Category: history

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The Incredible Story of Elizebeth Friedman, One of America’s Best Codebreakers

Elizebeth Smith Friedman (spelled that way by her mother, who reportedly disliked the name ‘Eliza’) was born the youngest of 9 children in 1892. From a young age it was clear the girl was bright, displaying an impressive talent for languages. She wanted to go to college, so badly that she borrowed the money from her father at a 6% interest rate when he refused to pay for her schooling outright.

She finished school at Hillsdale College in Michigan, earning a degree in English Literature while also studying German, Greek, and Latin and discovering a love for Shakespeare that would last the rest of her life. It turned out that a career in education wasn’t for Elizebeth, who grew bored and quit her job as a principal before traveling to Chicago in 1916.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

While there, she visited the Newberry Library, where Shakespeare’s First Folio was on display, and she ended up with a job at a nearby research facility, Riverbank. It was run by eccentric George Fabyan and already employed Shakespeare scholar Elizabeth Wells Gallup, who was working to prove that Sir Francis Bacon actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays.

Gallup was in need of a research assistant, and our Elizebeth was happy to take the job. She worked on a cipher that Gallup claimed was hidden in Shakespeare’s sonnets that proved they were written by Bacon, but perhaps more auspiciously, she met, fell in love with, and married geneticist William Friedman while there. A month later, the United States entered World War I.

Riverbank was one of the first institutes in the country to focus on codebreaking, or cryptology, and was essential in the early days of the war. It would transform both of the Friedman’s lives, with William becoming one of the biggest names in cryptanalysis (a word he coined himself) while his equally-as-talented wife was often deliberately kept from the spotlight.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

“So little was known in this country of codes and ciphers when the United States entered World War I, that we ourselves had to be the learners, the workers, and the teachers all at the same time,” wrote Elizebeth in her memoir.

One of their more famous wartime accomplishments actually involved cracking a code for Scotland Yard – a trunk of mysterious, coded messages turned out to contain the secrets behind the Hindu-German Conspiracy, in which Hindu activists living in the United States were shipping weapons to India with German assistance.

The resulting trial was one of the largest in U.S. history (at the time) and ended sensationally as a gunman who believed one of the defendants had snitched opened fire in the courtroom.

After the war, the Friedmans moved to Washington D.C. and continued working for the military full-time. Elizebeth stayed home for a time to focus on raising the couple’s two children, but she returned to work for the Coast Guard in 1925 when they asked for help on Prohibition-related cases. There, she proved to be an invaluable asset, and was called to testify in a 1933 trial following the bust of a million-dollar rum running operation in the Gulf of Mexico and on the West coast.

Photo Credit: Marshall Foundation

During the trial, attorneys asked her to prove how a jumble of letters could possibly be determined to mean “anchored in harbor where and when are you sending fuel?” Elizebeth asked for a chalkboard and proceeded to give the court a lesson on simple cipher charts, mono-alphabetic ciphers, and polysyllabic ciphers, then reviewed how she had spent two years intercepting and deciphering the radio broadcasts of four illicit New Orleans distilleries.

Special Assistant to the Attorney General Colonel Amos W. Woodcock wrote that Elizebeth’s proficiency “made an unusual impression.”

A year later, Elizebeth used her skills to avert a court case between Canada and the United States when her codebreaking abilities proved that a “Canadian” ship sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard was actually a ship owned by an American bootlegger and simply flew the Canadian flag to avert suspicion. The Canadians were so impressed with her that they hired her to help catch a ring of Chinese opium smugglers, and her testimony in that case led to five convictions.

