Russia threatens criminal charges against NASA astronaut for 2018 ISS incident - "Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has threatened to press charges against a NASA astronaut who it claims drilled a two millimeter hole in a Soyuz MS-09 vehicle that was docked with the International Space Station (ISS) in 2018. The agency recently completed its investigation into what it deems was a sabotage, citing Serena Auñón-Chancellor, a crew member of the ISS at the time of the incident, as the culprit... The Izvestia newspaper reported on Friday, citing sources, that Auñón-Chancellor made the hole with the hopes of return home early, TASS reports. Sources told the Russian news outlet that Auñón-Chancellor wanted to leave the orbiting laboratory due to a blood clot or fight wither her boyfriend onboard the ISS. However, Auñón-Chancellor was married to Jeff Chancellor when she was in space - and the two are still married to this day - so it is unclear who the 'boyfriend' was as stated by Russian insiders."
‘Don’t be so ridiculous’: police give Chinese parents exam-pressure dressing down after son, 14, found in tears wandering on highway alone | South China Morning Post - "A Chinese mother and father who accused their 14-year-old son of not trying hard enough despite him coming fourth in a school class exam have been lambasted on social media for being too demanding. The unidentified boy felt so wronged by his parents that he ran away from home late at night only to be discovered by police crying and alone on a highway, in southwest China’s Yunnan province on February 11... This ranked him fourth in his class and 20th in his grade, an achievement that failed to satisfy his parents... The parents’ obsession with the achievement of the best grades has echoes of the jiwa, or “chicken blood parents” phenomenon, in which parents pressure their kids aggressively to ensure their competitiveness in the fierce battle with their peers to get into an elite university. In January this year, a nine-year-old girl was thrown out of her home by her parents for not finishing her winter holiday homework, drawing widespread online criticism of them. Earlier this month, a Chinese father was sentenced to 12 years in jail, after he accidentally stabbed his 13-year-old son to death for achieving low scores at school."
The creator of a Witcher 3 vagina mod claims CD Projekt used it without permission - "Prior to its release, CD Projekt confirmed that the update included various community-made and community-inspired mods to improve visuals and overall game quality. It recently emerged that one such mod introduced styled pubic hair and visible labia to some of the female NPCs in the game. In a statement to Kotaku, CD Projekt said the mod’s addition was “unintended” and suggested it would be removed in an upcoming patch... The mod in question is an old Nexus Mods mod called Vaginas for Everyone, its creator has now claimed. And in a statement to Kotaku, they also accused CD Projekt of including it without their permission, although it has yet to be confirmed if this is indeed the case."
No, Republicans Aren’t Hypocrites on Family Values - "Scholars and journalists who have bought into the idea that red Americans are hypocrites on family values because some red states do poorly when it comes to family stability are committing what is called the “ecological fallacy” of conflating the family behaviors of individual conservatives with the family behaviors of states dominated by conservatives. So, while it is true Republican states in the South have more family instability than Democratic states in the North, that does not mean Republicans as individuals necessarily have more unstable families than Democrats as individuals. Indeed, when we look not at states but at counties in the United States, we see that counties that lean Republican across the country as a whole have more marriage, less nonmarital childbearing, and more family stability than counties that lean Democratic. In fact, an Institute for Family Studies report I authored found, “teens in red counties are more likely to be living with their biological parents, compared to children living in bluer counties.”... when we turn to the individual level, the conservatives-are-family-values-hypocrites thesis really falls apart. Republicans are more likely to be married, and happily married, than independents and Democrats, as Nicholas Wolfinger and I recently showed in a research brief for the Institute for Family Studies. They are also less likely to cheat on their spouses and less likely to be divorced, compared with independents and Democrats... Family patterns for parents are particularly noteworthy, since children are more likely to thrive when they are raised by stably married parents in good relationships. When we look at parents ages 18 to 55 in the United States, as the figures above and below indicate, we find that Republican parents are significantly more likely to be in their first marriage and, if married, to say they are “very happy” in their marriages... When it comes to family stability, Republican parents are less likely to