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Someone Posted The Raccoons
Someone Posted The Raccoons
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: JULY 24TH- THE OLD PEAK
This Day In History: July 24, 1911
On the drizzly, damp morning of July 24, 1911, Yale professor Hiram Bingham was leading an expedition through the jungles of the Andes Mountains in Peru. He was searching for the last two capitals of the Inca Empire, Vitcos and Vilcabamba. Instead, with a young local boy leading the way, Bingham happened upon what was later honored as one of the new New Seven Wonders of the World.
Bingham and his two companions had been told by local farmers and an innkeeper by the name of Melchor Arteaga about ancient ruins in the mountains. After climbing a surprisingly short two hours, they encountered a small grouping of huts. A young native boy agreed to lead them the rest of the way. Suddenly Bingham’s party found themselves surrounded by ancient ruins as breathtakingly splendid as any found in Peru. The area was called Machu Picchu, or “Old Peak”. …
The Underground Legacy of World War II
More than 300 unexploded bombs are hiding beneath one German city.
Just over a mile from where a stretch of the Berlin Wall once stood in Germany’s capital city, the neighborhood of Rummelsburg was evacuated earlier this week after construction workers uncovered a 550-pound American bomb. The bomb, with its fuse still intact, had sat dormant for more than 70 years since the Allies dropped it during World War II.
This one had failed to detonate, and now, decades later, its corroding fuse could set it off at any time. Every year, at least one or two such bombs explode in Germany without warning, according to the 2015 film The Bomb Hunters, which documents the work of the KMBD—the bomb squad for the state of Brandenburg.
First reported by the Associated Press, the story of this latest discovery was picked up by a handful of media outlets worldwide. But to Germans, such findings are so frequent in certain cities that it’s hardly shocking anymore. In fact, the KMBD estimates that more than 2,000 tons of unexploded bombs are uncovered each year, according to Smithsonian magazine. …
Was NASA’s codename for UFOs accidentally revealed?
A recent recording from the International Space Station has rumors flying that a ‘nervous’ astronaut may have accidentally revealed NASA’s secret code word for a UFO.
According to UFO blogger Scott Waring, the live recording from the ISS contained some suspicious references to the gospel, a word that appears to be out of the ordinary for astronaut chatter.
“On a personal level I look forward to this partnership with the gospel, really around the world,” the astronaut – likely Commander Jeff Williams – can be heard saying. …
10 Great Cultural Contributions Of The Borgias
Pope Alexander VI is often considered the most evil man ever to hold the papal office. He fathered seven children, helped his son Cesare invade Italy, poisoned his enemies, and held orgies inside the Vatican. His son and daughter were also lovers.
Today, he and his family—the infamous Borgias—are viewed as one of the most evil organizations in all of history. And yet, this family is responsible for some of the greatest contributions to human society. There are people and works of art that changed society so drastically that a world without them is almost impossible to imagine—and we owe every one of them to history’s most evil Pope.
10. Machiavelli’s The Prince
Machiavelli’s The Prince is one of the most famous political treatises ever written. Leaders from Napoleon to Mussolini and even Bill Clinton have all studied Machiavelli’s ideas on how to lead a nation.
Machiavelli, though, was studying Cesare Borgia, Alexander VI’s son, who led a conquering army into northern Italy. In the early 1500s, Machiavelli worked with Cesare and wrote letters of fawning adoration about him.
It was watching Cesare Borgia in action that inspired Machiavelli to write The Prince, which is based on Cesare’s tactics and ideas of politics. Since then, the history of the world has been shaped by men who have read the book. …
10 jobs that A.I. and chatbots are poised to eventually replace
If you’re a web designer, you’ve been warned.
Now there is an A.I. that can do your job. Customers can direct exactly how their new website should look. Fancy something more colorful? You got it. Less quirky and more professional? Done. This A.I. is still in a limited beta but it is coming. It’s called The Grid and it came out of nowhere. It makes you feel like you are interacting with a human counterpart. And it works.
Artificial intelligence has arrived. Time to sharpen up those resumes.
Today, A.I. researchers can mine a mountain of Internet usage data. In the past, technological leaps primarily sent blue-collar workers packing. Recent progress with artificial intelligence, however, has put a shocking amount of professional, salaried careers on the chopping block.
Studies show that almost every other thing professionals do on an average workday can already be automated by A.I. The BBC even predicted that nearly half of the most commonly held careers are above a 50 percent risk of automation before 2035.
