Great Bitter Lake Association, the Sort-of-Micronation Formed in the Suez Canal(99percentinvisible.org) |
Great Bitter Lake Association, the Sort-of-Micronation Formed in the Suez Canal(99percentinvisible.org) |
> Days of partying in the desert, opening random containers, driving little excavators.
Oh what could have been...
I like that apparently some form of agreement was reached to keep them well supplied.
We came across a giant trawling boat and the captain of our fishing boat asked if we wanted to change what we were fishing for. We said yes, and our guys gathered a bunch of random stuff from the galley and put it into a plastic sack: open bags of chips, beer, soda, other snacks, etc.
We pulled up next to the trawler and the captain negotiated a trade: our food and drinks for a giant basket of their bait.
Both boats ended up happy and we had a great time using their bait!
The last time this one was on HN it got me hooked on podcasts. 99% is usually of a good quality, but this episode was just too good.
Another quasi-governmental curio is that, again IIRC, Spain has several, maybe even a dozen or something, local currencies. All being traded just fine in their communities. (I think the US also has or had at least a couple, though those were essentially just checks of some co-op banks, and thus nothing new in the country.)
Also I remember reading about a currency established by a gang that controlled a part of a city—and which currency ended up being used more actively in the city than the country's currency, because it was more stable. Don't recall where it was: possibly northern Africa, maybe Ethiopia or Eritrea.
I've lived in Spain for decades, never heard of such thing. Depending how you count you could argue there are a dozen spoken languages, but currencies? That requires a big citation.
Stories like these need to be told more often, as they give hope to humanity in the toughest of times.
For posterity, how long will that take?
I'll start the bidding at ten years.
A micronation that I am a member of:
I know some of the people behind the project and they are sound. This is why I joined.
Pretty sure it runs horizontally. Vertical channel would be called waterfall.
But we both knew that.
Yes, we tried showing her the Nile.
Also:
What if north is facing down?
What if map is not on a wall but on a table?
What if map is not oriented not in north-south direction?
Depending on how you draw the line you could, for example, include the Barcelona Rec³ too. I think I draw the line at physical notes, but YMMV.
Edit to add: Looks like the ehki is digital only now.
¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_currency
Wikipedia lists four local currencies in France: Abeille, Eusko, Krôkô, Occitan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_currency). And also says, “The eusko is one of a number of currencies that are active in the Basque Country”.
Though apparently the UK has about five current and four past community currencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_i...
FWIW, I've only ever seen one local note in the UK and that was on somebody's fridge ~100km from Bristol where it would actually be valid. I suspect there is a fair amount of money trapped in scrapbooks and on fridges ;)
¹ https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_monnaies_locales_c...
(Also the ‘eQ’ thing on this page sounds like someone's marketing campaign, so perhaps should be cleaned up or removed. E.g.: “aims to promote local consumption, increase the purchasing power of people (for €1 you get 1.50eQ)”—wow very smart, much increase; but later suddenly “€1 = 1eQ”.)
I suppose we'd need a small sovereign piece of land for that kind of thing... a kind of micronation, if you will.
For anyone interested, the film we're talking about is the 2015 documentary "Bitter Lake" by Adam Curtis which tells the story of how an agreement signed on the Great Bitter Lake back in 1945 could have had an unexpectedly huge impact on how the modern world developed through the next 60+ years.
It's long, but entertaining and as always has a great soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84P4dzow1Bw