Today I Learned

The decision to demilitarize started from a proposal to put more money into education and healthcare by the then Defense Minister Edgar Cardona, who passed it to the Interior minister Alvaro Ramos and then, taken to the constitutional assembly by the provisional President at the time, Jose Figueres Ferrer.

But even though Costa Rica has no Army, it has a special police force, officially called the Public Force of Costa Rica (Fuerza Pública). It was established in 1996 by the Ministry of Public Security to perform law enforcement, policing, and border patrol tasks. The force’s motto is “God, Fatherland, and Honor.”

The Effects of Costa Rica not having an Army

The budget previously dedicated to sustaining the Costa Rica Army is put into other aspects of the society like education and health care.

This, in turn, allows for improved political, economic, and social stability. New schools and hospitals lowered the country’s infant mortality and heightened the literacy rate.

Today, Costa Rica’s infant mortality rate is the second-lowest in the region, and the literacy rate is 98%. It also has a higher life expectancy, averaging 80 years old. So, overall, the standard of living has increased.

In fact, in 2012, based on the Happy Planet Index, it was the happiest country in the world!

Population of 5 million.

Source : « The Great Scientists: From Euclid to Stephen Hawking », from John Farndon

I.d.k. why i thought that Euclid, and perhaps also others, were around Plato or before, just wanted to share, what a time.

B.t.w., we know about ChatGPT, some about Sam Altman, but nothing about the researchers, and the same goes for every other technology, it's a choice of society 🤷(, causes&consequences).

Edit : Transcript :

All the same, if anyone wanted a proper education, Alexandria in Egypt was the place to go, and here Archimedes went as a young man.
At the time he was there, the city was the greatest centre of learning in the ancient world. Although the museum or university there was barely 20 years old – the city itself had been founded by Alexander the Great just half a century earlier – it already held an unrivalled library, containing at least 100,000 scrolls, including all of Aristotle’s priceless personal collection.
It was here that the great Euclid taught geometry, that Aristarchus showed that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and that Hipparchus made the first great catalogue of constellations, categorizing stars in terms of their brightness. And it was here that, much later, Ptolemy wrote the Almagest, the most influential book about the nature of the universe for 1,500 years.
Euclid was probably dead by the time Archimedes was there, but Archimedes undoubtedly met Eratosthenes, the brilliant thinker who measured the circumference of the world to within 4 per cent of modern figures, and made a measurement of the year’s length as precise as any until barely half a century ago.

The following three lists of generic and genericized trademarks are:

• marks which were originally legally protected trademarks, but have been genericized and have lost their legal status due to becoming generic terms,
• marks which have been abandoned and are now generic terms
• marks which are still legally protected as trademarks, at least in some jurisdictions

The film's score was composed by Joe Strummer, former member of the punk rock band the Clash; the film's soundtrack contains a number of popular and alternative punk rock, skaand new wave songs.

The great auk (Pinguinus impennis), also known as the Penguin or gare-fowl, is a species of flightless alcid that became extinct in the mid-19th century. It was the only modern species in the genus Pinguinus. It is unrelated to the Penguins of the southern hemisphere, which were named so after their resemblance to the northern species.

...the auk foraged in the waters of the North Atlantic, ranging as far south as northern Spain and along the coastlines of Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Ireland, and Great Britain.

Early European explorers to the Americas used the great auk as a convenient food source or as fishing bait, reducing its numbers. The bird's down was in high demand in Europe, a factor that largely eliminated the European populations by the mid-16th century. Around the same time, nations such as Great Britain began to realize that the great auk was disappearing and it became the beneficiary of many early environmental laws, but despite that the great auk were still hunted.

Its growing rarity increased interest from European museums and private collectors in obtaining skins and eggs of the bird. On 3 June 1844, the last two confirmed specimens were killed on Eldey, off the coast of Iceland, ending the last known breeding attempt.

The word "penguin" first appears in the sixteenth century as a synonym for "great auk".[20] Although the etymology is debated, the generic name "penguin" may be derived from the Welsh pen gwyn "white head", either because the birds lived in New Brunswick on White Head Island (Pen Gwyn in Welsh) or because the great auk had such large white circles on its head. When European explorers discovered what today are known as penguins in the Southern Hemisphere, they noticed their similar appearance to the great auk and named them after this bird, although biologically, they are not closely related.[21]: 10

You’ve stepped into the thrilling world of voice acting. Whether your thing is to state characters in vitality, recite audiobooks, or attack commercials, warming up your voice is essential.

Not as hard as it sounds — actually, it’s enough pleasurable. Below are some top warm-ups for newcomers, along with some particular stories to keep effects relatable.

Have fun figuring out how to pronounce them though.

Also knowns as the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle

It obviously protects against sharing data with e.g. your employer, but if a health provider chooses to make your data shareable, there are 2.2M authorized entities that can potentially access the data (identifiable health data).

Excerpt of the video description: Most people think that HIPAA means that their medical records are kept private. But what if I told you that HIPAA doesn’t protect your privacy at all?

This is our first video in a series about medical privacy, specifically looking at legislation that stripped individuals of the right to consent to medical data sharing.

