Bannerless Builds - Posts | Facebook - "I have just discovered Orbis (https://orbis.stanford.edu), a free resource that estimates how long a journey might have taken in the Roman Empire. You can choose season, modes of transportation, priority (speed, economy etc); it also estimates costs & difficulty. I am SPEECHLESS."
"As someone who grew up on the Metric system (aka lawful measurement), the chaotic Imperial system employed by most RPGs might as well be a unique fantasy system of measurement designed by goblins with no consistency or forethought. Sure, I can eyeball 5', but overland travel baffles me. What the hell is a mile? I was going to post a random number as a joke, but the truth -that 1 mile = 5280 feet- is just as absurd as whatever I was coming up with. So! ORBIS Routefinder isn't just a useful tool for GMs to approximate trips based on the level of technology is your typical fantasy RPG. It's a mandatory tool for the Metric countries of the world to figure out the madness that is the US measurement system."
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "The boondoggle that is the California bullet train was just granted $1 billion from the Biden administration. The agency responsible for the high speed train was established in 1996 and was expected to produce a ballot proposal for 1998 or 2000. The ballot proposal appeared in November, 2008. The voters approved $10 billion in bonds to build core segments from San Francisco to Los Angeles, with an expected matching amount from the federal government. The voters were guaranteed that the train would run at least 200mph, take no more than 2 hours and 40 minutes to travel between LA and San Francisco, and would 100% cover its running costs without being subsidized. During 2010-2011, the White House agreed to give the project $6.25 billion. In 2014 California assigned 25% of its cap and trade revenues to the rail project. The actual revenue from this in 2016 was half of what was expected — $1.8 billion. The agency voted to start construction in 2012. The governor approved construction in 2015, Contractors were named in 2015 and the project was halted in 2019. California’s voters were told in 2008 that the total cost of the rail line would be $40 billion and be running by 2023. Ten years later, the cost estimates had more than doubled and full service would happen in 2033. I expect the train will not run at it’s needed speed of 220mph, will have longer trip times, have higher fares than the $86 predicted several years ago, will have lower ridership, and require subsidies. It’s also not likely to meet the latest deadlines."
Factors Associated With Obesity: A Case–Control Study of Young Adult Singaporean Males - "A case–control study among Singapore Armed Forces' newly enlisted Servicemen was conducted to examine factors associated with male obesity. Four hundred and fifty-nine individuals from the Obese Basic Military Training program were selected as “cases” (average age: 19.5, body mass index: 30.4) and another 340 individuals were selected from the Normal Basic Military Training program as “controls” (average age: 19.3, body mass index: 21.4). Information such as family background, socioeconomic factors, and lifestyle practices were captured using facilitator-led questionnaires. Several variables were significantly associated with obesity after adjustments for possible confounders. These include childhood obesity (odds ratio [OR] = 2.06), less than an hour of exercise per day (OR = 2.97), Indian ethnicity (OR = 2.22), specific education backgrounds (especially that of Institute of Technical Education—OR = 2.75), father's employment at nonmanagerial/professional jobs (OR = 1.52), mother's employment at managerial/professional jobs (OR = 2.02), regular smoking (OR = 1.73) and alcohol consumption (OR = 2.26), 6 hours or less of sleep (OR = 3.73), obesity among family members (OR = 1.86 for mother; OR = 2.98 for siblings), parental history of diabetes mellitus (OR = 2.22 for father; OR = 2.70 for mother), and eating at inexpensive local food stalls (OR = 1.82). Our study found that a number of factors, ranging from personal and family backgrounds to lifestyle choices, were significantly associated with obesity among male youths."
Hawker food makes you fat
The one thing I don't miss about our family holidays in France? The French - "Eating out at the locale bistro was, for example, a potential minefield. Most of the restaurants didn’t open till 7pm, by which time the children, then consisting of baby, toddler and five year old, were beside themselves with hunger. And there was no such things as a kids’ menu for our little plebs – so they mostly ended up stuffing their faces with French bread and squandering the menu du jour, much to our fellow diners’ horror. I remember the sinking feeling of mortification when our eldest asked for fish fingers at one place. The boy sitting at the next table, who can’t have been more than about four, was tucking quietly into a bowl of moules. He didn’t sulk about not having his iPad, refuse to eat the food put in front of him, or complain about being bored. I felt the eyes of the French locals on us when my terrible trio bypassed the salad course and went straight for the frites. The rustic charm of the region, just south of the Dordogne, with its verdant vineyards, ancient chateaux, and fields of sunflowers, was mostly lost on the children, who would probably have been far happier at Butlins."
