Professional Internet Lurker | Generalist Jack of all trades | Master of stumbling down rabbit holes. Occasional reader. Good with Languages & Cultures. I make𧔠More knowledgeable than how I may appear; I like to think of myself as a thinker of good lines
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Held every year since 2018, the Taiwan Expo in India has evolved into more than just a trade show Industries such as ICT, smart manufacturing, electronics, and semiconductors have already started forming partnerships, aided also by efforts to overcome tariff barriers & obtain governmental support
Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) will collaborate with Tata Group to begin mass production of chips in India as early as next year. Cheng emphasised that Taiwan has the technology & India has both resources & skilled human capital â making cooperation mutually beneficial.
India possesses nearly 6.9 million metric tonnes of rare earth reserves, making it the 3rd highest in the world, which have been underexploited. If fully utilised, they could make India a key long-term supplier of crucial materials used in EV batteries, defence systems & other advanced technologies.
India making moves in semiconductors. At the Taiwan Expo 2025 in New Delhi, Taiwan made a distinct proposal: "Taiwan wants access to Indiaâs rare earth minerals while offering its semiconductor technology in exchange" 60% of all semiconductors come from Taiwan convergence-now.com/embedded-tec...
I know you've all read this book by now because I keep blathering about it, right
Search interest for "cancel Disney plus." For comparison, I marked when the "Don't Say Gay" bill passed and conservatives tried to boycott Disney.
George Carlin tweaked Sinclair's quote in 2005 (approx. 2:48 mark) "When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown & black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers & Smiley Face shirts waving the flag with a trademark printed in the corner." youtu.be/vHn9AWYU0Hg?...
It is fucked up what they did to the headphone jack
Dutch late night TV has its take
I am going to try my goddamn hardest to live long enough to see ICE agents become ammo drops in a Wolfenstein game.
Welp. đŹđșđž
"In the novel, the protagonist changes one of her stories so that the character eats an apple rather than a guava, rendering it less âexoticâ to western readers but also less true, because apples are more expensive & less plentiful in India." www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...
10) To understand political thought globally, we must move beyond binaries and engage with relational, cyclical, and context-sensitive frameworks. Systems of governance are cultural expressions, not universal truths. What can work for some will NOT work for others and so will adapt to local needs.
9) The leftâright binary mirrors Christian moral dualism: saved vs. damned, good vs. evil. This framing was exported via colonial education and missionary discourse. newpolity.com/blog/right-l... The leftâright metaphor is historically contingent & narrow in expression.
- Zapatista councils (Chiapas, Mexico) practice horizontalism, community-led decision-making & anti-authoritarian ethics. iaf-fai.org/2020/04/19/z...
8) Indigenous governance models emphasize rotation, consensus & community roles: - Gadaa system (Oromo, Ethiopia) uses age-grade rotation, participatory councils & restorative justice. www.demmeksa.no/blog/the-gad...
- Japanâs postwar politics evolved around technocratic consensus, not ideological polarization. 213.219.61.110/UNRISD/websi... - Chinaâs governance blends Marxist rhetoric with Confucian hierarchy and market pragmatism. fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/research/blo...
7) Contemporary Asian politics often defy Western ideological mapping: - Indiaâs BJP and Congress adopt policies across the spectrum, shaped more by caste, religion, and regional dynamics than ideology. www.indiatoday.in/india/story/...
6) Some sources: Indian Political Thoughts of Dharmashastra politicsforindia.com/9-1-dharmash... Shura in Islamic Governance spiritualculture.org/what-is-shur... Confucian political treatise poliprephub.in/ugc-net/poli... Confucianism, the philosophy asiaconnectmagazine.com/confucianism...
5)Many Eastern traditions like Islam, Confucianism, India's Dharmic traditions, resist binary classification preferring to instead embrace the ambiguity of real life and ethical quandaries These systems focus on moral cultivation & contextual ethics rather than fixed ideological positions.
4) The great advantage of these labels is their simplicity: they reduce complex political ideas to a simple dichotomy. It also makes it easy for people to identify the ârightâ side, to which they belong, and the âwrongâ side, which they condemn. theconversation.com/the-evolutio...
3) Over time, âleftâ came to represent egalitarianism, secularism & reform; ârightâ stood for hierarchy, tradition & religious authority. These labels were codified in 19th-century France and exported globally via colonial and Cold War channels. missedhistory.com/3378/how-fre...