be divorced... Republicans are less likely to have their first child outside of marriage, compared with Democrats and independents. So, contra Kristof, it’s actually Republicans, not Democrats, who are more likely to enjoy a stable, happy family life anchored around marriage... Republican parents in the South are more likely to be in their first marriage than Democratic and independent parents in the North... Another way to put this: It’s blue and purple Americans in the South who are really pulling down family stability in the South, not red Americans... even if we limit our focus to whites, we still see that white Republican parents are more likely to be in their first marriage... given that Republicans are more likely to be religious than are Democrats, isn’t this Republican advantage an artifact of more religiosity among the Republican ranks? Not entirely... The Republican advantage when it comes to stable, happy marriages across regional, educational and religious lines makes sense for at least three reasons. First, Republicans are more likely to embrace marriage-minded values and live in communities that embrace such values, like the importance of marrying for life and raising children in a two-parent family; and these values do influence behavior... because married parents are more prosperous and less dependent on government for their financial security, they are less likely to gravitate to the Democratic Party and more likely to gravitate to the party of small government and lower taxes... it may be that Republican personality traits—such as their optimism or aversion to risk or conscientiousness—make them somewhat better or more stable spouses."
The liberal cope is that conservatives are lying, and that they're also in unhappy marriages instead of divorcing
Addendum: Red states, Bible Belt, teenage pregnancy, ecological inference
Meme - "Still think we all should get a bunch of blowup dolls and helium to freak out the people waiting for the rapture"
Which Cars Will Be the Last to Offer a Manual Transmission? - "manuals command a substantial 37.7 percent share when adding countries outside of the United States into the mix. In the world’s largest automotive market — China — the split is roughly 50/50 between automatic and manual, while as recently as 2018, countries like the UK boasted 60 percent of new car sales offering a clutch pedal... In the United States, manual transmissions have been most strongly associated with two very specific classes of vehicle: sports cars and entry-level economy models. The former has never been a substantial source of volume for any automaker anywhere, and with the recent focus on 0-to-60 bragging rights, the technical side of the sports and exotic segment has refocused almost exclusively on both dual-clutch and traditional torque-converter automatic designs. Base-model econo-boxes, meanwhile, have undergone a revolution of their own over the course of the past decade, as brands have come to realize that value-focused buyers still want access to advanced safety equipment and other high-tech features. Many of these require the installation of an automatic so that adaptive cruise control and automatic braking can be properly deployed. The end result has been the banishment of manual transmissions to the stripper side of the lot, where sales have also traditionally been slow. In Europe, it’s a quite a different story. Automatics were much slower to colonize the ranks of everyday commuter vehicles because of the fuel efficiency benefits that could be squeezed out by a skilled driver with a stick. In a region where fuel prices can easily double or triple those of the United States, every little bit helps. Diesel’s popularity on the continent has also been a major contributor to manual take rates, for similar reasons. What’s more, automobiles as a whole are much more expensive overseas than they are in America, whether it’s due to import tariffs or local taxation for efficiency and emissions reasons. Adding the cost of an automatic gearbox on top of that rendered the feature unappealing for generations of drivers. This has also been a driving factor in China, where owning a car is a massive status symbol. A less expensive vehicle is appealing to buyers who desperately want to park a car in their driveway at a price point they can afford, with little attention paid to who, or what, is shifting gears... With computer-controlled, continuously-variable transmissions rivaling manuals in terms of fuel-sipping and engineering costs sloping downwards at a steady rate, the practical reasons for manual ownership are becoming less apparent. Consider, too, the stringent regulations beginning to ban diesel engines from Europe’s major cities, and another manual stronghold is slowly beginning to crumble."
James Cameron Flies One-Finger Salute To Fans Leaving ‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ Screening - "Director James Cameron appeared to take issue with some fans after a special screening of his latest film — “Avatar: The Way of Water” — flipping them the bird when they booed him for refusing to stop and sign a few autographs."
