SUNDAY #4281 FACTS

One Of My Very Own

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EMAIL: 

ralh.henry.at.folio.olio@gmail.com

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ITEMS OF WHICH YOU MAY BE UNAWARE

Another topic post being presented in no particular order. I hope you find it tolerable.

Imagine a battery that powers devices thousands of years without ever needing to be recharged- it just got a lot closer to reality today! A brand new battery that uses a diamond nanocoating to harvest the radiation off a piece of diamond encased spent nuclear fuel got through a big proof of concept test at Lawrence Livermore National Lab today. If this technology works, it could totally replace lithium-ion batteries and mean we’d never have to recharge a device again! Plus, it’s an effective way to get rid of nuclear waste!

https://newatlas.com/energy/nano-diamond-self-charging-batteries-ndb/ 

I'll believe it when I see it.
^^A1^^

A man rides a whites-only bus in Durban in protest of South African apartheid policies (1986).

Damn! My daughter was eleven years old when this shit was still the law down there? 
A bit of research revealed it didn't end until 1994. 
^^A2^^

I had no idea turtles would do this...

Can we all assume it was done by accident...mistaken identity?
^^A3^^

I have posted this a dozen times thinking it was really ancient...

It's actually in Portugal and is only 100 years old. It was built as part of a bizarre complex by two rich businessmen. 
^^A4^^

What does an Alligator Gar eat?

Anything it fucking wants. 
^^A5^^

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2242937-universal-basic-income-seems-to-improve-employment-and-well-being/ 

You might want to read that.
^^A6^^

A smokescreen that was used during World War II.

It was dispensed from aircraft to create vertical smoke curtains and was made of Titanium tetrachloride, a colorless, non-flammable, corrosive liquid. In contact with damp air, it hydrolyzes readily, resulting in a dense white smoke consisting of droplets of hydrochloric acid and particles of titanium oxychloride. 

That's very impressive.
^^A7^^

What fun! 
I bet people flock there just to try to outdo one another. Brilliant.
^^A8^^

Bosch makes some damn fine tools. I assume there is a need for such as that but it much too rough a cut for my needs.
^^A9^^

There is one of those on a corner of a rather busy intersection in my city. Only it is constructed using lattice brickwork.

It is always getting hit by errant cars and has been repaired dozens of times just in the years I've lived here. 
Further, it has been whitewashed so many times that it looks like it has been dipped in ice cream. And every time they rebuild it they somehow make it look like the original wall. Queer that.
^^A10^^

 That thing reminds me of my old friend the incredible tardigrade.

God, I admire those creatures! 
^^A11^^

Mimicking Nature

I love everything about that. Nature has solved many of our problems if we only pay attention. 
^^A12^^

This mysterious cave found an incredible scene, all coffins, 1800 years ago.

Coffins stacked, layer upon layer in various stages of decay is believed to have been a practice since ancient times. These are the "anshun caves" in southwest China's Guizhou province. 
^^A13^^

Indoor Beehive

Did you notice that all of the patterns are identical? What's up with that?
I've seen many more examples of that and think it a wonderful learning tool for young children.
^^A14^^

Rehydrating Dried Leaves

Wonder if that's real-time? 
^^A15^^

That looks exactly like the bayonet I have on my Civil War musket. I think that one is used for quality control sampling. 
^^A16^^

How to swear in Latin

 ^^A17^^

My uncle worked in healthcare all of his life. He told me that normal economic rules don't apply to healthcare. Specifically, if a hospital buys an MRI machine for a million dollars and know they have two years to pay for it before it goes obsolete, and further that 500 people a year will need an MRI they deduce that by charging $1000 they can pay for it in the two-year window.
But if another hospital in their area installs a similar machine then normally you would reduce your price to stay competitive. But in healthcare, the price must DOUBLE! Because now each hospital will only have 250 people a year using their machine but it still has to be paid off in two years.
Now guess what happens when five hospitals all have $1M MRI machines.
^^A18^^

Target vs. College Book Store

And they have the students by the balls because they don't have the time nor the transportation to shop around.
^^A19^^

Fresnel shield.

https://www.iflscience.com/physics/ordinary-lens-used-cloaking-device/ 

Yes, I know I've shown you something similar, but I find it amazing. I mean, think of that being use on a tank...or an airplane!
^^A20^^

 SOURCE: CLICK HERE

 ^^A21^^

Not the tower.  The Saxon church.  The Roman tower next to it is 2,000 years old.   
As an American, this degree of antiquity never ceases to amaze me. 
^^A22^^

The shark eats and fucks, the dolphin solves problems.
^^A23^^

"The iron found in the asteroid 16 Psyche alone is worth an estimated $10 quintillion, and according to NASA, if we could extract all of the minerals in the asteroids between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the total value would be enough to give every person on Earth about $100 billion." 
But after you deduct the cost of retrieval it comes to a buck fifteen.
^^A24^^

I think that is a significant discovery. 
^^A25^^

This Soviet tractor design solves a problem.