When you're ethnocentric and don't believe that when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Luckily the French are mostly white, so this isn't "racist"
A Chinese zoo tried to pass off a Golden Retriever as a lion 😂 - "Take a look at this ferocious beast awaiting guests in the lion enclosure at China's Yuanjiashan Zoo... Apparently, this habit of substituting dogs for other animals has happened at other Chinese zoos. Two others substituted dogs for wolves, and when asked, one of the zoos said the wolf was just hiding but dog was better anyway because it was "more active.""
7-Eleven to build 7-Eleven in parking lot of another 7-Eleven - "For almost all of 2019, a lone 7-Eleven franchisee in Higashiosaka City, Osaka, made national headlines after it challenged the corporate policy of staying open 24 hours a day. Citing lack of staff as the reason, the owner Mitoshi Matsumoto took it upon himself to close overnight. In response, on 31 December 2019, the company ended their contract with Matsumoto claiming that they had received complaints about the way he treated customers. Normally, this would mean the shop would close, but Matsumoto surprised everyone by continuing to run the store for a few weeks after. After speaking with the owner, he told us he would not accept the termination of the contract until a court ruled on it. So, he kept the store running with a skeleton crew and without any 7-Eleven amenities like an official cash register, ATM, or prepaid cards, until all of the stock was sold off."
This Cool Underwater Post Box Actually Works - "When the postmaster of Sumami, Japan noticed the city needed a boost of tourism, he developed an interesting solution. He put a post box near the coast of the fishing town hoping that the novelty would attract divers from around the world and pique the curiosity of people everywhere. Postmaster Toshihiko Matsumoto hoped that it would attract people to the Kii Peninsula, altering an old, red post box that had been in the town since 1999. He didn't know if anyone would care or if it would even work. Over 45,000 pieces of mail later, it definitely seems to work. The small fishing town sees thousands of travelers each year come into a local dive shop to purchase a water-proof postcard. They then dive down to the post box and drop off their notes. Kioaki Yamatani manages Sumami's dive shop, and he's the one responsible for diving down to the post box each day, collecting the notes, and sending them on to the post office. The post box even caught the attention of Guinness World Records who determined that it was the deepest underwater postbox in the world at 10 meters"
Gyeongju Seokbinggo – Gyeongju, South Korea - "A small protrusion resembling the surrounding burial tumuli protrudes from the ground in a quiet corner of Wolseong Fortress. However, this one in particular had a very different purpose. Seokbinggo literally means “stone ice storage.” It is effectively an icebox made of stone and was the secret behind Korea’s ability to have ice in the middle of summer during the 1700s."
Cops: Cheesy Murder Plot Foiled - "In an unusual case of mistaken identity, a woman who apparently thought a block of white cheese was cocaine was charged with trying to hire a hit man to rob and kill four men... Jessica Sandy Booth, 18, was arrested over the weekend and charged with four counts of attempted murder and four counts of soliciting a murder."
WTF: There’s A NSFW ‘Pocket Puppy’ For Dogs No One Asked For, Not Even Fifi - "The quarantine has been a lonely time for man, and his best friend hasn’t been spared. Thanks to online marketplaces, however, there’s now a toy companion for horn dogs everywhere. Internet users are petrified at screenshots of a sex toy that pooches can hump instead of random objects around the house. “I thought I had seen it all,” one Facebook user shared. “[But here’s] a pocket PUPPY for your dog.” Unfortunately, the weirdness doesn’t stop there. In one listing from AliExpress, the item is described as a “vent toy” with a “high imitation [of] female canine organ.” It’s also touted to recreate “woo hoo sound[s]” from female dogs. The toy’s opening is built with an “imported” and “edible” silicone material. It is also equipped with a stainless steel skeleton, as well as suction cups beneath the paws, to ensure it stays up during the most rigorous of activities."
