He-Gassen: Revisiting Japan’s Edo Period Fart Scrolls - "Over 150 years ago a group of anonymous Japanese artists created a 34-ft long scroll titled He-Gassen (屁合戦), literally: “Fart Battle.” The scroll, which was created during the Edo Period (probably around 1846) in Japan, consists of roughly 15 different scenes depicting people directing their farts at other people or objects. There are people farting at each other. There are people farting through objects. There are people combating farts with fans. There are bags of farts being released. Trees and cats get blown away by farts. And the scroll culminates with a divine gust of flatulence knocking over a ceremony and causing complete and utter chaos. So why did these artists create this scroll? Some have argued that it’s a form of social commentary depicting anti-foreigner sentiment as Japan was beginning to emerge from isolation. Others feel we try to read too much into the art and that it was created simply because farts are funny. This scroll definitely isn’t alone in its sub-genre. There were many artists practicing Ukiyo-e – woodblock prints that emerged as a form of low-brow entertainment – who took up flatulence as a way to gain laughs... The scroll in its entirety was digitized by Waseda University and can be seen in hi-res format by accessing their database."
Babies mysteriously stop crying whenever this song is played to them - "Takashi Sorimachi's 'Poison' has gained an unexpected fanbase after parents revealed that their babies stop crying whenever the track is played... the track is from an extremely popular live-action series, Great Teacher Onizuka. Based off a manga of the same name by Tooru Fujisawa, it was eventually turned into a 43-episode anime series... The crew showed him several videos of crying babies from countries such as Brazil, the U.S., the UK, and New Zealand. All of them stopped crying the moment the track was played... According to Suzuki, the head of the Japan Acoustic Lab, the babies stopped crying because they were either stimulated or calmed by both tracks. For 'Poison', it's both. The opening guitar riff with a repetitive rise and fall is actually stimulating for babies, Suzuki explains to Sorimachi. The high frequency of the music on the other hand draws their attention To add to the track is Sorimachi's soothingly-calm voice singing the lyrics. So this track not only effectively stops babies from crying, but also prevents them from starting up again... The tracks is effective for children up to two years old who cry often"
Apostasy - "a video from Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood and a leading authority on Sunni Islam (90% of Muslims are Sunni). The broadcast came from a major television network: Egyptian national television. And it contained a very interesting message. Here are al-Qaradawi's words: If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment, Islam wouldn't exist today. Islam would have ended since the death of the prophet, peace be upon him. Opposing apostasy is what kept Islam to this day... Some might say that what is most interesting is that this is a clear, unequivocal statement against freedom of religion within Islam, or at least within Sunni Islam... Very informative for all of us who believe in freedom of religion - and who keep being told Islam is for this, with quotes such as "There is no compulsion in religion." Of course many of us know those passages were later abrogated - but it's great hearing this from a major Muslim authority"
Meme - "Like, 90% of infomercial style products were designed by/for disabled people, but you wouldn't know that, because there is no viable market for them. They have to be marketed and sold to abled people just so that any money can be made of off them and so the people who actually need them will have access. I think snuggies are the one example almost everyone knows. They were invented for wheelchair users (Do you have any idea how hard itis to get a coat on and off of someone in a wheelchair? Cause it's PRETTY FUCKIN HARD.) But now everyone just acts like they're some ~quirky, white people thing~ and not A PRODUCT DESIGNED TO MAKE PEOPLES DAY TO DAY LIVES 10000X EASIER. But if at any point you were to take your head out of your own ass and go "Hey, who would a product like this benefit," that would be really cool."
"This makes informational make so much sense now. Like... of course there's no reason for that guy to knock over that bowl of chips. However, the person it was actually designed for has constant hand tremors that would make this pretty rad, but since we don't want to show that in a commercial, here's an able bodied guy who can't remember how gravity works. Shit. Those commercials suddenly get a lot less funny when you realize it's pretty much just people ineptly trying to mimic disabllity."
