Today I learned
en.wikipedia.org
and [Aldous Huxley died while on LSD](https://www.openculture.com/2024/04/aldous-huxley-dying-of-cancer-left-this-world-tripping-on-lsd-1963.html) Fun day. Also, I learned that Doctor Who is considered a single TV series that has run for 60 years, not a bunch of remakes. (That might be common knowledge, I've never watched it.)
english.stackexchange.com
That unusual therapy is all very well—or perhaps not—but its existence among some pre-Columbian peoples of the Western Hemisphere and some post-Columbian peoples of eighteenth-century Europe does little to explain why the slang expression "blow smoke up [someone's] ass" emerged only in the 1940s or later. My guess is that the historical practice is only coincidentally related to the modern expression. But if the weird medical practice isn't the source of the slang term, what is? I suspect that the answer is amplification: sometimes a slang term that has been around for a while acquires new cachet thanks to a snappy word replacement or an edgier extension. But if this simply a case of amplification, a couple of other phenomena are likely: (1) we might see alternative extended versions of "blow smoke"—especially in the period before "blow smoke up [someone's] ass" comes into frequent use—that use less startling words than "ass"; and (2) we ought to see "blow smoke up [someone's] ass" being used not just for "blowing smoke" definition 2 above, but for definitions 1 and 3 as well.
I mentioned to someone how I think there should be more hands-on learning in schools and he told me to look up Waldorf schools. Very interesting to say the least. Rudolf Steiner had very unique philosophies, some very weird or outright morally questionable, but some that I think were an appropriate reaction to the “thinking in the box” that is often dolled out in school. The parts I agree with are that kids are taught engagement with crafts (eg, carving), music and creativity, an inquisitive exploration (reminds me of the Socratic approach), and an adaptive progression of subject matter that is based on the students’ individual levels. It reminds me a lot of the origins of the liberal arts being the skills a free person needed to engage the world, which included music and logic/rhetoric. The parts I don’t really agree with are the pseudo-spirituality, the pseudo-science, and the racist parts of Steiner’s theory. I think I would need to do a thorough investigation of the specific school before I would consider sending my student there, but the philosophy definitely seems to meet some needs of students that are otherwise under-developed in the current school systems. What are your thoughts?
arstechnica.com
I never went as far as to defend Gwyneth Paltrow, but after her Hot Ones appearance I created a post (which I will link in the comments) where I suggested that she's done no more harm than male grifters and that the dislike of her as a person was primarily due to misogyny. That's before I learned about her promotion of these unproven "vampire facials". Now an unlicensed clinic performing this procedure has given at least three women HIV. You guys were right and I was wrong.
> The symptoms normally disappear after several days and there are no adverse health effects. > The cause of pine mouth has not been determined, but several researchers have indicated that a particular species and source of pine nut, *Pinus armandii* exported from the Shaanxi and Shanxi regions of China, may be responsible for causing the symptoms. This species of pine nut was previously only consumed locally and not widely exported for consumption as whole nuts.
I don't like the guy, I just found this on YouTube and decided to share it
en.wikipedia.org
> > > Bagheera kiplingi inhabits Mimosaceae trees, Vachellia in particular, where it consumes specialized protein- and fat-rich nubs called Beltian bodies. The nubs form at the leaf tips of the acacia as part of a symbiotic relationship with certain species of ants. The spiders actively avoid the ants that attempt to guard the Beltian bodies (their food source) against intruders. Although the Beltian bodies account for over 90% of B. kiplingi diet, the spiders also consume nectar and occasionally steal ant larvae from passing worker ants for food. Sometimes, they cannibalize conspecifics, especially during the dry season. > > > > Despite their occasional acts of predation, the spiders' tissues have been found to exhibit isotopic signatures typical of herbivorous animals, implying that most of their food comes from plants.[3][6] The mechanism by which they process, ingest, and metabolize the Beltian bodies is still unresearched. The vast majority of spiders liquefy their prey using digestive enzymes before sucking it in. > >
www.cbsnews.com
Raw foods such as fruits and vegetables are not part of this 3% because they are not manufactured.
www.youtube.com
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/25160716 >Pretty interesting video ...
This is illustrated by getting elected on a platform of erasing student loan debt and then pretending that you can't do anything about it, or claiming to be against genocide and drawing out or never performing the process of pulling financial and political support for an ally who's committing genocide.
I was looking for a folk song from Oh Brother Where Art Thou and it sent me to this. I thought it would have the song, but it was this particular slave's story.