2) It originated during the French Revolution (1789), exported and globalized, often reductively, through Colonialism. In the National Assembly: -supporters of the monarchy sat on the presidentâs right; -revolutionaries sat on the left. This spatial division became symbolic of ideological camps
Also: the notion of the "LeftâRight Political Spectrum". A spatial metaphor that turned into a term that eventually came to mean how the "sum total of all political views conceivable can be neatly labelled as Left/Right". The binary of âleftâ & ârightâ in politics is NOT universal đ§”(1/10)
6) The Tear Gas wikipedia article mentions general health risks & includes only the following sentence about reproductive effects: "Novel findings suggest that menstrual changes are one of the most commonly reported health issues in women" en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tear_gas
5) Because tear gas is deployed indiscriminately, often in dense urban protests. Its effects on pregnant women, fertility & long-term hormonal health remain under-researched. âWe simply don't know very much about the short-term or long-term effects tear gas has on reproductive healthâ
4) A 2023 study from University of Minnesota confirmed the link 83% of women exposed to tear gas reported at least 1 adverse reproductive health outcome -Uterine cramping: 69% -Early menstrual bleeding: 55% -Breast tenderness: 30% -Delayed bleeding: 19% www.healthday.com/health-news/...
3) Yet tear gas is routinely used by police on civilians. Women are 2.6x more likely to suffer reproductive disruptions. In 2020, protestors exposed to tear gas began reporting menstrual irregularities (Early bleeding, cramps, breast tenderness & delayed cycles) www.sph.umn.edu/news/new-stu...
2) This exception was added because, by 1990s, most chemical agents were being used by police, not militaries & framed as a âless-lethalâ tool for crowd control which many disagree with âThe law enforcement exception in the Chemical Weapons Convention was a mistake" thebulletin.org/2020/06/why-...
Tear gas is banned in warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) of 1993, which prohibits use of toxic chemicals as weapons ('riot control agents') like CS gas & CN gas. But it's allowed for âlaw enforcement including domestic riot control purposes.â (đ§”1/6) daily.jstor.org/why-do-polic...
NEW: The Pentagon told journalists it will require them to pledge they wonât gather any information â even unclassified â that hasnât been expressly authorized for release, and will revoke the press credentials of those who do not obey. @washingtonpost.com
I canceled my Hulu account ages ago but I have also just requested them to delete all of my data. It was a multi-step pain-in-the-rear process, which indicates that they really don't want you to do it. It would be a shame if you did. help.hulu.com/article/hulu...
I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.
"In June, Milan Kovac, head of the Optimus program, left Tesla, after being promoted to senior vice-president. Kovac led the overall program, including robotics." "Now, Ashish Kumar, who led Teslaâs Optimus AI team has joined Meta as a researcher."
The first of the three corpora of German-English bilingual children's early speech that we've been working on for the last few years is finally publicly available! đ„ł đ talkbank.org/childes/acce...
Amazing!!! đ§Ș The 2025 Ig Nobel prize goes to scientists from the @mpipks.bsky.social for discovering a bullet proof version to make the classic pasta alla cacio e pepe! Including a deep understanding of the pasta sauce in terms of phase separation physics đ Congrats @gbart.bsky.social et al! Linksđ
The same week he sues the NY Times for $15 billion... *this* is the headline the NY Times goes with?
I think this comparison is largely right. Yes, itâs a replay of McCarthyismâs ugliest aspects but that was fueled by a widespread sense that the country faced dire external dangers while this is about a deeply unpopular presidentâs grudges.
Reminded me of the show Community, particularly the season 3 episode 14 "Pillows and Blankets", of the greendale civil war between Troy and Abed; the leaders of their respective factions of Blanketsburg and Pillowtown. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillows...
5) Requiem is an elegy by Anna about the suffering of people under the Great Purge. It was written over three decades, between 1935 & 1961 The whole work wasn't published in USSR until 1987. It would become the best known work of poetry about Soviet Great Terror en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem...
4) Akhmatova Orphans- a group of four 20th century Russian poets: Joseph Brodsky, Yevgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Dmitri Bobyshev who gathered as acolytes around Akhmatova who called them her "magic choir", but after her death became known as "Akhmatova's Orphans" en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhmato...
3) -Akhmatova's first husband, Nikolai Gumilev was executed by the Cheka -her son Lev Gumilev & -her common-law husband Nikolay Punin (Russian art scholar, writer, cofounder of Dept of Iconography in the State Russian Museum) died, after years spent in the Gulag en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay...
2) Her work was condemned & censored by Stalinist authorities. She is notable for choosing not to emigrate & remaining in the Soviet Union, acting as witness to events around her Her perennial themes include meditations on time, memory & difficulties of, living & writing in the shadow of Stalinism
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (1889â1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova, was a Russian & Soviet poet, one of the most significant of the 20th century, especially during World War II. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1965 & 1966. 1/5 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Ak...
if you must be online may i point out that project gutenberg is still around and still has basically every book written before 1910 for free
I hung out in Elon Muskâs company town. Its playground is always broken. The school is accepting just a fraction of the students it was supposed to because they didnât build a big enough well. And you can buy any canned beverage imaginable but canât recycle them. sherwood.news/power/the-re...
