r/todayilearned
•Posted byu/GQveracity
2 hours ago
TIL There are 41 countries that recognize sign language as an official language
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INTERESTING: TIL sign language as an official language?
Monday, May 24, 2021
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INTERESTING | 
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Posted by reinkefj
FUN: From the “why can’t they keep drugs out of prison” file!
Sunday, May 23, 2021https://www.boredpanda.com/people-share-dumbest-school-rules/
#28
My highschool had “coordinates”, not a uniform. But they stopped selling the shorts like a decade before I started there… So me and a bunch of buddies tracked down used pairs and started wearing them.
Next year, shorts were banned outright… So me and a bunch of buddies on the rugby team started wearing skirts, because the rules said skirts were acceptable, but didn’t specify gender. So you had a bunch of guys with hairy, hairy legs walking around in skirts we deliberately hiked up a little to show some thigh.
Shorts were allowed again in a week.
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Leave a Comment » | FUN | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
INSPIRATIONAL: Why do politicians get credit for things they didn’t do?
Sunday, May 23, 2021Things I wonder about, things I do, and some random links I’ve collected lately (with an emphasis on weirdness)
Published May 17, 2021 10:54 am by Claire
AKA “A Monday Ramble.”
*** begin quote ***
Why do politicians and social movements get credit for things they didn’t do?
“FDR ended the Depression.” (Yeah, only eight+ years into his administration, and then with a war and new forms of privation.)
“Street protests ended the Vietnam war.” (Lessee: Begun in 1964, 1968 was their biggest year, U.S. didn’t get out of Vietnam until 1975. Nope.)
“Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.” (Only if you believe we really had to be the only nation on earth to conduct a bloody war to do what the entire civilized world was already coming around to; only if you believe the Emancipation Proclamation was anything other than a PR gesture meant to undermine the South’s war effort; only if you pretend not to notice that Lincoln continued to preside over four slave states himself and excluded them from the so-called emancipation.)
And once established, these gigantic urban myths never seem to get debunked.
*** end quote ***
Because he who writes the history books gets to control the “narrative”.
Argh!
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Posted by reinkefj
TECHNOLOGY: Don’t depend on ANY Google product ever
Saturday, May 22, 2021https://www.makeuseof.com/google-products-discontinued/?utm_source=MUO-NL-RP&utm_medium=newsletter
Google Fails: 10 Google Products Discontinued in 2021
BY JOY OKUMOKO
*** begin quote ***
If you have used some of the above Google products in the past, you will agree that some will be missed. We hope that Google will shape the lessons learned from these failures into better products in the future.
*** end quote ***
Unless YOU can see the “value equation” (i.e., how does a service pay for itself), do NOT commit yourself to using it.
Perhaps, it’s unique or serves you well, then just make sure you can get your data “out”!
Note how many of the ten “products” just “silently” disappeared!
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Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
ECONOMICS: ‘The Great Reject’?
Saturday, May 22, 2021Atlas Is Shrugging: Forget ‘The Great Reset’, Here Comes ‘The Great Reject’
Zero Hedge by Tyler Durden
*** begin quote ***
It won’t work, and it brings to mind a particularly vivid example I once heard about a balloon disaster that still makes me cringe when I think of it:
A group of people were embarking on a balloon ride and as they were just a foot or two off the ground, the burner erupted into flames. The balloon pilot realized immediately what this meant and he leapt from the gondola which was still only a few feet off the ground.
One or two of the passengers were quick witted enough to realize what this meant and followed him. This set off a feedback loop: as the fire expanded, its hot air forcing the balloon higher, combined with the weight reductions as the first few people bailed out, the situation very quickly escalated past a point of no return.
The balloon had accelerated very rapidly to heights from which it was no longer possible to leap safely. The unfortunates who had hesitated and were trapped in a gondola being propelled higher by a fireball, to their inevitable doom.
That’s what our entire situation feels like today. The balloon is still hanging a foot or so above the ground, the canopy is on fire, and the people who have figured out what this means are bailing out while they can and in doing so they are accelerating the ultimate burn-then-crash of the entire system.
*** end quote ***
Economics is called the “dismal science” for a very good reason.
It’s based on the idea that ALL resources are scarce and there are “laws” that describe how resources are used
It’s “dismal” because rarely are there enough resources to satisfy everyone’s “wants”. (Notice I didn’t say “needs” because that’s a much lower standard. (Think what passes for a “good life” in a Third World country and you’ll have my idea of “needs” versus “wants”.)
In today’s economic climate, the “wants” have outstripped our Gooferment’s ability to supply the resources need to satisfy them. (Note the tax & borrow to spend on “wants”.)
So like the balloon example above, get off before the disaster.
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Posted by reinkefj
VOCABULARY: Meatspace is the opposite of Cyberspace
Friday, May 21, 2021Meatspace and Cyberspace
The word “meatspace” refers to the real-life physical world that we inhabit. The term was invented as a contrast to the emergence of “cyberspace,” which is the interconnected virtual world of computers that we interact in. Within a modern context, cyberspace would be everything online, while meatspace would be everything offline.
