When you can't live without bananas

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Thursday, September 26, 2024

Links - 26th September 2024 (1)

The year is 3129 - 666 - Blog - Pravda - "The year is 3129. Humanity is extinct. The last LG SmartFridge is desperately emailing its last owner that they are low on orange juice. The satellites still left, their orbits decaying, dutifully relay the message. The automated „away from office“ response turns on, as it always does, notifying the refrigerator that it’s owner will likely return to the office in 3-5 business days. A pack of roombas, the local wind turbines giving out, search for the next functional docking station. A washing machine tweets: „anyone need to do a load 😏“ every Saturday at 1:30 a.m. eastern standard time. The replies are filled with AI thirstposters and their hypebots. In North America, raccoons have entered the bronze age, while babboons riding domesticated battlewolves rule most of Asia. Unbeknownst to either, the octopi are mastering nuclear fusion. A weather balloon bobs and sways in the wind, reporting conditions to weather stations long since destroyed in World War Five. The Crab Nation are mostly hermits, but come out to greet their prohpet every ten years on the 6th full moon of the year. You decide to observe this decade’s event. Then you see him: Shia Lebouf He beckons you to follow. The crabs all start chittering excitedly. The time has come to invade Amazon HQ. The crows gather in huge numbers. They need more storage space for their Steam collections."
Ironically, "End Stage Capitalism" stole this. And from the screenshot, seems to have cut off the last bit

Meme - "Urn only thing I have worth any money and I'm extremely poor
$250
Description: Contains ashes of my father need money to eat"

The Battle of Pelusium: A Victory Decided by Cats - "the Battle of Pelusium of 525 BCE. This engagement was the decisive clash between the Pharaoh Psametik III (526-525 BCE) and the Persian king Cambyses II (525-522 BCE), resulting in the first Persian conquest of Egypt. It has been suggested that the battle would have gone to the Persians regardless of the tactics used since Cambyses II was far more experienced in war than the young Pharaoh Psametik III. The victory, however, was due far more to Cambyses II's knowledge of Egyptian culture than his record as a field commander. The battle was won through a very unusual strategy on Cambyses II's part: the use of animals as hostages and, especially, cats. Cats were a popular pet in ancient Egypt and closely associated with the goddess Bastet (also known as Bast)... Among the many ways people could offend the goddess was to harm one of her cats. Cats were so highly regarded in ancient Egypt that the punishment for killing one was death, and as Herodotus reports, Egyptians caught in a burning building would save the cats before saving themselves or attempting to put out the fire. Herodotus says, further, "All the inmates of a house where a cat has died a natural death shave their eyebrows" as a sign of their grief, and cats were mummified with jewelry just as people were (Nardo, 96)... According to Herodotus, Cambyses II invaded Egypt after being insulted by Amasis. Cambyses II had written to Amasis asking for one of his daughters as a wife, but Amasis, not wishing to comply, sent the daughter of his predecessor Apries. The young woman was insulted by this decision - especially since it was a tradition that Egyptian women were not given to foreign kings - and when she arrived at Cambyses II's court, she revealed her true identity. Cambyses II accused Amasis of sending him a 'fake wife' and mobilized his troops for war. Whether this story is true, the Persians would have eventually attacked Egypt anyway... The 2nd-century CE writer Polyaenus describes Cambyses II's approach in his Strategems, which he wrote in the hopes of helping Marcus Aurelius and Verus in their campaigns. Polyaenus recounts how the Egyptians were successfully holding back the Persian advance when Cambyses II suddenly switched tactics. The Persian king, knowing the veneration the Egyptians held for cats, had the image of Bastet painted on his soldiers' shields and, further, "ranged before his front line dogs, sheep, cats, ibises and whatever other animals the Egyptians hold dear" (Polyaenus VII.9). The Egyptians under Psametik III, seeing their own beloved goddess on the shields of enemies, and fearing to fight lest they injure the animals being driven before the enemy, surrendered their position and took flight in a rout... It is said that Cambyses II, after the battle, hurled cats into the faces of the defeated Egyptians in scorn that they would surrender their country and their freedom fearing for the safety of common animals. It should be noted, however, that Herodotus' depiction of Cambyses II has been challenged. Cambyses II is often depicted as a brutal and careless monarch by the Greek writers who had no love for the Persians. Cambyses II is also said to have killed the sacred Apis bull and thrown its carcass into the street and also to have defiled and banned sacred rites and traditions throughout Egypt.  This claim is contradicted by reports of other writers, inscriptions, and artwork which shows Cambyses II's great appreciation for Egyptian culture and religion including his rebuilding of Memphis and its continuation as the capital of the Persian satrapy. The very fact that he used their values against them in battle attests to this admiration; he knew the Egyptians would respond exactly as they did because they could not do otherwise. They would have thought it better to surrender than betray their beliefs."