The 'Bi Chair' For People Who Can't Sit Straight Is Now For Sale
The Story Behind the "Happiest Man in China" Photo - "For much of the early history of photography smiling in photographs was almost unheard of for various reasons. (See: When Did People Start Smiling in Photographs?) Despite this, a photo of a Chinese man, dubbed by the masses on the internet, “the happiest man in China”, occasionally makes the rounds purporting to be of a 19th century Chinese man who unabashedly displays a wide, toothy grin for the camera. This, in addition to the man’s remarkably photogenic appearance and near flawless smile, has naturally led many to dismiss the photo as fake- seemingly just a picture someone recently took and digitally touched up to appear like a photo from the 19th or early 20th centuries. So is the “happiest man in China” photo a fake and who is the smiling man? As for the latter question, very unfortunately, nobody knows. We do, however, know the photo is genuine and how it survived through today. Officially titled “Eating rice, China” (and originally captioned “Chinaman eating rice”), the picture is one of originally 143 photographs (105 of which can be seen here) collated by famed sinologist (more or less “expert on China”) Berthold Laufer who, in 1904, returned from a landmark three year trip to the Orient with about 7,500 objects intended to showcase the day to day life of the average Chinese individual at the time. As to this little adventure, Laufer, who did not take a camera with him, was sent on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History"
Miracle Turned tragedy: All you need to know about '1991 incident' involving Pastor Daniel and Lions of Ibadan Zoo - "Prophet Daniel Abodunrin is remembered by most Nigerians to date for his miracle mission that later became his doom. Determined to recreate a biblical occurrence, he wanted to prove that he is the modern-day Daniel, and that what happened in the Bible with Daniel could repeat itself. The city of Ibadan is popularly known for its fascinating history, culture and amazing tourist destinations... Prophet Daniel wanted to recreate the biblical story of Daniel, who was thrown into the lions den and came out with barely a scratch. But prophet Daniel Abodunrin forgot that the Biblical Daniel was under persecution and thrown into the lions den by his enemies and not on his own accord. Prophet Daniel Abodunrin begged the staff members of the zoo to let him in, but they refused. After much pleas which fell on deaf ears, he then sneaked into the cage. People outside, bewildered and alarmed tried to talk him out of it but he marched on. He was clothed in a red robe and had a big Bible under his armpit. When he entered, he began to recite Bible verses and speak in tongues. At first, the lions retreated to a corner of their cage and unknown to the prophet, he thought his prayers were working. As he moved closer, the lions pounced on him. He was torn apart and eaten by the lions. After the incidence, many people condemned the prophet for such a bizarre act while others believed the lions were possessed by demons stronger than the prophet, and demanded that they should be killed."
The day Queen Elizabeth died: the inside story of her final hours
Meme - "I hate thinking!
Me too!
Let's just leave all the thinking to the professionals and authorities!"
Meme - "Watch like 2 hours of Key and Peele skits and YouTube decided that now every ad is gonna be switched to only black people. It's like when I watched a free French movie on YouTube and suddenly every ad was in French. This shit is fucking weird and obnoxious."
Meme - "When I'm in the middle of a big boss fight and the HP gets low: *eating*"
Meme - "Creationist Puddle
Wow! I fit perfectly in this hole. It must have been designed for me!"
Fan Won Radio Station DJ Contest + Played Evanescence for an Hour - "In 2004, a young Evanescence fan won a contest to DJ for a morning at an easy listening station on their hometown radio dial. But when their allotted hour arrived, the music lover played only deep cuts from the Amy Lee-led rock band. They now jokingly admit they "ruined everyone's morning commute" with the programming."
Meme - "CAN SOMEBODY TELL SEAN BEAN HE'S EITHER SHAWN BAWN OR SEEN BEEN, HE CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS."
