Today I Learned

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/38846669

Film also claims that Adam Milstein funds Canary Mission

A 12 year old ted talk with moral philosopher James Flynn. He also mentions how university students in the 50s would go to their parents and grandparents and try to argue using hypotheticals, which never worked. I also noticed that "concrete thinking" is common among children, which is probably our human default.

When you think about it, it makes sense that most people thru history wouldn't need to bother with hypotheticals, those ideas would be so far removed from their reality that it made no sense to bother thinking about it.

Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_CIA_involvement_in_the_Whitlam_dismissal

Like I guess we all just collectively agreed to not talk about this?

Apparently the Queen and the CIA thought Australia was getting a little too progressive in 1975. They were pulling out of Viet Nam and doing things like welcoming refugees from Chile (who were fleeing a different coup engineered by the CIA).

The 50th anniversary of the coup just passed (Nov. 11th), and Consortium News republished an article originally written in 2020:

Gough Whitlam was driven from government on Nov. 11, 1975. When he died six years ago (2014), his achievements were recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. The truth of the coup against him, it was hoped, would be buried with him.

During the Whitlam years, 1972-75, Australia briefly achieved independence and became intolerably progressive.

The last Australian troops were ordered home from their mercenary service to the American assault on Vietnam. Whitlam’s ministers publicly condemned U.S. barbarities as “mass murder” and the crimes of “maniacs.” The Nixon administration was corrupt, said the Deputy Prime Minister, Jim Cairns, and called for a boycott of American trade. In response, Australian dockers refused to unload American ships.

Whitlam moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement and called for a Zone of Peace in the Indian ocean, which the U.S. and Britain opposed. He demanded France cease its nuclear testing in the Pacific. In the U.N., Australia spoke up for the Palestinians. Refugees fleeing the C.I.A.-engineered coup in Chile were welcomed into Australia.

https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

This is part 2. Part 1 discusses the relationship between power and key holders. Part 2 discusses this in terms of dictatorships and democracies.

Today I learned that even in a democracy, there are key holders that those in power must keep happy. It is interesting to review this video and reflect on who those key holders must be.

👀

N.B. This is a serious topic. Please stop spreading propaganda about acetaminophen being addictive or causing autism. Please read the study. The point of the study is not about acetaminophen. It is about social pain can hurt as much as physiological pain. Only people with trait of high level of forgiveness responded to acetaminophen. Acetaminophen will not work for you if you not a kind. forgiving person. No need to worry about acetaminophen if you have a weak trait. Kindness can be learned by not trolling

Social pain (psychache), such as ostracisation/rejection/bullying, can hurt as much as physical pain. Forgiveness and acetaminophen have interactive effects on experiences of social pain. Telling victims to just "let it go" is just like withholding pain medicines from patients recovering from surgery.

We need to tell the victims that psychological wounds are like physical wounds. They will heal but the healing processes can be long and painful. Psychological pain may come back in waves, and the scars may remain just like physical scars. If the psychological pain is unbearable, don't hesitant to seek mental health. "It's okay not to be okay." Don't be persuaded to think "it is all in the head." Psychological wounds are as real as physical wounds. Good luck.

We truly live in a dystopian world.

Most peoples only option for pet care, is the same company that makes M&M's.

Chung Sun-sin, the appointed head of the National Office of South Korea of Office of Investigation used his power and connections to protect his son who bullied his classmate daily for years. The victim almost chose to end his own life. Chung Sun-sin reversed the penalty against his son so that his son could get into the top South Korea university.

Any graduate from the top South Korea universities are guaranteed to be one of the "elites".

Chung Sun-nin was able to reduce his son punishment to "reduce 1 point" from the university entrance exam test score. His son got almost full score.

Cyber criminals purchase advertisements that appear within internet search results using a domain that is similar to an actual business or service. When a user searches for that business or service, these advertisements appear at the very top of search results with minimum distinction between an advertisement and an actual search result. These advertisements link to a webpage that looks identical to the impersonated business’s official webpage.

In tips section:

Use an ad blocking extension when performing internet searches. Most internet browsers allow a user to add extensions, including extensions that block advertisements. These ad blockers can be turned on and off within a browser to permit advertisements on certain websites while blocking advertisements on others.

Today I learned the metric equivalent of horsepower is, horsepower. You’d think someone would have come up with a better name.

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

Local councils have been banned from setting up their own municipal bus companies.