CBS Evening News on X - "With some parents using tablets as digital pacifiers to soothe their children, a new study finds preschoolers who spend 75 minutes or more in front of a screen showed increased anger and frustration as they got older, along with difficulties in regulating their emotions."
Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The study they're reporting on is not causally informative and does not indicate actual reasons to be concerned.  The reasons for this are very simple, as I'll show below.  🧵
First, sampling.  If I want to do a study on Holocaust survivors and I go and seek out people who survived it, I am looking for a select sample.  If, instead, I look in datasets that were sampled without respect to Holocaust survival and find survivors, my sample is nonselect. Why does this matter?  Select respondents differ from nonselect ones because they elect to be sampled or because I was able to find them by virtue of something that differentiates them from the population.  For example, my Holocaust survivors might be part of a support group. It might be that only the ones who suffer the most go to support groups. If I sample from the support group, I could contaminate my results because I'm sampling super-sufferers, not the norm.  That's actually a problem and I've pointed to it before.
The study CBS is referring to was based on a moderate-sized (n = 315 parents) convenience sample.  What happens when you use a large, population-representative sample to look at this screen time/tablets question?  Well, usually nothing more than chance:
Second, causality.  The study in question at best merely associated tablet use with outbursts of anger, it didn't provide meaningful causal evidence to explain this association. When the relationship screen time has with internalizing problems and attention problems has been looked at with genetic data, the whole relationship has been found to be due to genetic confounding.  Accordingly, to conclude anything about the causality of the relationship between table use or screen time or whatever and kids' behavioral problems, we need to do things differently: we need large, representative samples with causal designs. But wait, you might say: They had a random-intercepts cross-lagged panel model, so they could make causal inferences!  True, but the result is embarrassing, and especially so given the stronger literature on this finds nothing. They had two focal p-values: 0.045 and 0.040. p-values this marginal were almost-certainly not found by mistake. They represent p-hacking, and if you're willing to talk to the press about p-hacked findings, maybe we should question your other work too. Here's the study:  And an article on marginal p-values: jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap…
To make the p-hacking clearer, consider what the authors discussed in the abstract versus the results.  They generally found nonsignificant paths, but only discussed the two significant ones. Unless they're proposing age alters the nature of the causal relationship, that's no good. The fact that they only talked about the p &;t; 0.05 results even though the others weren't distinguishable is just odd. It would be a weak result either way (especially for a reason I'm about to say), but the way they decided to write about this suggests they really wanted to get published, not to deliver the null they really found.  Also, unmentioned in the abstract: They had lots of attrition. 16% of the sample was lost by T2, and by T3, they had lost a third. Without imputation, that p = 0.04 is almost-certainly going >0.05, and it might even be >0.05 just using a different imputation method than FIML. After re-estimating the model from the correlation matrix, I can confidently say that the highlighted significant results (p = 0.04/0.045) are down to the use of FIML.  The method of p-hacking was easily identifiable.  Good job accepting this, @JAMAPediatrics! "

Meme - *Woman eating sushi* "Sushi isn't the only raw meat she's getting tonight"

Meme - "I once bought all the toys from Toy Story and then proceeded to cum all over Jessie's face. I, then, left the room satisfied in the knowledge that all of the other toys would be trying to comfort her but knowing they couldn't remove the cum to avoid suspicion."

theartsyreader on X - "I have come to the conclusion that buying books and reading them are actually two entirely different hobbies."

Meme - "My child is my WORLD ! Also you must be at least 6 feel tall and make 6 figures... *gorilla*"

North Hollywood Medical Center - Wikipedia - "The building was the filming location of the NBC/ABC sitcom Scrubs for the first eight seasons (2001 through 2009) of the show, where it was called Sacred Heart Hospital... The series' lead actor, Zach Braff, commented on DVD audio commentary that the hospital still received patients in the lobby asking for medical advice, believing the hospital was still running due to the ambulances parked as props outside. On another DVD commentary, Sarah Chalke recalled having a man and his wife show up looking for medical help. She remembered that the man's arm was bloody and there was nothing anybody could do except direct the couple to a real hospital."