What follows are 10 of the professions A.I. is already gearing up to take down. Is there a target on your forehead? …
Dear Jon Stewart – this year’s been hard without you
I have so missed our evenings together on the sofa, you telling me about the latest evil or stupid or hilarious thing Fox News or the Republicans did
Dear Jon,
I can’t tell you how good it was to see you again on Thursday night, especially after four days of the World’s Worst Party. After dealing with all those horrible people, and their terrible, hateful, angry ideas, running into my ex-TV boyfriend of 20 years felt like a kind of miracle.
I like your beard. It’s sexy, plus it gives you a kind of grizzled mariner’s gravitas. I heard you started a sanctuary for abused and neglected animals, which … great, Jon, that’s all I need, another reason to be in love with you. Thanks for that. On top of your work on behalf of 9/11 first responders, you’re pretty much the only TV beau I’ve ever thought of as marriage material.
And on Thursday night, oh, god, it was good to have you back, even for only a few stolen minutes. We fell right back into our old rhythm, didn’t we? Where have you been?! This year has been an abattoir without you, an unmitigated parade of horrors. …
10 Archaeological Sites Suffering From Climate Change
When we hear the term “climate change,” we often think of its negative impact on animals, plants, and mankind. However, we fail to realize that it’s not only the living that are threatened by changes in the climate. Even archaeological sites—the windows to our past—are suffering from the devastating effects of the current warming trend.
10. Chinguetti
During its heyday, Chinguetti was a lively, rich metropolis that was home to more than 20,000 people. Between the 13th and 17th centuries, Chinguetti, which is located in north-central Mauritania, served as a vibrant trading and religious center for Sunni Muslims who were on their way to Mecca. Today, it’s an endangered site filled with decrepit buildings and abandoned homes with a population of “a few thousand residents” who primarily rely on tourism for income.
Like many desert towns, Chinguetti’s existence is at risk due to climate change. Seasonal flash flooding and increased desertification threaten this important archaeological site. The government of Mauritania and the residents of Chinguetti have the monumental task of protecting the village from flooding and preventing the Sahara Desert from completely wiping it off the map. …
Your Mama … Might Be Offended By This Insult Archive
If you love your mom, you might not be too happy with a current exhibition at the Queens Museum in New York City. It’s a video installation in which “your mama” jokes and other putdowns are projected onto the walls of a dark room, in a constant loop.
The insults were recorded around the world — and, as you can imagine, they aren’t very friendly. In one clip, a Philadelphia man taunts, “Your mama’s so old she farts dust.”
In another video, a woman in Belfast, Northern Ireland, barely keeps it together as she quips, “Your mama’s so fat she cuts herself and gravy pours out.”
…
Man faces prison after allegedly trying to deposit 10,000 bottles in Michigan
Brian Everidge accused of attempting to pull off a caper straight out of Seinfeld, hoping to cash in on bottles bought out of state
In a memorable episode of Seinfeld, two characters hatch a plot: instead of returning bottles in New York for a 5-cent refund, round up a load of containers and run them to Michigan, where the return is double, at 10 cents each.
In reality, the ploy – returning bottles purchased outside of Michigan to capitalize on the refund – is illegal under the state’s bottle deposit law. And a Michigan resident is finding out just how steep the penalties could be.
Brian Everidge, who is accused of attempting to “return” more than 10,000 bottles from other states, faces up to five years in prison for one felony count of beverage return of non-refundable bottles.
The incident dates to late April, when a Michigan state trooper pulled over Everidge – who was driving a rented Budget box truck in Tyrone Township, Michigan, about 40 miles north-west of Detroit – for speeding. …
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: JULY 24TH- INSTANT COFFEE
This Day In History: July 24, 1938
Although instant coffee had been around before this date, the instant coffee we know and love – or revile – today was introduced on July 24, 1938. The Nescafe (a combination of the words “Nestles” and “café”) brand was the result of a more sophisticated coffee refining process than earlier versions of the product.
The instant coffee odyssey began in 1901 with Japanese-American chemist Satori Kato who introduced his version at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. It was received well enough that in 1903 he formed the Kato Coffee Company Inc.
In 1906, an English chemist named George Constant Washington created what he dubbed “a refined soluble coffee,” and began selling it under the name Red E Coffee. …
The Man Who Captured Time
Eadweard Muybridge revealed a new universe of motion with his camera, but history has largely obscured his extraordinary accomplishments with photography.
The first humans who put paint on stone drew deer, buffalo, horses. They drew all the beasts man knew, and they painted them running.
It started on a cave wall in France some 40,000 years ago with animals that seemed to move with their hindquarters planted, torsos rigid, their front legs stiff and raised ever so off the ground. These Paleolithic artists were primitive, of course, but for the thousands of years to follow, neither the ancient Greeks, nor Leonardo Da Vinci, nor the Japanese masters, nor the 19th-century French artist Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (regarded for his pictures of horses) could seem to understand how to draw an animal in motion.
