TIL 5: Iambic pentameter

[Birdjaguar]

One Greek city was submerged by a tsunami during Plato's lifetime.

Helike - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Interesting. Timaeus was written about 360 BCE about a decade after that earthquake and tsunami. It might well have influenced Plato's descriptions of the Atlantis disasters.

 

[really]

The Spanish word gringo is probably derived from the word for Greek.
As in I don't understand what that foreigner is saying - it might as well be Greek.

 

[Birdjaguar]

TIL: The link has videos of people using this tech.

Robotic exoskeletons help Chinese tourists climb the country’s most punishing mountain​

Hong KongCNN —
A towering 5,000 feet high, with more than 7,000 steps, Mount Tai, in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, is known for turning legs to jelly for anyone game for scaling to the top. Videos all over Chinese social media, such as TikTok’s sister app Douyin, show even the fittest hikers shaking, collapsing or trying to climb downhill on all fours.

Some visitors hire “climbing buddies” to help them make the summit. But tourism officials in Shandong have come up with another idea: robotic legs. On January 29, the first day of Chinese New Year, ten AI-powered exoskeletons debuted at Mount Tai (Taishan in Mandarin), attracting over 200 users for a fee of 60 yuan to 80 yuan ($8 - $11 USD) per use during a week-long trial, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Co-developed by Taishan Cultural Tourism Group and Kenqing Technology, a Shenzhen-based tech company, this device is designed to wrap around users’ waists and thighs and weighs in at just 1.8 kilograms, according to the firm’s product introduction.
Powered by AI algorithms, it can sense users’ movements and provide “synchronized assistance” to ease the burden of legs, according to Kenqing Technology Chinese climbers use robotic exoskeletons while scaling Mount Tai in eastern China. Taishan Cultural Tourism Group

Each robotic exoskeleton runs on two batteries, lasting for about five hours, according to Wang Houzhe, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of the Taishan Cultural Tourism Group. It generally takes six hours to climb to the top.

“It really works!” Li Chengde, a 68-year-old tourist from the capital Jinan, told state-run Xinhua News Agency after trying out the device. “It felt like someone was pulling me uphill!” “This can help more people hike up the mountain and enjoy the scenery of Mount Tai… without it being too strenuous,” Wang told Chinese state media. Jacky, a content creator from Shandong who requested a pseudonym for privacy reasons, tested the device last Sunday for half an hour over hundreds of steps.

While echoing the general positive feedback as many others, he told CNN there is still room for improvement.



Related article In China, people are hiring ‘climbing buddies’ for big money. The more attractive they are, the higher the price
“The experience is definitely easier,” he said about climbing with the device on. “But once I took it off, I felt a bit clumsy walking (on my own).”

The 29-year-old said he felt like a “puppet” with the machine doing all the work but once he got used to not exerting himself, it was “really tiring” after he removed the exoskeleton and went back to climbing of his own power.

Jacky added he also found the device inconvenient when he needed to use the bathroom and tie his shoelaces while wearing it. The exoskeleton requires extra hands to put on and take off and fully squatting down could risk breaking the tight straps.

He also said that the battery needed more juice.

Wang from the Taishan Cultural Tourism Group said the team will extend battery life and set up replacement spots along the hiking trails, according to Chinese state-linked media.

Currently in beta testing, the exoskeletons are expected to hit the mass market in early March, according to the local publicity department Chinese climbers wear robotic exoskeletons while climbing Mount Tai in Shangdong, Eastern China. Taishan Cultural Tourism Group
Despite a few hiccups, Jacky deems the exoskeleton robots a “good product” and a “true blessing” for the elderly, children and mobility-impaired visitors. Half of the hikers who opted to try out the prototype exoskeletons at Mount Tai were senior citizens.

In addition to making mountain climbing a whole lot easier, these walking supports have sparked online discussions about their wider applications in a country grappling with a rapidly aging population. Last year, 22% of China’s population was over 60, and that figure is expected to rise to 30% by 2035, with the elderly population surpassing 400 million, according to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics.

And the market size of smart elderly care in China was estimated at 6.8 trillion yuan (about $934 billion) in 2024, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Kenqing Technology, the robotic exoskeletons’ co-developer, which was founded in 2015, is eyeing this vast elderly care market. It has rolled out an exoskeleton specifically designed for elderly users, weighing 2.4 kilograms and priced at 17,000 yuan ($2,334 USD) on China’s e-commerce giant Taobao. To fully unlock the potential of elderly care robots, industry insiders told Xinhua News Agency that stronger policy support is needed to scale up their production while keeping prices affordable for all.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/robotic-exoskeleton-hiking-china-intl-hnk/index.html

 

[Broken_Erika]

TIL The first practical snowblower

How a century-old Montreal invention changed snow removal in the city​

Tracing the history of snow clearing, from horses to the first snowblower​

Spoiler :

The challenge facing Montreal snow-removal crews this week is without precedent: two big storms back to back have left more than 70 centimetres of snow to clear.

