Reddit reviews Das Kapital: Ungekürzte Ausgabe nach der zweiten Auflage von 1872. Mit einem Geleitwort von Karl Korsch aus dem Jahre 1932

Lodge 49 S01E07 The Solemn Duty of the Squire

The Alchemical Magnum Opus says it has seven phases …but then says Fermentation has two sub phases, which sounds like it ups it to eight to me.

This is the Putrefaction sub phase of Fermentation, where impurities are shed by vermin and rot feeding on them, like how the grape rots in the vat. This rot looks bad and smell awful as the impurities are expelled, but will eventually leave behind purified clear wine, which will then be Fermentation’s Spiritization (as in wine spirits) phase. And for personal development, the rot will first consume our bad habits and limitations as we shed them, making way for new inspiration in a man from higher spheres. Except who is that man? Avery the Alchemist, or Jocelyn the Emissary and bookkeeper? Jocelyn’s French origin name means “of the Goth tribe”, the guys who sacked Rome, so Jocelyn is not here to build things (nor does he think much of the lodge building after sleeping in a dirty post-lube sex bed surrounded by mice, cockroaches, and old Reader’s Digest books). This Fermentation phase where rot is a necessary part of personal transformation is also known as the “Dark night of the soul”.

Alchemists believe fermentation is improved by adding the Sun and the Moon. Is Blaise the Sun and Avery the Moon, their lying together increasing the putrefaction? (and calling out all sorts of vermin?)

Spagyric is just another word for "alchemical", and the herb Dud drinks dissolved in water isn't written on the outside envelope; it's just an infinity sign, a triangle, Solomon's seal, and a fourth symbol. Decknamen means "code name". To keep their ciphers from being easily broken, alchemists would use lists of 24 possible names each for iron, copper, tin, lead, mercury, and sal-ammoniac, rotating between the words.

Bunco Night happens on the third Friday of each month, making Jocelyn's day going through lodge records Friday July 18, 2003. Dud gets kicked out of Ernie's place Saturday, the same day Liz has a dinner date. Ernie and Dud are reunited, and Ernie finds Gary, most likely on Monday July 21st 2003, exactly one month after Dud's awkward speech when he first entered the lodge.

Now we know why Liz thought Dud’s restraining order was “the best kind”. It’s purged from his record after three years. Her high school prank was a felony, which stays on her record for life if she was 18 or older when it happened. However there are legal ways to clear a criminal record, and with good behavior it would be easy to expunge her record several years after the fact. CA has also passed the Fair Chance Act restricting employers from using criminal background checks …in 2017, making it a bit late for 2003 era Liz.

Liz has yet to remove the broken mirror or throw out the skeleton of her coffee table. Most people would have dumped them and replaced them with something from Ikea already.

"Me? Yes, YOU!" by Janet Price (complete with obligatory Steve Jobs black turtleneck) has some interesting subtitles: "Eclipse the Darkness, Live Your Paradox" and "Chthonic Strategies for Abolishing Failure and Establishing Dominance". The promoters have now added the cover to Twitter. that adds "CEO of Omni Capital Partners|Food Service West, recruiter, and motivator."

The Lynx play drunken (fermenting?) softball with the Signal Hill Mud Men. Signal Hill is an odd city that is entirely surrounded by Long Beach, but was incorporated by the residents to avoid Long Beach oil taxes, which was important since Signal Hill Petroleum is still producing over a million gallons of oil annually. That's a lot of pump dragons! Unfortunately the cost per barrel in 2003 has dipped.

Overly competitive Scott slides into home to steal a run ...while the catcher ignores the ball and steals himself another beer from the Lynx keg. They're on the same field, playing two different games.

Grand Lodges most definitely do not own and can not sell the buildings of their member lodges out from under their members. Ownership brings too much liability in being sued any time anyone in the world slips of a sidewalk at a member lodge. Instead lodge buildings are owned by the local fraternal Hall Association, and Grand Lodges grant charters to their member lodges, generally for a $200 or so initial fee to start, after which the chartered lodge pays an annual per capita (or “per head”) fee to the Grand Lodge for every member. For 2013, the Elks “per cap” fee was $16 per member , so with slightly under a million members their Grand Lodge annual budget is slightly under $16 million per year. Most of the fraternities have annual “per caps” of $35 or less per member to their Grand Lodge. There is a whole annual battle between every Grand Lodge and its member lodges about paying the per capita fee, mostly from members being tardy in paying their lodge dues but Grand Lodge wanting to be paid at the beginning of the new fiscal year.

A Grand Lodge can choose to suspend the charter of a lodge, but that doesn’t sell the building, it just means the lodge can’t be opened to members of the fraternity. This loss of income to the lodge Tavern and lost rental fees is generally enough to get the local lodge officers to fix the problem.

Why is having a $300,000 mortgage a big deal? All they need to do is refinance the loan. Problem solved. Banks practically leap at you to get you to refinance with them.

Dud could have started paying off his car loan with his $450. Instead he redeems Ernie's flat screen TV trying to do his friend a favor. Some people feel that Dud could have bought Ernie a new flat screen for less than the $900 Burt charged him, but in 2003 the new flat screen technology was all priced above $2000.

Could Larry have mortgaged the lodge on his own? Real lodges have all sorts of legal protections and procedural checks and balances precisely against this kind of thing happening, but the largest one is a motion would need to be made and approved at the monthly business meeting and recorded by the Secretary (or "Scribe" for the Lynx, which is Connie) for it to be a legal motion. Since it wasn’t, the Chinese Banks can only sue Larry’s estate for the money based on his forgery –which doesn’t have much left.

To make sure the quorum requirement is met, most lodges bribe their members with a meal before the business meeting. An ideal business meeting is short, and consists of presenting and reviewing the bills against the lodge and quickly voting to pay the bills without controversy. The real risk to lodges is embezzling by the employees and the Treasurer, but that isn’t interesting, it’s just a sad story told many times over.

Eugine Mar/Corporate’s reading stack is: Das Kapital, a book similar to Connie’s proposed story series on unemployment written in the 1930s called The Road to Wigan Pier, and a book about Harwood Fitz Merrill written by “George Howland” that probably comes close to The Afghan Diaries of Captain George Felix Howland. But given their position on his desk to impress visitors, it is unlikely that Eugine has even cracked the cover of his copy of Das Kapital, otherwise he know this particular edition, while it has a pretty cover, is entirely written in German.

The equations on the white board are basic physics projectile equations related to the trebuchets (not catapults) they are building. Since they're using them indoors, the trebuchet's projectile parabola path's apogee has to stay below the ceiling height if they want maximum horizontal distance.

Building trebuchets is fun. Building them big became a trend after Survival Research Lab’s 1989 performance piece Illusions of Shameless Abundance had one large enough to hurl a burning piano, and the really big ones continue to pop up at Burning Man from year to year. Here former Orbis staff are going all Makers Faire to hurl obsolete PC towers for their game Death From Above. Given they’re drinking Blind Fox beer, their aim is probably not very good. If it were the current year, they'd instead be networking the scrap PCs into a server farm to mine for the cryptocurrency that Blase won't accept.