Wanted bald man caught - because he queued for a haircut - "Police caught a “prolific” shoplifter who had tried to evade arrest by hiding in a barbers - despite being bald. Officers grew suspicious after spotting the hairless 46-year-old queueing for a trim. He was then escorted off the premises. The criminal, who has not been named, later admitted to stealing 16 bottles of hair products from Boots in Beeston, Nottinghamshire"
Physics Needs Philosophy / Philosophy Needs Physics - Scientific American Blog Network - "Ancient astronomy—that is, everything we know about the Earth being round, its size, the size of the moon and the sun, the distances to the moon and the sun, the motion of the planets in the sky and the basis from which modern astronomy and modern physics have emerged—is a direct descendent of philosophy. The questions that motivated these developments were posed in the Academy and the Lyceum, motivated by theoretical, rather than practical concerns. Centuries later, Galileo and Newton took great steps ahead but they relied heavily on what had come before... Newton was explicit about his debt to ancient philosophy, Democritus in particular, for ideas that arose originally from philosophical motivations, such as the notions of empty space, atomism and natural rectilinear motion. His crucial discussion about the nature of space and time built upon his discussions with (and against) Descartes. In the 20th century, both major advances in physics were strongly influenced by philosophy. Quantum mechanics springs from Heisenberg’s intuition, grounded in the strongly positivist philosophical atmosphere in which he found himself: one gets knowledge by restricting oneself to what is observable. The abstract of Heisenberg’s 1925 milestone paper on quantum theory is explicit about this: “The aim of this work is to set the basis for a theory of quantum mechanics based exclusively on relations between quantities that are in principle observable.” The same distinctly philosophical attitude nourished Einstein’s discovery of special relativity: by restricting to what is observable, we recognize that the notion of simultaneity is misleading. Einstein recognized very explicitly his debt to the philosophical writings of Mach and Poincaré. The philosophical influences on the conception of general relativity were even stronger. Once again, he was explicit in recognizing his debt to the philosophical arguments in Leibniz, Berkeley and Mach. Einstein claimed that even Schopenhauer had had a pervasive influence on him. Schopenhauer’s ideas on time and representation are perhaps not so hard to recognize in Einstein’s ideas leading to general relativity... philosophy provides methods leading to novel perspectives and critical thinking. Philosophers have tools and skills that physics needs, but do not belong to the physicists training: conceptual analysis, attention to ambiguity, accuracy of expression, the ability to detect gaps in standard arguments, to devise radically new perspectives, to spot conceptual weak points, and to seek out alternative conceptual explanations. Nobody puts this better than Einstein himself: “A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.” It is sometimes said that scientists do not do anything unless they first get permission from philosophy. If we read what the greatest scientists had to say about the usefulness of philosophy, physicists like Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Bohr and Einstein, we find opposite opinions to those of Hawking and Weinberg. Here is a second argument due to Aristotle: Those who deny the utility of philosophy, are doing philosophy... when Weinberg and Hawking state that philosophy is useless, they are actually stating their adhesion to a particular philosophy of science. In principle, there's nothing wrong with that; but the problem is that it is not a very good philosophy of science... One reason for the relative sterility of theoretical physics over the last few decades may well be precisely that the wrong philosophy of science is held dear today by many physicists... In the post-Heideggerian atmosphere that dominates some philosophy departments, ignorance of science is something to exhibit with pride"
Meme - "Avatar is a movie about a guy who betrays his entire planet just so he can clap some alien cheeks"
S’porean teacher refuses to move out of Bukit Timah rented landed house for 1.5 years, judge orders him to pay double rent - "The landlord, Amirul Akbar bin Abdul Kadir, was a Turkish Airways pilot during the trial. He sued Lye Kok Leong, an enrichment teacher, to recover his property and the rental and penalties owed to him."
NTU student who climbed into 15-year-old girl's bedroom to have sex with her gets jail - "A student from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) repeatedly had consensual sex with a girl nine years his junior, climbing up water pipes to enter the teenager's bedroom... the accused got to know the victim in 2014, as they were in the same cell group in church. They became friends and began dating in October 2017, when the victim was 15. They first had consensual sex on Oct 26, 2017, when the victim went over to the accused's room after his roommate had left. They had sex a few more times after this, but broke up in December 2017 after the girl's parents found out about the relationship. However, they remained in contact, with the accused giving the teenager a phone to communicate with him behind her parents' back. They also continued to have sex even though they had broken up, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Grace Teo... They had consensual sex, said the prosecutor. The victim then fellated the accused, and he left through the window. Court documents did not reveal how the offences were uncovered, only that the victim's father called the police on Jan 24, 2018, reporting that his daughter had had sex with a student from NTU on several occasions. The prosecution asked for at least 20 months' jail. She said that the accused had exposed the victim, who was a virgin, to the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases... Mr Sudheesan said his client and the victim were "star-crossed lovers". He said the unfortunate episode started after the victim first kissed the accused, shocking him. They started talking and realised that they had feelings for each other, said Mr Sudheesan. They then discussed the matter and bought condoms together."