A new law just lifted the ban 👏

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/mps-agree-overturn-ban-councils-183323072.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clke3g03rljo

https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/new-era-of-better-buses-landmark-bus-bill-becomes-law/200478/

Foo Fighters - a name that’s synonymous around the world with heavy guitar anthems and the legend that is Dave Grohl. But why did Big Dave pick such an unusual name? What does “Foo Fighters” actually mean?

Back in the Nirvana days, Grohl had written and recorded songs but had kept them to himself as he considered Kurt Cobain to be the musical genius in the group. When Cobain died in April 1994, it looked like Dave would join another band as a superstar drummer, but the world was surprised when he came out of the studio with a whole album’s worth of his own songs, recorded pretty much by himself.

But Dave still wasn’t confident enough to release the music under his own name. He told Clash magazine in 2010: “Around the time that I recorded the first FF [demo] tape, I was reading a lot of books on UFOs. Not only is it a fascinating subject, but there's a treasure trove of band names in those UFO books!"

"I had recorded the first record by myself, but I wanted people to think that it was a group, I figured that FOO FIGHTERS might lead people to believe that it was more than just one guy. Silly, huh?"

"Had I actually considered this to be a career, I probably would have called it something else, because it's the stupidest fucking band name in the world."

The term “foo fighter” was first coined by the US Air Force in World War II, as a term for strange phenomena sighted in the sky, before the term “unidentified flying objects” became a term. In November 1944, pilots flying over Western Europe had spotted glowing objects flying quickly around the night sky - which were thought to be a new German “secret weapon”.

They were quickly dubbed “foo-fighters” by Donald J. Meiers, a radar operator in the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, who named them after a then-current comic strip called Smokey Stover. Smokey was a fireman, or “foo fighter”, who travelled to incidents in his “Foomobile”.

So when airmen saw bright balls of “fire”, flying in the sky, they called them “foo fighters”… and Dave Grohl picked up the term from one of the many, many books on UFO history.

And my kids sing it alll the time ...

Explanation: There's a popular pop song with a chant "APT APT! APT APT!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekr2nIex040

Excerpts:

In China, "left-behind children" (simplified Chinese: 留守儿童; traditional Chinese: 留守兒童; pinyin: liúshǒu'értóng), also called "stay-at-home children", are children who remain in rural regions of the country while their parents leave to work in urban areas. In many cases, these children are taken care of by their extended families, usually by grandparents or family friends, who remain in the rural regions.

According to the UNICEF 2018 Annual Report, there are approximately 69 million children left behind by one or both of their parents due to migration, which is equivalent to thirty percent of the children in rural areas. The number of left behind children is unevenly distributed across age groups, regions, and gender. The majority of the left-behind children population is located in south and central regions of China. Six south and central provinces, including Sichuan, Anhui, Henan, Guangdong, Hunan, and Jiangxi, take up 52% of the left-behind child population.

Many factors contribute to the increase of left-behind children in China. Internal migration, which mainly involves massive economically driven population shifts from the rural areas to the cities in China, produces a large population of left-behind children and migrant children. China's Hukou system (Chinese Household Registration System) hampers left-behind children's chances of public school enrollment in cities. In some cities where a school enrollment point system are implemented, educational resources in urban areas are not readily accessible to migrants and left-behind children. As a result of the lack of educational resources, many migrant parents left their children at home.

The physical and mental wellbeing of the left-behind children has become one increasing concern for researchers and Chinese government. Some researchers found that the remittance from migrant parents has a positive impact on children's education and human capital. Many of these children face developmental and emotional challenges as a result of the limited interaction with their biological parents. The lack of infrastructure and parental support have led to additional challenges for left-behind children including quality education, physical well-being, and healthy social relationships. Left-behind children are the victims of the longstanding intergenerational reproduction of social inequality.

I was just a bit obsessed about my past and started digging... This really hits close to home. I was a kid with Rural Hukou (Taishan), my older brother and I weren't allowed in Guangzhou City's Public Schools, but my parents tried to keep us closeby by enrolling us in privately-run schools, which are, according to my mother, sub-par compared than the Public Schools. If we had stayed in China, we had to return back to Taishan before Highschool because of the Gaokao stuff that you have to take in where your Hukou is. And since my parents likely would have to continue working their jobs in the city, I would've eventually became one of these kids.

So depressing to think about. Imagine not seeing your parents for a year.

When Sweden and Denmark built a connection between their countries, Sweden preferred a bridge, and Denmark preferred a tunnel, they each built their half and connected them in the middle with an artificial island. The Øresund Bridge is unique in the world.