Busy As A Bee On A Sugar Rush

the first of 4 books

3 written by murray leinster and published by pyramid books, and one i was reminded of via a comment on my old series of LotG update designs over on dA that was written by carl henry nathien and published by the western publishing company (a whitman book?)

i am unsure where exactly that single book takes place/fits into the book order, so for this ramble i'll read it last (and also wait for it to arrive by mail)

((despite there being a copy on the internet archive I NEED PHYSICAL BOOKS OKAY))

(((thank thrombeldinbar for thriftbooks.com)))

that said since these are short books and the longest one (the odd one out) tops out at 14 chapters, i'm not splitting the posts and keeping it to one entry per book

ANYWAY

chapter 1

summary: we meet the spindrift crew, a brief description of our passengers, and knowledge of space warps they will eventually find themselves in

TL;DR: a solid start, sets up the world and what they'll be leaving behind well enough, even if the dialogue is a little stilted

B-

the latter, mostly, but considering how easily i've gone from vague description -> detailed description -> detailed description with bits of dialogue -> writing passages out as if i were writing an actual chapter of something in my series bible word document, i am almost tempted to post it and see if it makes sense to anyone else in the world

chapter 2

summary: the spindrift hangs out in the space warp longer than expected, make a landing, only to take off once it's realized they are in...the land of the giants DUN DUN DUUUNNN

TL;DR: decent descriptions, so far only 2 passengers get speaking lines, but so far so expected of an emergency situation

B-

2c rice (2c is dry, prepare as you usually do. Whatever kind of rice you have is good, brown rice works well)

2 cans of pinto or black beans, drained (or one can of each. Whatever.)

12oz frozen broccoli

1c chunky salsa

Optional: .5c sour cream, .5c shredded cheese.

Also optional: salt, garlic powder, and cumin to taste (to season the rice)

Cook the rice in one pot (with the seasoning if you want to). Put the frozen broccoli, drained beans, and salsa in another pot and bring to a boil. When the rice is done and the bean broccoli salsa stuff is hot, mix the rice into the beans (if adding cheese or sour cream, stir into the beans before adding the rice).

Now you have a food. It's got protein and carbs and fiber and a vegetable (and fat if you add the cheese and sour cream).

The amount described above is a lot. You can portion half of it into single servings to freeze and still have like four meals.

Are you enjoying this?

Would you rather be doing something else?

If so please stop and go read your book or eat or something.

"Re"-domestication of cheetahs?

With reference to This Post In ancient Egypt, Cheetahs were sometimes used as hunting animals like greyhounds, and kept as housepets by the royal family and later, many wealthy households.

Now, there's an argument about how "domesticated" these cheetahs were- the majority of them were captured from the wild as adults and tamed/trained to tolerate humans and obey hunting commands, mostly because back then and still today, cheetahs are extremely hard to breed in captivity. Some were bred and raised from cubs, and there was not a shortage of cheetahs living in and around human habitation for them to replace stock with.

Even today, cheetahs are... weirdly comfortable around humans, if those humans know how to mind their manners. Game wardens in Kruger National Park sometimes sleep next to young cheetahs they are re-introducing into the wild, or have had female cheetahs who are familiar with them drop their cubs off on their feet to 'babysit' while she goes hunting.

Here's a pair of San hunters from the Naankuse Wildlife Reserve in Namibia bow-hunting while a wild local male cheetah hangs out with them (the angle makes him look much bigger and closer to the men than he is, but he's still VERY close). The male's name is Aiko, and is well-known to these men- they're not worried about his presence because they know how to respect his space and he knows not to go after game they've downed. Game they miss is free for him to run down, and game he flushes from the bushes are much easier to shoot- a mutually beneficial partnership. It's extremely similar to how the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea hunt with their dogs, some of the most recently domesticated and most similar to ancient 'proto-dogs' alive today.

So, cheetahs aren't domesticated the way dogs and housecats are- they haven't been selectively bred for generations, they're not dependent on humans, and they can and will attack people that bother them.

But like Coyotes, the remaining cheetahs we have are VERY habituated to humans, arguably even moreso than coyotes are, and we've made a lot of progress in getting them to breed in captivity- Ironically by pairing them up with highly domesticated dogs, who teach them domesticated animal behaviors like "not worrying about everything".