Rationing in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia - "In December 1939, Elsie Widdowson and Robert McCance of the University of Cambridge tested whether the United Kingdom could survive with only domestic food production if U-boats ended all imports. Using 1938 food production data, they fed themselves and other volunteers one egg, one pound (450 g) of meat and four ounces (110 g) of fish a week; one-quarter imperial pint (140 mL) of milk a day; four ounces (110 g) of margarine; and unlimited amounts of potatoes, vegetables and wholemeal bread. Two weeks of intensive outdoor exercise simulated the strenuous wartime physical work Britons would likely have to perform. The scientists found that the subjects' health and performance remained very good after three months; the only negative results were the increased time needed for meals to consume the necessary calories from bread and potatoes, and what they described as a "remarkable" increase in flatulence from the large amount of starch in the diet. The scientists also noted that their faeces had increased by 250% in volume. The results – kept secret until after the war – gave the government confidence that, if necessary, food could be distributed equally to all, including high-value war workers, without causing widespread health problems. Britons' actual wartime diet was never as severe as in the Cambridge study because imports from the United States avoided the U-boats, but rationing improved the health of British people; infant mortality declined and life expectancy rose, excluding deaths caused by hostilities. This was because it ensured that everyone had access to a varied diet with enough vitamins. Blackcurrant syrup and later American bottled orange juice was provided free for children under 2, and those under 5 and expectant mothers got subsidised milk. Consumption of fat and sugar declined while consumption of milk and fibre increased."

Meme - Roger Ebert @ebertchicago: "Cleavage. It speaks to us from the time before memory of love, comfort, warmth, softness and food. Cleavage. Oh yes. Cleavage."

Eating in the 50s - "1. Pasta was not eaten.
2. Curry was a surname.
3. A takeaway was a mathematical problem.
4. A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower.
5. Crisps were plain; the only choice we had was whether to put the Salton or not.
6. Rice was only eaten as a milk pudding.
7. A Big Mac was what we wore when it was raining.
8. Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
9. Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking.
10. Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never green.
11. Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold. Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.
12. Fish didn't have fingers.
13. Eating raw fish was called poverty, not sushi.
14. None of us had ever heard of yogurt.
15. Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
16. People who didn't peel potatoes were regarded as lazy.
17. Indian restaurants were only found in India.
18. Cooking outside was called camping.
19. Seaweed was not a recognized food.
20."Kebab” was not even a word, never mind a food.
21 . Prunes were medicinal.
22. Surprisingly, muesli was readily available, it was called cattle feed.
23. Water came out of the tap. If someone had suggested bottling it; and charging more than petrol for it, they would have become a laughing stock!
24. And the things that we never ever had on our table in the 50s and 60s: elbows or phones!"
Ironically, someone posted this list with the comment "Make America Great Again". Ironic ignorance, given that the term "crisps" is not used in the US

Meme - "Muslims making fun of other religions/countries/genders
Muslims when you make fun of them"

Meme - Freo Central Convenience Store: "Hello customers! Our American inspired charcutery board is now back in stock! Perfect for date night, show your sweetie a tour of the USA with this classic compilation. *Mini pizza, dinosaur nuggets, curly fries, mozzarella sticks, pasta rings in tomato sauce, smiley faces, waffles, letter shapes*"

Meme - "I think a large frog was here maybe even a toad *marks on car from people having sex*"

Meme *Daily Struggle/Two Buttons*
"Allah's revelation cannot be corrupted"
"The bible is a previous revelation of Allah that has been corrupted"

Meme - "What's your dirty little secret?"
"My ex told me to drug her and do with her what I wanted... So I drugged her and played video games all night with friends. She still thinks I fucked her multiple times that night. Not my thing. But she wouldn't stop pestering me about it."