This Meta VR event is a clusterfuck. Half the demos arenât working. Theyâre blaming the wifi. If these devices donât work for the dude whoâs learned to type 30 words per minute with his wrist what about the rest of us???
I miss the pre-social media, pre-blogging days internet too but I really donât think personal websites are coming back in a big way. Wish they were, donât think they are. The people who want them have them (waves) and it takes a certain stubbornness to keep one going vs getting a Threads account
Quite possible. UK Biobank operates as a public resource, but it allows access to its data for approved researchersâincluding those from commercial entities. The sequencing was supported by a consortium that includes Regeneron Genetics Center, Amgen & GSK. data monetization & licensing are risky.
4) This builds on the UK's prior success with Genomics England and the 100,000 Genomes Project, which demonstrated the clinical value of large-scale sequencing. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
3) - Creating a secure data ecosystem for ethical use of genomic information. - Initial focus will be on voluntary participation, especially among patients with rare diseases or cancer. - Full population sequencing would require massive investment, public trust, and robust data governance.
2) Goals include: - tailoring treatments to individualsâ genetic profiles - Enhancing early disease detection & preventive care. - Building a genomic infrastructure that supports research into rare diseases, cancer & inherited conditions. community.ukbiobank.ac.uk/hc/en-gb/art...
The UK government's proposal to launch a nationwide whole-genome sequencing initiative, potentially covering all citizens This would be the largest population-scale genomic project ever attempted The plan is aspirational, with phased implementation đ§”(1/4)
4) Chinese Room critiques strong AI & the idea that computation alone yields mind. Stochastic Parrot critiques LLMs & their lack of grounding, transparency, & ethical safeguards. The Chinese Room was hypothetical. The Stochastic Parrot is real. Todayâs LLMs are scaled-up versions of Searleâs room.
3) From the outside, it looks like they understand Chinese. But inside, there's no comprehensionâjust syntax, no semantics. Both metaphors challenge the assumption that generating coherent language implies understanding. They warn against mistaking surface-level fluency for cognitive depth.
2) The âStochastic Parrotâ (Bender et al., 2021) & the âChinese Roomâ (Searle, 1980) are two influential critiques of artificial intelligence. s10251.pcdn.co/pdf/2021-ben... John Searle imagined a person in a room manipulating Chinese symbols using a rulebook.
In machine learning, the term stochastic parrot is a metaphor, introduced by Emily M. Bender & colleagues in a 2021 paper, that frames large language models as systems that statistically mimic text without real understanding I.e. fluency â understanding. s10251.pcdn.co/pdf/2021-ben... đ§”(1/4)
'Tendency of people to prefer letters in their name over other letters in the alphabet.' Discovered in 1985 by Belgian psychologist Jozef Nuttin, the name-letter effect has been replicated in dozens of studies, with people from 15+ countries & 4 different scripts en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name-le...
Academic/museum folks who do a lot of internet searching, what are you using thatâs not Google and has zero AI? The mental load of dodging pointless dreck with every search is just a lot
Horrible story about a Russian man who fled the military, hoped for asylum in the United States, but has now been sent back to the gulag.
not an exaggeration to say I am WEEPING with laughter at this reply from someone who hadn't seen that Robert Redford died today
High-speed rail is coming to #Canada! This week, federal government fast-tracked the Alto project. Will link #Quebec City- #Montreal - #Ottawa - #Toronto , a corridor with half Canada's population. Projected to carry 30 million passengers a yearâtwice US Northeast Corridorâon 300 km/h trains. đđ§”
3) Appeared in 1750s by English dramatist & actor Samuel Foote: "So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; & at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. 'What! No soap?' So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber."
2) The punch line is known for its use as sociological & psychological experiments, relating to mob mentality & pressure to conform. The basic setup is similar to Asch conformity experiments, where people tended to agree with a group despite their own judgments. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_co...
âNo soap radioâ â a surreal prank from 1950s NYC where the punchline makes no sense, but everyone laughs anyway. The phrase "no soap" possibly originated around 1860 when it was first recorded, meaning "I haven't any money" or "I will not lend you money". đ§”(1/3) en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_soap...
"But that hasnât stopped reader Ernest Ager sending a string of examples of what must henceforth be known as RAS syndromeâwhere âRASâ stands for âredundant acronymâŠââyes, youâve guessed the rest. Is this the last we will be hearing of RAS syndrome? We suspect not."
"A COUPLE of weeks ago we reported on Microsoftâs âNT technologyâ, which we wrongly assumed meant âNew Technology technologyâ. Our thanks to reader Iain Broadfoot, who points out that it actually means âNorthern Telecom technologyâ, after the people who originally developed it."