Meme - "It was at this moment Louie realized why Rob bought him lunch everyday for the past 2 years *thin cop using fat police officer as human shield in firefight*"
Luca 🇦🇺 on Twitter - "You've just ordered Pizza Hut and a 2L Mountain Dew. You've loaded up RuneScape on your PC. No school tomorrow. Your parents don't care if you stay up all night long. A perfect Summer night. You are 39 years old. The year is 2022."
Meme - *Indian Army Camel with 81mm mortar*
Why Willem Dafoe Had Emma Stone Slap Him 20 Times for Upcoming Movie - "there's a scene in the film where Stone, 34, slaps Dafoe, 67, in the face off-camera — but Dafoe had his costar slap him in real life around 20 times to help make the action look more believable"
Meme - "66-73 CE. The Great Jewish Revolt against the Romans is crushed by Vespasian and Titus. Titus refuses to accept a wreath of victory, because there is "no merit in vanquishing people forsaken by their own God."
Meme - "Adam Brown I think it is time you go to church."
Adam Brown: "no thanks. When I want to spend 10% of my money to be lied to so I feel good, I'll go to a strip club. They have less rules, the touching is consensual, the music is way better, and the servings of wine are much bigger. Overall, it's just a much better value."
Meme - "Welcome to Hogwarts"
Meme - "Love. <3
Meme - "Les vieux : « Les jeunes sont dépendant de la technologie »
Hidden Valley Ranch is now an ice cream flavor - "The company has teamed up with Hidden Valley to release a limited-edition Ranch dressing flavored ice cream, which will go on sale for a short time later this month in honor of National Ranch Day."
Sorry for another question. What are fun things to do for a friendless single woman? : askTO - "One time I posted on Reddit that I was a single male that’s never received nudes in my life and some kind Redditor sent me a picture of her titties. I’m forever thankful to her for sharing the experience of receiving nudes with me."
Lost a direct chat and its history : help - "A direct chat with another Reddit user disappeared from my list of direct chats. I started a new direct chat with that same Reddit user, and I don't see any of the old history. I have two questions:
Meme - "hi"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Shop like the Queen - "'You can lose your Royal Warrant and that does happen on a fairly regular basis doesn't it? For what reasons could you lose it?'
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, The fungi kingdom - "'Why are plants so reliant on fungi?'
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Food for mood - "'There's some people who are very sensitive to blood sugar variations and especially if some anxiety. When you have a blood sugar crash after you eat a very high carb or high sugar kind of snack, 90 minutes later, people will get an anxiety attack, I've even had people wake up from sleep with an anxiety attack because they ate something really carby right before bed... when you eat more carbs... you produce more insulin... you need that insulin, that's how you drive energy into the cells... if you overshoot a little bit, then you get a crash and your blood sugar drops. When your blood sugar drops, you actually physiologically get a rush of steroids and that can cause you to have a panic attack or to have greater anxiety'"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, What do astronauts eat? - "Pretty much everything you could eat down here, just you had to add the water back to it. And of course we don't have bread on the space station because it crumbles and you don't want to get those crumbs everywhere, you don't want to breathe them in, you don't want to get them in your eyes or into the equipment, so we use flour tortillas for almost everything. So you can make a nice breakfast burrito'"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Portion distortion - "‘Today in the UK, the average pizza, has increased by 53% since 1990. I'm half Italian I remember in Italy, we used to have a slice of pizza. Now of course, you have a full pizza.’...
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, What's up with airline food? - "'You started having these weird gimmicks. There was an airline called Western Airlines which never flew to Britain but for some reason started something they called the Hunt Breakfast on their overnight flights, so the first thing in the morning you would be awakened by the sound of dogs barking and the stewards and stewardesses would come through the aircraft what looked like British hunting costumes'...
