Flight safety video

The Hobbit was filmed in New Zealand. Air New Zealand takes advantage… (4 min 38 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOw44VFNk8Y. This one is based on the third movie, others include https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBlRbrB_Gnc.

And more good news from FutureCrunch (now Fix the News):

The proportion of the world’s adults with a net worth of less than $10,000 has plunged from 75% in 2000 to less than 40% in 2023. The percentage of American workers earning under $15 an hour has dropped from 32% to 13% in just two years. The US Internal Revenue Service just collected a record $1 billion in past-due taxes from millionaires. Gavi’s Big Catch-Up begins, allocating 200 million vaccine doses to children missed during COVID-19. Saudi Arabia announces an unprecedented pension reform package, addressing critical issues such as retirement age and maternity leave. Johnson & Johnson agrees not to enforce its patent on critical TB medication in South Africa.

Why no Roman industrial revolution?

Why did the industrial revolution happen in Great Britain in the 1700s and not during the Roman Empire (or anywhere else) in, say, 200 AD? It turns out to be complicated, and modern historians took a while to fully unravel this.

The simple answer is, no one else had the multiple prerequisites. Great Britain was running out of wood for fuel, did have coal easily available up to a point, had practice (with all of Europe) producing precision metal cylinders (admittedly for cannon, but the knowledge was adaptable to steam engines), and had a use for the power from the steam engines. Two uses, in fact: pumping water out of the coal mines as they got deeper (and what luck! right there is the fuel for the engines!), and textile manufacturing on scales that had not previously existed. Neither the Romans nor any other economy had all these features in one place.

A long story (5,800 words) but fascinating to see how the modern world was created: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/.

And more good news from FutureCrunch (now Fix the News):

22 years after The Wire, Baltimore reports 36% decline in homicides
According to the Baltimore Police Department, these numbers for the first half of 2024 are on top of a 20% reduction in homicides in 2023. The new figures also show that non-fatal shootings declined by approximately 30% in H1 2024. City leaders have attributed this to community outreach and long-term efforts to regain public trust as well as ‘the collective efforts of [the] entire public safety apparatus.’ Hoodline

From the internet 2015 (part 1)

More stuff I saved because it was funny or useful or otherwise worth saving:

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(Still Drinking, http://www.stilldrinking.org/god-s-not-dead-a-film-student-s-review)

“Don’t try to be clever. Just tell the truth.” I am absolutely behind this extremely reusable piece of advice that works in any context outside of politics, job interviews, and first dates.

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Article in ArsTechnica: New neural implant reads a person’s intentions to control robotic arm

Erik Sorto, 34, has been paralysed from the neck down for the past 13 years. However, thanks to a ground-breaking clinical trial, he has been able to smoothly drink a bottle of beer using a robotic arm controlled with a brain implant.

To which one commenter replied:

I admire this man’s priorities.

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A Grand Master was talking to another GM at the chess club.

“I played an anonymous opponent online last night. He was good, I think it was God.”

The other GM replied, “God? Really? You think God plays anonymous chess online?”

“Yes, He was really good.”

“Maybe it was Carlsen, he’s played anonymously before.”

“No, He wasn’t that good.”

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QA Engineer walks into a bar. Orders a beer. Orders 0 beers. Orders 999999999 beers. Orders a lizard. Orders -1 beers. Orders a sfdeljknesv.

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It’s gibberish all the way down.

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Article title in The Register, 9/2015 (this headline made me get a subscription):

MAMMOTH MAMMOTH fossil find with BONUS BISON BONE BONANZA

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Karen Ravn (via Ad Astra):

Only as high as I reach can I grow,
only as far as I seek can I go.
Only as deep as I look can I see,
only as much as I dream can I be.

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I just got a message from USA Today that Xerox split into two companies. I bet they both look exactly alike…

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Infinity4011:

I have been trying to find a Toyota dealership that will even take a custom order for a new Tacoma. They all try to sell me last year’s model with similar options, or this year’s new model with different options but the same color. I don’t want a red crew cab automatic with a short bed. I want a red access cab with a long bed and a manual transmission, and a specific set of options. I don’t want a 2015 model, even if it’s close. I want a NEW model Tacoma, but the dealerships where I live just look at me like I’m trying to buy a car and pay with bags of Ebola virus or something. They want absolutely nothing to do with someone who wants to custom order a vehicle.

(Yes, this was pre-COVID.)

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Personally, I’ve been hearing all my life about the Serious Philosophical Issues posed by life extension, and my attitude has always been that I’m willing to grapple with those issues for as many centuries as it takes. – Patrick Hayden.

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I’m not a lawyer, but my lawyer is.

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My dad was a pastor in northern Wisconsin. As such, he couldn’t tell Finnish jokes because that area has a strong Finnish population. To make up for it, he would tell jokes about an extinct civilization – the Hittites. That way no one could be offended.

“So these two Hittites, Eino and Toivo…”

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General Peter Pace, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, once told me, “If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.”

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Give a man a fish and he’ll come back tomorrow for another one. Teach a man to fish and he’ll start looking for someone who will just give him a fish instead…

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That’s the nice thing about kleptomania: you can always take something for it.

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My favorite Latin words to live by: Carpe Deim. 10 cents a fish.

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Veni, vidi, visa.

I came, I saw, I charged it.

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Not my circus, not my monkey.

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And more good news from FutureCrunch (now Fix the News):

Good news for the planet

Something approaching a miracle has been taking place in California this spring. Beginning in early March, for some portion of almost every day, a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower has been producing more than a hundred per cent of the state’s demand for electricity. . . . It’s taken years of construction—and solid political leadership in Sacramento—to slowly build this wave, but all of a sudden it’s cresting into view. California has the fifth-largest economy in the world and, in the course of a few months, the state has proved that it’s possible to run a thriving modern economy on clean energy.
Bill McKibben in The New Yorker