I left the love of my life. Now I'm childless and alone - "I left the love of my life because I thought I could do better. Now I'm childless and alone at 42... Now I am 42 and have all the trappings of success - a high-flying career, financial security and a home in the heart of London's trendy Notting Hill. But I don't have the one thing I crave more than anything: a loving husband and family... Struggling should have brought us closer together, and at first it did. But as time went on, and my magazine career - and salary - advanced, I started to resent Matthew as he drifted from one dead-end job to another. I still loved him, but I began to feel embarrassed by his blue-collar jobs, annoyed that, despite his intelligence, he didn't have a career. Then he bought a lurid blue and pink VW Beetle.Why couldn't he drive a normal car? Things that now seem incredibly insignificant began to niggle.I began to wish he was more sophisticated and earned more. I felt envious of friends with better-off partners, who were able to support them as they started their families.I stopped seeing Matthew as my equal. I stopped seeing all the qualities that had made me fall in love with him - his fierce intelligence, our shared sense of humour, his determination not to follow the crowd. Instead, I saw someone who was holding me back... To those out there thinking of walking away from humdrum relationships, I would say don't mistake contentment for unhappiness, as I did. It could be a choice you'll regret for the rest of your life."
A Man used Giant 'Penguin Shoes' to Pull off the Greatest Footprint Hoax in History - "The creature’s tracks showed up on the beaches of various Florida towns for about two years. Its tracks were seen in towns between Clearwater and Sarasota, earning it the name “Old Three Toes”"
US gives first-ever OK for small commercial nuclear reactor - "The first small modular reactor is scheduled to come online in 2029, with 11 more to follow in 2030.The modular reactors are light-water reactors, which are the vast majority of reactors now operating. But modular reactors are designed to use less water than traditional reactors and have a passive safety system so they shut down without human action should something go wrong"
Guantanamo Bay Begins Construction On Senior Care Wing (The Onion, 2015)
Guantánamo Bay as Nursing Home: Military Envisions Hospice Care as Terrorism Suspects Age - The New York Times (2019)
Antikythera mechanism: Ancient Greece's astronomy-based clock - "Understanding how the pieces fit together confirmed that the Antikythera mechanism was capable of predicting the positions of the planets with which the Greeks were familiar—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn—as well as the sun and moon, and eclipses. It even has a black and white stone that turns to show the phases of the moon... In June of 2016, an international team of experts revealed new information derived from tiny inscriptions on the device's parts in ancient Greek that had been too tiny to read—some of its characters are just 1/20th of an inch wide—until cutting-edge imaging technology allowed it to be more clearly seen. They've now read about 3,500 characters explaining the device... it appears the device was built by more than one person on the island of Rhodes, and that it probably wasn't the only one of its kind. The ancient Greeks were apparently even further ahead in their astronomical understanding and mechanical know-how than we'd imagined."
How to Reheat Rice in the Microwave With an Ice Cube - "The words “life-changing” and “tip” get thrown around a lot in cooking, but what you’re about to see can’t be described in any other way. You see, before today I used to think the best way to reheat day-old rice in the microwave was by using the moist paper towel method or the pour-some-water-on-it method. But on my recent nightly TikTok scroll, I discovered a new solution I would have never thought of: Put an ice cube on top of the rice before you reheat it in the microwave. Apparently the ice won’t melt (!); instead, it will actually steam the rice, making it perfectly fluffy and delicious once again"
Apple: $12 Million Fine for IPhone Water-Resistance Claims - "in promotional materials the company claimed various iPhone models — from the iPhone 8 through to the iPhone 11 — were water resistant at a depth of between 1 and 4 metres (3 and 13 feet) for up to 30 minutes, depending on the model.The AGCM said this was only the case under controlled laboratory conditions, with completely still and pure water, and wasn't true in real-world scenarios where consumers might drop their phones in water. It also said Apple's warranty terms were misleading, as they were voided if the phone was damaged by liquids. It said Apple failed to repair iPhones that had been water-damaged."
