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Items tagged with: TIL
TIL a U.S. presidential candidate can win the Electoral College with only 23% of the popular vote. It’s unlikely but possible and it’s time to abolish the EC.
https://www.npr.org/2016/11/02/500112248/how-to-win-the-presidency-with-27-percent-of-the-popular-vote
#til #todayilearned
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1gi8nc1/til_a_us_presidential_candidate_can_win_the/
I was gonna ask what that "streak of light pointing in the wrong direction" was. But the image caption mentions an "anti-tail".
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/please-explain-what-an-anti-ta-Qx6FQO9QRC.sH_PYWVQuhA
TIL that the "microwave-safe" label on plastic containers only means they won't melt or warp, and doesn't guarantee that chemicals won't leach into your food when heated
https://scienceline.org/2022/09/is-it-safe-to-microwave-plastic-containers/
#til #todayilearned
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1f0qm01/til_that_the_microwavesafe_label_on_plastic/
Is it safe to microwave plastic containers? - Scienceline
Many plastics contain harmful chemicals, and a zap in the microwave can increase your exposure. The FDA says this exposure isn’t a concern, but some experts recommend caution.Deborah Balthazar, Daniel Leonard, Tatum McConnell (Scienceline)
TIL two families escaped East Germany in a home made hot air balloon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany_balloon_escape
#til #todayilearned
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1f16rz3/til_two_families_escaped_east_germany_in_a_home/
TIL that in the 1928 Olympics, a rower named Bobby Pearce stopped in the middle of the quarter final race in order to let a family of ducks pass his lane, allowing one of his opponents to pull ahead. He still managed to get first place out of 8 people and went on to win gold in the finals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Pearce_(rower)
#til #todayilearned
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1eu6gpk/til_that_in_the_1928_olympics_a_rower_named_bobby/
TIL Judith Love Cohen was American aerospace engineer who helped create the Abort-Guidance System that rescued the Apollo 13 astronauts. When she went into labor, she took a printout of her problem to the hospital. She called her boss and said she finished it before giving birth to actor Jack Black.
https://kottke.org/19/05/meet-aerospace-engineer-judith-love-cohen
#til #todayilearned
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1dgtbeh/til_judith_love_cohen_was_american_aerospace/
Meet Aerospace Engineer Judith Love Cohen
Judith Love Cohen was, at various times in her fascinating life, an engineer who worked on the Pioneer, Apollo, and Hubble missionkottke.org
TIL Coca-Cola was accused of hiring hitmen between 1990 and 2002 to kill at least 10 trade union leaders.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jul/24/marketingandpr.colombia
#til #todayilearned
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ckpxsk/til_cocacola_was_accused_of_hiring_hitmen_between/
Coca-Cola boycott launched after killings at Colombian plants
Trade unions around the world have launched a boycott of Coca-Cola products, alleging that the company's locally owned bottlers in Colombia used illegal paramilitary groups to intimidate, threaten and kill its workers.Sibylla Brodzinsky (The Guardian)
So apparently the term "patch" in software development comes from punched paper tape.
"Small corrections to the programmed sequence could be done by patching over portions of the paper tape and re-punching the holes in that section."
https://chsi.harvard.edu/harvard-ibm-mark-1-language
#til #computers #development #language #history
#TIL of this wild event, when, in 1961, a bomber carrying two nuclear bombs crashed in North Carolina and the bombs did not detonate.
The night two atomic bombs fell—on North Carolina
Sixty years ago, at the height of the Cold War, a B-52 bomber disintegrated over a small Southern town. An eyewitness recalls what happened next.National Geographic
#TIL about the Join Jabber collective:
https://joinjabber.org/about/goals/
Their aim is to make the federation of chat servers using the XMPP protocol accessible to more people, and improve #UX across the whole network.
#chat #federation #jabber #XMPP
Collective goals
When we founded our collective, we gave ourselves a set of goals. On this page, you will find the updated list of our goals, refined over time. These goals were debated in English language during our meetings, and contributions are welcome.JoinJabber
One was called "Prosperity", where every player won money anytime another gained a property. And the game was won by everyone playing only when the person with the least doubled their resources. A game of collaboration and social good.
The second set of rules was called "Monopoly", where players succeeded by taking properties and rent from those with less luck rolling the dice. The winner was the person who used their power to eliminate everyone else.
Magie's mission was to teach us how different we feel when playing Prosperity vs Monopoly, hoping that it would one day change national policies.
When the Parker Bros adopted the game, they erased the "Prosperity" rules and celebrated "Monopoly".
#ElizabethMagie #Monopoly #Landlord
HT Tumblr.com/soberscientistlife
"An open database of 46,853,993 free scholarly articles.
We harvest Open Access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories, and make it easy to find, track, and use."
https://unpaywall.org/
#research #PeerReviewed #AcademicJournals #OpenAccess
And, no, it's not a bug. It's a feature. 🤡
https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/1023
ignore a local-folder instead of un checking sync - avoid deleting localfolders · Issue #1023 · nextcloud/desktop
I don't expect much traction here given this has been a known issue/feature request for some time. Still the moderator at the forum requested I make an issue based on the work around I provided...GitHub
and anyone that travels should consider it mandatory, imo. #TIL that people are making 'deck docks with m2 drives in them why didn't i think of that?!
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/pickles-pocket
Its author also found there were only two C compilers in the world that could run Order correctly, one was GCC, another was the Wave C++ preprocessor library, everything else violated C99 (and even C89) in some ways.
order-pp/example at master · rofl0r/order-pp
order-pp preprocessor library (standalone part of chaos-pp) - order-pp/example at master · rofl0r/order-ppGitHub