"Or like the thing for the eggs? Like, oh, it cracks eggs perfectly, you only need, one hand? IT WAS DESIGNED FOR PEOPLE WHO ONLY HAVE THE USE OF ONE HAND. Or the juice bottle pourer? For people who're TOO LAZY TO POUR THEIR OWN JUICE? Or FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIFFICULTY BEARING WEIGHT IN THE HANDS."
Or pre-peeled oranges, which the environmentalists get very upset about
Meme - "There's always someone more Asian than you"
"Your Ancestry Result Summary
Asian 101%"
"Someone's got some extra chromosomes"
Meme - "This is Australia not America. Fuck off with your Halloween shit you little cunts"
Meme - "Let's Keep In Touch! *ouija board*
My best friends grandma made these before she passed away to give out at her funeral. What an icon"
Why French Schoolchildren Used To Drink Wine Between Lessons - "France used to allow schoolchildren to sup wine in between lessons, which is almost unbelievable compared to today’s society. In fact, before the 1950s, French children were not only allowed to drink wine, beer or cider in the canteen, but they were encouraged to do so. The reason was that people were under the impression that alcohol killed microbes, and it did at least seem to help with warming the chest when the child was suffering from a cold. As a result, alcoholic drinks were often drunk in lessons, especially since national advertising and mentality strongly encouraged it. Many parents would place one alcoholic drink of their choice in the child’s basket to take to school. Often half a litre of wine, cider, or beer depending on the region. Where there were cases of head teachers disallowing the drink be given to children, it’s said that some parents encouraged the children to drink their wine before they go to school, over breakfast. It wasn’t until 1956, August, that the Ministry of National Education forbade the serving of alcoholic drinks in schools to children under 14 years old. Though older children – with the consent of their parents – were allowed to continue to drink in the canteen, provided they did not consume more than ‘one eighth of a litre per head’... Of course eventually, the ban was extended to all school children, and most teachers were grateful, given that inebriated children would usually end up sleeping through lessons, show signs of inattentiveness, or hyperactivity... it was only in September 1981, shortly after the election of François Mitterrand, that alcoholic drinks were banned from high schools once and for all, when water became the only drink encouraged at the table."
These Coded Wine Glasses Were Used for Treasonous Toasts - "This glass has a secret. It’s encoded in the images inscribed around the bowl: a blazing star, an oak leaf, a rose blossom, and two delicate buds sprouting from a thorny stem. They may seem like mere decoration, but to the right eyes, they were a message, and a dangerous one at that. The original owners of this glass must have been careful who they let see it. In England, circa 1745, toasting with it could constitute treason. Taken together, the rose, oak leaf, and star tell a story of loyalty to a banished king, James II of England. The blooming rose stands for James’s son and heir (known to his enemies as the “Old Pretender”); the oak leaf is a symbol of the House of Stuart, James’s family line; and the star reflects the hope that the Stuart family will once more rise to glory... Just like the glasses themselves, Jacobites’ manner of toasting contained a secret code. When they raised a glass to the king, they took care to hold it over a finger-bowl on the table, signifying that their toast was addressed to the king “over water”—that is, the exiled “King James III” overseas. And after King William III died in a riding accident, Jacobites drank to “the little gentleman in black velvet”—meaning the mole that tripped William’s horse... Jacobites found themselves caught between two contradictory urges: the need to conceal their treasonous affiliations and the need to propagandize their cause. The artifacts they left behind neatly express this double-bind. The side of a fan painted with Jacobite symbols could be fluttered outwards to the room or held close to the chest. Garters stitched with Jacobite slogans could be coyly concealed beneath one’s clothes. A dice-box’s secret second lid could be flipped open, revealing the portrait of the Pretender beneath. One particularly playful example is a tray covered in what looks at first glance like abstract smears of paint. When a curved mirror is placed on the tray, the smears resolve themselves into a portrait of James’ infamous grandson Charles, nicknamed “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” Equally odd are the striking species of Jacobite cups known as “coin glasses.” A tour-de-force of glassblowing, their stems swell out to form transparent bubbles that house coins from the reign of James II or one of his predecessors. On the face of it, there’s nothing treasonous about honoring a legitimate king. But to Jacobites, these old coins hearkened back to the golden time before William III disrupted the line of succession. More than that, the coin served to symbolically return the exiled king to his loyal supporters: Every time they drained the cup, they saw his face. As Neil Guthrie writes in Material Culture of the Jacobites, “When you drink the king’s health he is there before you.”"