It's the most in a four-day period on record, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. A city official marvelled recently that the size of the snowbanks means the blower will need to pass two or even three times to fully clear one side of a street.

Still, the city crews are equipped with far more powerful machines than they were in the past.

Until the early 20th century, the city had to rely on horse-drawn plows, and often solely people and their shovels, to clear away the snow. In some cases, snow wasn't removed at all, as archival photos show.

Smaller city streets and roads in rural areas were often closed to traffic through the winter months throughout the late 1920s and beyond, said Yves Laberge, a historian and sociologist who teaches at the University of Ottawa.

"It was a big issue back then, and it took days after a big snowstorm to return to a normal life," said Laberge, who has documented the history of snow removal in Quebec in the history journal Cap-aux-Diamants.

"In rural Quebec, there were places or villages that were very much isolated from the other ones."

From shovels and horses to the snowblower​

From the middle of the 1800s to the turn of the century, residents in Montreal were responsible for clearing the sidewalk in front of their house — and often the road as well, according to the city.

That changed in 1905, when the city took charge. At that time, labourers were hired to shovel snow for 25 cents an hour. The snow was taken away in horse-drawn carts.

The first snowblower to clear the streets was purchased by the City of Montreal nearly 100 years ago, in 1928.

The inventor, Arthur Sicard, was born in 1876 in Saint-Léonard-de-Port-Maurice, which is now the Montreal borough of Saint-Léonard. At the time, it was mostly farmland, and Sicard was reportedly inspired by watching a grain thresher at work in a wheat field.

He wondered if a similar device could be used to clear snow, according to the entry on the snowblower in the Canadian Encyclopedia.

In 1925, he completed his first machine and called it "la déneigeuse et souffleuse à neige Sicard," which translates to "the Sicard snowplow and snowblower."

Attached to the front of a truck, the original design featured a scooper with an auger and a fan capable of blowing snow more than 25 metres.

The rise of the machine​

Sicard sold his first snowblowers to the cities of Outrement and Montreal in 1927 for $13,000 each.

By then, Montreal had also begun using more motorized plows to clear snow from the streets.

The City of Montreal acquired two more snowblowers from Sicard's firm in 1938.

The machines included "a combined scraper, conveyor, blower, loading pipe with appropriate hydraulically driven mechanism," according to city archives.

One pamphlet from the Quebec government from the same year described the machine as an "insatiable monster" that could send snow 23 metres into the distance.

The design proved effective. Sicard "was hailed as a genius who changed the city's relationship with winter," the Canadian Encyclopedia entry said.

Following his death in 1946, Sicard Street was named after him, near the factory where the snowblowers were manufactured.

"His team who built the snow machine, they are in my view great Canadian heroes and they should be celebrated," Laberge said, pointing out that the invention was borne out of necessity as Montreal modernized.

"It's because you need something that you have to invent something."

Great expectations​

The rise of the automobile, though, also put increased pressure on crews to clear the streets more quickly.

Decades later, in 1962, Montreal city director J.-V. Arpin remarked that the challenge for city workers had become immense, with more than one million people in the city centre each day, including 350,000 in automobiles.

"Motorists expect to drive to work in the morning on a bare pavement after a night storm," he said during a presentation.

These days, that challenge has multiplied, with roughly 800,000 personal vehicles registered on the island and an even greater expectation we should be able to get around quickly after rough weather.

On Wednesday, Mayor Valérie Plante, whose administration has faced criticism for its handling of the cleanup, urged patience.

"We want you to know that everyone is working extremely hard," she said. "We're making good progress, I'd like to say, in the midst of an historic storm."

• 'Be patient,' Montreal mayor says, as snow-removal operation lags
• How Montreal takes 300,000 truckloads of snow off the street every winter

Laberge, for his part, said it's important to remember how much we struggled in the face of snow storms of the past.

"Winters have always been an issue and we and Canadians have always been able to deal with snow storms, the ice, the cold, the winters," he said. "It's part of us."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-snow-removal-blower-sicard-1.7462967
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_blower#History

 

[Birdjaguar]

Quebec City (Winter 1872)

 

[BenitoChavez]

TIL that the Dutch eat something called hagelslag which is basically untoasted, buttered white bread with chocolate sprinkles. I know as an American I shouldn't be criticizing other country's cuisines, but it seems like something a 5 year old would make for breakfast.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

That would actually do the trick if a person had a chocolate craving in the morning. Mind you, I'd roll it up before eating it.

 

[Arakhor]

I think I've had that before. The texture wasn't great.