When WWII began, Elizebeth was recruited by the Coordinator of Information, an intelligence service that preceded both the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and the CIA. While her husband, William, was lauded for leading the team that cracked Japan’s Purple Encryption Machine, Elizebeth’s accomplishments breaking German codes and working closely with British intelligence to disrupt Axis spy rings all across Europe. For years, researchers hit brick wall after brick wall trying to uncover her contributions, largely because J. Edgar Hoover wrote her out of history (or tried to) by classifying her files as top-secret and taking the credit for himself.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

We do know, however, that she was instrumental in solving the “Doll Woman Case” in 1944, in which Velvalee Dickinson, a New York City antique doll dealer, was found guilty of spying on behalf of the Japanese government. Her work helped prove that the letters the woman had written about the condition of antique dolls were actually describing the positions of U.S. ships and other war-related matters. In the newspaper accounts of the day, however, Elizebeth’s name was never mentioned.

She retired in 1946, a year after the war ended, and her husband followed suit a decade later. Their relationship was uniquely bonded by their shared fascination for codes and codebreaking, which they brought into their person life as well – they used ciphers playing family games with their children and would even encode menus at dinner parties, encouraging their guests to solve them in order to earn the next course.

Together, they published The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined, a masterwork that won awards from several Shakespeare research facilities, and believed that they disproved the theory that Sir Francis Bacon was the real author of the plays.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

William passed away in 1969 and Elizebeth spent her remaining years compiling and documenting her husband’s work in cryptology instead of going back over her own extraordinary achievements. Her writings are now part of the George C. Marshall Research Library.

Elizebeth died in 1980 and is buried next to her husband. On their double gravestone is a quote commonly attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.”

Photo Credit: Find A Grave

The quote is, of course, a cipher that, when decrypted, reads “WFF,” William’s initials.

There’s no doubt that the field of codebreaking wouldn’t have come as far as fast as it did without William’s efforts, but Elizebeth’s deserve equal, if not more, credit.

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Startling Report Finds the U.S. Has Over 47,000 Bridges That Are “Structurally Deficient”

Rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure has been a big talking point among politicians over the past several years, but it doesn’t seem like any real action is ever taken.

And the news isn’t getting any better. A new report from the American Road and Transportation Builders Association revealed that more than 47,000 bridges in the U.S. are in bad condition and need urgent repairs. The organization estimates that it would take 80 years to repair all the bridges in the U.S. that are deficient.

Stillwater Bridge, MN
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The term “structurally deficient” doesn’t necessarily mean that a bridge is in danger of collapsing, but it does mean that a bridge needs repairs and renovations. Clearly that’s not a good thing.

Alison Black, the chief economist for the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, said, “In addition to those bridges that are structurally deficient, about 4 out of 10 bridges across the country need some sort of major rehabilitation work. So unfortunately, it’s not just these 47,000 structures that need to be fixed.”

Arlington Memorial Bridge, VA
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The report says that the deficient bridges in the U.S. are crossed 178 million times each day. Many notable bridges are on the “structurally deficient” list, including the Brooklyn Bridge, the Arlington Memorial Bridge that connects Washington, D.C. and Arlington, Virginia, and the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge that stretches across the San Francisco Bay.

San Mateo Bridge, CA
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

To add insult to injury, 2018 saw the slowest rate of repairs in five years. According to Black, “There’s not a lot of new money. It really is just keeping pace with project costs and inflation. I think if we saw a significant increase in the federal funding side of this that would really go a long way to help states that are trying to provide some of these repairs and fix these bridges.”

Let’s all hope that our local, state, and national politicians can work together to repair our infrastructure and ensure the safety of the millions of Americans who drive across these bridges each and every day.

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The Tragic Tale of Hannelore Schmatz, the First Woman to Die on Mount Everest

Many people attempt to summit Mount Everest, and most of them make it to the top. Unfortunately, due to the myriad hazards of the journey – fatigue, confusion, lack of oxygen, natural disasters, falls, cold – there are more than a few who never make it off the mountain.

One of those unfortunate climbers was a woman named Hannelore Schmatz – not the first woman to summit Everest (though she did make it up), but the first woman (and the first German) to die there.