Lamination: why a grade-school obsession fools kids to adulthood. - "there was one classroom object that their preschool student-teachers seemed obsessed with: “So many of them during these times were talking about the lamination machine and how happy they were,” Skreland told me. The professors watched the students’ eyes light up when they talked about using the machine to sheathe paper materials in plastic. They had stories about laminating, tales of love but also passionate frustration. The preschoolers themselves seemed just as enthralled"
When Every Ketchup But One Went Extinct - "In the early- to mid-1800s, Americans fermented tomato ketchup from a variety of home recipes. The first recorded recipe for a home-fermented tomato catsup was published in 1810, a descendant of British imitations of Asian “cat-sup,” or fermented fish sauce, that the British encountered on colonial voyages. Tomato catsup, which cooks made with ingredients such as apples and anchovies in addition to tomatoes, caught on quickly due to its bright flavor, which livened up an otherwise monotonous American diet. And because it was fermented, it boasted a shelf life of one to seven years. After the Civil War, companies mass produced, bottled, and sold ketchup to a new class of urban consumers. This ketchup was generally thinner, less sweet, less vinegary, and more tomato-y than present-day ketchup. But while fermentation was a boon for home cooks, it was a liability for manufacturers. Fermentation turned ketchup sour, an increasingly unpopular characteristic as Americans gravitated towards sugar towards the end of the century. Fermentation also sped up a more dangerous process: Occasionally, bottles of fermenting ketchup would explode... To protect customers and their bottom lines, ketchup companies embraced chemical preservatives. Smith cites turn-of-the-century studies in California, Connecticut, and Kentucky that found that the majority of commercial ketchup samples contained some form of antiseptic. Then, in 1883, a man named Dr. Harvey Wiley became chief of the Division of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture, where he fought preservatives with the religious zeal of a man raised evangelical in rural Indiana... American cooks had long ago figured out another way of halting fermentation (and explosions): carefully boiling ripe tomatoes, adding lots of vinegar, and sanitizing meticulously... In 1908, a board of scientists created by President Roosevelt ruled that benzoate of soda was harmless if consumed in quantities of less than a half of a gram per day. But this didn’t matter: Wiley and Heinz continued their campaign on public opinion, and Americans soured on preservatives. By 1915, Smith writes, most major ketchup companies stopped using them altogether, and those that didn’t lost many of their customers. It helped, too, that the thick consistency of Heinz’s preservative-free ketchup allowed it to cling tenaciously to the hot dogs, hamburgers, and french fries that swept the nation in the 1900s... At the time, Heinz’s victory secured cleaner ketchup with higher-quality ingredients for Americans. Many companies had used benzoates to hide poor sanitation and low-quality tomatoes. Ketchup was often made from leftover tomato trimmings that were stored poorly and then bottled with a heavy dose of benzoate, which also covered up factories’ shoddy sanitization practices that would otherwise breed mold and bacteria. This had allowed companies to sell at a lower price, Smith writes, but at a cost to consumer safety. As time went on, though, food inspectors were better able to detect low-quality or contaminated ketchup, with our without benzoates, prompting more companies to drop them. But Smith contends that this triumph came at a price: a mass extinction event for the once diverse ecosystem of ketchup flavors. The sugar, vinegar, and heavy boiling required to make preservative-free ketchup overwhelmed the condiment’s once myriad flavors. During the ketchup war, Blue Label Ketchup said that without benzoates they would have to cook the tomato flavor out of their ketchup. Smith writes supportively, citing testimony from a ketchup maker that benzoated ketchups “certainly had a better flavor than anything [preservative-free] on the market today.”
