I was watching Netflix yesterday and I saw they had Newsies

[conuly]

Which yay! but it turned out it was the Broadway Newsies not the movie Newsies.

After watching it, I don't think I like it as much, though admittedly it has been quite a while since I've seen the original full-out. I should do that so I can compare properly.

(Also, historical note, while fictional characters who happen to be involved in based-on-a-true stories is one thing, I'm really uncomfortable with fictional characters who have real world parents/families. I didn't know until last night that I felt this way, but now I do! If we can prove a certain person didn't exist, they shouldn't be there.)

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For years, the beef industry has leaned on universities to discover new cuts of steak. Don’t laugh: Meat science is behind at least one breakout hit.

How the Pre-Raphaelites Became Obsessed with the Wombat

The strange normality of life in a breakaway state

Missing 13-year-old Jayme Closs found alive in Wisconsin

7 Big Things That Are Smaller Than This Fatberg (Ew.)

Chicago’s Jail Is One of the County’s Biggest Mental Health Care Providers. Here’s a Look Inside.

Is Marijuana as Safe as We Think?

Study: Coca-Cola Shaped China's Efforts To Fight Obesity

How Cartographers for the U.S. Military Inadvertently Created a House of Horrors in South Africa

How New York Separated Immigrant Families in the Smallpox Outbreak of 1901

To Avoid Trump's Sanctions, Countries Turn to Stone Age Bartering (Fascinating, though as a point of fact I believe that we've never identified any culture that uses widespread bartering. Bartering is what people use in societies with cash when they themselves don't have cash, not what societies without any money use.)

Two Towns Forged an Unlikely Bond. Now, ICE Is Severing the Connection

Rescued Migrants, at Sea for Weeks, Struggle to Reach a New Life

Comments

Re: Barter

[conuly]

Thing is, as noted in the linked article (the second one, not the first one), use of barter at the end of the Roman Empire doesn't count because those people didn't traditionally use barter. They traditionally used money, they just couldn't depend on it anymore.

The question is not "did people ever use barter". Obviously they did or we'd be unlikely to have a word for it. The question is "is barter the precursor to money" and all signs point to no. People who have never had money don't barter. They use gifts, or oblique hinting, or communal property, and everything eventually gets sorted out, but nobody says "I'll trade you a pig for your ox" or "a carrot for your shirt" or the like. Adam Smith came up with that idea to explain the development of money, and lots of people believe that this is how it must have happened, but we've never found a society that functioned that way except in the edge case of "they used to have money, and now they don't". And if they used to have money then obviously they aren't a precursor to money.

Re: Barter

[nodrog]

But, wait a minute, how does

> Bartering is what people use in societies with cash
> when they themselves don't have cash

differ from

> They traditionally used money, they
> just couldn't depend on it anymore

?  I mean, that business with the wheelbarrows of money in Wiemar Germany was still using the money.  This may all be semantic hairsplitting, but I’m confused by your distinction, ’cuz I don’t see it.

Re: Barter

[conuly]

Bartering isn't the precursor to money. That's how it differs. Bartering is the successor to money.

There was almost certainly no bartering in the stone age, because as near as I can tell, the only people who barter are those who have a word for money.