Today I Learned

TIL learned that Fran Drescher was the victim of a brutal rape.

Link is to Wikipedia article about the island thought to have been home to the last group of mammoths, which died out about 4,000 years ago.

I mentioned this story in a different thread and thought I'd share it.

John Harrison was an English joiner and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of how to calculate longitude while at sea. Harrison's solution revolutionized navigation and greatly increased the safety of long-distance sea travel

Along the way he also invented the bi-metal strip used in temperature sensing equipment. We all have them in our houses and cars today.

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

"A prop, formally known as a theatrical property, is an object an actor uses on stage or screen during a performance or screen production."

Ballooning, sometimes called kiting, is a process by which spiders, and some other small invertebrates, move through the air by releasing one or more gossamer threads to catch the wind, causing them to become airborne at the mercy of air currents and electric fields.

Spiderlings ballooning in the Santa Cruz Mountains of the San Francisco Peninsula

there was a dragonfly trying to run into the windows at my work that got caught in a spider web in the process and it bit me when I was trying to save it >:(

googled to see if it was a bite or a sting and yep! the bloody bastard bit me, how rude.

Dragonflies do bite, and they will bite humans, but only if you catch one and it's trying to escape or defend itself. And only the largest dragonflies will be able to break your skin anyway.

Recently submitted a dozen+ legit FOIA requests to a list of specific small and medium sized Trump-friendly jurisdictions around the USA. Both with governments and law enforcement. Many in places you wouldn't think to look. But I'm a nosy motherfucker.

Most of the submission processes are (essentially) open borders, lol. With few barriers to entry. Which means you should try doing the same thing.

The biggest hurdle is knowing what to say in the original request message. But that is ultimately trivial.

Along these lines, here are three resources I have used to effectively investigate the names and events I submitted FOIA requests for:

1. The Stevens Method (This resource is a Substack, which I know isn't a popular platform here. But Chaz Stevens isn't a typical publisher. This is where youll find most of your examples and shortcuts for FOIA requests.)
2. u/ChurchOMarsChaz
3. Little Sis

I submitted high-leverage FOIA requests (for specific public figures, domestic terrorist attacks, Flock camera query logs, right-wing terrorist organizations and others entities/subjects you would recognize) that I will release everything related to once responses are received.

But beforehand I did my own research into publicly available information so I knew exactly where to strike first. This is a game of cat and mouse unfortunately. Meow.

I learned about where certain people grew-up and live today. I mapped political contributions and connections. I scraped websites, databases and social media profiles. I used automation to help expedite the process.

The goal here is to become as super-hot-precise in records requests as possible.

I want the public to know everything. Get dat milk and honey bro.

Also, if my home is raided during this ramp-up effort, this post can be used as a reference for how unbelievably dangerous the United States has become for average citizens. FAFO.

JF: My next-door neighbor at the time was a guy named Paul Fox, who produced R.E.M., 10,000 Maniacs, Jakob Dylan, Björk, and Phish. And the guys from Phish were huge Trekkers, and they used to come to his house to rehearse. Actually, I think they may have rehearsed in my guest house! This was up in Lookout Mountain, in L.A. But they got wind that I played trombone, and they didn’t know I wasn’t that good, but they asked me to the studio, so I came out to the studio to play trombone on Hoist. I played some music; I didn’t do it so well, but all of the outtakes from my trombone playing became a song called “Riker’s Mailbox,” because at the time, my mailbox vaguely looked like a cow, with black and white spots, only this one had been beaten up many times by cars running into it and people running by and smacking it. So my outtakes were named after the mutilated cow mailbox that was the identification of the front of our house, the Hoist album went platinum, and, as a result, I am the proud keeper of a platinum record. So there you go.

A farming manual written by the Roman writer Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella in the 1st century CE is a window into the roles of the female manager.

An upper-class landowner himself, Columella lists the responsibilities of farm managers, who were probably enslaved. The male manager was termed the vilicus, and the female manager the vilica, terms derived from their roles at the "villa."

But many historians reading this text have been sidetracked by a false lead: Columella begins his section on the vilica with a long quote from the Greek philosopher Xenophon, who wrote in Athens more than four centuries earlier.

The "natural" role of women, according to Xenophon, was to work indoors. Therefore, in his discussion, the ideal upper-class married woman is depicted staying inside her townhouse to supervise the domestic work of enslaved people.

The Greek writer is not discussing farm workers. In fact, Columella says four times that these ideas are not his own but those of Xenophon, writing long ago.

Columella lists a completely different set of responsibilities for the vilica on a Roman farm: most importantly, the making of wine and olive oil, which were highly valuable commodities—the backbone of landowners' profits.

In his description of the vilica's duties, Columella includes extracting juice from grapes during the harvest; adding flavorings and preservatives such as salt, wormwood, fennel or boiled grape juice; and overseeing successful fermentation into wine.

According to Columella, the vilica also managed the processing of other farm products to make them long-lasting and profitable, such as turning inedible olives into olive oil for sale.

While the world drowns in plastic, researchers are on the hunt for practical materials that are lightweight, tough, and biodegradable.  In recent years, scientists have increasingly turned to the natural world for inspiration – with a whole lot of research focusing on the impressive features of spider silk.

It's considered invasive in Indian and Pacific Ocean islands, and is native to the United States. Much to my surprise, there's no mention of Australia!

Be safe out there 💀🗡️🐌

I saw this article at BoingBoing, and had to look it up.

From Wikipedia:

The Aroma of Tacoma, also known as the Tacoma Aroma, is a putrid and unpleasant odor associated with Tacoma, Washington, United States.[1] The smell has been described as similar to the odor of rotten eggs.[2] The odor is not noticeable throughout the city, but is rather concentrated in the Tacoma tideflats and is frequently smelled by motorists traveling that section of Interstate 5.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicolored-spined_porcupine

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49317483