TIL: Today I Learned

[Zkribbler]

At least conservatives change their minds and think outside the box, unlike dyed-in-the-wool stuck-in-their-ways "liberals."

That's because liberalism works (sometimes); conservatism never does.

 

[Traitorfish]

That's because liberalism works (sometimes); conservatism never does.

Conservatism works until, one day, it doesn't. Liberalism doesn't work until, one day, it does. Therein lies the great push-and-pull of American political history.

 

[Takhisis]

I am angry at you takhisis,

I can give you two serious replies:

a) Rants thread is that way -->

b) Get help. I've been telling you this for years.

 

[Lohrenswald]

don't think I'm the only one who needs to be critical of his own behaviour

It's actually extremely dickish to bring up my difficulties to excuse your own rotten actions

 

[Kaitzilla]

TIL the FBI has an online database of FOI request documents that got made public.
https://vault.fbi.gov/

Kind of interesting to sort of read (redacted) 200 pages of documents about Hitler in South America.

The Vault

The Vault is our new FOIA Library, containing 6,700 documents and other media that have been scanned from paper into digital copies so you can read them in the comfort of your home or office.

Included here are many new FBI files that have been released to the public but never added to this website; dozens of records previously posted on our site but removed as requests diminished; files from our previous FOIA Library, and new, previously unreleased files.


The Vault includes several new tools and resources for your convenience:

• Searching for Topics: You can browse or search for specific topics or persons (like Al Capone or Marilyn Monroe) by viewing our alphabetical listing, by using the search tool in the upper right of this site, or by checking the different category lists that can be found in the menu on the right side of this page. In the search results, click on the folder to see all of the files for that particular topic.
• Searching for Key Words: Thanks to new technology we have developed, you can now search for key words or phrases within some individual files. You can search across all of our electronic files by using the search tool in the upper right of this site, or you can search for key words within a specific document by typing in terms in the search box in the upper right hand of the file after it has been opened and loaded. Note: since many of the files include handwritten notes or are not always in optimal condition due to age, this search feature does not always work perfectly.
• Viewing the Files: We are now using an open source web document viewer, so you no longer need your own file software to view our records. When you click on a file, it loads in a reader that enables you to view one or two pages at a time, search for key words, shrink or enlarge the size of the text, use different scroll features, and more. In many cases, the quality and clarity of the individual files has also been improved.
• Requesting a Status Update: Use our new Check the Status of Your FOI/PA Request tool to determine where your request stands in our process. Status information is updated weekly. Note: You need your FOI/PA request number to use this feature.

Please note: the content of the files in the Vault encompasses all time periods of Bureau history and do not always reflect the current views, policies, and priorities of the FBI.

New files will be added on a regular basis, so please check back often.

 

[Takhisis]

Did you just hotlink an image so that the FBI knows the IPs of every single person accessing it? Nice!

 

[Synobun]

The FBI's had your IP address on file since a long time ago, lil Tak.

 

[Takhisis]

Not since I rebooted my modem as they asked.

 

[Synobun]

Canada's most dangerous places.

Red Deer is #5!

 

[EgonSpengler]

Someone on the radio just said Italy has had 65 governments in 73 years.

 

[Takhisis]

Yeah, they've stabilised a bit after it stopped being necessary to prevent communism from happening.

 

[rah]

I hope they all don't get pensions.

 

[Takhisis]

Sei cattivo, rah.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Canada's most dangerous places.

Red Deer is #5!

We're the crossroads of Central Alberta, in all directions. There's a lot of drug trafficking going on between Edmonton and Calgary as well, plus other aspects of organized crime. It's an open secret that the guy who owns the more notorious nightclubs in the south end of downtown is mob-connected, and there's a motorcycle gang that likes to hold conventions in one of the downtown hotels. The neighborhood I lived in before moving here was one of the worst parts of town, and the reason I even considered moving there was because the cops swore up, down, and sideways that they'd cleaned it up, that the Grim Reapers were gone and so were the drugs.

The reality? Somebody was murdered in the building next door, the cops were in my building regularly due to a couple upstairs having domestic issues, and I was harassed by a woman spun out on some kind of drugs, while waiting at the bus stop. Oh, and the tenant who had the suite before me was a hooker and her "boyfriend" had put a hole in the wall one night when he was angry with her.

The moment I could afford to leave that neighborhood, I did.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Canada's most dangerous places.

Red Deer is #5!

Glad I left.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Thanks.

 

[Hrothbern]

TIL SLAPP and the need for anti-SLAPP laws.
And that the US have them, but the EU and the UK not.

A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.[1] Such lawsuits have been made illegal in many jurisdictions on the grounds that they impede freedom of speech.
The typical SLAPP plaintiff does not normally expect to win the lawsuit. The plaintiff's goals are accomplished if the defendant succumbs to fear, intimidation, mounting legal costs, or simple exhaustion and abandons the criticism.

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

"When Caruana Galizia [exposing corruption in Malta] was killed by a car bomb in October 2017, she was fighting 47 civil and criminal defamation lawsuits from an array of business people and politicians, brought by multiple law firms"
“Had our mother not been murdered, they would have succeeded.”
The case highlights what appears to be a trend: the use of London law firms by wealthy individuals and corporations to threaten foreign reporters with libel action in the UK, rather than in their home country.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...e-reporter-faced-threat-of-libel-action-in-uk

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

The concept of jhatka means that Sikhs are required to eat meat from animals that have been killed instantaneously.

