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Thursday, September 02, 2021

Links - 2nd September 2021 (1)

Furious driver taunts Trump fans and flips the bird before CRASHING into car in front of her - "Twitter user @WOP_45 wrote: "KARMA IS A B***H!!!"Biden supporter gets triggered over TRUMP street corner rally and causes a fender bender in front of the POLICE."The woman is seen yelling and holding up a middle-finger with one hand out her driver's side window.She appears to become more enraged as the demonstrators continued cheering.She then proceeded to lift both her middle-fingers into the air - while leaning out the window of her car.Distracted by her protest, the driver quickly tries to hit the breaks after picking up speed. However, she was too late and struck a large vehicle in front of her - to the delight of the Trump fans.Police sirens were then heard before two police officers walked over to the irate woman."

Treasure chest hidden in Rocky Mountains finally found - "A bronze chest filled with gold, jewels, and other valuables worth more than $1 million and hidden a decade ago somewhere in the Rocky Mountain wilderness has been found, according to a famed art and antiquities collector who created the treasure hunt.Forrest Fenn, 89, told the Santa Fe New Mexican on Sunday that a man who did not want his name released — but was from “back East” — located the chest a few days ago and the discovery was confirmed by a photograph the man sent him.“It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago,” Fenn said in a statement on his website Sunday that still did not reveal the exact location. “I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot.”Fenn posted clues to the treasure’s whereabouts online and in a 24-line poem that was published in his 2010 autobiography “The Thrill of the Chase.” Hundreds of thousands have hunted in vain across remote corners of the U.S. West for the bronze chest believed to be filled with gold coins, jewelry and other valuable items. Many quit their jobs to dedicate themselves to the search and others depleted their life savings. At least four people died searching for it.Fenn, who lives in Santa Fe, said he packed and repacked his treasure chest for more than a decade, sprinkling in gold dust and adding hundreds of rare gold coins and gold nuggets. Pre-Columbian animal figures went in, along with prehistoric “mirrors” of hammered gold, ancient Chinese faces carved from jade and antique jewelry with rubies and emeralds. He said he hid the treasure as a way to tempt people to get into the wilderness and give them a chance to launch an old-fashioned adventure and expedition for riches.Fenn told The New Mexican in 2017 that the chest weighs 20 pounds (9 kilograms) and its contents weigh another 22 pounds (10 kilograms). He said he delivered the chest to its hiding place by himself over two separate trips."

A suspect package sent six people to hospital and caused an evacuation -- but it turned out to be a very smelly fruit - "Twelve German postal workers received medical treatment and dozens more were evacuated due to a pungent suspect package -- which turned out to be a shipment of the notoriously smelly durian fruit.Police, firefighters and emergency services were called to a post office in the Bavarian town of Schweinfurt on Saturday after staff noticed the smell coming from a package... It's not the first time durian has caused a panic. Last year, staff at the University of Canberra library were forced to evacuate the building due to a suspected gas leak, but a search revealed the stench was in fact caused by the fruit.And in November 2018, a cargo of durian caused an Indonesian plane to be temporarily grounded after passengers complained about the fruit's room-clearing stench in the cabin."

Hacked Vacuum Cleaner Can Record Your Conversations—No Microphone Required - "This is worrying stuff when you consider that most vacuum cleaners don't come complete with microphones. The same techniques could, theoretically, be applied to any LiDAR sensor-equipped device."

Pranay Pathole on Twitter - "Tech enthusiasts: My entire house is smart. Tech workers: The only piece of technology in my house is a printer and I keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don't recognize."