Blue Light Linked With Depressive Symptoms In Hamsters, Study Suggests
Smiths Station Animal Hospital - Posts | Facebook - "*goodbye kisses* This jar is reserved for our euthanasia appointments...because no dog should go to Heaven without tasting chocolate. ❤️❤️❤️ Dr. Namie"
BBC accused of attempting to shut out GB News at 11th-hour - "The BBC has been accused of an eleventh-hour "ambush" intended to "damage" Sunday's launch of the right-leaning television network GB News. The corporation is alleged to have been pushing to bar GB News from accessing footage of public events via a "pooling" system run by the country's three main broadcasters. The move would leave the new channel unable to broadcast many major events where there is only space for one camera."
Ikea and Grolsch join Kopparberg boycott of GB News - "GB News has been struck by an advertising boycott from some of the world's biggest brands after the right-leaning news service was targeted by political activists. Kopparberg, the Swedish cider maker, was joined by Grolsch, Ikea, the Open University and skin care brand Nivea in suspending advertising ties with the network. Insurer LV=, Pinterest, Specsavers and Octopus Energy also said they would review their advertising. However, some GB News advertisers warned against taking "knee-jerk decisions" following the backlash prompted by Stop Funding Hate, a social media campaign group that has gained prominence by organising boycotts of some national newspapers promoting right-of-centre views... A source at a GB News advertiser said brands should resist the pressure exerted by Stop Funding Hate due to the threat posed to freedom of speech. They said: "Those calling for an advertising boycott of the channel are playing directly into the hands of the GB News agenda - researchers on 'Woke Watch' [one of GB News' shows] can probably take the next month off. "This can be a tough debate for brands, as it's so often spun as a values issue, but at its core this about freedom of speech and freedom of the press. "Brands should have principles, but avoid living in an echo chamber and taking knee-jerk decisions because of the noise made by one campaign group." Another industry source said: "The fact is GB News has a broadcasting licence awarded by the regulator. That same regulator can, and should, step in if 'hateful' content is truly being broadcast - and it is yet to do so.""
GB News: Why are advertisers boycotting the new TV channel? - "Responding to Ikea, veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil, who fronts the channel, shared a story about the company's French arm being fined £1m and its CEO handed a two-year suspended sentence after it spied on employees for three years. Neil wrote: "IKEA has decided to boycott GB News because of our alleged values. Here are IKEA's values - a French CEO who is a criminal with a two year suspended jail sentence for spying on staff."... In his opening monologue, former BBC political interviewer Mr Neil said the channel will "puncture the pomposity of our elites in politics, business, media and academia and expose the growing promotion of cancel culture for the threat to free speech and democracy that it is"."
The pathetic attempt to cancel GB News - " The pathetic attempt to cancel GB News Share Topics Free Speech Politics UK GB News – the first new British news network to launch in 24 years – has barely been on the air for 48 hours. And yet already people are trying to get it shut down. The group Stop Funding Hate has ramped up its campaign against the opinion-led, anti-woke GB News in the wake of its launch on Sunday night. SFH has been urging its followers to put pressure on the channel’s advertisers to withdraw and, depressingly, it has already had some success. The first to buckle was cider brand Kopparberg. In response to one tweeter, who was pushing the Stop Funding Hate hashtag and complaining about Kopparberg adverts running on GB News, the Swedish firm said yesterday that it would be ‘suspend[ing] our ads from this channel pending further review of its content’. It would be bad enough if this was a one-off. But today four other advertisers – Dutch beer brand Grolsch, skincare company Nivea, Swedish flat-pack giant IKEA, and the Open University – promptly followed suit, announcing they would also be suspending their advertising following a backlash. Grolsch went so far as to say it would try to make sure that its ads didn’t appear on GB News ever again. Stop Funding Hate has been trying to get GB News cancelled since long before it hit the airwaves. In February, it told its supporters to ‘tweet your mobile-phone company using the hashtag #DontFundGBNews; urge them not to advertise with GB News or any “Fox News-style” channel’. SFH’s aim is to strangle this upstart at birth – to deprive a new channel of revenue purely because of its political slant. Of course GB News is not the right-wing hate-fest its critics have made it out to be. As we’ve seen these past couple of days, it merely features some anti-woke and anti-lockdown voices. What Stop Funding Hate and its intolerant supporters are doing here is trying to mobilise corporate power to suppress opinions that they just happen to disagree with. It is all so pathetic and authoritarian at the same time... In all this, SFH is exploiting the cowardice of corporations, who are all desperate to appear right-on these days... Kopparberg declared itself a ‘drink for everyone’ when it pulled its ads. Everyone except GB News viewers, it seems. Indeed, all this talk of inclusion clearly doesn’t include those in the country who happen to like their news with an anti-woke angle. Any brand which bases its advertising strategy on the hurt feelings of tweeters and campaign groups needs to rethink its priorities. What’s even more concerning here is that a university, the Open University, piled in as well... To drop ads with GB News, purely because some easily offended tweeters don’t like what people say on it, is not to strike some blow against bigotry – it is to give in to bigotry, to give in to the sort of people who are so closed-minded that they can’t bear the thought of views they disagree with having a place in the mainstream media."
