bunch of open units on June 1 and (b) one month notice for nonrenewal is standard. It's OK to pay for convenience. It's also OK to pay higher than market rent for a place that works well for you (and then leave for somewhere even better because the owners are ridiculous).
Math: if you took utilities, your rent goes up by about 3600 WR/year. If you take their 7000 WR/month with two weeks free, your rent goes up by 2500 WR/yr (500 WR/month increase x 12 months - 3500 = 2500), so if you stay, the two weeks free deal (assuming they mean on rent, not just on the increase) is better and less hassle.
Disclaimer: I don't actually mind moving, but I hate scrambling to find a place to live. It just fills me with dread and panic.
All Google hits for the book on press.uchicago.edu are coming up "not found". A strategic donation?
41 Thanks!
41.last Same here. My lease is up on May 31s. I'm thinking of coming back with an offer of same as last years and see if they'll bite. Probably not.
42 Interesting.
A number of the Gulf states, including ours, have been doing some great digitization partnerships with the British Library and the National Archives but they're suppressing documents that show them in an unflattering light, or that would be currently politically problematic. But the thing is this stuff is great, and a lot of it is far more interesting than the line they're pushing. Someone should try to consolidate all of that material and make it available...hmm....
All fascinating Barry, thank you.
(And you're sounding a lot happier than you were. Any improvement at work?)
44 Thanks, work has improved under the new acting director in that this is no longer an abusive work environment even if it remains ridiculous in many ways and I've not yet gotten the promotion which is long overdue.
JFC, my landlord has the exact same apartment listed at the old price and terms!
They're claiming it's in error! Lol!
The entire region's history here in the 18th and 19th centuries reads like the wild West.
I've told the story about the time I encountered a nomadic American jazz band on a small boat in Muscat harbour (they'd just arrived from a gig at the Binladen Country Club in Riyadh IIRC) and startled them slightly by noting that slavery had only been made illegal in the sixties. "The 1860s?" said the bass player hopefully and I said no, the 1960s, and they got a bit sober and quiet.
1970 to be even more mind-blowing
We had history of slavery symposium at my institution. It was ok, not terrible but not great. OTOH there is a slavery museum here that is actually pretty good. And I have a native Fremen cow-orker who has a keen interest in the issue and who has a good nose for bs concerning it.
I think we were talking about Saudi specifically. But, yes, 1970 in Oman. (Always amazing reading about the Dhofar campaign which had conversations like "so, we are losing the hearts and minds campaign to FLOSY, how can we win them back?" "Well, have you considered abolishing slavery and building more than one paved road?" "Oooh, bold.")
We had history of slavery symposium at my institution. It was ok, not terrible but not great.
The symposium, or the slavery?
re: 43
Someone should try to consolidate all of that material and make it available...hmm....
I wonder who could possibly know how to do that. But that's assuming you can access the images, and deal with rights issues.
The present setup in Oman is largely due to UK intervention- probably the last hurrah east of Suez, even if only just.
Context. Also, this is quite informative, while adhering strictly to the official line.
53 Indeed. I could get my hands on all of the material, or at least a catalog list and I know all the principal people who've done the scoping of the archives...