Today I Learned #2: Gone for a Wiki Walk

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned that Sears used to offer mail-order houses.

 

[Cutlass]

Today I learned that Sears used to offer mail-order houses.

I knew that, but it is pretty interesting.

 

[Zkribbler]

Today I learned that Sears used to offer mail-order houses.

The postage must have been a killer.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

A few days ago I learned that someone made cluster computing out of Furbys.

 

[The_J]

Read it again, and then evaluate the seriousness of this article again .

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned about low-background metal.

(the alt-text is the best part)

 

[Cutlass]

Today I learned about low-background metal.

(the alt-text is the best part)

Actually, what is often used is the steel from German First World War ships that were surrendered to the British after the war, and then scuttled by their crews in shallow waters.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned about sick building syndrome.

Sick building syndrome (SBS) is a common worldwide health concern, where people in a building suffer from symptoms of illness or become infected with chronic disease from the building in which they work or reside.[1] The outbreaks may or may not be a direct result of inadequate cleaning or inappropriate cleaning methods.[2] SBS has also been used to describe staff concerns in post-war brutalist-style buildings with defects in the construction materials or assembly process and-or inadequate maintenance.[2] Certain symptoms tend to increase in severity with the time people spend in the building; often improving over time or even disappearing when people are away from the building.[2]

 

[Morty]

Worked for an organisation wayyyyy back when that used to look into this....SBS also used to cover buildings that although there wasn't anything actually wrong with them were grey, lacking in natural daylight, suitable airflow through them etc, etc. Would often be the concrete monstrosities that sprung up in the 1950's/60's

e.g.

• Inadequate ventilation.
• Low humidity.
• Inadequate sound insulation
• High levels of noise created by piping or air-conditioning systems.
• Fluctuations in room temperature.
• Airborne particles such as dust, carpet fibres and fungal spores.
• Airborne chemical pollutants such as cleaning products, ozone from photocopiers and printers, carbon monoxide, asbestos and external fumes such as traffic exhaust.
• Poor lighting.
• Electrostatic charges.
• Poor standards of cleanliness.
• Inadequate display screen equipment, causing glare or flicker.
• Psychological factors such as stress or low staff morale.

https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Sick_building_syndrome

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that better insulation on houses, while making them more energy-saving, resulted in more respiratory illnesses. I'm having trouble finding it again, all the results are about spray foam insulation and a few articles about poor insulation making people sick. Maybe I'm misremembering.

 

[r16]

low bacground metal ? Sunk warships in the Pacific in WW ll are totally scrapped in place , grave robbing style .

 

[Cutlass]

low bacground metal ? Sunk warships in the Pacific in WW ll are totally scrapped in place , grave robbing style .

It's a lot easier to raise tons of steel from 100ft in Scappa Flow than it is from 20,000ft in the Pacific.

 

[Morty]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that better insulation on houses, while making them more energy-saving, resulted in more respiratory illnesses. I'm having trouble finding it again, all the results are about spray foam insulation and a few articles about poor insulation making people sick. Maybe I'm misremembering.

It's possible - buildings need to have a certain amount of airflow through them, and I guess that too much insulation might limit that airflow. I'm very out of date on this, but I believe that legislation says that new houses have to have a minimum airflow rate through them....keep the air flowing, keep moving the germs away, moving 'bad air' away, etc, etc.

 

[Cutlass]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that better insulation on houses, while making them more energy-saving, resulted in more respiratory illnesses. I'm having trouble finding it again, all the results are about spray foam insulation and a few articles about poor insulation making people sick. Maybe I'm misremembering.

A house that is extremely air tight should have an air exchanger machine to bring in fresh air constantly. But big buildings are rarely built that way.

 

[r16]

scapa Flow , in case they still have ships there doesn't do that much profits of any Chinese or lndonesian company , now that they wouldn't get the permits in the first place .

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned that somebody did some research of whether cats are liquid. They won an Ig Nobel Prize in physics.

 

[Cutlass]

TIL that conservative voters often want the policy outcomes that liberal politicians work for, but vote for conservative politicians who want different outcomes than they think that they want, because policy design trumps policy outcome in their minds.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned that regular expressions are evil! Well, some of them.

 

[Samson]

TIL that ants have medevac in their wars:

Megaponera analis ants send out raiding parties to attack colonies of termites on which they prey. Ants that lose only one or two limbs in an attack are evacuated back to their nest where their injuries are tended to until they can literally get up to speed again, adapting their locomotion, ready for the next foray.​

Also, TIL that ants have their own wiki.

Today I learned that regular expressions are evil! Well, some of them.

I think it is all of them. They can be useful for quick text matching, but are so completely unreadable it is frequently impossible to work out what they are doing if you cannot remember.

 

[Hakim]

Pfft! Anyone can see what this regex is doing:

^(?:(?:(?:0?[13578]|1[02])(\/|-|\.)31)\1|(?:(?:0?[1,3-9]|1[0-2])(\/|-|\.)(?:29|30)\2))(?:(?:1[6-9]|[2-9]\d)?\d{2})$|^(?:0?2(\/|-|\.)29\3(?:(?:(?:1[6-9]|[2-9]\d)?(?:0[48]|[2468][048]|[13579][26])|(?:(?:16|[2468][048]|[3579][26])00))))$|^(?:(?:0?[1-9])|(?:1[0-2]))(\/|-|\.)(?:0?[1-9]|1\d|2[0-8])\4(?:(?:1[6-9]|[2-9]\d)?\d{2})$