NUS graduation ceremony ‘not a forum for advocacy’: University on student who held up anti-death penalty sign - "NUS student Luke Levy held up a sign protesting the death penalty on stage during his commencement ceremony last week"
Damn, now I want to pay someone to display a conservative message next year just to see all the people who are now cheering this guy now condemn the other one next year
Chinese arsonist is executed for setting fire to a busy karaoke bar killing 18 - "An arsonist in China has been executed for setting fire to a popular karaoke lounge in a revenge attack which left 18 people dead. Liu Chunlu, then 32 years old, carried out the crime last April after a female worker at the bar rejected his advances - a move that infuriated Liu. Liu, who had been drinking and singing at the bar with friends, then yanked out the fuel pipe from his motorbike parked outside, spread gasoline on the ground in front of the three-storey building and set the fuel ablaze with a cigarette lighter."
Colombia Is Considering Legalizing Its Massive Cocaine Industry - "After 40 years of U.S. - backed anti-drug policy that criminalizes the coca leaf, Marulanda and a group of members of congress want to change tack. The bill attempts to create a legal industry that distributes cocaine to users for pain relief, not recreational use. Like that in Bolivia, it also hopes to bring hundreds of thousands of illegal coca farmers out of the shadows into a legal, homegrown industry... In Colombia, the personal consumption of cocaine is legal. It’s legal because of a court ruling that recognizes personal consumption as a human right. In Colombia we have those freedoms and the state can’t intervene. However, what we don’t have is the legal cocaine to meet that demand. Instead, we have consumers who are in contact with organized crime groups who supply them cocaine in local drug markets. It’s poor quality cocaine and it’s often mixed with unregulated substances. It’s everywhere: in our schools, in universities, in parks and bars. It’s in all these public spaces... Less than 10 percent of cocaine consumers are addicts."
Left-wing social media also promotes violence - The Washington Post - "Months of civil unrest have coincided with a significant rise in social media posts critical of police that sometimes are laced with violent themes, including calls to destroy property and attack officers... the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), which previously has studied right-wing violence from groups such as the “boogaloo boys,” warns that some left-wing groups have embraced similar social media tactics, including memes and humorous catchphrases, to spread their messages and possibly help coordinate offline activity. The researchers pointed to possible signs of such coordination associated with riots in Seattle, Portland and other cities on July 25, involving fires, looting and property damage... the researchers found the growing use of memes a worrying sign and argue that the spread of dehumanizing rhetoric on the left could set the stage for more serious incidents by what the report called “network-enabled mobs.” It drew particular attention to the growing use of slogans — many of them profane — such as “ACAB” for “All Cops Are Bastards,” that have spread extensively in online conversations while also increasingly appearing in graffiti on government buildings and statues that have been toppled by protesters. Some memes that spread on social media depict police officers being shot or their vehicles burned. One post from a left-wing group cited by the report called for the use of laser pointers to obstruct surveillance and the lighting of fires at police barricades. Another post urged people to use 3-D printers to make guns that can’t be traced by authorities... “We don’t know enough about it to know just how dangerous it is, and we don’t know enough to know how dangerous it can become,” said Joel Finkelstein, a co-author of the report and executive director of the Network Contagion Research Institute, based in New Jersey. Its funders include George Soros’s Open Society Foundations as well as the Charles Koch Foundation.
Liberals will pretend this doesn't exist and continue demonising the "far right"
Since this is funded by both Soros and the Koch brother, everyone can be upset
It’s 2022 and the Magic Mouse still charges from the bottom - "six and a half years after its introduction, Apple still seems to think that the best way to charge the mouse is by flipping it over (rendering it useless) and plugging in a Lightning cable."
"User centered design"
How Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name - "Once upon a time, Apple was known for designing easy-to-use, easy-to-understand products. It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible, clearly see how to select that action, receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action, and have the power to reverse that action–to undo it–if the result is not what was intended. No more. Now, although the products are indeed even more beautiful than before, that beauty has come at a great price. Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people don’t realize exist... Android phones have Back built into the phone as a universal control that is always available. Apple does not. Why? We don’t know. Were they trying to avoid having a button or a menu? The result does provide for a clean, elegant visual appearance, but the simple-appearance mask is deceptive, for it increases the difficulty of usage. Apple does provides a “back” arrow in some locations, but, unlike Google’s Android, where it is universally available, Apple’s undo and back buttons are at the option of the developer. Not everyone, including Apple, implements these features... Apple products deliberately hide complexity by obscuring or removing important controls... Simple appearance can make control more difficult, more arbitrary, require memorization, and be subject to multiple forms of error. In fact, in the early days of Apple’s Lisa and Macintosh computers, “No Modes” was a rallying cry. The only way to have no modes is to have dedicated controls, each always meaning the very same thing."