The Telegraph - Posts | Facebook - "GB News will smash the BBC's,biasedm Left-wing broadcasting hegemony"
It's telling how all the people going on in the comments about how the BBC really has a right wing bias don't actually cite actual evidence of its biased reporting, but just claim that it's "Tory" owned/controlled, therefore it's biased. Of course, ownership/funding is only "proof" of bias when it makes the right look bad
IKEA and the con of woke capitalism - "Show me a ‘woke’ corporation and I’ll show you a corporation that almost certainly has been up to some really dodgy stuff in its time. That’s certainly been borne out by the whole GB News boycott row, which exploded online yesterday... What ‘values’ they were worried about isn’t entirely clear, given GB News is a chatty opinionated news channel, not the fascist propaganda channel of the FBPE set’s fever dreams. Plus, a quick Google would soon reveal that many of these companies aren’t exactly as pious as their Twitter account managers have been making out. When IKEA pulled its GBN ads yesterday, it said it wanted to make sure the content on the channel was in line with the firm’s ‘humanistic values’. You might ask what humanism has to do with selling flat-pack furniture. More to the point, what does humanism have to do with spying on employees – something else IKEA has been up to of late? Yes, within hours of IKEA UK making its brave stand against anti-woke broadcasting, IKEA France was fined €1million, and its former CEO was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence, after a French court found the company had spied on its employees over a number of years... It’s also worth noting that while IKEA is pulling promotional material from GBN, it has previously edited its promotional materials for use in Saudi Arabia, to better align with the regime’s values. In 2012, it was forced to apologise after it was found to have airbrushed women out of images in its catalogue. Then there’s Nivea, one of the other brands to boycott GBN. Despite its virtue-signalling yesterday, it has previously been criticised for flogging a skin-whitening cream, called ‘Natural Fairness’, in Africa – complete with an ad of a black woman being complimented for her lighter tone... Ben & Jerry’s has been a particularly striking example in this. In the past year it has solemnly pledged to ‘End White Supremacy’. It even lectured Priti Patel about migrants via a pious Twitter thread. Meanwhile, it has been the target of protests by migrant workers who have alleged awful working conditions in the firm’s supply chain. Nike and Apple have, like many giant US firms, spent a chunk of the past year banging on about Black Lives Matter and opining on the vicious legacy of slavery. And yet both firms have also been implicated in forced labour practices in China. The brass neck is staggering."
The 'Lost' City Of Atlantis | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘It's an astonishing piece of fiction writing, which, although it's set 9200 years ago, even from the middle of the fourth century BC, it's, has got very futuristic sort of elements. It's, it's an imaginary city. So it actually reads in a way more like a place in a science fiction novel to us than a piece of serious ancient history. Plato just was an amazing writer, I think he was a better writer than philosopher… he describes in the most elaborate terms an impossible society, specifically impossible. It's not quite clear whether it's even underwater or not..
Plato… didn't like the Athenian democracy... I always believe Aristotle... he says, the Great Plato invented this in order to teach political philosophy. He said it was an invention of Plato, is not a true story... trying to design the ideal, utopian society.’
‘So was it a moralistic? Or do you say, a philosophical device?'
‘Yes, I would say exactly that it binds together, ethics and politics, like how should we be as individuals? And how should we live together in a state, the Greeks hadn't really split those two branches of political theory and individual ethics, it was Aristotle really who came, who did that later. And it's not, it doesn't start from the bottom up doesn't start with what the individual wants, or individual human rights, or liberty or any of those kinds of concepts, very much starts from the top down how you organize, society is rigidly hierarchical and class stratified. And so it's very strange that it doesn't even discuss slavery...