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Menopause and diet - "‘One of the things that I find with women is they do not eat enough protein and that sends them binging on carbohydrates for the rest of the day, so I'm a big fan of protein. It helps to keep you full for longer and most, nearly all protein foods are full of vitamins and minerals and if they're plant-based, phytonutrients which are beneficial compounds so, getting enough protein, I recommend 20 to 30 grams at every meal, and work it into your snacks if you can and if that is the one change that you make let's say tomorrow you start doing that, I think you'll find a big difference in your appetite’"
Thomas Massie on Twitter - "Just got off of a zoom meeting with Fed, Treasury, FDIC, House, and Senate. A Democrat Senator essentially asked whether there was a program in place to censor information on social media that could lead to a run on the banks."
Yesu Wa Tongaren: Kenyans Say Bungoma Man Should Be Crucified Like Jesus - "A section of Kenyans has called for a Bungoma man claiming to be Jesus to suffer a similar fate. Yesu Wa Tongaren, real name Eliud Wekesa captivated the nation after claiming to be the Christian Messiah. Just like the Biblical Crist, Wekesa claimed to perform a miracle of turning water into tea. He also has a group of 12 disciples"
*hands over broom as kid is excited*
*kid sweeps grounds as other kids fly overhead on brooms*
"Throw me away. I'm used to it. *Black, presumably African, kid staring angrily*""
*White woman with black man*
*White woman with white kid and black man*"
Toujours eux : *L'hôpital*"
Is it possible to recover the old history? Could the old chat exist under a different identifier which I can somehow recover via browser developer tools?"
"I ended up making a request at https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request . When I got the data the missing chat history was there. I used https://csvkit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/cli.html to filter it to that one specific chat and remove useless columns. (Chat text can be quoted and split accross multiple lines, which is valid CSV, but not usable for ordinary grep.)"
How to export your reddit chat history
"send dudes"
"you mean nudes?"
"I'm in a fight. I need more men"
"And Rohan will answer."
'Well, there's the most interesting story of course. The Royal Lingerie Maker, Rigby and Peller, they lost theirs purely because one of their bra-fitters wrote her memoirs, delightfully entitled Storm in a D Cup - Revelations of Buckingham Palace based bra fitting sessions, and the Royal Family don't like that. Discretion is everything. Benson and Hedges, the tobacconist, lost theirs at the end of the 90s, it was said because very few members of the Royal Family were smoking so they were not supplying enough of what they make. But equally, that was at a time when the issue of smoking and health was very much to the fore'"
'So almost all plants depend on fungi that live in their roots which grow upwards into the soil which supply the plants with nutrients and water, which the plant feeds with sugars that it produces in photosynthesis. And this relationship is incredibly old. Land plants, when they started moving from freshwater onto the land, formed relationships with fungi which behaved as their root systems for tens of millions of years till plants evolved their own roots. So these fungal relationships are a more fundamental part of planthood than leaves or roots or wood or flowers or fruit, many of the things we think of when we think of plants'"
‘I think it's also selling a certain kind of, I think for some people masculinity. There has been some interesting research that shows that the larger the cap, that is on someone's desk, the more important people think this person is, especially. And I think there's a bit of all of that going on here. The same way when you go to Oktoberfest in Munich, you see those huge, huge glasses of beer. To me, it's symbolic. It is, I'm a big man, I can drink that much. Can you?’...
‘A slice of bread in the UK in 1993, was 36 grams. But by 2013, it was 40 grams, that might not sound like very much. But if you add a sandwich every day, then you'd be eating around seven and a half 1000 more calories in 2013, then you would have been with the same sandwich in 1993. So the food that we're buying a, in, in supermarkets, the food were being served in restaurants, the food that were being served in takeaways… it's all getting bigger.’...
‘There's also an increase in tableware, that's been documented over the last over the last 100 years. So the size of plates has been getting bigger. So you have glasses... In a recent study in the US children aged between three and five, the amount of food and milk that they were given over a five day period was increased by around 50%. And what was observed is that they didn't eat less as time went on. So it seems that we are cued much more by the food in front of us than we are by biological cues of hunger and satiety... there's some evidence to show that when people are presented with smaller portion sizes at a meal, they don't tend to eat more to make up for it later in the day’...