From 2015
Stephen King’s It Has A Very Graphic Child Orgy Scene - "The kids, known as the Losers' Club, defeat the killer shape-shifter at the end of the first segment, or so they think, but are stuck inside a network of tunnels that they can't seem to get out of. Right, you've just put an end to a merciless, demonic entity which has killed dozens of people in your town and you can't seem to navigate tunnels? Putting that to one side, the Losers ponder about how they're going to get out of their predicament. Beverly, the only girl in the group, decides that the only way to bring unity back to the group is to have an all-out sex session. The 11-year-old tells the six other boys of the same age: "You have to put your thing in me." Yep. Apparently, Stephen King doesn't miss anything and explains, in detail, the orgy for a few pages: "Mike comes to her, then Richie, and the act is repeated. Now she feels some pleasure, dim heat in her childish unmatured sex, and she closes her eyes as Stan comes to her and she thinks of the birds."... the author decided to clear things up about the controversial scene on a blog saying: "I wasn't really thinking of the sexual aspect of it. The book dealt with childhood and adulthood --1958 and Grown Ups. The grownups don't remember their childhood. None of us remember what we did as children--we think we do, but we don't remember it as it really happened. "Intuitively, the Losers knew they had to be together again. The sexual act connected childhood and adulthood. It's another version of the glass tunnel that connects the children's library and the adult library. Times have changed since I wrote that scene and there is now more sensitivity to those issues." Stephen King has been controversial in several books. In the novel The Stand, the character called Trashcan Man gets the barrel of a gun inserted into his anus, while in Apt Pupil, a kid called Todd has a dream about raping a 16-year-old girl with a condom that delivers electric shocks from the tip. But 'It' is the first child orgy."
Murders are up. Crime is not. What’s going on?
Many people had problems understanding that murder is just one type of crime
Couple order motorist who parked on their drive to pay £100 to have the car released - "Barry Newton and his girlfriend Zoe Hameston were baffled when they found the blue Peugeot parked at their home in Haltwhistle, Northumberland, without their permission... The car's owner, apparently the victim of a parking app scam, is believed to have been forced to pay the £100 cash fee to be able to leave with their vehicle"
Former Spanish king’s sex drive ‘was a danger to the state’ - "The former king of Spain was injected with female hormones as his sex drive was considered a "state problem"... José Manuel Villarejo, a disgraced former police commissioner entangled in allegations of spying, fraud and bribery, told Spain's parliament that Juan Carlos had been administered testosterone blockers to dampen his “ardent” libido. “They took everything away from him, he couldn’t be with a woman or anything,” said Mr Villarejo, who was at the centre of a scandal that eventually led to the king's exile... Apart from Ms zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, Juan Carlos is rumoured to have had many lovers during his nearly four decades on the throne, including a Miss World contestant called Bárbara Rey, who allegedly received millions of euros from state coffers to maintain her silence on the affair. Juan Carlos apologised to Spaniards in 2011, when it was revealed that he had been on a secret elephant hunt in Botswana in the company of Ms zu Sayn-Wittgenstein during a deep financial crisis in Spain."
Ethan Larsen's answer to Can tanks drive through walls? - Quora - "Tanks go where they want to go, and few objects short of a speeding freight train will stop one. But there are some things to remember.
The crew must watch the gun barrel. Especially for tanks with longer guns, the barrel can be fragile in comparison to the rest of the vehicle. Warpage or stoppage in the barrel can cause it to rupture when the tank attempts to fire. Especially for tanks like the Tiger I, which absolutely relied on the gun’s muzzle brake to manage the recoil, any damage to this part could render the vehicle toothless.
Structures with deep foundations could cave in, causing the tank to become trapped. While it wasn’t a tank, Marvin Heemeyer’s famous ‘Killdozer’ was caught this way.
C-wire can stop a tank dead in its tracks… by removing them... Still, tank wins 99% of the time."