The term RAS syndrome was coined in 2001 in a light-hearted column in New Scientist: Self-Loading Rifle rifle Laboratory Information Management System system HRT therapy HUD display SCUBA apparatus (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing apparatus) en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syn... archive.is/wF7mc
Fun fact: Nancy Mace is trying to censure me over comments I never said. Her res does not contain a single quote from me because she couldnât find any. Unlike her, I have routinely condemned political violence, no matter the political ideology.
it's so funny to see America's health insurance companies be like "look. If there's one thing we love it's denying you care. but we ran the numbers - and we cannot BELIEVE we're saying this - and it's cheaper for us to just pay for the vaccines than deal with you going to the ER."
It's like watching a trainwreck in slow motion bsky.app/profile/barc...
U.S. Stock Market at its most expensive valuation since the Great Depression đš Probably Fine? đ€
"The implication is that human writers should avoid em dashes for fear of being mistaken for chatbots. No. Wrong. I am here to raze this implication to the very ground and salt the earth where it stood." www.theringer.com/2025/08/20/p...
The Simpsons: 37 seasons since 1989. Yep. Sounds about right. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sim...
Glycated hemoglobin forms when sugars bind non-enzymatically to hemoglobin. Glucose, galactose & fructose can all bind. Glucose does so less readily, possibly explaining its role as the main metabolic fuel in humans Indicator of diabetes or other hormone diseases en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycate...
'Storytime'
The company (Jaguar Land Rover) has since found the attack has affected âsome dataâ, although it said it could not provide more details of what data was affected, or if customersâ or suppliersâ information was stolen, but that it would contact anyone affected.
Hankyoreh now has an official English translation of this editorial: english.hani.co.kr/arti/english...
Did you know that Mario and Luigi were one of the first themeable UI element? Born from tight technological constraints, they helped pave the way for a whole new era of flexible, customizable design systems.
Palestine's top brewmaster says Israeli settler attacks won't stop Taybeh beer - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestines-top-brewmaster-says-settler-attacks-wont-stop-taybeh-beer
In English, "fibula" is primarily used by archaeologists, for a "brooch", especially for types OTHER than the ancient "safety pin" types AND for types from British Isles. For Continental archaeologists, ALL metal jewellery clothes-fasteners are usually "fibulae". en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibula_...
Baddies, Mark Zuckerberg thinks that we should let men film us without CONSENT or else weâll be cognitively inferior, which some men think anyway
Turning Point USA is mass texting teenagers. My minor teen son is getting bombarded. Despite opting out of one text scam, TPUSA will text with another text scam. They're going full grift ahead to raise money by targeting teens for their allowance money. An absurd attempt to grift and indoctrinate.
6) The study also found 7 exogenous (actively replicating) deltaviruses in termite colonies. Based on molecular dating, deltaviruses may have coexisted with termites for ~141 million years. This implies deep evolutionary stability and possibly cross-phylum transmission events.
5) This fusion event is an example of "viral gene co-option", where host organisms repurpose viral genes for their own use. "Co-option" is a known evolutionary mechanism across many species. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaptat...
4) In one termite species (Reticulitermes spp.), a deltavirus-like gene was fused with a host gene called "nucleoplasmin". The fusion includes "exon/intron" structure, hallmarks of host gene integration. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intron
3) Transcriptome analysis (study of RNA expression) across 906 termite samples showed that these viral elements are actively expressed in various tissues and castes. This suggests they may serve functional roles. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcr...
2) These termite EVEs resemble the delta antigen gene from Hepatitis D virus (HDV), a subviral agent that requires a helper virus to replicate. HDV is the best-known deltavirus. In vertebrates EVEs derived from retroviruses (endogenous retroviruses) are common. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatit...
Termites have fused a viral gene into their own genome, making them symbionts, not just pathogens. Researchers found 13 deltavirus-like sequences in the genomes of 5 termite species. These are called endogenous viral elements (EVEs), viral DNA that has been integrated into host genomes. đ§”(1/6)
One of the few good things about early Bluesky culture is the commitment to accessibility. A lot of people who've been here longer than Nov. 2024. won't share your skeet if you don't use Alt text. Adding #Alt4Me can summon help and many of us will pitch in as we have spoons if you don't that day.
From mythical war goddesses to legendary and real female warriors, what roles have women played in past warfare? Find out in our review of Karlene Jones-Bley's 'Women and warfare in the ancient world: myth, legend and reality', in the #NewBookChronicle đ doi.org/10.15184/aqy... đș #Archaeology
Love this cat milk packaging
âThis book is overdue and Iâm about to make it your problem, ya wazzock.â
đ
Book :3 @amoiramara.bsky.social @feministpress.bsky.social
charlie kirk is MLK. camera is hamas. chair is astronaut. baby is stove. yawn is owl.