Pryor Week #13: There was a firefight!
I woke up early morning last week to sirens wailing down the street below my apartment. I groggily walked to the blinds, opened them up, and was faced with a wall of smoke on my balcony.
10 floors up and I couldn’t even see the edge of my balcony. Crazy.
Worse yet, I was a bit dazed from a big night out. I did contemplate the idea I was in fact, still inebriated and must be in some sort of sleep paralysis dream state. But of course, common sense prevailed and I quickly grabbed some essentials and left the building.
I took the above picture around 10 minutes later when the smoke had already started dying down, fortunately. But holy hell, the smell of burnt plastic still hasn’t quite left my street even a week later.
Also, probably should’ve mentioned earlier, no one was hurt!
And weirdly enough, the building doesn’t even look like it was on fire—the neighbors just have all of their windows and doors wide open even now as I write this.
Weirder still, no fire alarm went off in my building. Which is even weirder still, since they have regular building-wide fire alarm tests in the most creepy robotic Chinese woman’s voice you could possibly imagine.
Non-weirder still, every apartment was visited by a team of workers to check the fire alarms a day later (apparently they’re all connected to each other in the building).
Long story short—I now have several new fancy fire alarms. Yay!
Talk about timing. But hey, hindsight is 20/20 right? Especially when immersed in a cloud of burning plastic smoke.
On the plus side, I received a $100 discount on my rent this month.
Yay x 2!
Some Cool Things This Week:
#1. Speaking of burning
This is a programmed fractal that keeps ending up in images of burning ships the more you zoom in. It was even put on the album cover of a band called Empty Holds. I guess the band really liked the image as they named the album Burning Ships, too.
Anyway, fractals are neat. Let’s move on.
#2. Saving Britain’s environment
This is an interesting essay exploring the idea of buying up a big chunk of Britain’s farmland to restore forests and such for the environment, rather than letting capitalism solve the problem via the invisible hand of human greed coming together in an altruistic unpredictable force. (Hint: It won’t.)
#3. Rumbling higher than 2015
Did you know the Russian ruble recently hit its highest value since 2015? No? I was pretty shocked too, especially given the massive crash it suffered after their invasion of Ukraine.
This quirky NPR interview transcript ascribes the reasons as being threefold:
“These measures - doubling interest rates, freezing accounts and restricting trading - they're not unheard of, but they're highly unusual.”
“The Kremlin then gave itself a second dose of serum. It ordered all Russian countries doing business overseas and getting paid in foreign currency to convert 80% of those revenues into rubles. This, of course, created instant demand and jacked the ruble higher.” (Note: Pretty sure they meant to say “companies” here)
“Commodities have been skyrocket high. We have unprecedented prices for oil, gas. And about half of total Russia's exports is oil and gas.”
And while defending their currency’s value might sound good on the surface, a high Ruble means their exports are likely to drop even further given the increased price in foreign markets.
#4. Imagine taking the time…
That image above is thought to be the world’s oldest official complaint, sent to the city of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia in 1750 BC.
“Ea-nasir travelled to Dilmun to buy copper and returned to sell it in Mesopotamia. On one particular occasion, he had agreed to sell copper ingots to Nanni. Nanni sent his servant with the money to complete the transaction. The copper was considered by Nanni to be sub-standard and not accepted. In response, Nanni created the cuneiform letter for delivery to Ea-nasir. Inscribed on it is a complaint to Ea-nasir about a copper delivery of the incorrect grade, and issues with another delivery; Nanni also complained that his servant had been treated rudely.”
I wonder how Ea-nasir would feel about dealing with Amazon’s robotic customer service these days? Maybe carving out a complaint in clay is the only way to actually reach a human CSR these days.
This message has been brought to you by a non-lizard-king named J.J. Pryor.
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Loved this post, JJ. Such an eclectic mix of interesting facts. Glad you and your building were unscathed and even more glad you now have fire alarms fitted. Keep safe.
The world needs your brand of insanity. Not to mention the increased sales of peanut butter is helping America's peanit farmers. They haven't seen this much price action since Jimmy Carter was president.