Hannelore and her husband, Gerhard, were experienced climbers when they decided to try their luck at conquering the world’s tallest mountain in the fall of 1979. The pair celebrated after reaching the summit (Gerhard, 50, was the oldest man to ever do it, at the time), then headed back toward base camp with their group. It contained 8 climbers and 5 sherpas, and while 6 of the climbers and all of the sherpas made it safely down, Hannelore and a Swiss-American man named Ray Genet did not.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Despite being an experienced climber, Hannelore and Genet were too tired to keep going and, despite warnings from a Sherpa about the dangers of remaining in the mountain’s “Death Zone” overnight, set up a bivouac camp. One Sherpa remained with them. The brutal snowstorm that occurred overnight was too much for Genet, who died from hypothermia before morning.

Schmatz and the Sherpa survived the night, and continued down the mountain. At 27,200 feet, she sat down to rest against her backpack. She fell asleep and never woke up. Her Sherpa companion stayed with her body, costing him most of his fingers and toes. He later reported that her last words were “water, water.”

The fatigue she experienced is a common cause of death on Everest, where the air is so thin that the lack of oxygen can cause poor coordination, confusion, and incoherence that can make even an experienced climber like Hannelore make decisions that they never would have otherwise.

She died from exposure and exhaustion just over 300 feet from Camp IV, the highest camp on one of the primary trekking routes.

Image Credit: YouTube

One attempt was made to recover her body in 1984, but a Sherpa and a Nepalese police inspector on the trek fell to their deaths, and it was decided that perhaps Schmatz wanted to stay where she was. Which she did, frozen in place with her eyes open and her hair fluttering in the wind, as other climbers hiked past on their way to the summit.

In the end, the mountain took her, a gust of wind blowing her body over the side of the Kangshung Face.

A fitting burial, perhaps, for a brave, talented woman who tackled one of the world’s biggest obstacles before succumbing to her own humanity mere feet from safety.

If you want to climb (or to attempt to climb) Mount Everest, you’d better hurry. Her glaciers are quickly disappearing in the face of the warming climates.

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Apparently, Women’s Panties Just Kept Falling off in the 1950s

Seems as if we’ve made amazing technological advances in elastic waistbands in the past 65-years. Particularly, in the garment industry. Specifically, in women’s panties.

Photo Credit: Art Frahm, Public Domain

Art Frahm, an artist from Chicago, was known for his pin-up art from the 1940s through the 1960s. One of his series, “Ladies in Distress,” featured pretty girls mysteriously losing their panties in public places, all while their hands are full handling bags or purses or hatboxes – you know, lady stuff.

Photo Credit: Art Frahm, Public Domain

Journalist James Lileks has curated a large collection of Frahm’s art, along with other vintage fun, on his website The Institute of Official Cheer. Although Frahm is credited with many works that don’t involve women in the throes of wardrobe malfunctions, falling panties was his (somewhat bizarre) calling card.

Photo Credit: Art Frahm, Public Domain

How could this happen, you ask. What would make panties simply fall to the ankles in such a fashion?

Lileks said he has heard from women who claim their own underwear has failed. But did it ever happen like this? Wind blowing, arms full and a man or two in the background grinning ear to ear?

Unlikely. More of a daydream, Lileks muses. “This is a glimpse into someone’s fantasy – a world where men regularly happen across women whose undergarments have fluttered to their ankles.”

Photo Credit: Art Frahm, Public Domain

And why all the celery? That Lileks can’t explain. But whimsical blogger, Messy Nessy, did some digging on her own. It seems that celery was considered an aphrodisiac by Greeks and Romans, stimulating a man’s virility. Symbolism, perhaps?

Photo Credit: Art Frahm, Public Domain

Frahm depicts panties falling in so many situations. This poor lady loses her panties while bowling:

Photo Credit: Art Frahm, Public Domain

This lady only wanted to fix her tire. Goodness gracious! What’s happening?

Photo Credit: Art Frahm, Public Domain

But celery shopping seems to be the artist’s favorite motif.