WordPress claims Apple cut off updates to its completely free app because it wants 30 percent - "Mullenweg tells The Verge he’s not going to fight it anymore, though — he will add brand-new in-app purchases for WordPress.com’s paid tiers, which include domain names, within 30 days. Apple has agreed to allow Automattic to update the app while it waits. (The last update was issued yesterday.)In other words, Apple won: the richest company in the world just successfully forced an app developer to monetize an app so it could make more money. It’s just the latest example of Apple’s fervent attempts to guard its cash cow resulting in a decision that doesn’t make much sense and doesn’t live up to Apple’s ethos (real or imagined) of putting the customer experience ahead of all else... Apple has decided it won’t force this issue after all."
Like Trump, Justin Trudeau ‘Lost the Popular Vote’ - WSJ - "What are elections for? The most common answer is to discern “the will of the people,” and ideas for making America’s electoral system more responsive to majorities are gaining momentum. Democrats and liberals have called for scrapping the Electoral College in favor of a nationwide popular vote, putting independent commissions in charge of drawing legislative districts, and abolishing the Senate filibuster or even the Senate itself. More-esoteric ideas include proportional representation, which allocates legislative seats by party rather than candidate, and ranked-choice voting, in which voters cast ballots for multiple candidates in order of preference. Yet even as “political reform” goes mainstream in the U.S., events in other democracies demonstrate its limits. Canada has no Electoral College, and political-science wonks have touted its nonpartisan districting commission as a model for the U.S. Yet last week Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won re-election even though his Liberal Party didn’t get the most votes. The Liberals won 157 seats with 33% of the vote, while Conservatives managed only 121 seats with 34.4%... Representation based on geographic areas originated in England hundreds of years ago, and one benefit today is that it can pressure parties to compete beyond regional strongholds and target voters in competitive districts. But wouldn’t it be fairer to assign seats based on a party’s total number of votes, regardless of where voters live? So argue antigerrymandering campaigners in the U.S. when Democrats in places like North Carolina (or Republicans in Maryland) win a substantial number of votes statewide but manage only a few seats in their state’s congressional delegation. Israel doesn’t have that imbalance thanks to proportional representation. But that encourages the proliferation of small parties which can make countries ungovernable... If all these representative systems are flawed, perhaps voters should make policy themselves. Progressive reformers introduced initiatives and referendums in some U.S. states, mostly in the West, a century ago. The long Brexit saga shows that this approach can also wreak havoc for political stability... Expressing popular preferences isn’t the only purpose of elections. They also provide an agreed-upon way to distribute political power. Those purposes can be at odds if elections don’t lead to effective governance. Nixing the Electoral College might increase the number of candidates, thereby producing more “minority” presidents. Weakening the Anglo-American system of representation based on geographic districts could cause the number of parties to increase and further divide the country. Princeton political scientist Christopher Achen, co-author with Larry Bartels of “Democracy for Realists,” describes a gap between the reality of democratic politics—a tangled drama of deal-cutting, coalition-building and personal leadership—and the dominant “folk theory of democracy.” The folk theory says the will of the people can be perfectly translated into governance if the right conditions are in place."
Why So Many Comic Book Villains Wear Green and Purple - "From the inception of colorized print in newspapers to the 1970s, limitations of the technology at the time dictated color choice to a certain degree. Bright primary colors were favored over subdued hues; it was easier for printers to consistently depict a certain shade of red than a shade of grey, for example. Artists' options were limited, making choosing the right color for their heroes and villains all the more important. Sitting on the rack at the comics store, a cover for a new issue or series had to immediately grab a prospective buyer's attention. The solution: put a new, exciting villain on the cover...and make sure the reader knew they were evil without having to read a single word... the color green represents greed, sickness, envy—and ambition... when an artist gives a villain like Lex Luthor a purple costume, they effectively communicate to the reader that the villain is powerful—or at least, they believe themselves to be. It also suggests the villain has quite a large ego and demands respect, obedience, and fear"
Adding is favoured over subtracting in problem solving - "A series of problem-solving experiments reveal that people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient... the bias towards additive solutions might be further compounded by the fact that subtractive solutions are also less likely to be appreciated. People might expect to receive less credit for subtractive solutions than for additive ones. A proposal to get rid of something might feel less creative than would coming up with something new to add, and it could also have negative social or political consequences — suggesting that an academic department be disbanded might not be appreciated by those who work in it, for instance. Moreover, people could assume that existing features are there for a reason, and so looking for additions would be more effective. Finally, sunk-cost bias (a tendency to continue an endeavour once an investment in money, effort or time has been made) and waste aversion could lead people to shy away from removing existing features, particularly if those features took effort to create in the first place."