'The cost of food makes up a relatively small proportion of the price we pay for it, which means it's possible for the companies selling it to increase the amount they're offering without raising the price much. People love to think they're getting a good deal and happily buy the bigger portions. So supersizing makes good business sense.'...
'In your restaurants or even a supermarket, most of your costs are fixed, it's labor, it's real estate, it's advertising. The cost of the food itself, especially when it comes to soda or popcorn is almost negligible. It's something like one penny an ounce. So it really always pays to get your customers to upsize, to pay a little bit more for a larger portion, because it's going to be more profitable. Sometimes you actually even see restaurants or the cinemas price, the larger size below the marginal cost. So in fact, it's even cheaper than it should be. And the reason they do that is really because they overcharge you on the smaller size. They know that people who want to buy a small size, tend to be people who are wealthier, more educated, the kind of people who pay attention to how much they eat. And so they tax you by overcharging you on the small popcorn portion, for example, in movie theater, knowing that you can afford it... in a way, the limits to all these supersizing he's, surprisingly, perhaps the cost of the container, is not the cost of the soda, because again, it costs really little, is the fact that this plastic is expensive.'...
'The human brain isn't very good at perceiving increases in size'...
‘It's a different story when it comes to downsizing.’
‘People are incredibly accurate at spotting it... People know the old size and they also know that the new size can't be less than zero, right? So you have two reference points that help you. On the other hand when you're increasing the size, you know the starting point but it could go up to infinity so you only have one reference to help you... our eyes, they tend to be more influenced by the surface area of an object. And when you even get something when you move from a regular can to slim can you actually keep the surface area of the can about the same. And it gives the impression of, of volume. In in my studies, for example, I was able to downsize portions by up to 24%, without people realizing by elongating an object… You can downsize portions quite easily actually, if you cut them into pieces, because people are going to count the number of portions. And if they see many pieces, they'll think there's a lot of food. And so for example, I've been able to reduce the amount of food by up to sometimes 20, without people noticing by just cutting it into smaller pieces. It's like the old joke, you know, then when you're really hungry, you should cut the pizza into eight slices instead of four. It's actually not a joke, it really works.’
‘And there's one other idea Pierre has been working on. He calls it Epicurean nudging’...
‘We emphasize the multi sensory properties of the food, we talked about the different aromas, the flavors, the texture, and we reminded people that pleasuring food comes from savoring. So what we found is that in the Epicurean menu, people on average chose to eat less food, they ate 17% less. Yet, at the end of the meal, when we asked them to tell us what would be a fair price for the meal they just had, they were willing to pay about 16% more. So we made people happy to be willing to pay more for less food. Why? Because they ate more slowly. They ate more mindfully. Instead of watching their phone, they paid attention to what they were eating, and as a result, they enjoyed their meal more even though they had consumed less of it... The thing that we fail to realize is that the overall pleasure from eating that chocolate mousse is not the sum of the pleasure that you get from each spoon. But the average. So the last spoon, the last bite, the one that's not really pleasant, doesn't add a little bit of okay pleasure, it actually draws the entire average down.’"
‘As cheaper plane tickets and generous loyalty programs came in, the focus on food went out of the window’
‘So you started having food served on fewer and fewer flights and the airlines finally realized: look if we stop serving it all together or serve something that's very very minimal, you know, what are people going to do? Say I'll go to the place down the street? You know, all of our competitors are doing the same thing and it reduced both the volume of food served, the quality of the food served. All of a sudden it was just a different world... modern Airline meals are mostly bought from the same companies...
‘You're not completely cutting off your sense of smell by going on an airplane but you're definitely dulling the sensation. There's definitely a suppression in one's ability to be able to taste sweetness and saltiness. Interestingly enough though the research has shown that the fifth taste sensation Umami that that still seems to be more consistent or if anything perhaps boosted... you definitely want foods that have lots of great textures, so that's really important because if you've got a dulling in some of the senses like smell or taste or whatever it may be definitely having interesting uh textures in there’"
Damn misinformation!