Sex, Neighbours and Kids: Get Lucky, sound of the summer - FML - "Today, my neighbor called me a lucky bastard and said he heard me getting my wife off last night. I was too ashamed to admit the sounds he was referring to were from my 17-year-old daughter after a wasp flew through her bedroom window. FML"
21st Century City on Twitter - "Dress right for hostile architecture *padding to sit comfortably given slopes, bars and cylinders*"
Barilla pasta-maker sued over alleged false made-in-Italy advertising - "What would it be like to live in a world where everything that was printed in an ad or said in a commercial were true, without you having to read the fine print? It seems that's the world that Matthew Sinatro and Jessica Prost are seeking to build — at least when it comes to spaghetti. The two are behind a class action lawsuit against the pasta-making company Barilla, which they say is deliberately deceiving shoppers by using the slogan "Italy's #1 Brand of Pasta" on its packaging. Despite the green, white and red stylized Italian flags displayed on the blue boxes of angel hair, fusilli and bowtie pastas, a complaint filed in Northern California notes that the majority of the company's products sold in the U.S. are produced in Iowa and New York and are not made with ingredients sourced from Italy."
Meme - Alden Bunag @AldenBunag: "You're fucking acting like we want to show kids porn or something, but something I've learned through the years is that whenever right-wingers accuse others of something, it's DEFINITELY because they're projecting."
@StarAdvertiser: "#Oahu substitute teacher Alden Bunag was charged Wednesday in a criminal complaint filed in federal court for distributing child pornography."
So much for "grooming" accusations being projection
Meme - Derrek Mustelik: "I'm a mod of Did You Fail Sex Ed (etc). You have about 18 hours to remove your laugh react from [url] or I will be banning you. I understand that accidental reacts happen so if it was a mistake please remove it and apologize. Thank you."
Facebook group admins have no life
Meme - "I looked, and many of the "laughers" are sock accounts. They're just hoping to exhaust us with their determination to be cruel. Not gonna happen.
The laughers are all either sock accounts, entitled, loser dudes who never amounted to much in life with guns and pretend super heroes as their profile pics, and uneducated, self-hating women. It's kind of hilarious! If these people are the enemy, I'm laughing right back. Pathetic!"
The modern left can't stand when people laugh at them, just like dictators can't stand comedy.
Meme Michael Leclzio: "Hatred, misoginy, insecurity, arrogance and self-righteousness are at a new high in this group. Mockery is a low form of character. A laughing emoji reaction is tempting: makes you feel righteous, superior. You don't know that person's story. All you see is a clip. And based on your good fortune, the dogmatic beliefs of your culture, and your need for superiority, you judge and you debase. You say something half witted to get easy likes from other insecure men of low character. Haters gather in numbers. It reassures them, reinforces their self-righteousness. They gang up, attack and bully, at the risk of pushing fragile people to their limits. Don't be one of those laughing emojis. Look at them reacting to this comment. You can't stop them, but you don't have to join them."