Photo Credit: Art Frahm, Public Domain

So thankful the elastic waistband industry has finally caught up with the times. A girl really needs to be empowered to buy some celery these days without worrying her silky underthings might end up at her shoes.

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9 Common Phrases That Are Actually Racist

It may come as a surprise that a lot of the everyday terms in our lexicon have racist origins.

So maybe the next time you’re about to use one of these words or phrases, you’ll think twice because you’ll recognize they have some serious connotations.

Here’s a little history lesson for all of us:

1. Shuck and Jive

This term is a throwback to the days of slavery and refers to “the fact that black slaves sang and shouted gleefully during corn-shucking season, and this behavior, along with lying and teasing, became a part of the protective and evasive behavior normally adopted towards white people in ‘ traditional’ race relations.”

Obviously, using that term to describe President Obama was not a smart move.

2. Long Time No See

This term was first used to make fun of Native Americans, mocking a traditional greeting.

3. The Peanut Gallery

4. Uppity

5. Sold Down the River

A literal reference to slaves being sold down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

6. Thug

A thug is a violent criminal, so referring to protesters by that term is way off base and offensive.

7. Grandfather Clause

From the Encyclopedia Britannica: “Grandfather clause, statutory or constitutional device enacted by seven Southern states between 1895 and 1910 to deny suffrage to African Americans. It provided that those who had enjoyed the right to vote prior to 1866 or 1867, or their lineal descendants, would be exempt from educational, property, or tax requirements for voting. Because the former slaves had not been granted the franchise until the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, those clauses worked effectively to exclude black people from the vote but assured the franchise to many impoverished and illiterate whites.”

8. Gypsy or “Gyp”

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“Gypsy” is a slur referring to the Roma people, who have been outcasts throughout much of history. The word “Gypsy” and the term “gyp” or “to get gypped” means to get conned or ripped off because of the stereotype of Roma as thieves.

9. Welfare Queen

This term was first popularized during Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign and was used to portray people on welfare as taking advantage of the system.

Think twice before you use any of these terms again.

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The Auschwitz Memorial Actually Had to Ask Visitors to Stop Taking “Playful” Selfies

File this under “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

You’d think that when visiting a place that will be indelibly associated with the absolute depth of human suffering and cruelty, people would take it seriously. And yet, I guess we can’t be too surprised by how insensitive people are.

The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland is a site where over 1 million people were murdered during the Holocaust. I had the opportunity to visit it as a young lad with my parents, and the feeling you get there is indescribably sad. Indeed, the very air around the place is still thick with the misery of all those lost souls, to the point that even decades after my visit I still start to choke every time I think of it.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that visitors have been posting inappropriate photos from Auschwitz to social media, the memorial site had to put a tweet out admonishing that kind of ridiculous behavior.

The infamous train tracks of Auschwitz carried untold numbers of people to their deaths, and to see people acting this way has upset many. People on Twitter were taken aback by the trend and weighed in with their own opinions.

The Auschwitz Memorial later added these tweets.

If you’re visiting a place where unfathomable atrocities took place, have some respect and be aware enough not to take cute selfies. Thank you.

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5 of the Most Infamous Murders in Mob History

There’s something about high-profile mob hits that’s almost thrilling to the general public. On March 13, 2019, Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali, the 53-year-old leader of the Gambino crime family was shot and killed in Staten Island, New York, in front of his home.

It was a stark reminder that although the heydays of mob hits may be behind us, these kinds of “hits” can (and do) still happen.

In light of recent events, we thought we’d bring you a list of 5 of the most famous mob murders in history.

1. Carmine Galante – 1979

Photo Credit: Public Domain

Galante was known to have a psychopathic personality and led the Bonnano crime organization, one of the Five Families. The heads of New York’s other families were not happy with the way Galante conducted business and they finally decided he had to go.

On July 12, 1979, Galante was gunned down as he ate lunch on the patio of an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. A photo of the gruesome crime scene showed Galante dead on the ground with his ever-present cigar dangling from his mouth.