Meme - "Five Star Seafood Restaurant. 3.0 (1,043 Reviews)"

Meme - *Man tying up woman*
"When they bust out a leash and then you realize you're not going for a walk." *dog*

Meme - Elizabeth Herreid @eliz_herreid: "Once again pondering the viability of a bookstore in a town where everyone thinks reading is weird and the one book lover just takes things on extended loans without paying, and I've come to the conclusion--l'm sorry you guys-- that this was probably a money laundering operation. *Disney's Beauty and the Beast*"

Meme - "When someone with no Mutual friend tries to add you
Batman from Arkham City: Hugo Strange Trailer: who sent you?"

Meme - Muslim Woman in Hijab: "IN MY COUNTRY I AM FORCED TO KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT. HERE I'M FREE TO TALK TRASH ABOUT THIS COUNTRY IN HOPES IT CHANGES INTO A COUNTRY WHERE I'M FORCED TO KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT."

Paris Gun - Wikipedia - "As military weapons, the Paris Guns were not a great success: the payload was small, the barrel required frequent replacement, and the guns' accuracy was good enough for only city-sized targets. The German objective was to build a psychological weapon to attack the morale of the Parisians, not to destroy the city itself...   The distance was so far that the Coriolis effect—the rotation of the Earth—was substantial enough to affect trajectory calculations...   The shells were propelled at such a high velocity that each successive shot wore away a considerable amount of steel from the rifled bore. Each shell was sequentially numbered according to its increasing diameter, and had to be fired in numeric order, lest the projectile lodge in the bore and the gun explode. Also, when the shell was rammed into the gun, the chamber was precisely measured to determine the difference in its length: a few inches off would cause a great variance in the velocity, and with it, the range. Then, with the variance determined, the additional quantity of propellant was calculated, and its measure taken from a special car and added to the regular charge. After 65 rounds had been fired, each of progressively larger caliber to allow for wear, the barrel was sent back to Krupp and rebored with a new set of shells."

Meme - "Gender study when I was a kid *boy reading Playboy*"

IF EUROPEANS MADE STREET FOOD THE SAME WAY INDIANS DO. #streetfood #indianfood - YouTube

They Shot Each Other Down Then Depended On Each Other For Survival In The Norwegian Wilderness - "Into the White was a 2012 Norwegian film loosely based on real events from World War II’s Norwegian Campaign, when the Allies tried to keep the Germans from engulfing Norway in their quickly spreading military conquests.  The film is a fun and captivating dramatization of how the crews of a German Heinkel He 111 bomber and a British Blackburn Skua (which had shot down the German bomber and crash-landed soon after) survived in the remote Norwegian wilderness in late April 1940...   The Heinkel bomber flown by Lieutenant Horst Schopis was shot down by Captain R.T. Partridge and his radio operator R.S. Bostock in their Skua. Schopis’ tail gunner Hans Hauck was dead on impact, but Schopis, along with Unteroffizier Josef Auchtor and Feldwebel Karl-Heinz Strunk, the remaining survivors of his crew, now faced the vast, cold unknown.  They weren’t alone, however. Partridge and Bostock had crash-landed on a frozen lake not too far away after their engine failed.  The two crews were nearest to Grotli, Norway, but surrounded by mountains and lakes, and miles from any road.   While trying to bring his sputtering plane into a safe landing, Partridge spotted an old reindeer hunter’s cabin not too far away. They hiked there through the snow, only to soon be set upon by the German crew with pistols and knives at the ready.  Thinking quickly and trying to break down the language barrier in a mix of German and English, Partridge convinced the Germans that he and Bostock were survivors of a downed Vickers Wellington Bomber (and not the aces that had brought their plane down)... Many years later, in 1977, Schopis received a phone call from Partridge, and the two met as friends in their hometowns of Munich and London."