Meme - "THIS IS KILLING ME"
"I believed in God as a kid bc I always felt so moved during worship songs at my megachurch and then I went to a One Direction concert and felt the same thing and realized I just like live music"
Chimp who threw stones at zoo visitors showed human trait, says scientist - "The loutish behaviour of a stone-throwing chimpanzee at a zoo in Sweden has challenged scientists' beliefs about human beings. Santino, a 31-year-old male at Furuvik zoo, may be the first animal to exhibit an unambiguous ability to plan for the future, a behaviour many scientists argue is unique to humans... Santino would get agitated when the first groups of visitors arrived at his enclosure in the morning, and would start hurling stones at the spectators. When the zookeepers investigated, they found that, while the zoo was closed, Santino had been busy making piles of ammunition, and returned to them to resupply. To catch the chimp in action, one zookeeper hid in a room overlooking the enclosure and observed the ape's behaviour before the zoo gates opened each morning. She saw Santino dragging stones from a protective moat that surrounded his island home, before placing them in piles. Further covert surveillance of the ape revealed he spent some time tapping areas of concrete floor with his fist. Occasionally, the animal would thump harder, releasing chunks of concrete that he broke into rough discs. A survey of the enclosure showed that Santino made piles of ammunition only on the quarter of the island's shore that faced the visiting crowds... Santino only gathered rocks and made concrete missiles when the zoo was closed. He gave up the behaviour completely when the zoo was shut over the winter. The zookeepers recently decided that an operation was the best way of controlling Santino's behaviour. "They have castrated the poor guy. They hope that his hormone levels will decrease and that will make him less prone to throw stones. He's already getting fatter and he likes to play much more now than before. Being agitated isn't good for him""
Can we trust the Rorschach test? - "Despite decades of controversy, today the Rorschach test is admissible in court, reimbursed by medical insurance companies and administered around the world in job evaluations, custody battles and psychiatric clinics. The common habit of describing Brexit or Beyoncé or anything else as “a Rorschach test” – the implication being that there are no right or wrong answers; your reaction to it is what matters – coexists in a kind of alternate universe from the literal test given to patients, defendants and job applicants by psychologists. In these situations, there are very real right and wrong answers... To the test’s critics, both within and outside the psychology community, its continued use is a scandal – an embarrassing vestige of pseudoscience that should have been written off years ago, along with truth serum and primal-scream therapy. In their view, the test’s amazing power is its ability to brainwash otherwise sensible people into believing in it."
Canadian tech company looks to reinvent the intersection - "In many cases, roads have reached their capacity limits, city budgets can’t accommodate huge infrastructure spending, and congested cities need smarter, affordable solutions that optimize networks instead of making them bigger... by optimizing traffic flow they could drastically reduce congestion and the carbon emissions that come with it. On an emotional level, they also saw it could improve quality of life for commuters by making gridlock a thing of the past. They do this by using advanced algorithms to analyze traffic data captured by 360-degree video cameras mounted at busy intersections... In Peterborough, Miovision’s technology was paired with adaptive signal control along a 1.75-kilometre stretch of one of the city’s most congested streets. Since August 2021, they’ve seen peak travel times reduced by up to 30 per cent and vehicle stops reduced by up to 53 per cent... This results in annual travel time savings valued at $977,000, a 273-tonne reduction in carbon emissions and saved an estimated 106,700 litres of fuel"
Meme - "My mom started an OnlyFans account. I have no idea why. It's not like we need the money. Dad was. in the tech sector and made lots of investments before he passed so we're very financially stable. She posted about it for all the family and friends to see. I confronted her and based my arguments against her actions in Kant's Categorical Imperative. After half an hour she still wasn't understanding the concept and was just in tears that I wasn't being supportive. I told her alright look, imagine things in terms of universal actions. So you should consider whether the act of subscribing to your OnlyFans is something you'd want to see all men in the world undertake, i.e. me, your own son. Obviously this renders it immoral since it fails Kant's Categorical Imperative. Now she just thinks I'm trying to make an elaborate argument that justifies me subscribing to her OnlyFans because I'm a perv and she's starts crying whenever she sees me. She's threatened that I'll have to move out but I think it's a bluff. I'm giving up on invoking the Categorical Imperative and need some other moral arguments. Unfortunately I've spent the last 7 years of my life pretty much exclusively reading Kant and secondary sources on Kant, so I don't really have a good grasp of non-Kantian morality. Any help would be appreciated."
