Seemingly pointless tasks such as washing sand!

Toxicologists and medical scientists looking for data on humans suddenly having to learn Japanese (or German) …

I once read a fairly interesting take on this: Historical settings are often chosen to wrap the story in a certain context in order to allow the reader to picture the style and theme without having to establish and explain a new setting first, so basically you skip on world building. If you read an analogy to Zeus you will immediately have an image in mind as well as a bunch of characteristics, no need to establish that beforehand.

Now, considering this it makes sense to choose a setting people already know - the 16th centruy Ottoman Empire is certainly interesting, but the average reader might know next to nothing about it and you have to explain everything first.

Why are these three settings used so much? Well, it’s positive feedback! Literature, Theatres and Video Games will select something well known and it receives popularity. In addition, a piece of media using a less-popular setting will have to a) compete with other media to become popular and b) provide plenty of worldbuilding in order to have the setting make sense. A piece of media that both establishes a “new” setting AND is very popular is going to be rare, making the entry of a new mythology/historical setting into mainstream difficult.

Blowing into an enclosed space is chaotic, the fan has to push against air currents being deflected. Blowing into an open space (aka sucking out of you dishwasher) is much more orderly, the fan can simply pull the air out and there are much fewer air currents running orthogonal.

This is as far as my very basic knowledge goes here. You can try this effect by exhaling and inhaling air through a barely open mouth or a straw.

EDIT: On a related note, never “blow” during fellatio.

Ah, I was wondering where all the Karens went.

At my job we recently had an old device that was used to produce the sound a phone makes when the line is busy, open, etc. . It’s about arm length and 20 cm thick, you can distinguish the cogs producing the phase from the signal.

That’s … actually very high quality!

Buddy, if this is your reaction to reading a humouristic headline, you need to touch grass.

I think there used to be a teaching that depiction of humans was - for some reason - forbidden. But my source is the novel “Der Medicus” , so take that with a teaspoon of salt.

Tbf, this has proven to be extremely effective: Just think of how many tobacco or chili plants are grown today! Domestication really is a two-way-street

Thanks for the info! I didn’t think they were widespread, but figured they might be a bit wholesome and would light up this thread :)

Projecting ads onto the tunnel walls off of a moving subway. Seen in mainland Taiwan China.

I’d like to add that there are good versions of “microloans”! I learned that there used to be (or still are, didn’t check) non-profit " banks" in some parts of India (and South africa I think) that would give out small loans of a few dollars to a few hundred dollars (which can be quite a lot of money in India). There was no collateral and low interest, but a group of people had to apply for a loan together. Until the first loan was paid back, the rest of the group couldn’t apply again. It was meant to provide financial backing and capital to microbusinesses (e.g. fishers, farmers, peddlers) that would otherwise be excluded from the financial market due to a lack of collateral and otherwise be forced to take high-interest loans.

This headline could use some Mandy Rice-Davies.

*Ah, here we go shit again

It’s an anti-missile system. To shoot down incoming missiles.

Well, what else is there to human behaviour? There are some serious hypothesis about the interface between neurology and quantum mechanics, but if you break humans down to their foundations they will invariably die. Don’t do that, it’s bad.

It’s hard to believe someone can stomach to take a stance against such overwhelming cruelty - which was probably the intention. Not exactly a new form of terrorism, but shocking nonetheless.

Hot take.

+1 for Zotero and Biblatex. You do need the “Better Bibtex”-Plugin though, or at least I highly recommend it.

“Zotfile” allows you to more or less automatically create a filesystem, so as long as you have a way to sync parts of your drive (or access a server) you can have working links to every paper in your library on any machine.