Someone claimed that it was very easy to stop tanks, especially in urban environments. Weird how armies around the world still have them, then
My gruelling weekend at Witcher School - "All signs of modern life have been disguised or hidden, electronics outlawed (except in dormitories). For the duration the castle will be lit by torches and candles and by fires roaring in hearths. And everyone here - everyone - is in costume. Witcher School is a weekend-long live action role-play event - or, if you will, a larp. Imagine a video game, come to life. The event ran for the first time last year, though was only open to locals; this year it's international, and is carried out entirely in English. People have come as far as from America to play, as well as from all over Europe, and for many (myself included) this is their first larp. It's all a testament to the extraordinary success of The Witcher video games, which have propelled Andrzej Sapkowski's fiction far beyond Poland. CD Projekt has nothing to do with the Witcher School, incidentally, beyond being name-checked as a partner. Witcher School costs €350 (£276) to attend, a price that includes a weekend's accommodation, food and rental of a costume, although travel's not included. It's a significant amount - as much as week's break somewhere hot - but it's a far bigger and more impressive operation than I expected... How you play the game is explained in a series of workshops upon arrival, and there are so many new players this explanation is essential. It's not complicated; the general rule of thumb is 'don't be an asshole'. If you're hit, act hit. Support the role-play, don't poo-poo it because you want to be the hero. Do what's good for the game. There are more specific mechanics, including sex cards non-player characters can hand out to simulate the raunchy side of the Witcher games and fiction without things getting weird. There are safe words, and there are some guidelines about how often adepts like us can use witcher magic - i.e. we can't, really. Not yet. Then, after the workshops and dinner, the game begins, and runs non-stop Thursday evening to Saturday night. Dormitories may be flagged as 'out of game', and the organiser's backstage area and office is 'out of game', but otherwise everywhere and everyone will be in character for the duration. I'm Lester, an email I receive a few days before the event tells me, a spy and a deserter from the Temerian army captured and forced to infiltrate Witcher School. Will I find the Temerian Captain and keep them happy with information, or will I be discovered by the witchers and punished? Armed with motivations and backstory I stride into the courtyard with the other recruits and stand before the witcher masters, bedecked in their impressive assortments of leather and metal, capes and scars. The game begins. Witcher School isn't for the faint-hearted; it's more like military boot camp than a holiday. We are pushed to physical breaking point - some do break, almost literally - and robbed of sleep... wherever possible Witcher School employs theatrical tricks to lend an immersive helping hand. It may be an ultraviolet light to simulate being able to see in the dark; or a pyrotechnic display to simulate a fire spell; or a very convincing monster crew twisting and contorting into believable-enough replicas of the fantasy thing. It sounds silly but it works, it really does, and to the man who wore a wetsuit in the icy night so he could emerge as a drowner from a pond, over and over again: you are my hero."
Dawn Butler, take note. Name-calling won't endear you to the public - "The Commons rule that members must not accuse another member of lying or hypocrisy is often disparaged by commentators and political activists, particularly those on the Left. If someone is a liar, why not say so? But they overestimate the public’s appetite for lowering the tone of political debate even further. Would the country really be improved by replicating the tone and language of Twitter in the Houses of Parliament?"
Fired: German reporter seen applying mud to her face before reporting on flood - "A German TV reporter who was accused of smearing mud on herself and pretending to help during Europe’s devastating floods has been fired... Susanna Ohlen was caught applying mud on herself before claiming to aid emergency efforts that are underway following more than 200 deaths due to massive floods in Western Europe."
Iowan fired for using forklift on candy machine - "An Iowa man has lost his job and unemployment benefits for using a forklift to get a candy bar from a malfunctioning vending machine... Robert McKevitt, 27, of Spirit Lake, was working at Polaris Industries' warehouse in Milford when the incident occurred last fall. McKevitt wanted some candy, so he deposited $1 in a vending machine for a 90-cent Twix candy bar, The Des Moines Register reported. But the candy bar got snagged on a hook and wouldn't fall. He banged it and rocked it, but that didn't work. The state records said McKevitt then commandeered a forklift, picked up the machine at least six times and dropped it about 2 feet onto the concrete floor. Three candy bars fell. McKevitt was fired five days later... "That machine was trouble," McKevitt said. "They fired me, and now I hear they have all new vending machines there.""
Meme - "Don't break in. Here's $20 for meth"
Daylight Saving Time Disrupts Humans' Natural Circadian Rhythm - "When people living in many parts of the world move their clocks forward one hour in the spring in observance of daylight saving time (DST), their bodies' internal, daily rhythms don't adjust with them"
U.S. Senate approves bill to make daylight saving time permanent - "The House Energy and Commerce committee held a hearing on the issue this month. Representative Frank Pallone, the committee's chairman, said that "the loss of that one hour of sleep seems to impact us for days afterwards. It also can cause havoc on the sleeping patterns of our kids and our pets"... Pallone cited a 2019 poll that found that 71% of Americans prefer to no longer switch their clocks twice a year. Supporters say the change could prevent a slight uptick in car crashes that typically occurs around the time changes and point to studies showing a small increase in the rate of heart attacks and strokes soon after the time change."
