Stuff you didn't know and probably don't care about

[KMFJD]

https://twitter.com/x/status/909473295937839104

 

[Kaido]

https://twitter.com/x/status/909473295937839104

Lies, that's just Wheetabix they threw in a blender!

Fun fact: famine & starvation is a people-problem, not a food-problem. We currently have an estimated global population of just shy of 7.6 billion people & produce enough food to feed 10 billion people. It's a distribution problem that starts with corrupt governments (looking at you, North Korea) & continues with inefficient distribution systems, lack of assistance systems, budget issues, and so on.

Not only that, but from a purely survival perspective, we have water generators (basically large, outdoor dehumidification systems with potable water filtering systems, which can be powered by solar panels & batteries for off-grid usage) & stuff like Soylent, which is a complete meal-in-a-drink with all of the macros, micros, and fiber you need to not only survive, but obtain properly nutrition on a daily basis. These are real things that actually exist & can be made in bulk quantity & plugged into our worldwide shipping & distribution system.

The technology & abundance exists to solve these problems, so the hard part now is getting the system setup to meet everyone's needs on a global basis, which is pretty dang challenging!

 

[IronWing]

Automation is coming like a freight train.
https://www.mining.com/rio-tinto-rolls-out-worlds-biggest-robot-in-pilbara/

 

[snoopy7548]

Lies, that's just Wheetabix they threw in a blender!

Fun fact: famine & starvation is a people-problem, not a food-problem. We currently have an estimated global population of just shy of 7.6 billion people & produce enough food to feed 10 billion people. It's a distribution problem that starts with corrupt governments (looking at you, North Korea) & continues with inefficient distribution systems, lack of assistance systems, budget issues, and so on.

Not only that, but from a purely survival perspective, we have water generators (basically large, outdoor dehumidification systems with potable water filtering systems, which can be powered by solar panels & batteries for off-grid usage) & stuff like Soylent, which is a complete meal-in-a-drink with all of the macros, micros, and fiber you need to not only survive, but obtain properly nutrition on a daily basis. These are real things that actually exist & can be made in bulk quantity & plugged into our worldwide shipping & distribution system.

The technology & abundance exists to solve these problems, so the hard part now is getting the system setup to meet everyone's needs on a global basis, which is pretty dang challenging!

The amount of food Americans waste is probably enough to end world hunger.

 

[Kaido]

The amount of food Americans waste is probably enough to end world hunger.

There's a big advertising push in my county to "Save the Food"; they billboards are saying that an average American family of 4 wastes $1,500 in food annually:

https://savethefood.com/

This is a big reason I got a vac-sealer & a deep-freezer...it's so easy to burn through food, and meal-planning can be a real bear, so a lot goes to waste.

I think I first learned about the "10 billion" figure from the Forks Over Knives documentary...I was pretty shocked, because I had grown up my whole life thinking that there literally wasn't enough food to go around. And here we are with a ridiculous surplus, and we haven't even touched what we're capable of making. Lots of companies like Freight Farms and Farm One are out there doing really great work, it's more of a problem with corrupt governments than anything, really. A couple great companies include Freight Farms:

 

[sdifox]

Automation is coming like a freight train.
https://www.mining.com/rio-tinto-rolls-out-worlds-biggest-robot-in-pilbara/

I for one, welcome our new locomotive overlord.

 

[sdifox]

Automation is coming like a freight train.
https://www.mining.com/rio-tinto-rolls-out-worlds-biggest-robot-in-pilbara/

I, for one, welcome our new locomotive overlord.

 

[KMFJD]

 

[KMFJD]

very cool analysis of the Battle of Midway from the Japanese perspective and why it failed

 

[IronWing]

The famous defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was followed by the defeat of a similar English Armada in 1589. The English Armada lost more ships but had fewer casualties than the Spanish Armada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Armada

 

[lxskllr]

Welsh used to have letter "K", but it was abandoned due to typesetter restrictions...

Alt text...

"Found this delightful story in 'The Monsters and the Critics: And Other Essays.' "

Non authoritative corroboration..

The grapheme k was also used more commonly than in the modern alphabet, particularly before front vowels.[4] The disuse of this letter is at least partly due to the publication of William Morgan's Welsh Bible, whose English printers, with type letter frequencies set for English and Latin, did not have enough k letters in their type cases to spell every /k/ sound as k, so the order went "C for K, because the printers have not so many as the Welsh requireth";[6] this was not liked at the time, but has become standard usage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_orthography

 

[IronWing]

One thousand chicks have been hatched in the California Condor recovery effort.

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/21/7439...lifornia-condor-comeback-reaches-1-000-chicks

 

[Charmonium]

The Dinner Party That Served Up 50,000-Year-Old Bison Stew

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ancient-bison-stew-blue-babe-alaska

ONE NIGHT IN 1984, A handful of lucky guests gathered at the Alaska home of paleontologist Dale Guthrie to eat stew crafted from a once-in-a-lifetime delicacy: the neck meat of an ancient, recently-discovered bison nicknamed Blue Babe.
The dinner party fit Alaska tradition: Since state law bans the buying, bartering, and selling of game meats, you can’t find local favorites such as caribou stew at restaurants. Those dishes are enjoyed when hunters host a gathering. But their meat source is usually the moose population—not a preserved piece of biological history.
Blue Babe had been discovered just five years earlier by gold miners, who noticed that a hydraulic mining hose melted part of the gunk that had kept the bison frozen. They reported their findings to the nearby University of Alaska Fairbanks. Concerned that it would decompose, Guthrie—then a professor and researcher at the university—opted to dig out Blue Babe immediately. But the icy, impenetrable surroundings made that challenging. So he cut off what he could, refroze it, and waited for the head and neck to thaw.

 

[KMFJD]

 

[OccamsToothbrush]

The Dinner Party That Served Up 50,000-Year-Old Bison Stew

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ancient-bison-stew-blue-babe-alaska

I have some two month old stew in my refrigerator and nobody wants to get close enough to the container to throw it away. If I wait 49,999.8 years will it get good again?

 

[IronWing]

If I hadn't believed it, I wouldn't have seen it.

https://www.wired.com/story/a-single-math-model-explains-many-mysteries-of-vision/

 

[mikeymikec]

The 'Werewolf Mouse' that can convert scorpion poison to a painkiller, and howls into the night sky:

 

[KMFJD]

 

[IronWing]

Windows RT is taking off any day now.

 

[shortylickens]

The amount of food Americans waste is probably enough to end world hunger.

John Oliver did a special on food.
One way or another America wastes 40% of its food.

 

[OccamsToothbrush]

John Oliver did a special on food.
One way or another America wastes 40% of its food.

Does that include the stuff like McDonalds which is wasted the moment its cooked regardless of whether anyone actually eats it?

 

[KMFJD]

 

[KMFJD]

 

[Kaido]

I had no idea South America produced soybeans!

 

[IronWing]

I had no idea South America produced soybeans!

That was the outcome of the U.S.’s last trade war. Our former customers diversified their supply chain.