The team examined over 600 sculls from South America from 400 BCE to the mid-1500s CE. The earliest had survival rate of 40%, then it jumped to 53%, during the Inca period it was 75% to 83%, and the latest period survival rates was at 91%.

According to Civil War medical records which was from 1861 to1865 , some 46% to 56% of cranial surgery patients died.

More on this: South America's Inca civilization was better at skull surgery than Civil War doctors

The Mesozoic marine revolution (MMR) refers to the increase in shell-crushing (durophagous) and boring predation in shallow-sea (neritic) and some deep-sea marine organisms throughout the Mesozoic era (251 Mya to 66 Mya), along with bulldozing and sediment remodelling in benthic marine habitats

It coincided with the rise of large secondarily adapted marine reptiles... proliferation of shell-destroying mesopredators... a trend toward benthos infaunalization,[2] and extinction/habitat restriction of sessile organisms incapable of reattachment once dislodged

The MMR is an important evolutionary transition from the Paleozoic fauna to the more modern-looking fauna

It is thought that the break-up of Pangaea and the formation of new oceans throughout the Mesozoic brought together previously isolated marine communities, forcing them to compete and adapt

We don't know how pterosaurs evolved powered flight. The most primitive, probable, ancestor of pterosaurs had a bodyplan closer to that of a kangaroo. And the earliest pterosaurs like Preondactylus or Eudimorphodon were already fully capable of flight.

Hong Xiuquan was a Chinese religious leader who believed he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. He led the Taiping Rebellion, which established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Death count during the rebellion? 20-30 million people...

Riding Giant Mechanical Tricycles, 1896

Vine-Glo was a grape concentrate brick product sold in the United States during Prohibition by Fruit Industries Ltd, a front for the California Vineyardist Association (CVA), from 1929.

The product was advertised with tips for preventing alcoholic fermentation, with one salesperson giving customers a very specific warning: "Do not place the liquid in this jug and put it away in the cupboard for twenty-one days, because then it would turn into wine."

(sketch is self-made)

So, many solid materials have a so-called "Young modulus E" which describes the mechanical stress that develops inside a material when it is deformed. Basically, when a material is deformed by a deformation ε, then the stress σ is σ = E · ε.

ε is measured as Δx/x, i.e. when you take 1m of steel and deform (stretch) it by 1mm, then ε = 1mm / 1m = 10^-3. The value of E is set for any material, i.e. E(steel) = 200 GPa, or 200 kN/mm². So if you stretch it by a deformation of ε = 10^-3, you get a stress σ = 10⁻³ · 200 GPa = 200 MPa.

A practical application of this would be if you have an elastic wire (a wire made from steel, in this case), and you want to calculate how much force you need to stretch it.

This means that if the steel bar has a cross-section area of A = 1mm², and a length of 1 m, and you stretch it by an additional 1mm, then ε = 10^-3 and to calculate the force F, you multiply σ by A and get F = σ · A = 200 MPa · 1 mm² = 200 N/mm² · 1 mm² = 200 N. This is the force that you have to exert to stretch the wire to this length.

In a follow-up article i intend to show how you calculate how much energy you need to stretch the wire to this length, which is surprisingly simple to do if you know some calculus and the basic rule that dW = F · dx. To sum it up, the result would be W = ∫ F · dx = ½ · F · Δx. For the above example this would be W = ½ · F · Δx = ½ · 200 N · 1 mm = 0.1 J. Which is surprisingly little energy, in my opinion.

Did i calculate this correctly? Can somebody check please?

On August 25, 1958, Momofuku Ando created the first instant noodles, Chikin Ramen (Chicken Ramen). The inventor and businessman created them to help address the food shortage crisis in post-World War II Japan. Ramen itself has its roots in China, but after Japan ended its isolationist policies in the mid-1800s, the quintessentially Japanese version of the dish was created from the resulting cultural fusion. More specifically, modern Japanese ramen was first created in 1926 by a chef named Wang Wen-chai at a Chinese restaurant in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. His dish was designed to appeal to both Chinese and Japanese students studying in the area and combined Chinese wheat-based noodles with traditional Japanese flavors. The food quickly became a staple, and during the postwar period in Japan, black-market food vendors began selling ramen. After noticing the long lines forming at these stalls, Momofuku Ando became determined to help alleviate the plight of food shortages and set out to create noodles that could be “quickly prepared and eaten at home with only hot water.” He spent a year working on the recipe in his garden shed and then had an epiphany while watching his wife make tempura, which made him realize that the process of dehydration through frying could preserve the noodles, allowing them to be stored for a long period of time. He then created the first instant ramen, which was sold by Nissin Foods under the name Chikin Ramen. The product was originally sold as a luxury item, costing far more than fresh noodles, and was originally met with skepticism, but eventually morphed into a staple. Then in 1971, Momofuku Ando introduced Cup Noodles, creating a global trend that is still going strong today. Over time, different flavors and brands of instant noodles have been introduced, but the original Chikin Ramen version is still widely available. In fact, instant noodles remain extremely popular today overall and more than 100 billion servings are consumed each year.

It's like a very quiet Digg or (old) Reddit. Niche content covered by passionate individuals. The way the web was meant to be. While I wasn't able to log in with my piefed account, I was able to use my mastodon one, which is pretty cool.