TikTok challenge possibly killed four teens - "the teens may have been participating in a TikTok challenge that encourages people to break into Kia cars using cellphone chargers. The so-called Kia challenge, first posted over the summer, shows how to hot-wire Kia and Hyundai cars with a USB cord and a screwdriver. Many police departments around the country have reported increases in Kia and Hyundai thefts since the video was posted. A class-action lawsuit filed in September in Orange County, California, alleges that Kias built between 2011 and 2021 as well as Hyundais built from 2015 to 2021 lack anti-theft parts called engine immobilizers, making the cars easier to steal than other models. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages from the automakers and a nationwide recall."
I Took an Amazon Warehouse Job to Cure My Burnout - "I'd started a nonprofit in Seattle in 2018, building free software for global health, and I'd run it for three years. But during that last year, I really struggled with seasonal depression... after being unemployed for a good six to eight months, I actually ended up feeling even worse. I sometimes wouldn't get out of bed until noon or even 2 p.m. I was really low. It felt like the one thing I really needed for myself was some structure — wake-up times, some exercise — just to get out there somehow... in addition to having been an Amazon customer for like 25 years, I was curious about robotization and what it's doing to our society and future of work. I've been convinced that robots will put us all out of jobs. I was honestly also a little skeptical of the articles you read about employees being unable to pee and other things [about workplace conditions]. Part of me wondered, could it really be that bad? Lastly, I wanted to understand my own sort of societal footprint when it comes to my own consumption, and what that means for employees — for people's lives... On my first day, I was given a hot-and-cold compress, some sort of sports drink, a COVID cloth mask with the Amazon smile on it, and one serving of a pain medication — all in a Ziploc gallon-size freezer bag. I contrast that with joining a place like Microsoft, where I got T-shirts and hoodies and stuff on my first day, or a place like Facebook, where I got an iPhone Plus and a MacBook Pro on my first day... I never once met my manager, and no one knew my name. The most frequent name I was ever called was Peter; my name is Philip. Almost every horizontal suitable surface in the warehouse, like the step ladders that are very nice for sitting on, is labeled with a custom sticker that says, "Do not sit." Even the team leads, who primarily monitor computers throughout their entire shift, do not have chairs. I don't understand why even a person whose job is stationary does not get a chair in the warehouse. I'm sure these decisions aren't taken lightly; they're million-dollar decisions. I've always worked for companies that have claimed that people are their greatest asset. The fact that the security gates in an Amazon warehouse are on exit and not upon entry, in order to trap people from stealing iPhones and stuff, shows that the greatest assets really are the goods moving into that warehouse, not the people... During peak, Amazon could notify me just 16 hours in advance that I was required to work an 11-hour shift the next day. I had 10 hours of unpaid time that I could take before I would be automatically fired. If I missed one of these last-minute mandatory 11-hour days, I could get fired. For someone like me, who doesn't need childcare, that was no problem. However, the average person with a family could be called in for an extra day just 16 hours in advance — the day before, even during Thanksgiving weekend. I think that lack of schedule predictability was the biggest issue for most associates... I was given medication and told not to lift more than 10 pounds for two weeks. I submitted accommodation paperwork to Amazon right away; after seven days, I hadn't heard back. But in the meantime my manager let me work on a line with lighter packages — the little bubble-wrapped ones. I cranked on that for a while. When Amazon HR did get back to me, they gave me the option of taking two weeks of what's called "accommodation." It involved three-hour-a-day shifts — meaning about $1,700 less in income — and working a changed set of days. The other option was to sign something saying I was fine and go back to work. I took the accommodation, but because HR had taken so long to get back to me I worked just one day of the lighter duty before the two weeks ordered by my doctor was up... Within about two weeks after I left the job, the physical symptoms went away. I took the job because I was desperate for something to enforce regularity for me, and I very much benefited from Amazon doing that. And I was taking 28,000 steps a day and lifting 6 tons of packages — it was serious exercise. I also loved the simplicity. In the white-collar jobs I'd had, there was always an infinite pile of work to do, with no hard