Today I Learned #2: Gone for a Wiki Walk

[aimeeandbeatles]

All I really got from that is that "having Parkinson's disease kind of fudges up saccades."

 

[Samson]

TIL that amazon is setting up their own testing facility. I suppose it may actually be a good thing, when the state is doing so badly at it, but I have to suspect it is primarily a way to get as many people back to work ASAP.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned that lightning can turn pink or green if it occurs during snowstorms.

 

[Zkribbler]

TIL in some parts of the United States it is against the law to cause a catastrophe.
https://features.weather.com/causing-a-catastrophe/

After reading this, I can't help but wonder why every place doesn't have these laws.

 

[Samson]

After reading this, I can't help but wonder why every place doesn't have these laws.

Presumably in most places if they caught you dismantling a dam they would find something serious to charge you with.

 

[Colon]

TIL that already in the 16th century the School of Salamanca rejected the labour theory of value, and argued value instead depended on subjective factors, centuries before Smith et al brought it back to live. They also recognized the role of money supply in prices and justified charging interest in spite of Catholic Church attitudes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca#Economics

 

[The_J]

TIL that Lenin and Stalin once robbed a bank to finance the bolshevik cause o_O.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1907_Tiflis_bank_robbery

 

[Ferocitus]

TIL that total sleep deprivation often results in death, but not from neurological damage as is commonly supposed.
Instead, it seems that one of the primary causes (in a very complicated network of interactions!) is the build-up of oxidants in the gut.
When fruit-flies subject to total sleep deprivation were given anti-oxidants, they lived for as long as controls that were not sleep deprived.

Sleep Loss Can Cause Death through Accumulation of Reactive Oxygen Species in the Gut,
Cell, no 181, pp. 1307–1328, June 11, 2020.

 

[Commodore]

TIL: George Washington is the only US President to lead troops into battle while holding the office of president. He took command of Pennsylvania militia forces during the Whiskey Rebellion.

 

[Samson]

TIL: George Washington is the only US President to lead troops into battle while holding the office of president. He took command of Pennsylvania militia forces during the Whiskey Rebellion.

TIL that 600 Americans went to war with the federal government when it tried to impose its first domestic tax on their hooch. When George turned up with his army, they went home and figured it was easier to just evade the tax.

 

[Traitorfish]

TIL that Lenin and Stalin once robbed a bank to finance the bolshevik cause o_O.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1907_Tiflis_bank_robbery

The early Bolsheviks were a pretty roguish bunch. The modern perception of them as stuffy theoreticians is in part a product their own later revisionism, intended to distinguish them from the anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries who more openly celebrated this sort of thing.

 

[Ferocitus]

The early Bolsheviks were a pretty roguish bunch. The modern perception of them as stuffy theoreticians is in part a product their own later revisionism, intended to distinguish them from the anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries who more openly celebrated this sort of thing.

There were many flavours of anarchists and socialist revolutionaries in Russia (and in exile) at that time.

Even though Herzen associated with Bakunin for a time, he was definitely not of a violent temperament. I vaguely remember a quote I read in Who is to Blame? when I was 20sumpin (which I can't find reference to now).
"We sit around and drink tea and discuss politics. Where is the harm in that?"

From the books I read of his, Kropotkin didn't have a mean bone in his body. He comes across as a very kindly old soul.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned

 

[Takhisis]

Hilarious!

Btw it's ‘zbignef ribchinski’.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned that there was almost a law that dropping an atomic bomb on Chico, California would be punishable by a $500 fine.

 

[r16]

don't know why people are laughing at this , now that 700 or 800 billions of dollars in defence budgets of US will not be providing any stronger form of defence .

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned about a hilarious bad purple prose novel called Irene Iddesleigh. Even better, it's on Project Gutenberg.

I also learned from a friend that Project Gutenberg is blocked in Germany. A bit ironic considering that Johannes Gutenberg was German.

 

[Takhisis]

^Out of morbid curiosity I've wanted to read ‘Atlanta Nights’ for a number of years now. I blame TVTropes.

 

[Ferocitus]

TIL that there is a US National Task Force on Election Crises, a bipartisan collection of experts who are plotting out potential calamities and exploring possible remedies for the upcoming election.

One scenario they have been looking at is if Trump was ahead in the last state, Pennsylvania, and claimed victory on election night, but then absentee votes gave the state to the Democrat candidate.

The Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs the process for tallying votes within the Electoral College, is imprecise. Under this law, Republicans could even argue that the very existence of competing slates ought to invalidate Pennsylvania’s votes, if the Democratic candidate needs that state to win.

Is it time to start hoarding popcorn yet?

 

[Zkribbler]

The Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs the process for tallying votes within the Electoral College, is imprecise. Under this law, Republicans could even argue that the very existence of competing slates ought to invalidate Pennsylvania’s votes, if the Democratic candidate needs that state to win.

On a related note, as the July 2, 1776 date for the vote for independence closed in, the majority of Penn. delegates were against independence. Although the majority of NY delegates were pro-independence, their colonial legislators had given them strict instructions to vote against it.. All understood that if the colonies were to vote for independence, for political reasons, that vote needed to be unanimous. The NY delegation urgently wrote to the legislature for new instruction. However, they received no response.
Come the July 2 vote, the NY delegates abstained. The anti-independence Penn. delegates stayed away, allowing Pennsylvania to vote for independence.
The final vote: 12 colonies for independence; 0 against; 1 abstention.