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Famous Blue Raincoat

A while ago I started using “Socks” and “Caps” as shorthand for social anarchists and anarcho-capitalists respectively. But then I drifted away from it, mainly because there seemed to be no useful article-of-clothing shorthand for us lefty individualist types in the middle.

Murray Bookchin manifesting deep ideologico-sartorial confusion

Murray Bookchin manifesting deep ideologico-sartorial confusion

But there is! “Mack” (or “Mac,” but I’d prefer to avoid the association with either computers or hamburgers) is an abbreviation for an article of clothing – a Mac(k)intosh raincoat – and also works as an abbreviation for “FMAC,” itself an acronym for Kevin Carson’s phrase “free-market anti-capitalist.”

Okay, it’s a bit less intuitive than “Sock” or “Cap” – but on the other hand it has the advantage that macks are generally worn between socks and caps, which is just where we Macks generally find ourselves – because, y’know, we’re the vital center, while Socks and Caps are bewildered deviationists.

Also, it’s more embarrassing to be caught wearing only socks, or only a cap, than to be caught wearing only a mack – thus reinforcing our dialectical superiority. Plus Zerzanites can denounce all three groups, since Zerzanites don’t approve of clothing of any kind.


The Girl With the Xeroxed Tattoo

Warner Bros. is “ditching its drama pilot about a crime-solving girl hacker who teams up with a male police detective,” because Sony Pictures is “threatening legal action over similarities” with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Barbara Gordon

Attempts to decrease the similarities by “turning the white male cop into a black female lawyer and giving the loner hacker a boyfriend” apparently weren’t good enough, because “the series is based around [sic] a hacker.”

Wtf? Sony claims ownership of the mere concept of having a hacker as a main character?

Or is it just that it’s a female hacker? Maybe DC comics should be suing Sony then.

In related news, the Moffat-Vertue axis is still sabre-rattling against CBS for daring to imitate the idea of an updated Sherlock Holmes series.

Now I love the hell out of Sherlock, and I doubt that CBS’s effort will even remotely measure up. But before the BBC folks decide to resort to violence over this, they might remember that the idea of Holmes-in-the-present-day is not exactly one they invented.


It’s Hard Out There For a Bank

According to AP:

Since November, Wells Fargo has charged $15 a month for some checking accounts unless customers have three accounts with the bank, maintain a minimum balance of $7,500 or have a Wells Fargo mortgage. … Some Citibank customers are being charged $20 a month unless they keep $15,000 in their accounts, up from $6,000 before December. …

Banks aren’t charities, and they say they need to make money, or at least cover the cost of doing business. … The big banks are public companies and are expected to make a profit somehow.

You’d never guess from this writeup that bank deposits are loans to the bank – which means that deposits themselves already include payments for the bank’s services. In what other industry does the lender have to pay interest to the borrower?

As in most cases, the solution would be competition and free entry in the banking industry. But regulations make that a distant ideal.


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