Explains software, bureaucratic etc bloat
Jimmy Kimmel - Wikipedia - "Kimmel permanently left The Man Show to host his own late-night talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, on ABC... Despite its name, the show has not actually aired live since 2004, when censors were unable to properly bleep censor a barrage of swearing from actor Thomas Jane"
Red state America is prospering. Blue state America is in meltdown. - "Progressives like to argue that their big-government, high tax policies are economically superior and thus better for the poor, minorities and working-class Americans than those of red states. Conservative policies, progressives contend, are culturally backward, and tilted to benefit the rich. Let's test this thesis by comparing three of the largest red states: Florida, Texas, and Tennessee with three of the largest blue states: California, New York, and Illinois. If progressive policies really work, then Americans should be rushing to get into the blue states. But just the opposite is happening. Americans are packing up their U-Hauls and heading to the red states. According to the New York Times, in August 2020, so many people wanted to leave New York City that moving companies were turning away business. They just couldn't handle the demand. This exodus may be accelerating, but it's not new. Over the last decade the three big blue states each lost an average of one million people to other states, while the three big red states gained almost a million from other states... Let's say you're looking for a job. Over the last decade, Florida, Texas and Tennessee have gained twice as many jobs as the progressive states... Progressives like to say that this isn't about economics, it's about weather. The red states tend to be in the South and southwest where the weather is warmer. But that doesn't explain why so many people are leaving California which has the best weather in the country... Of the twenty cities with the highest murder rates, 18 are run by left-leaning Democrats — and for the most part, have been for decades. And these cities aren't getting safer; they're getting more dangerous. A good chunk of Minneapolis was burned to the ground as a result of riots, following the death of George Floyd. Portland had over 90 consecutive nights of rioting — not peaceful protests, rioting. Seattle allowed an entire section of the city to declare itself an autonomous zone — a first in American history!... Ask any resident of Los Angeles or San Francisco about the rise in homelessness and you'll get a litany of horror stories. Both cities, of course, have a long history of progressive mayors. How about keeping us healthy and safe? Surely the progressive states, with their strict lockdowns, did a better job saving lives from the coronavirus. Nope. Adjusted for population, as a resident of New York, New Jersey or Illinois, you were three, four or even five times more likely to die of the virus than if you lived in a red state like Florida, Texas, Georgia, Utah or Arizona."
Liberals denounce the Confederacy as traitors for seceding, but supported CHOP/CHAZ somehow
How the Silicon Valley Exodus Relates to Ongoing Culture Wars - "Tech's elite are leaving, and they're citing a mixture of high taxes , state regulations, and a homogenous, liberal culture as their reasons for decamping to Texas, Colorado, or Florida. While the departures of Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, and Keith Rabois are new, the reasons that seem to have nudged them out the door date back years. The pandemic may have spurred a migration away from the West Coast, but the writing has been on the wall as far back as 2017... In September 2016, Palmer Luckey, then the 24-year-old millionaire cofounder of virtual reality company Oculus, was discovered to be the main benefactor behind an anti-Hillary Clinton meme group... After the report came out, several female employees resigned from Facebook in protest and Luckey stayed out of the spotlight at Oculus events. By March 2017, he left Facebook — in subsequent interviews, Luckey has said he was fired. Luckey's departure was viewed, by some, as a politically motivated firing... Palantir has moved its headquarters to Colorado and HP and Oracle moved to Texas. Palantir CEO Alex Karp told Axios in May that the company wanted to move away from the West Coast and described what he saw as an "increasing intolerance and monoculture" in the tech industry. Karp, for his part, had been living in New Hampshire for much of the pandemic. Since then, venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have moved to Austin — Lonsdale tweeted that the region was "more tolerant of ideological diversity," and Musk made the move after warring with California over the state's coronavirus lockdown measures. Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison has left the region for Lanai, the island he mostly owns in Hawaii, and investor Keith Rabois is decamping for Miami, citing high taxes in San Francisco and a political culture he abhors as his reasons for leaving. And of course, all of these moves follow venture capitalist and PayPal founder Peter Thiel's famous departure for Los Angeles in 2018, a move seemingly spurred by his dislike of Silicon Valley's liberal ideology."