Are Billionaires Hotter? Economists Study Whether The Ultra-Rich Are More Attractive. - "Billionaires with larger net worths didn’t earn significantly higher attractiveness scores than less well-heeled members of the three-comma club, according to the paper, which was co-written by Barnard College distinguished scholar Daniel Hamermesh and economist and Australian member of parliament Andrew Leigh. However, ultra-rich people may be better-looking than their less wealthy peers: The researchers matched the billionaires to similarly aged college professors whose looks were appraised by six undergraduates in a 2003 study, and billionaires earned a slightly higher rating on average, a result the study’s authors called a “loose comparison.”... Hamermesh has spent decades researching how beauty impacts economic fortunes, a surprisingly robust corner of study sometimes known as “pulchronomics.” Attractive people tend to earn more money, secure more favorable loans and report higher levels of life satisfaction than less good-looking peers, and some research suggests beauty can help people get ahead in politics, business, sports and academia, Hamermesh says. However, this “beauty premium” doesn’t appear to boost billionaires’ fortunes: “This group is so extreme that within it, nothing matters to raise you from a $2-billionaire to a $50-billionaire”... Yes, beauty is subjective, and the NBER study is based on just 16 college students’ assessments. Still, Hamermesh believes these panelists’ answers are reliable because they tend to align with each other in most cases. In other words, Hamermesh thinks beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but “we tend to behold it very similarly.”"
Comparing and Contrasting the Visual Styles of the Batman Movies
Robert Pattinson’s gritty iteration of Batman highlights just how bad the Marvel movies are - "Not only do the movies have grit, the storylines are fully formed and the characters are complex. Rather than the half-baked, open-ended tripe of Marvel movies, which always feel like filler – a means to get to the next stage of the story, instead of just getting to the point there and then – the Batman films are all solid movies in their own right. They all tie in nicely with each other, but each individual instalment is considered and masterfully executed... Rather than being an all-singing, all-dancing illusion, he is flawed and enigmatic, and viewers have no choice but to be invested in his character.
Too many minions spoil the plot - "If you’re thinking of creating a massive conspiracy, you may be better scaling back your plans, according to an Oxford University researcher. While we can all keep a secret, a study by Dr David Robert Grimes suggests that large groups of people sharing in a conspiracy will very quickly give themselves away... Dr Grimes initially created an equation to express the probability of a conspiracy being either deliberately uncovered by a whistle-blower or inadvertently revealed by a bungler. This factors in the number of conspirators, the length of time, and even the effects of conspirators dying, whether of old age or more nefarious means, for those conspiracies that do not require active maintenance. However, the equation required a realistic estimation of the chances of any one individual revealing a conspiracy. Three genuine conspiracies were used to provide this – including the NSA Prism project revealed by Edward Snowden... Dr Grimes calculated that hoax moon landings would have been revealed in 3 years 8 months, a climate change fraud in 3 years 9 months, a vaccination conspiracy in 3 years 2 months, and a suppressed Cancer cure in 3 years 3 months. In simple terms, any one of the four conspiracies would have been exposed long before now. He then looked at the maximum number of people who could take part in an intrigue in order to maintain it. For a plot to last five years, the maximum was 2521 people. To keep a scheme operating undetected for more than a decade, fewer than 1000 people can be involved. A century-long deception should ideally include fewer than 125 collaborators. Even a straightforward cover-up of a single event, requiring no more complex machinations than everyone keeping their mouth shut, is likely to be blown if more than 650 people are accomplices."