It’s Plato's response to what he thought was wrong with the democracy, but it takes a very moral tone. And for in the Renaissance, for example, it was very often seen as not actually about specific political constitutions, but about a parable about how decadence, countries with decadent people in them will always fall. Like the ancient Romans...
My own view, and this is probably about half of classical scholars would agree with me is that it's a parable about how Athens herself has has an ideal constitution, became decadent, became a sea power. So Athens turned into if you'd like, Atlantis, o we've got the good Athens and the bad Athens. And he counts the bad Athens as what it was in his own day, when it was run by the rowers, they were the working class. They were the ones who gathered all the tribute in from the Empire. Won all the battles. You know, all the Imperial subject cities were on the islands and on coasts. Sea power was how the Athenian Empire worked. And the Athenian Empire was incredibly good for working class men, they got all kinds of liberties that nobody'd ever had before in their class, because they literally provided the energy that pulled the boats. That got the money out of the Empire. Plato hated, hated this, he thought it was quite wrong that uneducated rowers, should have the majority, which they did in the assembly and basically run the city. He thought all the problems Athens had, which it did, it was far too militaristic, and was, you know, all kinds of problems. I'm not denying that. He laid this all at the feet of the uneducated majority, having the say so and argued that in the Republic, he argues that we should build a society where philosophers trained, philosophers who were only interested in goodness and virtue and thinking about what is justice, should be running the show. That's all they do is attend to moral thinking. But that is located back in antediluvian Athens...
[Others] say it's not as specific as that, it's a much more general parable. It isn't tied to the Athenian experience in that way. It's about, it's got bits of, say, the Persian Empire in it, it's got bits of the Islands of the Blessed in it, it's got bits of the Phiatians [sp?] who the Utopian Island that Odysseus goes to in the Odyssey, it's got bits of ancient Egypt, sort of divided, divided between the Athenians and the Atlanteans. It's sort of every constitution that had ever occurred in literature before, right, has fed into it. And of course, I would agree with that in a way with the descriptive writing. But I still think it's more, I think this is a parable about democracy. And there aren’t that many democracies, and most of them were in the Athenian Empire. A few archaeologists, archaeologically minded classicists are still trying to find the real Atlantis and trying to pin it on, I mean, there were a considerable number of floods and tsunamis and earthquakes in the period between the early Bronze Age. In fact, even earlier than that, we know we know. So it's very possible that there are traces, of course, in Plato's writing of folk memory of islands that literally disappear. I mean, that does happen in the Mediterranean, even now, in the world, we know of islands that just suddenly disappear or appear because of earthquake. So I'm not saying they aren't in there. But I do think trying to find a specific location for Atlantis is really, to, to misunderstand Plato’s project fundamentally. The very fact that he sets this island where Greek ships just didn't go, they did not go very far into the Atlantic at all, the people who did were the Phoenicians, and I think there's quite a lot of the Phoenicians, in the Atlanteans, the Phoenicians were a great empire, before classical Athens became, rose to its acme. And they were a great sea power. And they run Western Mediterranean. They founded Carthage, and they were very influential in southern Spain, you know, Barcelona is named after Barca, Hannibal Barca. Barca is the family name of the Carthaginian conquerors... So there’s quite alot of the Pheonicians in it. But that doesn't mean it's about the Phoenicians.'"
Bizarre Books & Macabre Manuscripts | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘I couldn't quite believe how many books it turns out has been bound in human skin. Why?’