 

[Kaitzilla]

So last Christmas I got fed up getting only 3 or 4 Brazil Nuts in my mixed nuts and bought a 1LB bag off of Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Farm-Fresh-Nuts-Roasted-Himalayan/dp/B00KWD032A/ref=sr_1_11_s_it?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1528080692&sr=1-11&keywords=brazil+nuts&th=1

Brazil nuts are the big fat nuts in the mixed nuts tin.
Ate the whole 1 pound bag over a period of 7 days.

TIL that eating more than 6 brazil nuts per day for months at a time will probably give you selenium poisoning.
I ate 25 a day for a week!
So I probably poisoned myself a little.
Don't think any of my hair fell out?

Brazil Nuts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_nut

Brazil nuts are perhaps the richest dietary source of selenium, with a one-ounce (28 g) serving of 6 nuts supplying 774% DV.[14] This is 10 times the adult U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance, more even than the Tolerable Upper Intake Level, although the amount of selenium within batches of nuts varies greatly.[16]

Grrr, why isn't there a warning label on the 16oz bag of brazil nuts?
Nope, neither front nor back mentions poisoning yourself.

Selenium Poisoning symptoms
https://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/11-selenium-toxicity-dangers/

Wait, eating the whole $8 jar of macadamia nuts is ok, right?

 

[Kaitzilla]

TIL also about a terrifying disease I didn't know existed called Chagas.

Signs and symptoms

The acute phase lasts for the first few weeks or months of infection. It usually occurs unnoticed because it is symptom-free or exhibits only mild symptoms that are not unique to Chagas disease. These can include fever, fatigue, body aches, muscle pain, headache, rash, loss of appetite, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. The signs on physical examination can include mild enlargement of the liver or spleen, swollen glands, and local swelling (a chagoma) where the parasite entered the body.[14]

The most recognized marker of acute Chagas disease is called Romaña's sign, which includes swelling of the eyelids on the side of the face near the bite wound or where the bug feces were deposited or accidentally rubbed into the eye. Rarely, young children, or adults may die from the acute disease due to severe inflammation/infection of the heart muscle (myocarditis) or brain (meningoencephalitis).[14] The acute phase also can be severe in people with weakened immune systems.[6]

If symptoms develop during the acute phase, they usually resolve spontaneously within three to eight weeks in approximately 90% of individuals.[5][9] Although the symptoms resolve, even with treatment the infection persists and enters a chronic phase. Of individuals with chronic Chagas disease, 60–80% will never develop symptoms (called indeterminate chronic Chagas disease), while the remaining 20–40% will develop life-threatening heart and/or digestive disorders during their lifetime (called determinate chronic Chagas disease). In 10% of individuals, the disease progresses directly from the acute form to a symptomatic clinical form of chronic Chagas disease.[5][9]

The symptomatic (determinate) chronic stage affects the nervous system, digestive system and heart. About two-thirds of people with chronic symptoms have cardiac damage, including dilated cardiomyopathy, which causes heart rhythm abnormalities and may result in sudden death. About one-third of patients go on to develop digestive system damage, resulting in dilation of the digestive tract (megacolon and megaesophagus), accompanied by severe weight loss. Swallowing difficulties (secondary achalasia) may be the first symptom of digestive disturbances and may lead to malnutrition.[15]

It is from South America and you get it when a Kissing Bug bites you on the face when you sleep.
It infects you with Chagas, and then the disease spends the next 30 years quietly chewing through your heart until you die from heart disease.

I think I read somewhere that something like 66% of Chagas infected people had heart damage after they died and got autopsied?
That's the 20-40% that had life-threatening symptoms plus a bunch more than never showed any symptoms at all, but their heart still got chewed on just the same.

Anyway, it is now spreading outside of South America, so expect to start hearing about it in Southern USA.
The Kissing Bug is also called the Assassin Bug since it is basically giving you the kiss of death.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29343210

And so they should: the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi that causes the disease hides inside the muscle fibres of the heart, the digestive system or peripheral nervous system, gradually damaging organs.

By the time they notice symptoms, patients may have developed serious complications in the heart or digestive system.

Briggitte thought her mother would only live until her 40s or 50s. "That's what you hear in our country."

The teen in the story also had Chagas.
Her mother passed it to her in the womb.
Hopefully she got treated and the heart damage isn't too bad or even better not damaged at all.

People in the US know nothing about it.
2/3rds of my countrymen are fat, so even if everyone caught this disease and died from heart problems at 40 years old, I'm not sure if anyone would notice it wasn't the Big Macs.
https://nutritionreview.org/2017/05/death-rate-from-chagas-disease-higher-than-expected/

Among those who tested positive for Chagas, 159 (5.6%) died during the course of the study, whereas only 103 (1.8%) who tested negative for the disease died, representing a more than doubling of the overall death risk. Moreover, when only deaths due to Chagas or to underlying cardiac abnormalities were analyzed, the different was even greater – those diagnosed with Chagas disease had a 17.9 time greater risk of death. However, Chagas was often not listed as a cause of death in patients who had tested positive for the disease and died of heart problems.