America's only metric road - "Only three nations do not use the metric system today: Myanmar, Liberia and the United States. But calling America a nonmetric nation is somewhat of a misnomer. The United States has given more than an inch even though it might not have gone the whole nine yards. Consider that Coke bottles are sold in liters. So is wine. Medicine, in milligrams. Food nutrition labels are metric. And what about a 100-meter sprint or a 5K race?... In 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act, which declared metric as the preferred system of the United States, and the U.S. Metric Board was created to implement the conversion. America began testing road signs in kilometers under President Jimmy Carter, who supported efforts to go metric. Interstate 19, which connects Tucson, Arizona, to Mexico, was one of them and today remains the only highway in America with distances posted solely in kilometers... International business interests may once again provide rationale for going metric. Hawaii and Oregon have recently introduced metric legislation, a reflection perhaps of those states' relationships with Pacific trade partners, tourism and efforts to build a high-tech workforce, says Elizabeth Gentry, metric coordinator for the federal National Institute of Standards and Technology. "Major opportunities for metrication have occurred when emerging technologies or new products enter the U.S. marketplace, developed from the bottom up using metric measurement practices," Gentry says... Gentry says metric adoption is not a one-time event in America, but rather a process that is happening over time. "Consumers are often unaware of the level of metric use because gradual changes have taken place around them over time," she says. Marciano ends his book on the metric system with this thought: Think of America as preserving important ways of thinking that human beings used for centuries. "If we get rid of our measures, we will never bring them back. To be for a metric America is to be for a global monoculture.""
The battle of the standards: why the US and UK can’t stop fighting the metric system - "What made this signpost noteworthy was that it had come to the attention of a vigilante group known as Active Resistance to Metrication, or ARM. Their motivation? To stop the adoption of metric units in the UK and preserve the country’s traditional imperial measures. Their method? Waging a guerrilla war against metric road signs and signposts: unscrewing them in the dead of night, stowing them in hedgerows, or amending them using paints and stickers... The slow march of the metric system might have continued unabated if it hadn’t been for a bunch of bananas. In the year 2000, a market-stall owner in Sunderland named Steve Thoburn sold the fruit in question to an undercover trading standards officer, pricing them using pounds and ounces (25p for a pound) and so contravening an EU directive that all loose goods should be sold using metric. Thoburn’s scales were confiscated, and along with four others accused of similar crimes, he was convicted in 2001 of breaking the law. The case raised the question of weights and measures to national prominence, and the traders were dubbed the “Metric Martyrs” by the press... The judge overseeing the appeal described the fruit at the heart of the case as “the most famous bunch of bananas in English legal history.”... When the UK voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, one BBC reporter identified this dispute over weights and measures as a watershed moment for Brexit: an event that “helped turn public opinion against EU membership, giving critics something tangible to point to that affected people’s everyday lives and for which Brussels appeared responsible.” The grievance remained, even though the European Union relented on the issue. In 2007, in fact, the EU told the UK it could keep using imperial measures wherever it liked. As Günter Verheugen, EU industry commissioner, said at the time: “I want to bring to an end a bitter, bitter battle that has lasted for decades and which in my view is completely pointless.” Today, the UK is almost entirely metric but retains dual units on some food packaging and imperial measures in areas of life too culturally embedded to suffer change. There are still miles, yards, and feet on road signs; most people still measure their height in feet and inches, and newborn babies’ weights are announced in pounds and ounces (even if they’re recorded in metric). Polls show no one wants to give up pints in the pub or imperial road signs, and earlier this year, in a cynical but well-calculated bit of political theater, the then-embattled prime minister, Boris Johnson, launched a consultation on the prospect of a greater return for imperial units in the UK... the US is definitely much more metric than it first appears. After all, the federal government has relied on metric units to define feet, pounds, and ounces since 1893, judging metric standards to be the product of an unimpeachably rigorous scientific process. Many commercial products in the US list measurements in both metric and customary units, the better to appeal to international markets; numerous industries are metric, like auto making and pharmaceuticals; and the US military is mostly metric, to better work alongside international forces.
Cow tosses terrified holidaymaker into air and stamps on him - "A farmer has been fined after one of his cows tossed a terrified holidaymaker into the air and stamped on him as he tried to crawl away... A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation established that cattle with young calves were being kept in a field with a public right of way across it. Cattle with young calves are known to be protective and unpredictable and can pose a risk to walkers, especially to those with dogs. Farmers should not put cattle with young calves in fields with a public right of way."
Pensioner urinating on a train track is killed by a flying cow that was hit by a carriage - "A pensioner was killed by a flying cow after the animal was hit by an express train and flung 100ft through the air in India. Shivdayal Sharma, 82, was urinating on a train track in the indian region of Alwar when the animal struck him, killing him instantly."
