2024-12-26
Kazak plane crash, fancy light bulbs, old school grapes, dated apps, games that suck, Star Trek heresy, when append ain't, Bald Eagle made official, Finland power cable cut, ultrablack ants
etc
Horseshit
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Mazda's Suitcase Car Was a Genius Answer to a Question Nobody Asked
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Twisted light: The Edison bulb has purpose again
researchers from the University of Michigan have developed a new type of incandescent light bulb. The device is capable of emitting elliptically polarized light, described as "twisted" light. due to the intricate engineering of the filament itself. By integrating micro- and nanoscale twists into the tungsten filament structure, the light wave inherits that helical shape, effectively making it elliptically polarized.
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Scientists Are Pretty Sure They Found a Portal to the Fifth Dimension
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Single women are doing photoshoots with fake baby bumps — and the reason is wild.
Young women in China are paying for fake maternity photoshoots because they want “beautiful” pregnancy pictures while they’re still at their physical peak.
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America invented the perfect grape, then banished it into obscurity. I found out why. When I was growing up, my family would often travel to Korea, the country of my heritage. Each time, my sister and I gleefully looked forward to getting our hands on the things we couldn’t easily get anywhere else—fruit especially. We feasted on Korean melon, persimmons, Asian pears, and what we thought of as “Korean grapes.”
The grapes were always the star of the show. They tasted like grape candy. Spherical with dark blue-purple skin, they aren’t eaten the same way as typical American table grapes. Holding one grape with its “belly button” (what I call the part where the fruit attaches to the vine) to your mouth, you gently suck while pinching the fruit with your fingers. The green jellylike flesh pops out of its thick skin and into your mouth. Grapes that are consumed this way are called slipskin because of how readily the flesh falls from its casing. After pulling each grape out, we’d work with our teeth to extract and spit out the large seeds, then return to the skin to suck out any extra grape juice. We’d repeat this until we were left with lightly purple fingertips and a mound of skins and seeds. Recently, my boyfriend’s parents showed us around their magnificent garden in Staten Island. They had footlong gourds, fig trees, a wall of tomato plants, and, to my shock, Korean grapes.
It turns out these grapes—which account for two-thirds of Korea’s grape production (and are also popular in Japan)—are not Korean at all but American. A hybrid of the iconic Concord grape. Concord grapes are rarely seen in grocery stores, but even if you’re not familiar with the name, you definitely know the taste—at least if you grew up in the U.S. It’s the source of flavor in grape bubblegum and Kool-Aid, the grape traditionally used to make the jelly in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the grape of Welch’s grape juice.
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Does leaning left politically make you a more prosocial person?
- What is "leaning left"? Supporting free speech and individual autonomy used to be very "left"...
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Lying down and vomiting between courses: This is how Ancient Romans would feast
celebrity gossip
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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How we fell out of love with dating apps
In early December, Match Group, the owner of more than 40 dating apps and by far the market leader in the world of online dating, held its first investor day since going public in 2015. The major theme was that the next big shift in the business of romantic connections will be artificial intelligence — something the group is pushing hard. “AI is going to transform the dating experience. It’s going to enable us to make all aspects of the online dating journey better,” proclaimed chief executive Bernard Kim. Behind those optimistic words, however, were some difficult realities. Although its brands now cater to tens of millions of users globally, Match’s market value — roughly $8bn — is just a fifth of what it was three years ago. Last month, Tinder, Match’s flagship brand and the app that arguably invented the modern dating industry, reported that paid user numbers had dropped on a year-on-year basis for the eighth consecutive quarter.
- "owner of more than 40 apps" ... with what difference between them or reason for there not to be one pool of prospects? "40 different channels, all full of crap" killed TV too.
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2024 Was the Year the Bottom Fell Out of the Games Industry | WIRED
Ball says that the blame for all of this can’t be pinned to a single thing, like capitalism, mismanagement, Covid-19, or even interest rates. It also involves development costs, how studios are staffed, consumers’ spending habits, and game pricing. “This storm is so brutal,” he says, “because it is all of these things at once, and none have really alleviated since the layoffs began.”
Dragon Age: The Veilguard, was criticized by far-right trolls for its customization options, which allow players to create characters with top surgery scars or play with a nonbinary companion.
- Making games designed to annoy the audiences that buy them seems to be working as expected. as Pixy says: "Remember 1983".
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Apple Explains Why It Doesn't Plan to Create a Search Engine
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Duolingo's passive-aggressive strategy for keeping users hooked
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Spoiler Alert: 'Star Trek: Discovery' Officially Erased from Canon
Star Trek: Lower Decks had its big finale this week, and in the process of ending the show, they fixed one of the worst problems Star Trek has ever had. That problem is named Star Trek: Discovery, and thankfully, it is no longer part of the official, prime timeline Star Trek canon.
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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I Thought I Found a Bug… | OS/2 Museum
why is it like this? Having basic file I/O functions behave in this non-obvious way (either quietly failing or not writing the expected data, depending on the sequence of other function calls) is clearly sub-optimal.
(exhaustive historic investigation elided)
suppose oddities like this just happen when you have nearly nearly 50 years of history behind you.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Biden to decide Nippon Steel's bid for US Steel after deadlock on security risk
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US housing market is mirroring 2008 bubble–real estate analyst
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Big banks sue Federal Reserve over minimum cash requirements
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Fiserv bets on gig-economy financing with $140M deal for Canada's Payfare
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The Bank Behind the Fintech Revolution Stumbles After Customer Funds Go Missing
Trump
Democrats / Biden Inc
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Bald eagle officially U.S. national bird after Biden signs bill into law
The bald eagle is now officially the national bird of the U.S. after President Biden signed into law legislation amending a code to formally recognize the previously unofficial American emblem.
Left Angst
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Bilderberg Group changes itself for the modern world – and return of Trump
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(Nov 2024) The Economy Has Been Great Under Biden. That's Why Trump Won
Our main thesis is that a strong economy favors Republicans, and a weak economy favors Democrats, regardless of the incumbent. Take the two biggest economic crises of the past century. In November 1932, when Americans were living through the Great Depression, they put Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, in the Oval Office. In November 2008, during the Great Recession, they elected Barack Obama, another Democrat. These are not the only examples of recessions that were good for Democratic candidates. John F. Kennedy was chosen in 1960, during the 1960–61 recession. Jimmy Carter became president after the 1973–75 recession. Bill Clinton won shortly after the 1990–91 recession. And they are not coincidences, according to our model.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
Health / Medicine
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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Invasive species! Giant redwoods: largest trees 'thriving in UK'
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Solar, EVs and a Big Exit from Coal: 2024's Good Climate News
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Pre-Roman copper industry had no polluting impact on the global environment
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but i thought sea levels were rising... Three-quarters of the land is drying out, 'redefining life on Earth'