 

[Lexicus]

That would actually do the trick if a person had a chocolate craving in the morning. Mind you, I'd roll it up before eating it.

Roll it, light it, and smoke it (i'm just kidding btw i know smoke irritates you)

 

[Kyriakos]

The Spanish word gringo is probably derived from the word for Greek.
As in I don't understand what that foreigner is saying - it might as well be Greek.

But that would be incongruous as they didn't call that painter El Gringo ^^
Then again maybe the plebs would.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I think I've had that before. The texture wasn't great.

When you're in the middle of a chocolate craving, texture is irrelevant. Unless it's sharp and lumpy, which indicates the presence of nuts, which means I can't have whatever it is (I hate it when perfectly good chocolate squares are ruined by nuts).

Roll it, light it, and smoke it (i'm just kidding btw i know smoke irritates you)

"Irritates" is too mild a word. It makes me physically ill.

I was actually thinking of a jelly roll kind of thing, except there's chocolate instead of jelly/jam (whichever word applies for you). It wouldn't be ideal, but would do in a pinch.

Keep in mind that I've done some weird substitutions when I used to make homemade pizza, so this wouldn't seem so odd to me.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Gringo (/ˈɡriːnɡoʊ/, Spanish: [ˈɡɾiŋɡo], Portuguese: [ˈɡɾĩɡu]) (masculine) or gringa (feminine) is a term in Spanish and Portuguese for a foreigner. In Spanish, the term usually refers to English-speaking Anglo-Americans. There are differences in meaning depending on region and country. The term is often considered derogatory,[1] but is not always used to insult,[2][3][4] and in the United States its usage and offensiveness is disputed.[5]
The word derives from the term used by the Spanish for a Greek person: griego.[6][7] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use in English comes from John Woodhouse Audubon's Western Journal of 1849–1850,[8][9] in which Audubon reports that his party was hooted and shouted at and called "Gringoes" while passing through the town of Cerro Gordo, Veracruz.[10]

Etymology​

[edit]
The word gringo originally referred to any kind of foreigner. It was first recorded in 1787 in the Spanish Diccionario castellano con las voces de Ciencias y Artes:[11][12][a]

GRINGOS, llaman en Málaga a los extranjeros, que tienen cierta especie de acento, que los priva de una locución fácil, y natural Castellana; y en Madrid dan el mismo, y por la misma causa con particularidad a los Irlandeses.

Gringos is what, in Malaga, they call foreigners who have a certain type of accent that prevents them from speaking Castilian easily and naturally; and in Madrid they give the same name, and for the same reason, in particular to the Irish.

The most likely theory is that it originates from griego ('Greek'), used in the same way as the English phrase "it's Greek to me".[6][13] Spanish is known to have used Greek as a stand-in for incomprehensibility, though now less common, such as in the phrase hablar en griego (lit. 'to speak Greek'). The 1817 Nuevo diccionario francés-español,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo#cite_note-15 for example, gives gringo and griego as synonyms in this context:[14]

... hablar en griego, en guirigay, en gringo. Gringo, griego: aplícase a lo que se dice o escribe sin entenderse.

... to speak in Greek, in gibberish, in gringo. Gringo, Greek : applied to what is said or written but not understood.

This derivation requires two steps: griego > grigo, and grigo > gringo. Corominas notes that while the first change is common in Spanish (e.g. priesa to prisa), there is no perfect analogy for the second, save in Old French (Gregoire to Grigoire to Gringoire).[15] However, there are other Spanish words whose colloquial form contains an epenthetic n, such as gordiflón and gordinflón ('chubby'), and Cochinchina and Conchinchina ('South Vietnam'). It is also possible that the final form was influenced by the word jeringonza, a game like Pig Latin also used to mean "gibberish".[11]
Alternatively, it has been suggested that gringo could derive from the Caló language, the language of the Romani people of Spain, as a variant of the hypothetical *peregringo, 'peregrine', 'wayfarer', 'stranger'.[16][17]

Gringo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Gori the Grey]

it seems like something a 5 year old would make for breakfast

A 5 year old who doesn't have access to Nutella.

 

[Snowygerry]

TIL that the Dutch eat something called hagelslag which is basically untoasted, buttered white bread with chocolate sprinkles. I know as an American I shouldn't be criticizing other country's cuisines, but it seems like something a 5 year old would make for breakfast.

View attachment 722223

I know that yes - here they are known as mouse droppings, the word hagelslag itself refers to hailstones (small ones), the original was white apparently in the early 20th century and anise flavored..

The chocolate version only appeared from 1913 in advertisements.