2. Paul Castellano – 1985

Photo Credit: Public Domain

70-year-old Castellano was the head of the Gambino crime family and his 1985 assassination outside a steak house in Manhattan signaled the rise of John Gotti, who organized the hit.

Many in the family were unhappy with the way Castellano ran the organization, so it was determined that he had to be taken out.

3. Albert Anastasia – 1957

Photo Credit: Public Domain

Anastasia was one of the founding fathers of the American Mafia, and he also was the head of Murder, Inc., a ruthless gang of hired killers. He was the head of what became the Gambino crime family.

On the day of his death, Anastasia sat in his barber’s chair in Manhattan for a shave and a haircut and was shot down by two masked gunmen.

4. Bugsy Siegel – 1947

Photo Credit: Public Domain

Siegel learned his trade on the mean streets of New York but later headed West to handle mob business in Las Vegas and California. Siegel was one of the original financiers of the casinos in Las Vegas.

Siegel promised his mob boss associates that their investments in Las Vegas would pay off, but the opening of the Flamingo Hotel was a flop and the writing was on the wall for Bugsy.

On June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot and killed through a window of his girlfriend’s house in Beverly Hills, California as he sat on her couch. The identity of the shooter or shooters has never been confirmed.

5. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre – 1929

Photo Credit: Public Domain

This was probably the most famous mob hit of all time – on February 14, 1929, seven members of Bugs Moran’s North Side gang were gunned down in a garage in Chicago.

The man behind the deadly affair: none other than the legendary Al Capone, whose gangs had fought against Moran and other enemies for years to control of the Windy City’s booze trade.

The men who carried out the vicious hit were dressed as police officers, which allowed them to line the seven victims up against a wall, where they blindsided them with machine gun fire.

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10+ Millennials Remember the Things They Miss Most About the 90s

Nostalgia is a pretty universal aspect of the human condition. Every generation has looked back at their own childhood and thought “Ahhh, those were the days!”

Well, millennials who grew up during the 90s are no different. If you’re one of them (or just love the 90s) then these 15 memories are probably going to spark more than a few of your own.

#1. Basic necessities

“Honestly, I miss life before the internet and cell phones/texting became basic necessities.”

#2. A bit carried away

“Climbing trees, making dens in the woods, knocking on your friends door on a Saturday morning without phoning first, ‘are you playing out?’ Summer holidays spent in the half sunny alleys and fields behind the cul de sac. Asking my dad to record my tv shows onto vcr and him always getting the audio wrong from not turning the volume up on the cable box. Those little blue chocolate wafers my Nan had and the way she made toast. My parents watching Inspector Morse after I went to bed and how the radio was always on in the kitchen. The plum tree outside my bedroom window when it blossomed. School mornings getting colder and how my Mum got the car warmed up in the winter before we left. Our dog. My home. My self when I was young and the world was still magical.

Sorry I got a bit carried away.”

#3. Most of all

“8bit graphics, rainbow windbreakers, roller rinks still being cool, AOL, Nickelodeon. But most of all, just being a carefree kid.”

#4. A sense of innocence

“Amazing music, comfy clothes, cheap gasoline and a sense of innocence and optimism about the future.

Also being around my high school classmates seven hours a day, five days a week September through June could be a mixed blessing then, but I sure miss them now.”

#5. The good stuff

90s cartoons!

#6. When you got home

“I miss being safe from bullies when you got home. Like when I was in school I would get shit from someone, but once I got home that stopped. With the way we are all connected now through the internet and social media, I probably wouldn’t have escaped it like I used to be able to. I feel bad for kids that are bullied in school nowadays because they can’t escape the bullying by going home if they have any sort of presence on the internet.”

#7. The highest virtue

“Vintage clothes were the epitome of cool. It’s still weird to me that now it’s cool to wear expensive clothes, much less ones with obvious labels.