Alaska’s continental shelf and North American plate rose over 9 meters during the earthquake. This sudden displacement of the ocean floor, along with earthquake-induced landslides, generated massive local tsunamis that resulted in 70 percent of the fatalities in southern Alaska. The tsunamis created by the earthquake reached land within a few minutes of the ground shaking and engulfed some areas as much as 170 feet above sea level. Scientists measured a wave runup of 220 feet in the Valdez Inlet. I learned it from reading this post:https://sh.itjust.works/post/14455184
gizmodo.com
>Chariklo is about 160 miles (257.5 kilometers) across and is one of the Centaurs, a group of icy bodies between Jupiter and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune. Chariklo is the largest of these small bodies, making it similar to a large boulder the size of a small boulder as far as superlatives go. Chariklo also boasts two rings, discovered in 2013 and recently observed by the Webb Space Telescope. > >Now, research published in The Planetary Science Journal suggests that a satellite may be confining Chariklo’s skimpy rings. “Planetary rings will naturally spread or disperse over time,” said Amanda Sickafoose, an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute and the study’s lead author, in an institute release. > >“Chariklo exhibits two thin rings, a few kilometers in width,” Sickafoose added. “In order for the rings to stay this thin, there needs to be a mechanism to confine the material and prevent it from dispersing.”
TIL that Eminem opened a restaurant in Detroit called Mom's Spaghetti [https://momsspaghetti.com/](https://momsspaghetti.com/) [@todayilearned](https://lemmy.ml/c/todayilearned)
Long story short, the classic "ding-dong" doorbell chime is the first two notes of the bells played Westminster Palace, which in turn are based on Handel's opera The Messiah. Read more about it, it's neat.
> Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, manuscripts in Aramaic, Arabic, and Hebrew, the illuminated Christian Gospels, the Talmud, the Koran—with these forms and collections of writing came the expectation that a person would read them out loud and would, in a manner of speaking, conjure their reality. > In his book A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel points out that Aramaic and Hebrew, the “primordial” languages of the Bible, draw no distinction between reading and speaking. The same word stands for both. Buddhism and Hinduism also give an exalted place to the spoken word. >The opening words of The Odyssey—“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story”—make this clear: The storyteller is acknowledging at the start that the tale he tells is not his own, and that he hopes for divine assistance in telling it well. I think it is pretty interesting that people engaged with reading this way. The author of this article notes that it becomes a living story. This also had the benefit of reaching persons that could not read. I wonder if the content was remembered more vividly through both seeing and hearing the words.
en.wikipedia.org
Robert Baron had Parker Brothers design its own version, Fortune, before negotiation to purchase her patents in case the discussion fell apart or she sold to another potential buyer, Dave Knapp, publisher of Finance.[mwmfg 4] Magie held the patent until 1935, when she sold it to Parker Brothers for $500,[10] equivalent to $10,672 in 2022.[11] The company had recently started distributing Monopoly, which it purchased from Charles Darrow who claimed to have invented it.[10][3] The company only printed a very small run of the game to secure the copyright. Surviving copies of The Landlord's Game by Parker Brothers are considered by many the rarest of all 20th century board games. Parker Brothers pushed her game aside for Darrow's by 1936. Magie then did two interviews showcasing copies of the original board with The Washington Post and The Evening Star to show that Darrow was not the inventor of the game.[3]
Learned this from a friend. The types are null, integer, real, text, and blob. My friend describes them thusly: - Null stores nothing, but like, actively nothing, as opposed to the absence of a thing. - Integer is a signed integer, up to 8 bytes. - Real is always an 8-byte float. - Text is an arbitrary-length UTF-8 or UTF-16. - Blob is an arbitrary-length anything-else. But I hope you remembered what you put there. Because it sure isn't gonna tell you. Oh, and it doesn't have strong typing, so if you ask for it back as an integer, it'll quite happily give you it back as an integer, especially if that doesn't make sense!
www.youtube.com
Inspired by the video by Gem and Impulse from Hermitcraft. In the video, Impulse told Gem (a Canadian) that he had hawaiian pizza with canadian bacon on it; and Gem got really confused in what constitute a "Canadian bacon". Apparently Canadian bacon is called "Canadian" because it is originally imported from Canada to New York. Not because it is popular or invented in Canada. On the other hand, Hawaiian pizza is a true cultural amalgamation. It is invented by a Greek in Canada inspired by his experience cooking Chinese food. One of the culture it doesn't connect to is Hawaii, its name comes from the brand of pineapple the inventor was using. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_bacon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_pizza
In 1967, Sir David Attenborough was in charge of BBC2’s coverage of Wimbledon. The event was being televised in color for the first time, and he decided to change the tennis balls from white to yellow for easier visibility when they crossed the white pitch lines. It caught on, and now almost all tennis balls are yellow. [CNN Article on the topic](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/style/article/artsy-tennis-ball-design-artsy/index.html)
Is this a common knowledge? Is this an old feature? I accidentally found about it few days ago.
Men’s buttons are on the right to make it easy to do up with one hand for right-handed people. When buttons were invented, only the wealthy wore them. Wealthy women had maids who would do the buttons up for them, and so the buttons are on the left so that they are easier for someone facing you to do up.