cutoff times. In the warehouse, when your shift ends, the entire loading dock could be backed up, and it's not your problem. You can just walk away from it knowing the night shift is coming in and they'll fix the problem. I also never had to make decisions; someone told me what to do each day. And when you do the work, it's largely mindless. So for someone like me, who has felt tremendous pressure to make the right decisions, your mind is so peaceful the whole time because there's never stress about the actual decision-making. I could sleep at night without thinking about work... I ended up meeting one guy at the warehouse who also joined because he was depressed. He said he had an associate's degree in women's studies and couldn't work up the motivation to turn on the Uber partner app every day... I recommend that people do a stint at Amazon. Our fellow Americans have become very detached from one another, and the idea of really seeing and really feeling what it feels like to be the average American worker is hugely helpful"
My Surprising Career as an Amazon.com "Fake" Reviewer - "I place an order for a product by following a complicated set of search keyword instructions intended to improve the product’s search ranking. When the product ships, I receive a refund for the purchase price. After I get the product, I post a review and share it with the seller. I liked the idea of getting free stuff, but I didn’t get any more offers after the first one for a month. Then I had an idea - I walked around my apartment and wrote a photo review of every product that was currently sold on Amazon.com. Then I waited. It worked. Within a week, I was getting multiple offers every night... The flood of reviews caused my reviewer ranking to rise high enough that I could demand a higher product value and dictate terms: I demanded that reviewers pay the PayPal transaction fees, and rejected those that only paid after a positive review... If an American company wants to make something, chances are that they will need to make a series of prototypes in China, with turnaround times of around a week. A Chinese startup in Shenzhen can get turnaround times of under a day, and spy on what virtually every manufacturer worldwide is prototyping in the process. This is why Chinese knockoffs are often released online before the product they imitate reaches stores, and can be better than the originals. Some Silicon Valley startups have decided to move to China to take advantage of this environment. The “copycat” image of China is a temporary phenomenon: while the freedom of speech in America offers an advantage to American software startups, the greater freedom of labor (due to poorly enforced welfare, tax, and minimum wage laws) in China offers an advantage to Chinese hardware startups. It’s not hard to imagine that within a decade, most of the world’s hardware innovation will come from Shenzhen, not Silicon Valley... Amazon.com shoppers can cancel or return a product, and keep the money intended to compensate their purchase... Sellers can abuse reviewers as well, by promising payment after a positive review, then disappearing. Since much of the communication happens via Facebook messages, and Facebook is blocked in China, and the sellers themselves are often banned by Facebook (perhaps even at Amazon.com’s urging), it is not often clear if the disappearance is intentional. Even when a seller scams a buyer, it is not clear that the seller was trying to increase his own sales or hurt a competitor. In fact, many vanishing sellers have been accused of trying to attack their competitors by offering a free review, then disappearing in order to get the buyer to change his review to a negative one."
How Graphology Fools People - "To the casual observer, handwriting analysis enjoys greater plausibility than other occult or pseudoscientific ways of reading personality... Astrology provides a classic example of how sympathetic magic is used to ascribe attributes to strangers. As we shall see, the parallels with graphology are striking... All the foregoing would be touchingly naive, even comical, were it not for the fact that these self- styled experts offer advice where it can seriously affect people’s reputations, well-being, and economic status. For instance, in Vancouver, British Columbia, a prominent graphologist offered to identify, secretly, for preemptive action by the school board, the actual and potential sexual molesters in the local teaching ranks. Others have advised financial institutions on the credit-worthiness of borrowers and many civic governments and large corporations admit to consulting handwriting analysts for pre-employment screening. Graphologists also say they are competent to help select marriage partners and there have been press reports that at least one member of Canada’s National Parole Board was privately consulting her graphologist sister to help select those prisoners who were safe to release. Similarly, a judge in Denver, Colorado, was reported to have sentenced a convict to undergo graphotherapy"