Also related, the idea of “not selling out” as the highest virtue. The idea that the coolest people of the 2010s are influencers with sponsored posts couldn’t be more anti-90s.”

#8. I didn’t appreciate it enough

“I spent the 90s on college and grad school, mostly. I miss having a life where my job was just to think, learn and mature. I didn’t appreciate it enough.”

#9. Some sort of game

“Starting high school in 1990. Good music. Rap rock and even pop. Getting outside. Calling people on an actual house phone to set up the weekend. Meeting girls by actually meeting and talking to them in person. You actually had to have some sort of game to even get a number. We worked hard and played hard. People weren’t so sensitive.”

#10. The news wasn’t 24/7

“Stop watching the news. I stopped a couple of years ago and I’m happier. Most of it is irrelevant anyway. Think about it this way. What have you learned from the news in the past year that has directly affected your life? Of those things, what’s the likelyhood of you finding out about it through other means. If the answer is high, just stop watching.”

#11. Instant win

“Instant win contests.

You could buy a bottle of Coke, win another bottle of Coke and immediately turn around to get another one for free.

Now you have to go online, enter some code somewhere and it sucks.”

#12. Like I was at an Irish funeral

“When I would be sitting in my living room apartment and looking at my CD shelf and seeing my Pink Floyd Pulse disk blinking that beautiful red blink. I always wondered when the exact time and date it stopped was because I would have popped that disc in and proceed to drink like I was at an Irish funeral.”

#13. All you had to do

“All you had to do was just go outside. We always found something to do and had a blast. My kids never go outside unless they have a specific activity planned ahead.”

 

#14. Improvised WWF

“Improvised WWF (it was still the WWF back then) matches on my trampoline with buddies.

Also NOT having the internet for every little thing made stuff like Pokemon game glitches the stuff of legend.”

#15. Having all my hair

“The music. The sense the world was improving. Having all my hair.”

Let me know when they invent a time machine, okay?!

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Ancient Greek historian Polybius…

Ancient Greek historian Polybius came up with a cyclical theory of government (anacyclosis), where governments start off as monarchies, the final stage is ochlocracy, when a democracy degenerates into chaos and mob-rule. Then the cycle resets itself.

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15 Things That Are Socially Acceptable Today But Will be Seen as Backwards and Immoral by Future Generations

Times change. It’s one of the few things you can actually rely on. What may have been totally acceptable a few decades ago might be considered extremely problematic today. Take homophobia, for example. Just a few decades ago, homosexuality was considered a mental illness! Today, we know better, and gay people are seen (by most of us, anyway) as just regular people who love the same sex.

Even though we like to think we’re so advanced and enlightened, the fact is that in 50 years, future generations will look at how we behave now and they’ll think we did some seriously backward things.

Here are what AskReddit users think those things will be.

1. Workaholics

“The insane workaholic culture we have that promotes unhealthy amounts of overtime and getting to work early every day.”

2. A divisive topic

“Allowing children to eat so much sugar.”

3. Noooooooo

“Microwaving fish at the work cafetaria.”

4. I don’t see this ever going away

“Posting pictures of your children on social media.”

5. Gotcha!

“Hyper-politicizing everything. “Gotcha” debates where the aim is just to win the argument rather than actually being right or making sensible points.”

6. No more plastic surgery

“My money is on the current methods of cosmetic surgery. Jamming sacks of fluid in a lady’s chest to create bigger boobs, for instance, seems like something for which there will one day be a better practice.”

7. Enough of that

“Influencers”, or in other words, people expressing an opinion (or worse, being paid to express an opinion) with the intent to influence others.

If I am looking to buy a new product that I am not familiar with, I will look for honest reviews. Unfortunately, honest reviews are virtually impossible to find today – they are either written by the manufacturer themself, or by a paid “customer” (influencer).

The only honest reviews are the negative ones by pissed off customers, but those are also not reilable, since they could be coming from someone who has been paid by a competitor, or just someone who happened to get that one faulty product that slipped through the QA checks.”