A Meghan Markle-style cult of truth bending bullies is hijacking museums - "Since 2007 the International Council of Museums (Icom) has offered – as if it were necessary – a definition of a museum. Few reasonable people would disagree with it: platitudes about a non-profit institution serving society and the public by acquiring, conserving and exhibiting examples of heritage, and conducting research. Its purposes, again universally agreed, are that it should exist for “education, study and enjoyment”... a new definition of a museum Icom is proposing to adopt next year abolishes enjoyment. Instead, museums are to be “democratising, inclusive and polyphonic [sic] spaces for critical dialogue”. Worse than that, the dialogue is to be about “the pasts and the futures” [sic iterum]. Museums are to be weaponised in the so-called culture wars that a vocal, unrepresentative, bullying and extremist minority are determined to inflict upon a harmless majority who merely want to get on with their inoffensive lives and, out of natural intellectual curiosity, learn something. So instead of learning some objective truths about the past, the visitor to the museum of the future will have to cope with an institution “acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present”. The purpose of a museum is to aim “to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing”. In such a world, manipulative curators will feel empowered to pander to every cause that radical leftists and anarchists choose to espouse. Museums would become a means of imposing the will of such minorities on to everyone else – something self-evidently a million miles from “democratising” the experience of heritage. This prepares the way for demands by minority groups to force their interpretations of history and culture on a museum’s exhibits, irrespective of the legitimacy of those interpretations or of the facts. The nonsense in this new definition about “pasts” and “futures”’ gives an indication of the direction of travel. It is rather like the Duchess of Sussex’s patronising and delusive assertions about her “truth”, in which anything she asserts to be true must be so. Now museums, if this new definition is adopted, are to be expected to put into suspense the objective truths of history and replace them with the truths according to the Meghan Markles of politics. If one should seek a taster of the future, one needs only to look at the absurdity the National Trust has inflicted upon itself with its “report” on the links to slavery and colonialism that some of its properties have, which start from the assumption that the British Empire was in every respect inherently wicked... Like, it appears, every other public utility in the western world, museums are ripe for hijacking for the purpose of re-educating and radicalising those young or naïve enough to be susceptible to such grotesque manipulation. The hijacking will be helped by our public life having reached the stage where it has become career-ending to question assumptions such as that all white people are racists, all males are rapists, all who believe in capitalism are exploitative, and that we are all destroying the planet: though what museum artefacts can do about that will be beyond most of us. To seek to destroy part of the civilising process to further this intolerant, bullying cult is bad enough; that too many in authority are afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes is terrifying. Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, has said it is nothing to do with him; but Museums are to do with him. He cannot play Pontius Pilate on this. Otherwise he is raising the white flag not merely on the role of our heritage, but on what we think is our way of life."
Swiss Wealth Tax Rakes in Cash as Covid Stokes Global Debate - Bloomberg - "Switzerland’s rationale is the constitutional principle of everyone paying according to their means. Inheritance tax is low, and there’s no capital gains levy on movable property such as equities. The measure also comes with safeguards. There’s a formula to ensure people who are asset-rich but with low incomes can still afford it. In Kaufmann’s case, the farmers’ association sets the valuation of livestock annually to help keep filing simple. The result is that Switzerland derives a bigger share of total tax revenue from the levy than any other industrialized country, according to OECD data."
New Science Shows Managing Blood Sugar Isn’t About Counting Calories or Carbs - " According to the study, the model was able to accurately predict blood-sugar changes 62 percent of the time. Previously, when only predicting based off carbs or calorie intake, they were able to accurately guess fluctuations 40 percent and 32 percent of the time, respectively. “With our individualized model, people no longer have to give up all foods within a certain category,” said researcher Purna Kashyap, in a statement. “It allows them to choose specific foods within certain categories that fit well with their microbiome.”"