Especially horses. Even as humans increasingly spent their lives around horses, the greatest artistic talents of their time drew them running with all four legs splayed, as if mounted to a rocker. Man has always sought to understand the natural world—if for no other reason than to bend it to our will. But an invisible life existed in the motion of the horse, hidden from our eye, and thus from human understanding. Until the 1870s, when the man who founded Stanford University became obsessed with this mystery—so much so that he hired the photographer Eadweard Muybridge. …
Why Did Busloads Of Asian Tourists Suddenly Arrive In This English Village?
Fran Beesley was still in her bathrobe early one morning in June when she emerged from her home to find a Japanese family taking photos of her flowerbeds.
She lives in a 1970s-style one-story bungalow in the rural village of Kidlington, about a 90-minute drive northwest of London. It’s a quiet place. Doesn’t get many visitors. Beesley is retired and cares for her invalid husband. They’re both in their 70s.
It was what Brits call “wheelie bin day” — garbage collection day. Beesley walked down her driveway to retrieve her empty trash cans.
“And I saw this gentleman putting his camera away. Well, as you can see, it’s just my vegetables and geraniums!” she says, taking NPR on a tour of the flower beds. She says the Asian tourists politely put away their cameras. Their tour bus idled out front.
Beesley tried to offer tea to her unexpected guests, but they didn’t speak English. She managed a few words with their Polish bus driver but he didn’t say much.
Meanwhile, more tourists were busy exploring her neighbors’ gardens. One family has a trampoline in their yard. The tourists — adults — asked if they could jump on it. Others asked if they could have a go with a neighbor’s lawn mower. …
6 Gross Bodily Functions Humanity Developed On Purpose
Our bodies are weird, as the farts that half of you will inadvertently release while reading this can attest. And though we all live in one, there’s a lot about our bodies that we still don’t understand. Why do we faint at the sight of blood? Why do teenagers break out into a pimply mess just when they’ve reached the point where they want to attract the opposite sex instead of making them run away in disgust?
Usually, the answer is that society evolves faster than biology, and quirks that helped us survive in the woolly mammoth days are now a pain in the ass. For example …
#6. Acne Might Have Kept You A Virgin Until You Were Strong Enough To Raise Kids
Acne doesn’t seem to serve any purpose beyond making the lives of teenagers even more miserable. A bad case of it pretty much guarantees that you have plenty of spare time to do your math homework, because no one wants to date someone who looks like an alien life form is slowly taking over their face. And despite your mom insisting that you were still beautiful, that may have been nature working exactly as intended.
Nature is a dick.
According to one theory, there was a time when a pimply mess on your face kept the opposite sex away while you went through the process of becoming a finely-tuned reproductive machine. Adolescence produces an interest in sex, but it doesn’t magically provide you with the experience and maturity required to raise a child (or to defend it from wolves, if we’re thinking in terms of evolution here). …
They’re Small, But These Big-City Apartments Tout Their Communal Feel
Summertime means college graduates are on the lookout for work and housing. For those eyeing big city life the trick to paying reasonable rent might mean downsizing — really downsizing.
In coastal cities, where space is scarce and demand is through the roof, there is a new housing trend developing: micro apartments.
Think dorm life, but a little more grown up. Small studio apartments, kitchenettes and beds that fold into the wall to make space.
Summertime means college graduates are on the lookout for work and housing. For those eyeing big city life the trick to paying reasonable rent might mean downsizing — really downsizing.
In coastal cities, where space is scarce and demand is through the roof, there is a new housing trend developing: micro apartments.
Think dorm life, but a little more grown up. Small studio apartments, kitchenettes and beds that fold into the wall to make space. …
FCC Pushes Carriers To Offer Robocall Blockers To Consumers: Will They Finally Act?
In an open letter addressed to the CEOs of major telecommunications companies, Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, pressed the carriers to take immediate action in making technology to block so-called robocalls available for free to consumers.
The FCC has previously ruled that telecommunications providers have the ability to offer blocking services to their customers against robocalls, which are automated pre-recorded telephone calls that are often used by scam artists and telemarketers.
However, companies have incorrectly insisted that they do not possess the authority to implement such a system. In an effort to clarify the matter once and for all, Wheeler sent out the letters to the telecommunications providers, which include AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, U.S. Cellular, CenturyLink and Frontier. …
10 Most Insane Recent Conspiracy Theories
The annals of far-out conspiracy theories ran deep even before the advent of the Internet. If you think about it, the type of planning, execution, and silence on the part of all involved make such large-scale conspiracies extremely unlikely.
But we now apparently live in times where outright insanity is part of our daily news cycle. So, hey, did you hear about these recent conspiracy theories?