Man Uses Live Alligator For His Baby’s Gender Reveal Party

Cardboard collecting auntie in Tiong Bahru does it to pass time & exercise: Mummy Yummy - "A Facebook post about a Porsche SUV almost hitting an elderly woman collecting cardboard has been making its round this week. The Facebook user — one Vladimir Guevarra — said that social services could perhaps help the woman, who he said looked "too old and frail" to be collecting cardboard. Two days later, vegetarian hawker stall Mummy Yummy shared on Facebook that they had found the woman — identified as Madam Cha — and that she is being taken care of by her son, and collects cardboard as a way to pass time and exercise, while earning a small income... Guevarra wrote that he was struck by the juxtaposition of the elderly woman and the rich man in the Porsche, and was "stunned" by how big the woman's stack of cardboard was.He said that he gave her money and told her to have some dinner, and asked in his Facebook post whether social services might be able to help her."She looked too old, and shouldn't be doing this. #richpoordivide"... Madam Cha told them that she does not need help from the Social Service Office or government agencies, but that she is getting some money every three months from Silver Support, which is managed for her by her son.Mummy Yummy said that they contacted Madam Cha's son and asked to do a house visit, to see if it is possible to provide meals for Madam Cha.The food stall also wrote that they tried to convince Madam Cha to stop collecting cardboard, but that after chatting with her, they compromised and agreed as long as she looks out for health and road safety."
Poor oppressed elderly auntie who must be lying because she is embarrassed!

US judge says parents owe son over trashed porn collection - "A US judge in Michigan has ruled that a 42-year-old man can seek compensation from his parents for destroying his pornography collection.David Werking, who was living with his parents following a divorce, sued them over the items, which he claims were worth over $25,000 (£18,500)."

Hillary Clinton on Twitter - "Wasn't @TheAmandaGorman’s poem just stunning? She's promised to run for president in 2036 and I for one can't wait."
Comment (elsewhere): "TIL that writing a good poem means you'd make a good Presidential candidate. I suppose you could say that having a reality star as a President has set the bar low! Awesome judge of character this Hilary is!"

Behold: The Fresca button - "There are a ton of hilarious anecdotes about Lyndon Johnson but this might be my favorite. Dude was way too awesome to pick up the phone or use the intercom or heaven forbid, actually get up and walk out of his office to grab a Fresca. He had a special Fresca button installed so he didn’t have to bother with all that."

Preservation Photography Series by Blake Little - "There’s something almost unearthly or otherworldly about Blake Little‘s photography. When you first view his work, it’s like discovering a new form of the human race, some strange underground or earth dwelling people. It is perhaps the honey that they are dripped in that gives them a crystalline quality, as though emerging from an amber, fluid sack. But the images also share a strange eerie quality, as though the subjects were petrified, immortalised in the golden, orange liquid."

sofie halili on Twitter - "men who expect sex from a girl cuz they paid for dinner: you think i'm worth 60 dollars???????"
sofie halili (top 0.5%) OnlyFans - "subscription $15 per month"

Myopia correcting 'smart glasses' from Japan to be sold across Asia - Nikkei Asia - "Can a pair of unique spectacles banish nearsightedness without surgical intervention? Japan's Kubota Pharmaceutical Holdings says its wearable device can do just that, and it plans to start releasing the product in Asia, where many people grapple with myopia. The device, which the company calls Kubota Glasses or smart glasses, is still being tested. It projects an image from the lens of the unit onto the wearer's retina to correct the refractive error that causes nearsightedness. Wearing the device 60 to 90 minutes a day corrects myopia according to the Japanese company."

Confused, jealous wife stabs husband after seeing her younger self in old photos - "A woman stabbed her husband several times after thinking she found photos of him with a younger woman.It turns out that she herself was that “other” woman. The photo of the couple was taken years ago, when they were dating, police in Sonora, Mexico said.Authorities from the municipality of Cajeme reported that a suspect identified only as “Leonora N” was arrested for wounding her husband “Juan N” with a knife after finding several photos on his cellphone."

When Adobe Stopped Flash Content From Running It Also Stopped A Chinese Railroad - "the city of Dalian in northern China was running their railroad system on it. Yes, a railroad, run on Flash, the same thing used to run “free online casinos” and knockoff Breakout games in mortgage re-fi ads... Hell, YouTube used to run on Flash until 2015... when Adobe finally killed Flash-based content from running, this Tuesday Dalian’s railroad network found itself ground to a halt for 20 hours.The railroad’s technicians did get everything back up and running, but the way they did this is fascinating, too. They didn’t switch the rail management system to some other, more modern codebase or software installation; instead, they installed a pirated version of Flash that was still operational. The knockoff version seems to be known as “Ghost Version.” This, along with installing an older version of the Flash player to work with the knockoff Flash server setup, “solved” the problem, and the railroad was back up and running.This is all fascinating to me. It’s not like Flash’s demise was sudden; it’s been known since 2017 that it was going away, and this railroad somehow managed to ignore that until they had absolutely no choice, and everything stopped."

