Today I Learned

however, they might be prone to other illnesses and obesity, according to this reddit thread. (redlib link to the same thread)

"inflammation is now understood to be a key mediator of OA that contributes to cartilage loss and progressive degeneration of affected joints... OA is no longer considered a noninflammatory arthritis or a 'wear and tear' disease"

I heretofore thought age-related cartilage loss was the cause of osteoarthritis and inflammation. Turns out it's the other way around: the inflammation degrades cartilage. Okay, no more slogging through joint pains for me, regardless of how small.

Edit: added a phrase for clarity

True 'skeletonization' also includes the trimming away of any non-essential metal on the bridge, plate, wheel train or any other mechanical part of the watch, leaving only a minimalist 'bare' skeleton of the movement required for functionality.

They will respond to the shaking of a stick, but they always just come back. Can be very destructive to human habitats of wood

I bought a little bottle of Cussons handsoap on sale called "Mallow Magic", and just noticed today that the label very proudly claims "Trusted Since 1869".

I chuckled to myself thinking "Well, surely they didn't have marshmallows back then..." Boy was I wrong.

His daughter Paulina suffered from mental illness and drug addiction. She died in 1930 at the age of 40 of a heroin overdose.

Hans shot himself to death on the day of his sister Paulina's funeral; he was 39 years old.

Paulina and Hans had little contact with their young sister, "Trude" (Margarethe, 1893–1943). She married Richard Neumann, a man 17 years her elder. Neumann lost his fortune in the Great Depression. Burdened by the steep costs of hospitalizing Trude, who suffered from severe bouts of depressive illness that required repeated hospitalization, the Neumanns' financial life was precarious. The Nazis sent Trude and Richard to the Theresienstadt concentration camp where they died. Her body was burned. Her mother, who died in 1907, was cremated, and her ashes were lost by accident.

Norman became deeply depressed over the fate of his family and his inability to help the Jewish people "languishing" in the European camps. Unable to endure his suffering any further, he jumped to his death from the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge in Washington, D.C., on 26 November 1946.

Now a whole people have to suffer and die in a nightmare, for a dream of a single man.

@til Today I learned that Ritalin (Methylphenidate) was named after the inventor’s wife Marguerite “Rita” Panizzon, because it improved her tennis game (article in German). https://archive.li/VGcQD#selection-635.181-635.308

#til

https://web.archive.org/web/20260506011916/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/05/the-man-who-blew-up-a-nuclear-power-station-koeberg-south-africa

Read this article today and was amazed. A former fencing champion named Rodney Wilkinson joined up with the ANC. Rodney had been working at the plant which was under construction. A black draftsman he worked with looked the other way when he took the plans for the plant to copy. He was trained by the ANC in espionage tradecraft, and was given 4 limpet mines to place around the reactors. Since the plant was under construction, there was no nuclear material on site. To minimize the risk of casualties, the operation would occur on the weekend. Rodney was successful and escaped and was able to return to South Africa after the fall of Apartheid.

Really incredible story!

They do develop tumors, which the paper discusses.

Brandolini's law (or the bullshit asymmetry principle) is an Internet adage coined in 2013 by Italian programmer Alberto Brandolini. It compares the considerable effort of debunking misinformation to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. The adage states:

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

The challenge of refuting bullshit does not come just from its time-consuming nature, but also from the challenge of defying and confronting one's community.

This isn't riveting, insightful information. I just figured there were enough Linux nerds on Lemmy to find this funny.

Supposedly one of the better ways to sequester carbon dioxide on a massive scale. I've learned about ocean fertilization in the past, but this also seems like a really good geoengineering option.

In the event of an imminent nuclear apocalypse, we suspect that many people who have access to private jets will immediately take to the skies and escape city centers. This site tracks this indicator in realtime. The current emergency level is reported on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being an indicator of a likely imminent apocalypse.