‘Yeah, well, quite. I mean that, isn't that the first question, it's mind boggling. It's pretty offensive to our modern sensibilities and we've got these notions of, you know, the Nazis doing nefarious things, binding, making lamps with human skins. It seems like it's just an incredibly sadisti,c psychopathic thing to do. But, you know, as with anything in history, you have to sort of interrogate it, something that happened in our past. And you do have to examine, well, why? And as it turns out, it was a perfectly acceptable at the time, decorative extra offered by printers and binders. And when you when you think well, what could possibly, what could possibly fit with a human skin binding? What kind of work would go inside that other than a book, like a history of human skin binding? What you find is really it, there’s three different genres of literature as this art, I don't know if it evolved, but as it was, as it developed, and initially, you find it used to bind the records of criminals, murderers, people who, you know, we really wanted to make an example out of just how savage and terrible and anathema to decent, law abiding society, these, these sort of outliers are, and make an example of them and what better way to symbolically punish someone who commits these unthinkable crimes by physically binding them and turning them into the, the greatest symbol of civilization, the book? And so there are examples of, I mean, they're fairly well known, but I think we also consider perhaps they’re cloaked in rumor as well. We're not quite sure how many are confirmed examples of human skin but there are, there are murderers. There's a famous example of a highwayman who presented a copy of his autobiography on his deathbed, he left orders that it would be delivered to his only victim who fought back and survived. And the highwayman actually sort of shot at him. But the bullet ricocheted off the the man's belt buckle. And so the highwayman was so impressed with this act of bravery, that he left him a copy of his autobiography bound in his own skin. And as you move away from criminal accounts, you move into the field of medicine, and curious medical cases would be bound by surgeons in the skin of the subject, really, as a way of memorializing this person, in a sense, showing just how special they were, and not just because of the unusual ailment that they suffered from. And then it evolves into more of a romantic metaphor in the 19th century when this is still very much going on. And the idea became more about encapsulating great literature, great works of art, in flesh in the same way that the body encapsulates the soul. And the most famous example of that is Camille Flammarion, the French writer-astronomer, who, and this is a story that he confirmed to the newspapers, was at a party when he complimented a young Countess on her beautiful skin, the charm of her skin, it turned out that she was dying of a terminal illness, I presume tuberculosis or something. And one day later, there's a knock at his door, and there's a French surgeon standing there with a package saying he just flayed the quote marvelously attractive young woman, who had left orders on her deathbed that her skin be presented to her hero, Flammarion for him to bind the his latest work in whatever that might be. So there's a copy of his book Les terres du ciel, from 1877, bound in this charming skin of the Countess, and it actually, it goes on into the early 20th century, but then it becomes more the references that you find looking for evidence of it become more recollections of binders and printers. And especially with you know, little things like world wars going on, it just becomes so sort of disgusting and antithetical to good taste that it dies away...
So in 1997, Saddam Hussein commissioned a master calligrapher of Baghdad to create a, I think it's an 805 page copy of the Quran. Manuscript, to be written in Saddam Hussein's own blood. So over a period of, I think two years, he had around 50 pints of his own blood withdrawn, and to be mixed in with the ink and the calligraphic chemicals. And this work the Blood Quran of Saddam Hussein was produced. Now, obviously, this is not your average man, creating something like this. And it's very much deemed a total monstrosity in Islam to do such, it’s completely haram and forbidden to do this. But the fascinating thing is it presents, continues to present a dilemma to its archivists who bundle it away after the fall of Baghdad into an archive somewhere under, under the streets of Baghdad. And no one knows to this day what to do with it, because it's forbidden to create it. But it's also forbidden to destroy a Quran. And it did go on display, I do include a photo of it, amazingly, in the book, showing it behind those pages out on display in its glass case. So we know it did, it, at least did exist if it, if it doesn't still. And it sits there. Supposedly, in this archive of which there are three separate keys needed to open it. Each one is given to a different public official. So no one can just sort of sneak in and have a peek… I go back all the way looking at the practice in sort of Buddhist writing where it's deemed a sort of an aesthetic act of sacrifice, earning good karma to sort of prick your skin, snap your bones and write. In giving yourself to the literature imbuing yourself and it with this sort of divine power'"
If life gives you lemons a simple surgery can give you melons sign
Meme - "Chuck Montgomery: Anti-Arab reactionary: gets brutally murdered like they deserve
Fake Marxist pacifist Islamaphobic white liberals: yOu CaN't KiLl PeOpLe OvEr a CaRtOoN"
Grady Booch on Twitter - "“I’m not scared of a computer passing the Turing Test. I'm terrified of one that intentionally fails it.”"
Religion, Violence, Tolerance & Progress: Nothing to do with Theology | by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
More nonsense. I guess the surge in Islamist terrorism has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia exporting Wahhabi theology. According to his logic, ideology doesn't change you. It's your underlying culture that makes you respond to that ideology. But that would mean historically tolerant Southeast Asian Islam was really fanatical underneath all along - but somehow this never emerged until recently oddly
Teenager accidentally moved into a retirement community because rent was cheaper - "When Madison Kohout, 19, moved across the country from Oklahoma to Arkansas for a new life, she thought she’d found a bargain apartment. Turns out, she’d actually moved into a retirement community."