Moscow nanny who decapitated girl, 4, 'to be freed after just five years in psychiatric ward' - "A nanny who decapitated a four-year-old girl then carried her head through the streets shouting 'Allahu Akbar' will be free after just five years in a psychiatric ward, reports claim. Gyulchehra Bobokulova, 43, has been 'cured' of the 'chronic psychiatric disorder' that led her to kill Anastasia Meshcheryakov and parade her head in Moscow, Russian doctors claim. Horrifying footage shows burka-clad Bobokulova clutching the severed head of Anastasia - known as Nastya - and shouting 'I am a terrorist' outside Oktyabrskoye Pol metro station in Moscow... Bobokulova claimed she conducted the brutal killing to get revenge on Vladimir Putin for bombings in Syria... The court ruled that Bobokulova suffered from paroxysmal paranoid schizophrenia but the mother said she was 'sane' and 'cheerful' before she was influenced by extremist ideologies on the web."
The Paintings of Geometric Cows in the 19th Century UK - "The early 19th-century livestock art of the UK portrayed corpulent paintings of cows, sheep, and pigs. The commercial paintings and prints often came with information like the animals' size measurements and the farm owner breeding techniques. According to animal studies professor Ron Broglio, the size of the animals was exaggerated in the paintings to show the idealized animal shape. The cows were portrayed in a rectangular shape, the pigs in football shape, and sheep as oblong."
'Cow Hug Day': How India's plan to rebrand Valentine's backfired - "The declaration of February 14 as “Cow Hug Day,” had come in a statement Monday from the Animal Welfare Board of India, which called cows the “backbone of Indian culture and rural economy.” The cow is “the giver of all, providing riches to humanity” due to its “nourishing nature,” said the agency, a statutory body that advises India’s Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying. It said the push to hug cows was part of an effort to promote “Vedic” or sacred Hindu traditions, which it claimed have been eroded by Western influence... the idea appears to have been dropped. For days, media outlets have been mocking the government’s plan, publishing satirical cartoons showing cows running away from amorous men, while internet users have delighted in posting videos of violent encounters between beast and man... An agency for the protection of cows, known as the Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog (RKA), was set up in 2019 by the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying. Two years later, the RKA was forced to indefinitely postpone a national “cow science” exam after the curriculum prompted widespread criticism over its unscientific claims about the animal. Among several unproven claims, the 54-page exam study guide stated that large-scale abattoir activity leads to major earthquakes, suggesting that pain emitted by mass slaughter could generate enough stress to trigger a seismic reaction. Without providing evidence, it also stated that native (Indian) cows produce the best quality of milk, compared to “exotic cows.”... During Modi’s 2014 election campaign, he promised to end a “pink revolution” – a phrase he used to describe the slaughter of cattle. Other BJP lawmakers have taken it one step further. “I had promised that I will break the hands and legs of those who do not consider cows their mother and kill them,” said Vikram Saini, a legislator for the state of Uttar Pradesh, at an event in March 2017."
Meme - "Greatest personal injury case I've ever heard: Chris Goodnow, an estimated Valley attorney, has picked up a client who is suing a sex toy company. Said client purchased a butt plug that was advertised as "100% silicone". Client wears butt plug to MRI appointment. Much to client's dismay, butt plug in fact has a metallic core. Butt plug is accelerated at the speed of sound ip into client's chest cavity. Described in memo as an "anal rail gun". Client survived with major injuries."
Meme - "Japanese snake girl drawing in 1773
Japanese snake girl drawing in 2023"
Kekma.net - Screamer Wiki - "clicking ENTER forces the web browser into fullscreen, play two extremely loud sound effects of World's Loudest Orgasm, changes your cursor into a picture of a mutilated penis in the shape of a swastika, and plays a video of a man squatting in a bathtub full of blood, forcing a large, bloodstained industrial screw down his urethra in the middle of the page. The page background also changes to two brightly flashing images: a man whose face was smashed by a bear, and a surgical image of a man who held a firecracker for too long. Prior to March 13, 2020, the video at the center of the site was a medical recording of pork tapeworm cysts being pressed from a human liver, and the background images went through various iterations. The most infamous pair was a photoshop of interracial porn made to look like a man having sex with an exploded corpse, and a supposed movie prop of a zombie baby with a penis photoshopped over the top of it. This image was removed when the creator began having concerns that the source was a mislabeled medical image, rather than a dummy. It was replaced by a Chinese dog skinning, and various other photoshops. By October 2020, the site had changed to its final phase, briefly including the original liver cyst video by mistake."
