TIL 5: Iambic pentameter

[Valka D'Ur]

I learned something a few days ago and forgot to tell all of you.

And TIL that they not only don't have chinooks in Denmark, but most people there have no idea what they even are.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I have no idea what a chinook is

 

[Birdjaguar]

I have no idea what a chinook is

Here is one. I think valka is talking about another use of the word though.

 

[Narz]

FDA so corrupt

It's not a surprise why people don't trust institutions.

So depressing reading this **** in my financial situation knowing my kids are gonna be exposed to all sorts of chemicals like this and there's only so much I can do about it at present.

 

[Narz]

Even while chicken (Aldi UK) laced with BS

Unless you're rich you just can't get decent food in many places.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I have no idea what a chinook is

Here is one. I think valka is talking about another use of the word though.


View attachment 708920

@Bonyduck Campersang, I just took a look at your join date, and realize that the last time I explained chinooks here in OT was before your time.

Here's a trip down memory lane from January 2017:

Valka, isn't Calgary on the wrong side of the mountains for moderate winter weather?

Nope.

Here is a diagram of how chinooks work:



And here's a map of Alberta, where you can see the approximate zones that experience chinook weather. As mentioned in my location, I'm in Red Deer. We don't get chinooks as strong as they do south of here, but it's still a pretty nice occasional break.



In the upper diagram, think of the Pacific Ocean and British Columbia as being on the left (west) side of the mountain, and Central/Southern Alberta being on the right (east) side.

To put the Alberta map in perspective, Alberta is directly north of Montana, and the green area north of Alberta is the Northwest Territories (that stretch all the way to the North Pole).

 

[Samson]

@Bonyduck Campersang, I just took a look at your join date, and realize that the last time I explained chinooks here in OT was before your time.

Here's a trip down memory lane from January 2017:





To put the Alberta map in perspective, Alberta is directly north of Montana, and the green area north of Alberta is the Northwest Territories (that stretch all the way to the North Pole).

TIL that Canadians call the Foehn wind chinook.

Spoiler You can just about see it in this picture from antartica :

 

[Samson]

Even while chicken (Aldi UK) laced with BS

View attachment 709043

Unless you're rich you just can't get decent food in many places.

I read this and my first reaction was that is not too bad for processed meat, just sugar, salt and triphosphates, there is loads of them in food naturally.

After a quick read however this does seem like it could be an unrecognised source of unhealth:

Naturally occurring phosphate in food is organically bound, and only 40% to 60% of it is absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract.

On the other hand, an avoidable risk to health that has not attracted sufficient attention to date arises from the increased use of phosphate as a food additive and preservative. This “free” (not organically bound) phosphate is very effectively absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract. Typical foods with large amounts of added phosphate are processed meat, ham, sausages, canned fish, baked goods, cola drinks, and other soft drinks. Dietary counseling is all the more difficult because the phosphate content in food—and, in particular, the added phospate content—is not marked on the package.

It used to be thought that the only health risk posed by phosphate lay in the promotion of calcification in blood vessels and bodily organs. Recently, however, important discoveries have been made about the hormonal regulation of phosphate metabolism. It is now known that the serum phosphate concentration is controlled by two newly discovered factors called fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23) and klotho; that phosphate causes lasting damage to the cardiovascular system, either by a direct mechanism or by way of these hormonal factors; and that phosphate accelerates aging processes in animal models.


Post-hoc analysis in the Cholesterol and Recurrent Events (CARE) study (n = 4127): A high-normal phosphate concentration is an independent predictor of mortality and further cardiovascular events in patients who have sustained a myocardial infarction [Note the possibility of correlation without causation here, phosphate could well be an indicator of low socio-economic status]

Spoiler More but less scientific :

I want to add that phosphates for some time have been suspected of being associated with behavioral abnormalities. The doctor and children’s book author Heinrich Hoffmann described in his character of Fidgety Philip not only a child in whom nowadays attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) would be diagnosed, but he also adds that “a normal human being has only 1.5/1000 phosphorus in their brain”, and wonders if it should be investigated whether “any fellow who was happy as a lark did not carry two or three times of that amount in his head” (2).