10. The Chipotle E. Coli Outbreak Was Bioterrorism
Fast casual chain Chipotle Mexican Grill has had a number of problems with foodborne diseases, including a multistate E. coli outbreak in late 2015. The FDA never pinpointed the source of the outbreak due to the large selection of fresh ingredients mixed together in dozens of ways. But that didn’t stop some intrepid websites from exposing the outbreak as an attack by “food terrorists.”
Since Chipotle has always maintained a public anti-GMO stance, biotech henchmen supposedly used spray bottles to nebulize the virus onto the readily accessible fixings in several locations. As one article’s subhead stated, “GMO industry routinely resorts to tactics that resemble terrorism or criminal mafias.” …
Medical Marijuana States See Big Drop in Drug Prescriptions and Medicare Spending
Recent findings may show that medical marijuana not only saves state and federal governments millions on Medicare, but it may help curb prescription drug use too. A new study reports that in states where medical marijuana is available prescriptions for painkillers has dipped drastically.
There’s been a spate of growing studies on how overdose and painkiller abuse — particularly among chronic pain patients — are lower in medical marijuana states, but the researchers have largely hypothesized that these patients are picking pot over prescription drugs. Now, a recent report in the journal Health Affairs suggests that the link between prescriptions and marijuana is no longer just a hypothesis.
Authored by a University of Georgia research team, the study found that in the 17 states with a medical marijuana law in place by 2013, prescriptions for painkillers and other drugs dropped significantly compared to states that did not legalize medical marijuana. Medical marijuana’s availability in these states, whether it was available to be cultivated at home or at dispensaries, also had a significant effect on Medicare spending. According to the study, Medicare saved approximately $165.2 million in 2013 because of lower prescription drug use. …
The Search for ‘Earth Proxima’
There are probably billions of potentially habitable Earth-like planets—but where is “Earth Proxima,” the closest one? Twenty years ago, the idea of detecting exoplanets was mere science fiction. Today, this frontier of space exploration is closer than ever to finding habitable planets orbiting other stars, thanks to new telescope technology. “If we find Earth Proxima, it would fundamentally shift people’s perception of what the cosmos is,” says NASA astrophysicist Ruslan Belikov in this short documentary by Speculative Films. …
WHY DO SCREWS TIGHTEN CLOCKWISE?
One of the six simple machines, a screw is nothing more than an inclined plane wrapped around a center pole. While today screws come in standard sizes, and typically are tightened by turning clockwise (and loosened by turning counterclockwise), this is a recent invention. A great example of how things that seem simple can be really hard to do right, the development of the predicable system we enjoy today took 2,000 years to invent.
Archytas of Tarentum (428 BC – 350 BC), a friend of Plato, is believed to have invented the screw around 400 BC, while Archimedes (287 BC – 212 BC) was one of the first to realize the screw’s ability to fix things together, as well as to lift water. The Romans developed hand-cut screws and made them with bronze and silver. Early on, screws of all sizes were used to press olive oil, help irrigate canals and drain bilges, and, of course, attach things together.
Nonetheless, since these early screws were made by hand, threads were rarely precise and varied according to the preference of the craftsman. …
Erm… Unlike the myth of the flush toilet, screws don’t tighten counter-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
Northern Hemisphere or Southern, the Toilets Drain the Same
Water rotating clockwise in Australia and counterclockwise in the States? It’s a myth.
The Simpsons episode “Bart vs. Australia,” which involves the oldest Simpson kid getting indicted for fraud in the Commonwealth, starts with a scene in a bathroom. Bart has noticed that the water in the sink always drains in a counterclockwise way; Lisa informs him that, in the Southern Hemisphere, it drains the other way. Bart doesn’t believe her. To find out for sure, though, he calls a number in Australia—collect—and … hijinks ensure.
The idea that water rotates differently in the different hemispheres is a long-standing one. Long before seeing that Simpsons episode, I’d heard it, and assumed it to be true. It sounds true. Just like Lisa explains to Bart, the Earth is subject to Coriolis forces, which determine how moving objects are deflected off the inside of rotating objects—wheels, circular containers, those kinds of things. Applied to Earth’s rotating sphere, the Coriolis effect accounts in part for why, say, hurricanes and cyclones rotate the way they do. (The storms rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern.) …
Video Goodnesses
(and not-so-goodnesses)
(and not-so-goodnesses)
This telemarketer called from an invalid caller-id, so got transferred immediately to the robot to take the call. Unfortunately, just as he was getting hotter and hotter, my robot ran out of things to say and ended the call. I have since modified to code to restart the whole call, which would have been interesting to hear. Enjoy.