If it passes, this might be the best news in 2022
Is Daylight Saving Time Hazardous to Your Health? - Freakonomics - "In 2001, a group of researchers from Stanford analyzed 21 years of data and found that fatal car accidents increased on the Monday after we set the clocks forward. What was also interesting was that the researchers spotted more deadly crashes on the Sunday when we gain an hour, in the fall. For the autumn change, they theorized that people changed their behavior — they stayed out later, they drank more — in anticipation of the bonus hour of sleep they were about to get. Driving hazards weren’t the only problem that people started investigating. In 2008, two physicians from Sweden found that heart attacks spiked in the three days after the spring change. There were about 10 percent more heart attacks on the Tuesday following “spring forward” compared with the two weeks earlier or two weeks later. The research that’s followed has been contradictory"
Daylight Saving Time Wastes Energy - NYTimes.com - "daylight saving time reduces demand for residential lighting, yet increases demand for heating and especially cooling. So, while Benjamin Franklin’s argument still applies to lighting, the more important effect today comes from air conditioners. And in regions where demand for air conditioning is greater and growing, daylight saving time is likely to increase electricity use even more. Arizona, one of the hottest states, may have it right by not changing the clocks."
Meme - Brittany Matthews @brittanylynne8" "That guy needs to get out of the game...and go die I literally hate him >:( #totalbs"
Brittany Matthews @brittanylynne8: "Hate is a very strong word to just be thrown at someone you don't even know. *shrug*"
The "be kind" squad strikes again
Meme - Jack Cocchiarella: "Breaking: Disney is pausing all political donations in Florida. Keep up the pressure. Keep saying GAY"
Jack Cocchiarella @JDCocchiarella: "Can someone ask the Disney CEO why they paused donations to Florida Democrats? We're standing up for students, democracy, and a woman's right to choose. Does he have a problem with that?"
Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, wasn't black. But here's why so many people think he was.
North Korea’s Kim has noticeably lost weight - "Kim stands at around 170cm and once reportedly weighed 130kg, per South Korean estimations – measurements that would place him as obese on the BMI (Body Mass Index) scale. However, Kim has been steadily shedding the pounds since earlier this year, with North Korean state media in June describing his weight loss as upsetting the nation and leaving him looking “emaciated.” Severe flooding and supply issues due to the coronavirus pandemic have reportedly caused food shortages in North Korea, with the closure of the communist state’s border with China further exacerbating the problem. The government, famously tight-lipped about the country’s internal struggles, appears to have acknowledged this problem, stating that Kim is eating less “for the sake of the country”"
Kim Jong Un: K-pop is a 'vicious cancer,' merits execution - "It’s not just listening to K-pop that’s the problem. Lately, Korean slang has started to infiltrate everyday conversation, with North Korean women increasingly calling their boyfriends “oppa” — a term for “honey” popularized by South Korean dramas — rather than the state-mandated “comrade.” In order to eradicate the “perverse” phenomenon, state officials have been ordered to search computers, text messages and notebooks for South Korean vernacular, while people caught mimicking the “puppet accent” could be banished from cities, per the top-secret papers. However, it might be too late the curb the trend. A South Korean study of 116 recent defectors found that nearly half had “frequently” enjoyed southern content while residing in the DPRK... This isn’t the first time Kim has cracked down on so-called anti-socialist tendencies. This past April, the mushroom-haired dictator infamously outlawed mullets and skinny jeans in an attempt to cut off “decadent” Western-style fashion trends."
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ on Twitter - "The leader of Sexy Summer Camp recommends that children begin to masturbate as toddlers. "Masturbation is really healthy and I recommend it to people of all ages. All ages. As soon as my nephews could talk, they were doing that.""
