TIL: Today I Learned

[EgonSpengler]

Rubber gloves for people doing cavity searches at airports?
The stuff they're made from doesn't grow on trees you know.

I dunno, man. If I'm gonna get a cavity search, I think I'd want them to have a fresh rubber glove.

 

[Ferocitus]

I dunno, man. If I'm gonna get a cavity search, I think I'd want them to have a fresh rubber glove.

That's the price of freedom, valued customer (or comrade if you're a commie).

 

[Ferocitus]

The Pacific beetle cockroach is the only one of the species known to lactate and
its milk is thought to be a powerhouse of nutrients, according to a study
published in the Journal of the International Union of Crystallography.
More?
https://www.inverse.com/article/19066-cockroach-milk-what-is-it

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Afghanistan's northeastern panhandle is called the Wakhan Corridor. Agreements between Afghanistan, Britain, and Russia in the late 19th century led to its creation to add to the buffer between the two empires.

 

[Birdjaguar]

2016 data tells us:

• 31% of US transactions were made with cash that accounted for 7.9% of the total value.
• Debit and credit cards together accounted for 45% of the transactions and 26% of the total value.
• Electronic transfers were 14% of the transactions and 43% of the total value.
• The remaining ~10% of transactions were 23% of the value and were made via checks, money orders, prepaid cards and misc. methods.

In 2017 there was $1.6 trillion of US cash in circulation worldwide. 80% of that is in $100 bills.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

The Pacific beetle cockroach is the only one of the species known to lactate and
its milk is thought to be a powerhouse of nutrients, according to a study
published in the Journal of the International Union of Crystallography.
More?
https://www.inverse.com/article/19066-cockroach-milk-what-is-it

Oh God, we're going to get countless dumbed down pop pseudoscience articles about how roach milk is the new "superfood"...

 

[Ferocitus]

Oh God, we're going to get countless dumbed down pop pseudoscience articles about how roach milk is the new "superfood"...

And good luck to them! I like this understated response to that notion:
The potential for this particular secretion is fairly huge, but it might be a
bit of a hard sell. While the milk’s protein can possibly be used for healthy
diets and bodybuilding, it’s not every day that someone looks at a product
involving roach secretion and dives for it.
Professor John Carver, Director of the Research School of Chemistry, Australian
National University.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Where can we buy it!!! Is it on amazon yet?

 

[Ferocitus]

Where can we buy it!!! Is it on amazon yet?

You can't trust Amazon! Just send me your credit card details and how much you
want and I'll send you as much as you want. Want gluten-free? No problem,
valued customer!

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Where can we buy it!!! Is it on amazon yet?

You can order artisinal roach cheese directly from me for only twenty dollars per gram.

Don't send it to some establishment food science lab for analysis, you'll just waste your money. They'll lie to you and tell you it's store brand Lidl cottage cheese because the establishment food science labs are in the pocket of Big Pharma, Big Cheese, the Deep State, Cultural Marxists and The Globalists in general.

 

[Kyriakos]

So this is Slurm?

I am not going to be drinking anything that came out of a beetle.

 

[Ferocitus]

So this is Slurm?

I am not going to be drinking anything that came out of a beetle.

Our milk is tickled from the tumescent udders of contented roaches, not
squaeezed from the cloaca of a giant grub. That really would be a marketing
nightmare!

 

[Kyriakos]

Til about this being:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson's_Puppeteers

 

[Ferocitus]

Til about this being:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson's_Puppeteers

Definitely among Niven's best creations!
Donald "Bonespurs" Trump is a good example of a Human Hindmost.

 

[Takhisis]

This is the age of outrage.

Has it ever been otherwise?

Of course if we do go with the terrorism angle one could make the argument that the fact that so few Americans are killed by terrorism shows that the money we give to the DoD is money well spent since they are clearly doing their jobs.

By the same logic, more money should be thrown at Obamacare.

 

[Commodore]

TIL: There were more joke candidates in the 2016 presidential election than I thought. I'm sure by now everyone has heard of the splash Deez Nuts made in pre-election polls, but some other joke candidates made some noise in the polls too. Some of them include:

Beast Mode
Captain Crunch
'Murican Cookies
Queen Elsa Ice
Butt Stuff
Cranky Pants
Limberbutt McCubins
Harambe

This list of candidates inspires me to believe there is still hope for this country. Politics is not something to be taken seriously.

 

[Traitorfish]

Politics is not something to be taken seriously.

I don't think you can draw a clear line between mockery of politicians, and dismissal of politics.

Anecdotally, those who take politicians most seriously are precisely the sort of upper-middle class moderates for whom politics is a sort of sport, because they know that whichever party comes to power, they personally are going to be fine.

 

[Ferocitus]

Til about this being:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson's_Puppeteers

Niven's and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye is a better effort than Ringworld.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God's_Eye

Brown Moties remind me of the lovely people who mod games, improve and debug
enormous numbers of programs, and cut the ads out of the shows we download.
Cue applause.

 

[Takhisis]

There were more joke candidates in the 2016 presidential election than I thought.

And that one ended up being no small joke.

 

[Cutlass]

TIL that Little House on the Prairie were squatters on Indian lands.