With Coyotes, the obstacle to domestication are mostly practical matters like "getting a coyote farm funded, zoned, built and insured.", whereas with cheetahs the problem is "there are almost no cheetahs left to practice domestication on and the ones we do have are already inbred". There IS a lot of commercial interest in domesticated cheetahs, so I think a good way to get the funding for species conservation and genetic re-diversification of cheetahs would be to frame it as a prerequisite to "Re-Domestication" and pet cheetahs.

dearly departed fung wah bus may she rest in POWER 🫡 obsessed with ayo's go-to bit in her last press cycle being the great molasses flood and this time around it's the fung wah bus. real bostonian representation 🙂‍↕️

when you deposit a paycheck in a traditional bank account, you go online and see the number in your balance. to you, it looks like there is a single account that quarantines your money away from everybody else’s. you may think that when you deposit money in the bank, the bank is just holding that money for you, but actually, by depositing money is a bank, you are lending the bank company your money.

a bank company’s core function is to make money by bundling together the deposits that many customers have lent it, and investing that money in the stock market. the bank’s investments earn interest, which is the bank’s profit. if you have a savings account, you’re essentially telling the bank “hey, I plan to have this money sitting here for a while without drawing on it.” a savings account is a more stable investment base than a checking account for the bank, which is why the company incentivizes you to have one. when you earn interest on a savings account, that is the bank giving you a tiny kickback of the money they are making through investing your (and others’ blended) deposits.

the traditional banking system is insured by the federal deposit insurance corporation (FDIC), which is a government agency. if you took all your money out of the bank and hid it under your mattress, if somebody broke into your house and stole it, you will lose all your money. but the government insures money in traditional banks, usually up to $250,000 per consumer account. this means that even if the bank company’s investments all fail and the bank company loses all your cash, the government will bail the bank out, and you will not lose your money.

by putting your money in a traditional bank, you ensure your money is protected, you get a small kickback of interest, and you get access to the convenience of the bank’s online platform to track your finances. you also get a debit card to easily make purchases by drawing directly from your accounts. for the bank company, they get billions of dollars of interest-free loans, in the form of their customer’s deposits, to invest in the stock market. at its core, ignoring fees and credit cards and mortgages, this is how the banking system works.

bankification is the idea that non-banking companies are trying to operate like banks. this includes tech companies like Apple offering credit cards, but an aspect of bankification that is less understood is companies incentivizing consumers to give them interest-free loans. while banks are regulated by the government in exactly when and how they can operate within this business model, other companies trying to profit through this model are not always beholden to these regulations because their activities are not technically considered banking. let’s look at an example: loyalty programs.

in 2025, starbucks has an estimated $2 billion in deferred revenue from their loyalty program. deferred revenue is like a gift card; the company receives money because the customer paid up-front for the gift card, but the company is beholden to discount a future purchase by the pre-paid amount. there are multiple advantages to receiving deferred revenue for a company.

when a customer loads money onto their starbucks loyalty account, they are essentially buying a digital gift card. remember how banks encourage consumers to put money into savings accounts because it is a long-term holding account, which makes it a more stable investment base? once you buy a gift card, you cannot convert it back into cash. the money cannot leave the company, making a very stable investment base. starbucks offers a lot of benefits and discounts for customers who load money onto their loyalty accounts because starbucks recognizes the value of a captive investment base of interest-free loans. when many customers prepay through the loyalty program, starbucks is using that pooled money the same way a bank does: investing it to make even more money.

as a side note, two other major advantages of this gift card model for companies is inflation and breakage. money loses value over time through inflation. when you buy a gift card, you pay the money upfront, and the company can invest that money sooner at its higher value. breakage is the idea that if a gift card is bought but never redeemed, then the company essentially got money for nothing.

now, does this bankification through loyalty programs directly hurt consumers? well, not really. consumers who participate in these sorts of loyalty programs get benefits like discounts. the problem is indirect harms: that this money is uninsured for the consumer, and the deferred revenue investment base is less regulated than traditional banks.

if starbucks’ investments failed and the company died, any money those customers had paid into the loyalty program but had not yet used on purchases would disappear. the money is not insured, so the customer wouldn’t get it back. the same is true for keeping your money in any non-FDIC insured company, including companies like PayPal and Cashapp*. (*some services from those platforms, usually the credit cards, are insured because they have a backing partner bank. but a sitting balance in a free account is usually not FDIC-insured. don’t leave your money sitting in these accounts.)

because companies investing their deferred revenue is regulated and taxed differently than traditional banks’ investments, not only if there less protection for the consumer, but there is less protection for the wider economy. If a bankified company with significant investments into other bankified company fails, this can cause a shockwave effect similar to the 2008-9 financial crisis wherein all the interconnected bankified companies are destabilized. banks are heavily regulated to avoid that happening again, but bankified companies are not beholden to that legislation.