ArtieShaw

My husband had a weird job many years ago doing this very thing. He worked (via a temp agency) for the federal government. They reviewed hospital billings for their agency's workers and send mildly threatening letters if they charged $12,000 for a procedure that averaged $5,000.

It had some success, but some states had outright outlawed this sort of thing. Texas.

Yes! They absolutely did. And they were wildly creative about it.

Some knock-offs were semi-genuine. For example, many cities minted their own version of legitimate coins, like the wildly successful Athenian Owl. They look a little weird, but they aren't strictly counterfeit because they contained the equivalent silver content. There was no intent to deceive, but there was a desire to show that coins from your city were as good as the ones accepted in international trade.

I have one that was minted in Egypt in ancient times and it just looks a little funky. If you put it next to a real one, you can see obvious differences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetradrachm

Some were straight up fakes. For example, pretty much what you said. It could be a convincing looking bronze core with a light coat of silver.

To make things a bit more murky, even officially minted coins may have been debased in times of economic hardship.

A good place to start down this rabbit hole is the term "fourree" https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Fourree

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourr%C3%A9e

Modern fakes are a whole 'nother story.

I have some good news for you. There's a whole genre of cleaning videos.

This one uses the toothpick method. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSrEiwEIURM

This other guy demonstrates a cleaning with Andre's Pencils/Crayons. (I've used these on some stubbornly encrusted old Roman bronzes.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfOFal97uhc

There's another video of a guy using hypodermic needles and a microscope. It was very memorable, but I can't seem to find it.

Some of these videos show cleaning using applications of chemical-looking goo. I don't know anything about that, so I can't recommend it.

I think it's a transcendental sort of thing.

You're in for a treat.

Headline: Ohio Pastor, Homeless, Cold Weather, City - Legal Action

Me: It's fucking Dad's Place again, isn't it? Yes. Yes it is.

This happens every year with this place. And they always make national news. Somehow, this sort of injustice only happens to them. Repeatedly. In a town of less than 10,000 people. In the US's 7th largest state.

They're not equipped to handle the amount of people that they want to accommodate in this facility. They've ignored warnings for years. They've refused to improve their facilities, but they're quick to get their story on Facebook whenever there's a cold snap or snow event. Even if this weather is not happening in Ohio.

There's a shelter literally next door to them. [yes - this other shelter has rules about substance use. They are probably also compliant with fire codes.]

But they're martyrs here at Dad's Place! Isn't it a shame no one will fund them? /s

Here's one going back to 2023 https://thevillagereporter.com/gofundme-established-for-dads-place-in-bryan-as-dispute-with-city-continues/

The "conventionally attractive" Marx brother, who usually played the straight man. Still better known than Gummo, if I were to guess.

We're personally fans of Harpo, mainly because of the metaphorical whiplash that comes from watching his scenes. One minute you're laughing at the comical clown or admiring his musical skill, and the next you realize that he's actually a dangerous maniac. (Run, children!!!! He is not safe!!)

Is this list facetious? Or a pop culture reference that I don't get?

Some of these items have existed for thousands of years in non-petrochemical forms (dice, tool racks, tents). Others are currently obsolete, weirdly specific (soap dishes?), or weirdly vague (tubing), or a weird combination of the same (water pipes).

I'm also struggling to understand vitamin capsules. Don't most of those use standard gelatin derived from animal sources? Or fish or vegetable sources? And why vitamins specifically? I've visited several factories that make capsules for vitamins or pharmaceuticals. Is there an additive to the gelatin formula that I'm forgetting? And why specific to vitamins?

I don't know. It's early and this doesn't make sense

We seem to have some sort of natural immunity to that. Whether for good or ill, only time will tell.

Not a doctor, but I'm interested in the subject. I think the current consensus is "yes and no."

200 years ago, people may have answered yes. Thirty years ago it was popular to discount the idea entirely because germs are what make you sick. Can't deny that.

Lately I've been hearing some acknowledgement that a stress to your body may make you more susceptible or less able to fight off an infection. The wiki article includes a recent study that pointed to poor sewage treatment near the White House in Harrison's day. For whatever reason WHH wasn't able to fight that off but the rest of the residents seemingly were.

People have been making the connection of "he stood outside for hours in the snow and drizzle, then caught the dropsy and died" for centuries. I don't think they lacked for sense or couldn't make the obvious connection between exposure and sickness. I do think they lacked for microscopes.

I'm probably being annoying, but I'm a lapsed space/astronomy nerd. And I'm old.

When I think of cheap and fast, I think of the soyuz program.

It's just that 30 years ago I heard so much public boosterism about the promise of private space flight and nothing much of substance has seems to have materialized in the subsequent 30 years. Older nerds that I knew (in their 30s or 40s at the time) were pretty skeptical of that '90s narrative. To be fair, most of them worked at Fermilab or Argonne NL rather than NASA. It's not exactly an insider's view. It was just nerd gossip overheard by a teenager.

I was born into a world where people had been to the moon a few years earlier. They had launched Voyager, Mariner, and that Venus one. My family ate weekend breakfast at a restaurant called Skylab (it was shaped like it). The shuttle flies. Shuttle explodes. Shuttle flies again. All before I graduated middle high school.

Had to look that last one up. 1988. It seemed like an eternity at the time.

Thirty-five years later?

Hoping for another Wm. Henry Harrison?

When Harrison came to Washington, he wanted to show that he was still the steadfast hero of Tippecanoe.... He took the oath of office on Thursday, March 4, 1841, a cold and wet day.[104] He braved the chilly weather and chose not to wear an overcoat or a hat, rode on horseback to the grand ceremony, and then delivered the longest inaugural address in American history

In the evening of Saturday, April 3, Harrison developed severe diarrhea and became delirious, and at 8:30 p.m. he uttered his last words....

The prevailing theory at the time was that his illness had been caused by the bad weather at his inauguration three weeks earlier.

Things one learns in high school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Harrison