Wat is de etymologie van hagelslag? - Woordhistorie

Een broodje hagelslag is misschien wel het meest Nederlandse dat er is. Waar komt dit woord vandaan? Ontdek de etymologie van hagelslag.

woordhistorie.nl

 

[BenitoChavez]

TIL about PMDS or Persistent Müllerian Duct Syndrome. Basically all babies in the womb develop a Müllerian duct. In females, this eventually develops into the uterus and fallopian tubes. In males, proteins break the duct down. Some males however have a genetic mutation where the duct doesn't get broken down, so it develops as it does in females. The result is a male who still has male sex organs, but also has a uterus and fallopian tubes. Common symptoms can be undescended testes, hernias in one of the male reproductive tracts, and blood in the urine caused by hormonal imbalances.

 

[Birdjaguar]

It’s not just the Gulf of Mexico. Why is so much of America named after foreign countries?​

Our exhaustive search of American place names discovered that one country has been a shockingly dominant source of inspiration. You’ll never guess which one.

Every place in the U.S. that shares the name of a foreign country or country adjective, or select foreign territories or cities.

It has come to our attention that much of the United States of America is, shockingly, named for countries that are not the United States of America.
It’s not just the Gulf of Mexico. Or New Mexico. Or the Old Mexico Mine in Colorado. Or the Mexico Public Library in Maine. Our analysis has revealed thousands of places — and even more people — named after well over 100 foreign countries.

More at paywalled link. The key to the map linked above didn't copy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/07/gulf-mexico-foreign-country-names/

 

[Gori the Grey]

Shhhhhhh. Don't tell Trump.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It’s not just the Gulf of Mexico. Why is so much of America named after foreign countries?​

Our exhaustive search of American place names discovered that one country has been a shockingly dominant source of inspiration. You’ll never guess which one.

Every place in the U.S. that shares the name of a foreign country or country adjective, or select foreign territories or cities.






View attachment 724536
It has come to our attention that much of the United States of America is, shockingly, named for countries that are not the United States of America.
It’s not just the Gulf of Mexico. Or New Mexico. Or the Old Mexico Mine in Colorado. Or the Mexico Public Library in Maine. Our analysis has revealed thousands of places — and even more people — named after well over 100 foreign countries.

More at paywalled link. The key to the map linked above didn't copy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/07/gulf-mexico-foreign-country-names/

You realize that the placement of Alaska and Hawaii is why so many Americans can't find their own country on a world map, right? Or so I've seen on various FB videos.

 

[Birdjaguar]

TIL:

Fake CAPTCHA websites hijack your clipboard to install information stealers​

Posted: March 10, 2025 by Pieter Arntz
There are more and more sites that use a clipboard hijacker and instruct victims on how to infect their own machine.

I realize that may sound like something trivial to steer clear from, but apparently it’s not because the social engineering behind it is pretty sophisticated.

At first, these attacks were more targeted at people that could provide cybercriminals a foothold at a targeted company, but their popularity has grown so much that now anyone can run into one of them.

It usually starts on a website that promises visitors some kind of popular content: Movies, music, pictures, news articles, you name it.

Nobody will think twice when they are asked to prove they are not a robot.

Details here:

Fake CAPTCHA websites hijack your clipboard to install information stealers

An increasing number of websites use a clipboard hijacker and instruct victims on how to infect their own machine.

www.malwarebytes.com

 

[Samson]

TIL:

Fake CAPTCHA websites hijack your clipboard to install information stealers​

Posted: March 10, 2025 by Pieter Arntz
There are more and more sites that use a clipboard hijacker and instruct victims on how to infect their own machine.

I realize that may sound like something trivial to steer clear from, but apparently it’s not because the social engineering behind it is pretty sophisticated.

At first, these attacks were more targeted at people that could provide cybercriminals a foothold at a targeted company, but their popularity has grown so much that now anyone can run into one of them.

It usually starts on a website that promises visitors some kind of popular content: Movies, music, pictures, news articles, you name it.

Nobody will think twice when they are asked to prove they are not a robot.

Details here:

Fake CAPTCHA websites hijack your clipboard to install information stealers

An increasing number of websites use a clipboard hijacker and instruct victims on how to infect their own machine.

www.malwarebytes.com

I think they are giving really bad advice. The answer to how to check a website you get in unsolicited mail is not to turn off JavaScript. That will break most web sites including any served with CloudFlair.

I think the best answer to this problem is virtualisation. Install say Virtual Box, put whatever OS(s)* you want on it, set a snapshot after installation, and always revert to that snapshot after visiting a site.

Spoiler * What OS :

As long as you have space on you disk you can put as many OS's as you like on it. I would say you should have a linux, lubuntu is small, light and fully featured. ubuntu is the standard choice if you are less resource constrained. I have not done it with anything after Windows 7 but that worked well, and one can use also android is you like. Reddit talks about more apply things you can but I could not comment.