For the most part the predicted market peaks and troughs are pretty accurate. This is more of a statistical analysis (using past numbers to predict future behavior) than a Nostradamus getting high and pulling predictions out of his ass.

But still, there's a degree of confirmation bias influencing the believers (and conversely instinctive skepticism affecting doubters) that come into okay.

Either way, I think it's an interesting tidbit from the past.

• Genus name: Rattus
• Species name: rattus
• Subspecies name: rattus

You'd actually say it as R. rattus rattus or Rattus r. rattus.

The Flashpoint Archive is a big project to preserve old web games (Adobe Flash based games, animations etc).

It has a really cool video about what it does on its website: https://flashpointarchive.org/

Go check it out. It's literally a treasure trove of old games.

Here are some screenshots:

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51078361

Here, using high-resolution satellite-retrieved data and interpretable machine learning techniques, this study quantified the impact of NEVs on atmospheric pollution, specifically particulate matter particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 μm or less (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 10 μm or less, and evaluates the corresponding health benefits. By 2023, NEVs led to reductions of 23.80% in particles with a diameter of 2.5 μm or less (8.97 µg m−3) and 30.67% in carbon monoxide (0.26 mg m−3), resulting in the prevention of approximately 262,000 non-accidental deaths and 75,000 all-cause deaths, respectively.

Very interesting article.

in the past, the parts of the country granted outsize power by the Constitution — less populated states, which tend to be more rural — voted in broadly similar ways as large states and urban areas.

This similarity meant that the small-state bonus in the Senate and Electoral College had only a limited effect on national results. Both Democrats and Republicans benefited, and suffered, from the Constitution’s undemocratic features.

In recent decades, Americans have increasingly sorted themselves along ideological lines. Liberals have flocked to large metropolitan areas, which are heavily concentrated in big states like California, while residents of smaller cities and more rural areas have become more conservative.

This combination — the Constitution’s structure and the country’s geographic sorting — has created a disconnect between public opinion and election outcomes.

Geographic sorting has helped cause a growing disconnect between public opinion and election results, and this disconnect has shaped the Supreme Court, as well

The court’s membership at any given time is dictated by the outcomes of presidential and Senate elections over the previous few decades. And if elections reflected popular opinion, Democratic appointees would dominate the court. Yet the court is now dominated by a conservative, six-member majority

There are multiple reasons (including Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision not to retire in 2014 when a Democratic president and Senate could have replaced her). But the increasingly undemocratic natures of both the Electoral College and Senate play crucial roles.

Mr. Trump was able to appoint three justices despite losing the popular vote. Similarly, if Senate seats were based on population, none of Mr. Trump’s nominees — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — would likely have been confirmed, said Michael J. Klarman, a law professor at Harvard.

Senate Republicans also would not have been able to block Mr. Obama from filling a court seat during his final year in office.

Even Justice Clarence Thomas’s 1991 confirmation relied on the Senate’s structure: The 52 senators who voted to confirm him represented a minority of Americans

The current court’s approach has magnified the disconnect between public opinion and government policy, because Republican-appointed justices have overruled Congress on some major issues

The list includes bills on voting rights and campaign finance that earlier Congresses passed along bipartisan lines. This term, the court issued rulings on abortion, climate policy and gun laws that seemed to be inconsistent with majority opinion, based on polls

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/17/us/american-democracy-threats.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7lA.Lopu.-c9cuH2yc0mq

Window guidance - essentially, the central bank increases or limits credit for certain sectors in order to incentivize their growth.

Learned from watching this documentary - The Princes of Yen | The Hidden Power of Central Banks (yt link) - , so if anyone knows if any information is wrong or misleading, please tell me so :)

Other stuff the doc mentions is that the late 1980s Japanese economic crisis was caused on purpose by the Ministry of Finance, through the Bank of Japan, by enforcing all banks to reach minimal loan quotas; all of that in order to force structural changes to the finance system, as without a crisis, there is "no reason to change the structure"

So I saw this show with a bit of a different title but completely the superfriends animation with cyborg and firestorm and im like what is this? Went on a bit of a rabbit hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Friends but it seems like they were slowly inter speeding so many reruns and not putting in much new content when I was watching it and then it was gone for awhile but apparently it came back but they had relegated it to early sat timeslots. Kinda funny because I was getting into comics about then and I had never seen firestorm or cyborg at the time unitl I saw them in comics but apperently they were on some early time on saturdays.

Haven't bought name brand Pop-Tarts in years, but have occasionally picked up Toaster 'Betes or whatever the off-brand versions are called.

Noticed a 'sale' on the name brand and got conned into buying them. They're now smaller, have less frosting, and have way less filling. The damn things were so flimsy that two of them snapped trying to take them out of the toaster.

If you get a craving for some nice sugary betes for breakfast, stick to the off-brands. They're now higher quality than the name brand.

The future is stupid.

TIL: „Oberdeutscher Präteritumschwund“ exists and I absolutely love it — and the name, obviously.

It basically describes the phenomenon that the simple past tense is vanishing or even has completely vanished from various German dialects. Apprently, this can be traced back until the 13th century.

@wikipedia article: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberdeutscher/_Pr%C3%A4teritumschwund

Article is only available in German (… and Bavarian)

@til

#til #wikipedia #grammar #dialects #german