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Posted by reinkefj
TECHNOLOGY: Podcast will disappear behind paywalls
Friday, May 21, 2021https://theconversation.com/apple-threatens-to-upend-podcastings-free-open-architecture-160318
The Conversation – Articles (US)
Apple threatens to upend podcasting’s free, open architecture
by John Sullivan, Professor of Media and Communication, Muhlenberg College
*** begin quote ***
A medium that exploded due to the lack of institutional gatekeepers is now seeing big tech companies act like traditional media networks, signing popular hosts and shows to exclusive contracts. Of course, other publishers like Slate and Stitcher have offered subscriptions to their shows via their own websites and mobile apps. But the m
uch larger audience share of Apple Podcasts and Spotify has much greater potential to move the podcast ecosystem in the direction of premium paid content.
This presents a potential long-term threat to the free, open architecture of podcasting, though projects like The Podcast Index are aiming to preserve the medium as platform-agnostic.
One thing is for certain: Apple and Spotify have given us a glimpse of a podcasting future where the walled gardens of platform-exclusive, premium content become the norm.
*** end quote ***
The Podcast Index are aiming to preserve the medium as platform-agnostic.
Guess that’s all that can save us from paywalls and the Apple Tax?
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Leave a Comment » | Technology | Tagged: APPLE, iPod, ITUNES, Media, open architecture, Paywalls, platform-agnostic, podcasting, Podcasts, Radio, RSS, Slate, Spotify, Steve Jobs, Stitcher | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
INTERESTING: Here’s a crazy behavior
Thursday, May 20, 2021r/todayilearned
•Posted byu/YourOwnBiggestFan
15 hours ago
TIL of William Lyttle, the “Mole Man of Hackney”, who spent around 40 years digging a network of tunnels up to 59 feet (18 m) long beneath his home. When the authorities discovered the extent of his burrowing, he was rehoused on the top floor of a high-rise to prevent digging.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W…
# – # – # – # – #
That’s strange behavior!
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Leave a Comment » | INTERESTING | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
HEALTH: A statin intolerance?
Thursday, May 20, 2021How Common Are Muscle Side Effects from Statins?
Michael Greger M.D. FACLM May 3rd, 2021 Volume 53
*** begin quote ***
When asked why, most former statin users, or discontinuers, cited muscle pain, a side effect, as the primary reason for stopping the pills. By far the most prevalent and important adverse events, up to 72 percent of all statin side effects are statin-associated muscle symptoms. Taking coenzyme Q10 supplements as a treatment for statin-associated muscle symptoms was a good idea in theory, but they don’t actually appear to help. Normally, side-effect symptoms go away when you stop the drug, but sometimes can linger a year or more. But there is evidently growing evidence that statin intolerance is predominantly psychosocial, not pharmacological. Wait; meaning maybe it’s mostly just in people’s heads?
*** end quote ***
Placebo effects are positive consequences falsely attributed to a treatment
Nocebo effects, kind of like the opposite of the placebo effect, are negative consequences falsely attributed to a treatment
# – # – # – # – #
12:40 p.m., Sunday May 9
ferdinand reinke: wrote:
Interesting. I’ve been complaining for a while about “stiff legs in the morning”. I never associated with the statin drugs that I have been taking. So it’s not nocebo in my case because I observed the sympton having never associated any connection to the drug. I’ll be interested if the “mystery” is ever figured out — if ever.
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Leave a Comment » | HEALTH | Tagged: Michael Greger M.D., Nocebo, Nocebo effect, Placebo, Placebo effect | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
INSPIRATIONAL: Judge Judy for SCOTUS
Wednesday, May 19, 2021https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/judge-sheindlin-ending-judge-judy-1234950880/
Judy Sheindlin on Ending ‘Judge Judy,’ Her New Show and the Legal System’s Biggest Flaw
- After 25 years, television’s highest-paid host — and The Hollywood Reporter’s Unscripted TV Player of the Year — is walking away from the show that made her an icon, but she has no plans to put the gavel down anytime soon with ‘Judy Justice’ in the works for IMDb TV.
BY MIKEY O’CONNELL
MAY 13, 2021
*** begin quote ***
As someone who’s openly defied the “PC police” throughout her career, what is your take on the trend of people being shamed for past comments?
If you’re a bad person, if you’ve done something wrong, you’ve got to be prepared to pay the piper. And there are people who have done just that. They’ve paid the price with their good name, their footprint. That’s a good thing. But to have a fear of speaking your opinion, for fear of being put on somebody’s list and canceled? It’s a frightening place for America to be. And you’re right. I’m not a big fan of the PC police. Is it PC to say to people who are 19 or 23 years old, have no job, no prospects and six children, “Find something else to do with that organ”? No. But where I come from, I’ve seen the ravages of that kind of neglect.
*** end quote ***
I like her no BS attitude. Other than faulting her back of Bloomberg, which she was well within her rights to do, I can’t remember when I found her “disagreeable”.
Maybe she and I could get along.
Laugh!
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Leave a Comment » | INSPIRATIONAL | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
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