Sexualising children is just a conspiracy theory
Play slammed over safety as live wolves chase, 'maul' actors - "Viewers are raising safety concerns over a Chinese play, in which real-life wolves were seen chasing performers through the middle of a crowded theater in Xi’an... In the shocking footage of the show — titled “Tuoling Legend,” or “The Legend of Camel Bell” — wolves can be seen pursuing performers across the stage sans any leashes or safety harnesses. At one point, the apex predators leave the stage and chase the actors through the packed aisles while audiences record the shocking scene. The toothy thespians even act out fight scenes with a wolf pretend-mauling one of the performers as they flail about on the ground. The controversial scene was part of a visual history of the Silk Road — an ancient trade route — in which the wolves were meant to symbolize the dangers China’s ancient camel warriors would face while traversing Central Asia... Huaxia Cultural Tourism, the company behind the show, insisted that the “wolves are safe and won’t hurt people. “The wolves have been domesticated for three to four generations,” a representative said in a statement. “They are legally raised and trained by professional trainers with certifications since 2018 and no accident happened in the past three years.” In order to further ensure the safety of the audience, the company put up protective nets between the stage and seats, according to CNN. Meanwhile, the actors reportedly donned safety gear so they wouldn’t get injured while play-fighting with their canine co-stars"
panini — Hot Take: - "Hot Take:
Witchcraft isn’t just organized spells and ceremonial magick.
Magic is talking to your plants and explaining to them why they’re being re-potted.
Magic is wearing your favorite shirt for good luck.
Magic is saying “thank you” to old items before discarding them.
Magic is a deep breath and a murmured assurance of, “I can do this” before a big day.
Magic is keeping a candle lit on your desk because you find it relaxing.
Magic is throwing open your windows and playing some comforting music.
Magic is the little things, too."
???
Gray hair is caused by stress — and is reversible: study - "Researchers from Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons reached these conclusions by analyzing the individual hairs of 14 volunteers in comparison to stress diaries each kept. The method they used is comparable to analyzing the rings of a tree: By looking at a tiny portion of each human hair, reflecting approximately an hour of hair growth, the scientists were able to find a correlation between times of stress and times of graying in the hair. Not only that, but they also found that periods of relaxation correlated with once-gray hair growing out dark. “There was one individual who went on vacation, and five hairs on that person’s head reverted back to dark during the vacation, synchronized in time”"
Old HDB flats are being snapped up by young Singaporeans, but why? - "Here are some likely reasons:
High home ownership rates reduce legacy needs
HDB flats depreciating slower than theories suggest
Trending gentrification
The oldest flats tend to be bigger (for five-room flats at least)
Changing perspectives of flats as assets
Optimism about flats being just a temporary home"
Planck's Principle - "Two views about the Darwinian revolution are tested: that nearly all scientists in Great Britain had been converted to a belief in the evolution of species within 10 years after the publication of the Origin of Species, and that younger scientists were converted much more rapidly than older scientists. Both views are shown to be less than accurate."
Aka the claim that "science advances one funeral at a time."
Science really does advance one funeral at a time, study suggests - "When a superstar dies, their subfields expand a little, says study co-author Pierre Azoulay, a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. But within those subfields, the number of papers authored by former collaborators of star scientists collapses ‘very drastically’, Azoulay says, while the number of papers by non-collaborators rises markedly. What’s more, Azoulay explains, most non-collaborators tend to be new to the subfield rather than existing competitors to the deceased star. He speculates that outsiders perceive fields to be closed and therefore stay away while stars are alive."
This is a subtly different sense of the saying than what Planck said: “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Ponytail Physics: How Competing Forces Shape Bundles of Hair - Scientific American Blog Network - "A ponytail may look like a relatively simple object, but in truth it is a bundle of physical complexity. Multiple forces are in play. Each hair is elastic, with a random intrinsic curvature. And the average head of hair has 50,000 to 100,000 individual strands, according to Raymond Goldstein, a professor in the University of Cambridge's department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics... Some of the major forces conspiring to shape a ponytail are elasticity, gravity, tension and pressure... Beyond unveiling a theory of the ponytail, Goldstein and his colleagues also added a new term to the physics lexicon. They describe ponytail size by the "Rapunzel number," a unit equal to the total length of the ponytail in centimeters divided by five. Five centimeters, Goldstein said, is about the length scale below which gravity does not bend the hairs much."
Walking with coffee: Why does it spill? - "In our busy lives, almost all of us have to walk with a cup of coffee. While often we spill the drink, this familiar phenomenon has never been explored systematically. Here we report on the results of an experimental study of the conditions under which coffee spills for various walking speeds and initial liquid levels in the cup. These observations are analyzed from the dynamical systems and fluid mechanics viewpoints as well as with the help of a model developed here. Particularities of the common cup sizes, the coffee properties, and the biomechanics of walking proved to be responsible for the spilling phenomenon. The studied problem represents an example of the interplay between the complex motion of a cup, due to the biomechanics of a walking individual, and the low-viscosity-liquid dynamics in it."
