— Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1838.

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How often, in the nearly 200 years since those words were written, do you suppose Mr. Bumble has been proven right? The nearest answer would probably be: Countless times.

And in today’s news was possibly the best — and certainly the most hilarious — evidence of that bit of wisdom, contained in the following headline:

“Russia fines Google
$20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000”

[Hanna Ziady and Anna Chernova, CNN, October 31, 2024]

No, CNN was not playing a Halloween trick on us. As a result of Google’s having blocked pro-Russian channels on YouTube — some since 2022 — a Russian court had earlier ordered Google to restore the channels or face the penalties, which have been doubling every week. And today’s figure has been set at 2 undecillion Russian rubles, or US$20 decillion. That’s around $20 billion trillion trillion — dwarfing the size of the entire global economy (estimated by the IMF at $110 trillion). [Id.]

Considering that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has a current market value of “only” $2 trillion . . . well, I was going to estimate the number of years it would take them to pay off a judgment of that size, but my calculator exploded, along with my brain.

[Ed. note: Wait just a second — that would make Alphabet’s market capitalization 1.8% of the whole freakin’ global economy. I’m not an economist, but . . . is that even possible?!! Or has the IMF undervalued the world?]

*. *. *

And now — oh, thank Heaven! — along comes my knight in shining armor, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, to explain how his government has come up with this particular figure, rather than something they might have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever collecting. During a call with reporters today, he admitted that he “can’t even pronounce this figure right,” but said that the sum was “filled with symbolism.”

“[Google] should not be restricting the actions of our broadcasters on its platform,” he added. [Id.]

Oh, Dima . . . even you had to be laughing on the other end of that phone call.

But that’s good. If the number is only symbolic, then maybe they’ll settle for a reasonable sum . . . let’s say, just for example, $100. Because that’s about what their claim is worth.

Twenty billion trillion trillion dollars, indeed! Why don’t we just throw in Las Vegas as a bonus?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
10/31/24

P.S. Thanks for the belly laugh, Dima. It was the highlight of my day.