The association of phosphorus and behavioral abnormalities has been the subject of a controversial discussion ever since, and in ADHD, a low-phosphate diet has been recommended. However, only recently, several clinical studies have suggested an association between (organo-)phosphates and ADHD.

Then:

Professor Maurer mentions the association of phosphate with abnormal behaviors. The mechanism of organophosphates that is being discussed in the context of the development of ADHD is due to the direct effect of these organophosphates and not due to dietary phosphate intake.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

TIL that MSN Weather has some impressively good stats and graphs

London, England Weather Forecast | MSN Weather

Get accurate hourly forecasts for today, tonight, and tomorrow, along with 10-day daily forecasts and weather radar for London, England with MSN Weather. Stay updated on precipitation, severe weather warnings, air quality, and wildfire alerts.

www.msn.com

 

[Samson]

TIL that MSN Weather has some impressively good stats and graphs

London, England Weather Forecast | MSN Weather

Get accurate hourly forecasts for today, tonight, and tomorrow, along with 10-day daily forecasts and weather radar for London, England with MSN Weather. Stay updated on precipitation, severe weather warnings, air quality, and wildfire alerts.

www.msn.com

I really like wetterzentrale for lots of stats.

Spoiler Some examples, for London as that is what you link :

 

[Birdjaguar]

I am currently reading The Wager, a nautical tale from the 1740s about a failed British expedition to capture Spanish Galleons in the Pacific as they made their way from Peru to China.

TIL from this brief passage some word origins. The middle paragraph is the important part.

• toe the line
• pipe down
• piping hot
• scuttlebutt
• three sheets to the wind
• to turn a blind eye

 

[Chukchi Husky]

A lot of modern day English phrases come from nautical terms.

 

[Birdjaguar]

TIL that trigonometry may have been invented/discovered by the Babylonians a thousand years before the Greeks.

Ancient Babylonian Tablet May Show Early Trigonometry, But Some Experts Are Dubious

A reinterpretation of an ancient Babylonian tablet shows that trigonometry might be 1,000 years older than thought. But there's some disagreement.

science.howstuffworks.com

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I am currently reading The Wager, a nautical tale from the 1740s about a failed British expedition to capture Spanish Galleons in the Pacific as they made their way from Peru to China.

TIL from this brief passage some word origins. The middle paragraph is the important part.

• toe the line
• pipe down
• piping hot
• scuttlebutt
• three sheets to the wind
• to turn a blind eye

View attachment 709392

Sounds interesting and useful (some of the very long Highlander fanfic I'm working on takes place on a ship during that era; I haven't done a lot of research yet, though).

Who's the author?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Who's the author?

David Grann The Wager. It is an excellent book.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

That, until 2004, Poles were not allowed to fly the national flag except on national holidays

 

[Takhisis]

I also learned (by how deep into the old threads I had to go to find this thread) that nobody on CFCOT has learned anything in three weeks--at least not anything they thought was worth sharing with the rest of us!

TYL that you also have a subscriptions page.

90 CAD is ~65 USD, which is just under £51, which is roughly what new games retail at in the UK these days (the step from 40 to 50 GBP happened in the past year or three).

(of course, these prices never take into account the relatively purchasing power folks have, etc - it's just aligned to ensure equal revenue in all regions)

TIL that there's always ways of fleecing people.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

If you try to download images directly from an image search result (like on Google or Bing) usually it downloads as a WEBP and you have to upload it again to some site to convert it into PNG.

But if you're on Edge, and you're on edge, you can simply right-click the image, choose 'Edit Image', then save it and the image is downloaded as a PNG.

 

[Broken_Erika]

If you try to download images directly from an image search result (like on Google or Bing) usually it downloads as a WEBP and you have to upload it again to some site to convert it into PNG.

But if you're on Edge, and you're on edge, you can simply right-click the image, choose 'Edit Image', then save it and the image is downloaded as a PNG.

MSPaint also works

 

[Gori the Grey]

That's how I tend to do it.

How I got this groovy Grey-Amadeus avatar.