When people explode during colonoscopies - "an explosion of colonic gasses requires three things:
1. The presence of combustible gases (hydrogen and/or methane)
2. The presence of combustive gas (oxygen)
3. Application of a heat source...
And yet, a survey of the medical literature conducted by Ben-Soussan's team turned up just 20 cases of colonic gas explosion between 1952 and October 2006, only one of which was fatal. Why such a small number? Because if you read the last paragraph closely, you'll notice that the cited hydrogen and methane concentrations are high in unprepared (i.e. uncleaned) large intestines; and adequate bowel cleansing, as you might expect, is pretty common practice in colonoscopies"
‘New homes’ turn Swedes’ hair green - "When several formerly blonde inhabitants of Anderslöv in southern Sweden suddenly had green hair, suspicion was immediately directed towards the municipal drinking water. The culprit, however, turned out to be new homes combined with hot showers... When the tests showed normal copper levels in the water delivered to houses, engineers were confounded. However, left overnight, the copper suddenly skyrocketed to five or ten times the normal amount. Hot water left overnight peeled copper from the pipes and water heaters, and into the water. The problems were most severe in new houses, where pipes lacked coatings."
Winners of 2012 Ig Nobel Prizes for Odd Discoveries Revealed [PHOTOS + VIDEO] - "Literature Prize - The US Government's General Accountability Office, for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports"
Catherine the Great: Love, Sex and Power, by Virginia Rounding - "When Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst arrived at the Russian court in 1744, one of the many daughters of minor German royal houses who came to St Petersburg in the hope of an advantageous marriage, she was just 15 and ‘as ugly as a scarecrow’ after a severe illness. Her future husband, the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Peter, was a bizarre character whose main interests were his toy soldiers and ‘romping’ with his valets. No one, unsurprisingly, recognised in her the future Catherine II, one of Russia’s greatest rulers, who was to preside over a vast expansion of Russian territory, the flourishing of St Petersburg, the huge collection of European art and sculpture that formed the basis of the Hermitage, the reform of local government, law and education, not to mention a procession of ever younger and more delectable lovers... After seven years of marriage, her ‘child-husband’ had still not got round to the business of consummation. Finally an attendant arranged that Catherine take her first lover, bloodlines being less important than healthy little heirs. A son duly appeared... A year after the ascendancy of her husband, Peter III, she was already plotting to overthrow him. In June 1762, she was woken in the middle of the night by the news that one of her conspirators had been arrested and the coup must take place at once. She left the palace in such a hurry that only a lucky meeting with her French hairdresser, who jumped into her carriage and arranged her hair as they sped towards the Ismailovsky regiment, avoided the scene of Catherine, Empress of All the Russias, receiving the oath of allegiance in her lace nightcap. Peter did not resist. Arrested in his palace of Peterhof, it was said of him later that he ‘allowed himself to be dethroned like a child being sent to bed’. A week later Peter was dead, strangled by his guards. It looked fishy, whether Catherine was complicit in the murder or not. All her efforts to bring Russia into the Age of Enlightenment could never quite rid her of the stain of regicide. Catherine took to power with alacrity. Clever, diligent and well-read from her years of preparation, she was an empress who astonished her Senate by actually joining in their sessions. She, in turn, was horrified to discover the senators’ ignorance of the country they were governing. One of her first instructions to them was to obtain a map of Russia from the Academy of Sciences... Essential to her happiness was a current ‘favourite’, of whom she had, I think, ten during the course of her 30-year reign. ‘The trouble is that my heart is loth to remain even one hour without love,’ she wrote. She was not as capricious as this makes her sound; most of her lovers were seen off by court intrigues. Her practice of loading each one with not only rank and wealth but political power made this almost inevitable. Only Potemkin, whom she may have secretly married (although Rounding thinks not), retained his position after their first passion had waned. Catherine relied on him as a member of her government, and in a brilliantly pragmatic move he provided her with young, handsome officers, thus solving the matter of her heart and preserving his status in one move."
"What she did when alone with these young men we will never know. Rounding plausibly suggests that sex may not have been as important to Catherine as her contemporaries imagined. During the war with Sweden in 1790, Catherine (aged 61) and Platon Zubov (aged 23) were disturbed by a cannonade clearly audible from her private apartments, but the activity interrupted by the noise was irreproachable: the couple were busy translating Plutarch into Russian."
Every Jurassic Park Dinosaur Illustrated With Modern Science