Teen Documents Her New Life After Accidentally Moving Into a Retirement Home - "A teenager has compared her life to the plot of a "hallmark movie" after accidentally moving into a retirement home. Madi Ann, 19, shared the bizarre story on TikTok, revealing she moved from Norman, Oklahoma, to start a new life in a "small town" in Arkansas... Madi, who works as a nursing assistant for a local home health company, said most of her neighbors are over 65, as she called the senior citizens "kind and caring." "I have also become friends with a lot of my neighbors. I have been able to go to dinner with them, have late-night conversations, and I have received some snacks as well! I love getting to know them and developing close relationships as well"... "When I get home it's usually always super quiet. Because most of my neighbors are asleep by the time I get home. But one major perk is that I can play music whenever I want to, because some of them can't hear."Another fun thing about living in the old folks' home is I can always hear about the tea in town. Another fun thing is whenever I get to come home after a long day, everyone asks me how I'm doing"... "They are equal opportunity housing, meaning they do not discriminate based on age. However, it is designed for senior citizens, as that is the primary age group residing here. I am the only teenager in sight. They have about 10 apartments on site, and I am the only teenager here! It has definitely been fun getting to have extra sets of grandparents. I plan on staying for quite a while! I absolutely love my neighbors." She added the rent was a "financial blessing," revealing she pays $350 a month for a two-bedroom apartment... Numerous people have commented on the clips, with TikToker Chlo wrote: "For people confused: most of those places are required by law to rent (for example) 15% of the units to 40+, or 18+ etc." And Lisa commented: "My friend moved into one when she was 24. She still lives there 10yrs later and she loves it. She plays bingo with everyone.""
No relationship between class size and learning outcomes: OECD - "Reducing class size is very appealing. The natural thinking is that with a smaller class, the teacher is able to give more time to each child/student. This is true to some extent, especially with very young children. Overall the evidence of the effects of differences in class size on student performance is weak according to an OECD publication on ‘Education at a glance’. The Pisa international tables suggest that small class sizes do not necessarily create high-performing education systems. In fact, Andreas Schleicher who is Director for Education and Skills, and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the OECD in Paris which runs the Pisa Research, says: “Everywhere, teachers, parents and policy-makers favour small classes as the key to better and more personalised education… And yet, Pisa results show no relationship between class size and learning outcomes, neither within nor across countries.”"
This won't stop people fetishising small class sizes
Man with dual citizenship jailed for defaulting on NS obligations - "Basil Lim Boon Hoh, 28, holds both Singapore and Malaysian citizenships. The court heard that Lim - who is Singaporean by birth - was relocated to Malaysia when he was about a year old... While Lim was granted Malaysian citizenship in 2001, his mother still applied for a Singapore NRIC on his behalf in 2007 because she wanted him to have a choice in the future, court documents state. Lim's father informed him of his NS obligations before he turned 10, but his mother told him when he was 16 that he could ignore these obligations as he had Malaysian citizenship... Lim's mother had hidden her son's NS obligations from him as she did not want him to return to Singapore."
So much for giving him a choice
Couple escapes assisted living facility by military Morse Code training - "A husband and wife briefly escaped from a secure memory unit at an assisted living facility in Lebanon last month by using military experience with Morse code to decipher and memorize the code to an electronic door lock"
Farmer bites cobra to death in Nepal - "A Nepali farmer who was bitten by a cobra in his rice paddy field has killed the snake by repeatedly biting it in return. "A snake charmer told me that if a snake bites you, bite it until it is dead and nothing will happen to you," Mohammed Salmodin told the BBC... Officials say he will not be charged because the reptile was not endangered... After he bit the snake to death, Mr Salmodin said that he went about his daily business as if nothing had happened. He says he finally agreed to go to hospital after pressure from family, neighbours and police."
UK Beats France To Having The 'Best' Of Cheese - "A survey by UK takeaway app Foodhub has revealed that sliced processed cheese is the UK's favourite. Commonly referred to as, 'plastic cheese', it is mostly used in American burgers at takeaways."
French woman spends three years trying to prove she is not dead - "In the flesh, Jeanne Pouchain appears very much alive and well. Convincing the French authorities of this has proven another matter. After being declared dead by a court, Pouchain has spent three years trying to have herself officially resuscitated. The 58-year-old from Saint-Joseph, near Lyon, has not existed in the eyes of France’s administration since 2017, after a long-running legal dispute involving a former employee at her cleaning company."