We focus on what HIPAA actually is, how it came to allow our data to be shared without us even knowing, how we’ve been tricked into thinking we have privacy, and steps we can take to reclaim control of our medical data.

00:00 The State of Medical Privacy is a Mess 02:29 What is HIPAA 07:39 How Your Data is Shared 12:10 The Illusion of Privacy 14:48 What Can We Do 22:16 We Deserve Medical Privacy

We deserve privacy in our medical system. Our health information is sensitive, and we should be allowed to protect it. Even while we fight for better medical privacy, please always prioritize your health.

Special Thanks to: Twila Brase, Rob Frommer, and Keith Smith for chatting to us!

List of doctors who have opted out of the surveillance system: https://jointhewedge.com/

Twila's website: https://www.cchfreedom.org/patient-toolbox/

Do you want to fight the system and lead a suit against medical data collection? Contact the Institute for Justice: https://ij.org/

Keith Smith's Surgery Center: https://surgerycenterok.com/

Brought to you by NBTV team members: Lee Rennie, Cube Boy, Sam Ettaro, Will Sandoval and Naomi Brockwell

Edit: changed the title to something that isn't misleading

The Haitian independence debt involves an 1825 agreement between Haiti and France that included France demanding an indemnity of 150 million francs in five annual payments of 30 million to be paid by Haiti in claims over property – including Haitian slaves – that was lost through the Haitian Revolution in return for diplomatic recognition. Haiti was forced to take a loan for the first 30 million,[a] and in 1838 France agreed to reduce the remaining debt to 60 million to be paid over 30 years, with the final payment paid in 1883.[1][2][b] However, The New York Times estimates that because of other loans taken to pay off this loan, the final payment to debtors was actually in 1947. They approximated that in total 112 million francs was paid in indemnity, which when adjusted for the inflation rate would be $560 million in 2022, but considering that if had been invested in the Haitian economy instead, it could be valued at $115 billion.[4][5][c]

Restoration France's demand of payments in exchange for recognizing Haiti's independence was delivered to the country by several French warships in 1825, twenty-one years after Haiti's declaration of independence in 1804.[7][8] Despite several revolutions in France after that date (July Revolution, French Revolution of 1848, Paris Commune), successive governments, be they imperial, monarchist or republican, continued enforcing the debt and coercing Haiti to pay.[d] Haiti had to take a loan in 1875 to pay back the final portion of the original loan, and the bank that benefited most from this was Crédit Industriel et Commercial.[9] Even after the indemnity was paid, Haiti had to continue paying the other loans, and the government of the United States funded the acquisition of Haiti's treasury in 1911,[10] and in 1922, the rest of Haiti's debt was moved to be paid to American investors.[11] The New York Times states that it took until 1947 for Haiti to finally pay off all the associated interest to the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank).[10][12] In 2016, the Parliament of France repealed the 1825 ordinance of Charles X, though no reparations have been offered by France.[5] These debts have been denounced by some historians and activists as responsible for Haiti's poverty today and a case of odious debt.[3]

Tho I must admit that I would never get that close to the surface with my bare hands while doing this.

Biofuels are biomass-derived fuels from plants, animals, or waste; depending on which type of biomass is used, they could lower CO2 emissions by 20–98% compared to conventional jet fuel.[4] The first test flight using blended biofuel was in 2008, and in 2011, blended fuels with 50% biofuels were allowed on commercial flights. In 2023 SAF production was 600 million liters, representing 0.2% of global jet fuel use.[5]

Aviation biofuel can be produced from plant or animal sources such as Jatropha, algae, tallows, waste oils, palm oil, Babassu, and Camelina (bio-SPK); from solid biomass using pyrolysis processed with a Fischer–Tropsch process (FT-SPK); with an alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) process from waste fermentation; or from synthetic biology through a solar reactor.

SAF technology faces significant challenges due to feedstock constraints. The oils and fats known as hydrotreated esters and fatty acids (Hefa), crucial for SAF production, are in limited supply as demand increases. Although advanced e-fuels technology, which combines waste CO2 with clean hydrogen, presents a promising solution, it is still under development and comes with high costs. To overcome these issues, SAF developers are exploring more readily available feedstocks such as woody biomass and agricultural and municipal waste, aiming to produce lower-carbon jet fuel more sustainably and efficiently.[7]

I feel like an idiot for not knowing about these.

Every 2-3 months I have to snake out our shower drain with a 25' snake. Giant PITA.

After some web searches, I stumbled across these hair trap devices. They come in both external and internal configurations. Many different types to choose from.

I purchased an internal one, installed it, and am going to give it a try. In theory I can just pop it out and clean it instead of snaking the pipes. Folks tell me they work well. If this one doesn't work I'll try another type. They are fairly inexpensive.

I'm just a newb when it comes to high grade keyboards, but these things look wild, and I kind of want to try one.

I've gone 47 years without knowing that.

But how did this name originally come into place in engineering??

I've been reading a book on the Paraguay War, Maldita Guerra, and it mentioned how Solano Lopez (then Paraguay's dictator) planned to invade Mato Grosso and possibly take Cuiabá. Trips upstream from Assuncion to Cuiabá at that time would usually take 12+ days on steam ships.

What really surprised me is that this kind of information was supposed to be taught back when I was in school.