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/25/weird-soviet-tractor-transform.html 
^^A26^^

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 ^^A28^^

If You Keep Your Feet On The Dashboard And Get Into A Car Crash.

 ^^A29^^

Many breeds of sheep have their tails docked to reduce the buildup of feces which can encourage flystrike.

 Also used for this purpose is mulesing. Docking also makes it easier to view a grown ewe's udders to detect potential problems.  

This is a Pazyryk warrior's coat (Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Science) from 2,500 years ago.

A peculiar part of his coat is the 'tail', made from an undocked sheepskin. 
^^A30^^

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^^A32^^

A member of the Harlem Hellfighters (369th Infantry Regiment) poses for the camera while holding a puppy he saved during World War 1, 1918. 
And when he returned home he was still treated like dog shit. 
^^A33^^

One of the most clever timesaving inventions I ever thought of was tying the ends of two of those together so we could work off ladders and not have to get down. 
^^A34^^

 ^^A36^^

Enlarge at will. 
^^A37^^

Sand Tornado

You may have noticed that I have a thing about phenomena like that. 
^^A35^^

Waterspouts in the Gulf of Mexico during Laura.

Remember Laura?

Most people who ride out hurricanes also don't wear masks.
^^A38^^

The underside of a barge that's been submerged for 15 years.

 ^^A39^^

Baidu offers a satellite map service much like Google's or Microsoft's. Based in China, it is subject to rigorous censorship. By comparing conspicuously blanked-out areas on Baidu Maps to the corresponding regions in western mapping services, Buzzfeed uncovered a network of prisons and internment camps in Xinjiang. But there's more: also concealed this way are military facilities, power plants, and more.

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/27/blanked-out-areas-of-baidu-map.html 

Fuck the CCP.
^^A40^^

If we rely on carbon sequestration to get atmospheric carbon concentrations down to a more livable 350ppm, we will recover enough carbon to fill 138,462 pyramids, each the size of the Great Pyramid at Giza; we could build 3.79 great carbon pyramids every day for 100 years. "Beyond providing employment and sequestering carbon, these pyramids would do nothing. In as much as we understand this scheme cannot be built, we suggest that it must be" 

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/27/global-warming-solved-just-bu.html

As mentioned prior, I now believe that we don't have a prayer of solving the global warming problem.
^^A41^^

Think of the very first person to think of trying that shit.
I bet he was not very popular.
^^A42^^

Speaking of China...

Larung Gar Buddhist Academy in Tibet. 4000-meter elevation.

China, of course, is set on ruining it.

"...a report in August 2017 found that the demolitions were still being continued, not due to overpopulation—the area is expansive—but because of a government program to turn the sacred site into a 'tourist attraction'. Thousands of Tibetans had already been displaced, while a Han Chinese migration program to the area continued. The report also found that the Tibetans whose houses were destroyed were forced to sign documents that legally bound them to renounce their land rights in Larung Gar. Afterward, they were sent away via buses without notice on where they will be relocated." 

^^A43^^

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 My state has Chitterlings.

That's fresh hog intestines that necessitates a very bizarre dance to sling the shit out of the "tube". That procedure is called a chitterling strut and there's a famous festival named after it.
Around here we call it a "Chitlin" and that's all I have to say about that.
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 I want you to imagine that you have never even heard of religion. Then one day a friend tells you about a man he met.

"This guy I met said he was born from a virgin and could walk on water. That man said that he was the Son of an all-powerful entity named God and it was his understanding that this God created the whole universe in six days and then the first two people, but those two people pissed God off by being talked into eating an apple by a talking snake so this God kicked them out into the real world where they had children who interbred until the world was full of people, but all of them also pissed him off except for one family who he told to build a boat and fill it with two of every animal on Earth even the kangaroos, polar bears, and penguins, then God made it rain for forty days which flooded the whole world then the waters went away and that family got off the boat and interbred until...here we are. And that all happened in only six thousand years."

Would you believe him?

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https://imgur.com/gallery/CZNW75x

https://imgur.com/gallery/zs3myjy

https://imgur.com/gallery/ZyzwGnF 

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Oh, she knows exactly what she's doing. 
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A small number of cards have been lost from a complete pack. If I deal to four people, three cards remain. If I deal to three people, two remain and if I deal to five people, two cards remain. How many cards are there?