Platypus venom: painful, immediate, long-lasting, impervious to painkillers. - "As someone who doesn’t enjoy “long lasting excruciating pain that cannot be relieved with conventional painkillers,” I’d really regret petting a platypus. Especially a male platypus, in late winter, when there’s only one thing on his mind and, even worse, something nasty on his feet... in late winter: The males’ testes swell, they start fighting over the females, and when they fight, they wrap their legs around their opponent and viciously stab with those sharp spurs. With all the action, Home probably wouldn’t be able to see that the males are also injecting each other with venom. Venom made by their crural glands—a sweat gland co-opted by evolution that swells with about a teaspoon’s volume of venom during mating seasons. But even if he didn’t know about the venom, Home would still see the loser collapse, its limbs paralyzed, while the winner went off to be a lover. To Home’s relief, the loser would eventually recover and stagger (or more likely swim) off. And once mating season’s over, the lovers would go back to being eaters: Their testes go back to normal size, and their crural glands go dormant.  But what would happen if you provoked a randy male’s ire during mating season?   The good news: There’ve been no recorded human fatalities. But there’s also bad news: We know from a few case reports that the randy, angry male can drive his spurs into you so viciously that he’ll “require manual disengagement”—meaning you’ll have to yank his spurs out of your wounds. This would be rather difficult, as you would likely be distracted by pain that was “immediate, sustained, and devastating.” Not even morphine would work against it; the doctors would have to inject local anesthesia to make it stop. But that pain’s just the beginning: Soon you might become nauseated, suffer from cold sweats, and watch as the muscles wasted away in your hand. And if you’re like one unfortunate 57-year-old victim, your hand would stay weak and hypersensitive to pain for up to three months after your “spurring.”"

Xin Zhui's Lady Dai Mummy: The Best-Preserved Corpse In History - "Now more than 2,000 years old, Xin Zhui, also known as Lady Dai, is a mummified woman of China’s Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) who still has her own hair, is soft to the touch, and has ligaments that still bend, much like a living person. She is widely recognized as the best-preserved human mummy in history... When she was unearthed, she was revealed to have maintained the skin of a living person, still soft to the touch with moisture and elasticity. Her original hair was found to be in place, including that on her head and inside of her nostrils, as well as the eyebrows and lashes. Scientists were able to conduct an autopsy, during which they discovered that her 2,000-year-old body — she died in 163 BC — was in similar condition to that of a person who had just recently passed.  However, Xin Zhui’s preserved corpse immediately became compromised once the oxygen in the air touched her body, which caused her to begin deteriorating. Thus, the images of Xin Zhui that we have today don’t do the initial discovery justice. Furthermore, researchers found that all of her organs were intact and that her veins still housed type-A blood. These veins also showed clots, revealing her official cause of death: heart attack.  An array of additional ailments was also found throughout Xin Zhui’s body, including gallstones, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and liver disease. While examining Lady Dai, pathologists even found 138 undigested melon seeds in her stomach and intestines. As such seeds typically take one hour to digest, it was safe to assume that the melon was her last meal, eaten minutes before the heart attack that killed her."

Actual Fact Bot: Revived | Facebook - "In an effort to fight oil well fires, Hungarian engineers recycled a Russian T-34 tank and replaced the gun turret with two Mig-21 jet engines. The team would inject water into the exhaust of the engines and literally blow an oil well fire out. They called the device Big Wind."

An outbreak of common colds at an Antarctic base after seventeen weeks of complete isolation - "Six of 12 men wintering at an isolated Antarctic base sequentially developed symptoms and signs of a common cold after 17 weeks of complete isolation. Examination of specimens taken from the men in relation to the outbreak has not revealed a causative agent."
And covid hystericists imagine that we could've stopped covid with a 2 week global lockdown

Meme - "Here is an actual photo of that pretty lady asking you to send her a friend request *Man manipulating multiple plugged in phones, with many more phones on in front of him, with another man to his left doing the same*"

Meme - "I'd really love to be ni**a"
"Why did you censor that?"
"Because ninjas are supposed to be secretive and mysterious"
"Oh yeah, that makes sense"

Meme - "I just wanna apologize to the people I called old at 30 when I was 18"

Meme - Book: "How To Beat Boredom"
Contents: "Pick fights with random internet strangers to pass the time."
Man: "Hell yea"

Bangkok - Cesspool of the Orient | Twilight 2000 Wiki | Fandom - ""Bangkok is the first adventure/campaign sourcebook written especially for the revised Twilight: 2000 game system. It presents players and referees with a totally new and different background against which to adventure: Thailand. Bangkok describes the geography, climate, peoples, and culture of Thailand, giving maps of the major cities, a rundown on the three main political factions, and complete organizational details of the various armies. From the opium warlords of the Golden Triangle to the 'sea gypsies' of the Gulf of Thailand, from the primitive hill tribes of the northeast to the sophisticated mercantile/criminal syndicates of Bangkok itself, each region of the country is fully described. Each section also includes a short folio-type adventure set in that part of the country."

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