USDA ERS - Productivity Increases With Farm Size in the Heartland Region - "Past ERS research on consolidation in the U.S. farm sector has documented a widespread shift in agricultural production to large-scale operations. This structural change has likely been partly driven by productivity advantages enjoyed by larger operations... the shift in production to larger farms accounted for about one-sixth of aggregate productivity growth, while adoption of improved technologies and more efficient farm management accounted for the rest... In general, more productive farms are more likely to survive in business over time and to expand in size."
Damn corrupt farming subsidies, the only thing keeping big farms in business and screwing the little guy!
Commentary: Running may help you live longer but more isn’t necessarily better - "We found running just once a week, or for 50 minutes a week, reduces the risk of death at a given point in time. The benefits do not seem to increase or decrease with higher amounts of running."
The lack of a dose-response relationship suggests that running per se may not be the reason for longer longevity
The Root Bridges of Cherrapunji – Cherrapunjee, India - "In the depths of northeastern India, within sight of the India-Bangladesh border, in one of the wettest places on earth, bridges aren’t built—they’re grown."
Amber Heard’s pledge to charity a ‘calculated and manipulative lie’, says Johnny Depp - "Johnny Depp’s lawyers have accused his ex-wife Amber Heard of a “calculated and manipulative lie” after she claimed she gave her $7 million (£5.5 million) divorce settlement to charity."
Every NHS and social care worker in Scotland to receive £500 ‘thank you’, Sturgeon announces
What you can do when you have English money!
The offal truth: Haggis returns to Canada — but the Canadian government made sure it won’t be authentic - "Due to a controversial Canadian import law, the made-in-Scotland haggises all had to be crafted without one of their most signature ingredients: sheep lung... While Canadians are allowed to eat most parts of a sheep, lungs remain in a federally verboten category that includes genitals, udders, spleens and “black gut.” The lung ban is mirrored in the United States, where authorities have similarly mandated since 1971 that “livestock lungs shall not be saved for use as human food.” Macsween of Edinburgh was forced to circumvent this regulation by making their Canadian haggis with sheep heart, rather than sheep lung... The North American lung bans have been a persistent irritant in the United Kingdom, where truckloads of offal are eaten every year without incident. If there was a reason behind the 1971 lung bans, they appear to have been lost to history. No mention of offal exists in Canadian parliamentary records at the time of the ban. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration reportedly banned the organs without so much as assessing their safety. Given the tiny U.S. market for edible lungs at the time, it was likely deemed to be not worth the trouble... Naturally, North America’s generation-long offal ban has spawned a vibrant black market for haggis. Retailers in Scottish tourist areas report regularly encountering Americans who vow to smuggle their haggis purchases back home. In 2016, the food blog Food52 spoke to Lou, a New York haggis smuggler who hinted at collusion with U.S. Homeland Security... The typical culinary criticism of lung-less haggis is that it’s too heavy and sausage-like, and lacks a nutty flavour... One of the more outlandish denouncements, however, belongs to the House of Lords, where Scotland’s Lord McColl of Dulwich proposed that legal haggis could help fat Americans lose some weight. “The United States Government is depriving 24 million American Scots of this wholesome food, which satisfies hunger very much more than the junk food the Americans consume,” the former surgeon said in January, 2015. Pride aside, Scottish haggis makers have good reason to try and get their product across the Atlantic. The North American Scottish diaspora dwarfs the population of modern Scotland, and even niche demand could dramatically expand haggis production... Although lungs from Canadian sheep cannot be eaten, their sale and transfer is legal, where they’re typically sold as pet food. Thus, any enterprising haggis dealer can conceivably obtain a shipment on the sly and incorporate it into an illicit haggis... “Haggis was originally supposed to be made out of whatever you had left from the slaughterhouse floor”... Todd Panchuk is the owner of Edmonton’s Old Country Meat and Deli, a butcher that sells upwards of 5,000 pounds of haggis each year. His haggises don’t contain lungs, but he says it’s purely a culinary decision and that much of the traditional obsession over lungs can be chalked up to “mythology.” “Lung is terrible; there’s no way to make it good,” he said. “You can make a nice-tasting, popular haggis without putting absolutely all the organs that you can think of in there.”"