Shock sites are so 2000s
Free unlimited in-flight WiFi across all cabin classes on SIA flights from Jul. 1, 2023 - "The enhanced WiFi offering will be available virtually across the entire aircraft fleet and almost the entire global SIA route network. "
Amazon.com: Live, Laugh, Lobotomy T-Shirt : Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry
Journalist plugs in unknown USB drive mailed to him—it exploded in his face - "five Ecuadorian journalists have received USB drives in the mail from Quinsaloma. Each of the USB sticks was meant to explode when activated. Upon receiving the drive, Lenin Artieda of the Ecuavisa TV station in Guayaquil inserted it into his computer, at which point it exploded. According to a police official who spoke with AFP, the journalist suffered mild hand and face injuries, and no one else was harmed. According to police official Xavier Chango, the flash drive that went off had a 5-volt explosive charge and is thought to have used RDX. Also known as T4, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (PDF), militaries, including the US's, use RDX, which "can be used alone as a base charge for detonators or mixed with other explosives, such as TNT." Chango said it comes in capsules measuring about 1 cm, but only half of it was activated in the drive that Artieda plugged in, which likely saved him some harm"
Texas teacher fired for turning middle school classroom into 'fight ring' - "A substitute teacher in Texas is under investigation after she allegedly turned her classroom into a cage match and encouraged students as young as 12 to fight each other. Natally Garcia, 24, was immediately fired after the incident at Kimbrough Middle School in Mesquite... Shocking footage from inside the classroom shows desks pushed into a circle to create a “fight ring” while 12- and 13-year-old students duke it out, leaving some battered and bloody... Garcia outlined rules for the children to follow and told one to keep watch at the door while the fights occurred. In the video, Garcia can be heard telling her class that she “does not want this on record” and threatening to confiscate cellphones if students had them out. The clip shows at least four students fighting each and a timer can be heard going off at different points during the melees, Garcia shouting “30 seconds” before one fight began."
This is the best article I could find on this, with details and a photo
Sri Lankan wins lawsuit against NHS as midwives fail to explain why she needed to feed her son due to language barrier - "A Sri Lankan refugee who could not speak English has won a legal battle against the NHS after her child was brain damaged after hospital staff did not explain the importance of feeding a newborn. Nilujan Rajatheepan was in good condition when he was delivered by caesarean section at King George Hospital in Goodmayes, Essex in July 2009. His parents are Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka and his mother, Sinthiya, was 21 when Nilujan was born and spoke only very few words of English. When the community midwife visited the family at home after the birth, Nilujan was pale and lethargic, having not been fed for more than 15 hours. His hypoglycemic state resulted in catastrophic brain injuries. Nilujan, now eight, has cerebral palsy with severely impaired physical and cognitive function. On Friday in London, Judge McKenna ruled that Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Foundation Trust was liable. He ruled midwives failed to hire an interpreter to tell her to feed her baby and the eight-year-old is now in line for multi-million-pound NHS compensation because midwives were negligent in failing to tackle the language barrier... She was anxious that Nilujan was "crying continuously", but the judge said: "Her attempts to draw attention to her concern in this regard were effectively ignored." The ward was busy and Mrs Rajatheepan, of Lavender Place, Ilford, had "a propensity simply to smile at people when she caught their eye." She had, "albeit timidly", approached the midwive's station in a bid to draw attention to her concerns, but the judge said she was "ignored". Midwives gave her "false reassurance" by "repeating the mantra that it is perfectly normal for new born baby's to cry.""
Apparently it's unreasonable to expect parents to know that they need to feed their children. And yet, if you propose needing a licence to have a child, people get upset
How do you pull transcripts from youtube "shorts." : youtube - "right click on the short and click on copy video url. open the url in a new tab. You will have access to the transcript now."
Meme - Emily Nussbaum @emilynussbaum: "Why do chefs hate brunch?"
Julia Callahan @pesty1079: "Anthony Bourdain has a great bit on it in Kitchen Confidential and he says basically everything is very time consuming and not fun or interesting to cook and hollandaise is stored at the exact right temperature to be absolutely foul."
He caught his daughter hugging a boy and her reaction is priceless. : MadeMeSmile
The Case for Sleeping With Stuffed Animals as an Adult - "In a 2017 survey of US adults commissioned by Build-A-Bear (so, yes, possibly biased), 40% of respondents who own, or once owned, a stuffed animal said they still slept with one... Though there is no robust scientific literature on the effect of stuffed animals on adult sleep, several studies have shown that plush companions can help adults self-soothe. A 2016 study observed that holding a stuffed animal during group therapy allowed college students to better comfort themselves. The act of hugging has also been associated with stress relief, and a 2013 study found that interacting with a huggable communication device lowered stress hormones in blood and saliva"