Colombia's 'cocaine hippos' must be stopped: scientists - "Pablo Escobar’s hippos are taking over the marshlands of Colombia — and need to face the same fate as their late owner before they become impossible to control, scientists have warned.The so-called “cocaine hippos” were illegally imported to the country by the notorious drug lord, who was shot dead by authorities in 1993... the rapidly breeding beasts have grown to become the largest invasive species on the planet — and could reach dangerous numbers in the next two decades... When Escobar was killed, authorities took control of his 7,000-acre estate, including a personal zoo.While most of the animals found homes at zoos elsewhere, four of the hippos escaped.With no real predators, there are anywhere between 80 and 100 descendants of Escobar’s former pets terrorizing the country’s lakes and rivers... Scientists have projected that the hippo population could surge to 1,500 by 2024.The hippos pose a threat to the natural wildlife since their urine and feces are toxic, potentially sickening other species and even humans... David Echeverri Lopez, a government environmentalist, said they’re racing to castrate the critters before they take over.“These hippos have become part of the local identity. But time is running out,” he said.Others fear that there’s no other option than to slaughter them."

The World’s Most Efficient Languages - "The prize for most economical language could go to certain colloquial dialects of Indonesian that are rarely written but represent the daily reality of Indonesian in millions of mouths. For example, in the Riau dialect spoken in Sumatra, ayam means chicken and makan means eat, but “Ayam makan” doesn’t mean only “The chicken is eating.” Depending on context, “Ayam makan” can mean the “chickens are eating,” “a chicken is eating,” “the chicken is eating,” “the chicken will be eating,” “the chicken eats,” “the chicken has eaten,” “someone is eating the chicken,” “someone is eating for the chicken,” “someone is eating with the chicken,” “the chicken that is eating,” “where the chicken is eating,” and “when the chicken is eating.” If chickens and eating are à propos, the assumption is that everybody in the conversation knows what’s what. Thus for a wide variety of situations the equivalent of “chicken eat” will do—and does... So does the contrast between Riau Indonesian’s “chicken eat” and Kabardian’s “they saw me and it affected me, not now, and I really mean it” mean that each language gives its speakers a different way of looking at the world? It’s an intriguing idea, first formulated by anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir and amateur linguist (and fire inspector!) Benjamin Whorf. If it were correct, an English-speaker would generally think about the past more than a Chinese-speaker would, while Germans would think more about movement than Americans or Brits.Experiments have shown that this is often true to a faint, flickering degree a psychologist can detect in the artifice of experimental conditions. But does this mean a different way of experiencing life?... When a language seems especially telegraphic, usually another factor has come into play: Enough adults learned it at a certain stage in its history that, given the difficulty of learning a new language after childhood, it became a kind of stripped-down “schoolroom” version of itself. Because all languages, are, to some extent, busier than they need to be, this streamlining leaves the language thoroughly complex and nuanced, just lighter on the bric-a-brac that so many languages pant under. Even today, Indonesian is a first language to only one in four of its speakers; the language has been used for many centuries as a lingua franca in a vast region, imposed on speakers of several hundred languages. This means that while other languages can be like overgrown lawns, Indonesian’s grammar has been regularly mowed, such that especially the colloquial forms are tidier. Lots of adult learning over long periods of time is also why, for example, the colloquial forms of Arabic like Egyptian and Moroccan are somewhat less elaborated than Modern Standard Arabic—they were imposed on new people as Islam spread after the seventh century... only a few languages have been taken up as vehicles of empire and imposed on millions of unsuspecting and underqualified adults. Long-dominant Mandarin, then, is less “busy” than Cantonese and Taiwanese, which have been imposed on fewer people. English came out the way it did because Vikings, who in the first millennium forged something of an empire of their own in northern and western Europe, imposed themselves on the Old English of the people they invaded and, as it were, mowed it. German, meanwhile, stayed “normal.”"

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