8. Wasteful

“Using something as strong and durable as plastic to make packaging destined to be thrown away.”

9. Awful

“Letting businesses pay politicians who are then responsible for setting laws that apply to the businesses.”

10. Do you agree?

“Colleges sucking every fucking dollar out of you that they can. Fucking scam artists.”

11. Bad for your health?

“Social media in general it’s proven that it takes a toll on our mental health but we still use it all the time anyway.”

12. Obsession

“The North American obsession/fetishization with work. European countries already have it figured out that productivity isn’t linear with time worked and 50-80 hour weeks aren’t doing anyone any good.

We’re still stuck with bragging about how little we slept and how many hours we worked this week, when so many of us are probably non or low functioning for many of those hours worked anyway.”

13. Listen to this one

“The idea that it is correct and sustainable for the current generation to borrow from future generations to consume now.

This is a relatively new trend. Perhaps 100 years in the most developed countries. Only beginning in many developing countries. This is why we don’t see the horrible consequences… yet.

Traditional models of economic development were all about savings and deferred consumption. Future generations had more than past generations and it was assumed that this is how they take care of their parents – by having slightly more than they would on their own. There was a general consensus that life is hard and that giving our children a better one is our duty. I eat half as much so that you and your children can eat it all. People were happy that they had it better than their parents and attempted to control their greed for the sake of their children.

Present models of economic development are all about present short term consumption which is financed with money creation. But money creation means that the wealth still has to come from somewhere and it does – from the future. More money creation now stimulates the economy for greater investment in the future which will increase production so that the extra debt can be paid. Unfortunately because there is no way to know how much you can borrow from the future it leads to essentially what is greed because expectations for the future have no restraint in something that we see around us – it is all in the future. Then as a result the future generations have less available to them than past generations and are being increasingly more burdened by economic cost of that which was consumed.

The result is that I want my house and my car and my vacations and my pension at 60 and you can get a student loan and get a job and not live in my house because I didn’t do it when I was your age. Except you did it because you borrowed from the future – that is my future.

Almost nothing of the way we now pay for things in the long term is ethical. The most obvious example is the environment – we are consuming now by leaving environmental debt for our children – but the same is true of welfare as pensions and medical care. We have fewer and fewer children and we both live longer and have greater demands and expectations. This means that our children have to both work harder to have the same standard of living that we had and in the end they are loaded with debt to pay for our welfare.

In the past a child would get inheritance from the parents. Sometimes nothing. But now every child gets a ton of debt and inflation before you get to whatever your parents left you. The national debt, the private debts, consumer debts they all keep growing… Who is going to pay it? Every time the government bails someone out to stave off a complete collapse of the debt-based economy the bill falls on the shoulders of the new generation. How much longer?

We still keep deferring the deadline with more and more money creation and various financial inventions but sooner or later enough people in the world will get on the same “consume now, pay later” scheme that it will crack because there will be nowhere to borrow from or nobody left to exploit and the sheer pressure of everyone wanting to have it will be like a collapsing star.

And there will be no escaping the black hole. Nobody will remember what it meant to just work for a better future for your children. Everyone will be angry that they can’t have it as good as their parents. And remember… the “natural” way of human society is not to have it as good as your parents but better. It is so natural to us as if it has been wired into us by evolution – which makes sense because those whose parents ensured their children’s well-being would be more likely to survive.

And when you can’t have it better. When there is no hope for a better future. Why live? Why let others live…? Why should they have when I can’t? And this is how wars begin.”

14. Here, here!

“I really hope this extremely polarizing political climate is seen as backwards and immoral in the future.”

15. Hmmmm

“I think one day some future generation will think “Can you believe they used to just let people drive these multi ton metal boxes at high speeds? They just accepted car accidents and traffic as a fact of life.”

I think this even now when I’m doing 80-85 mph on the highway and I look over and the driver next to me is doing the same speed while looking at their phone.”

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