Heliograph, to random
@Heliograph@mastodon.au avatar

👀 Monopoly wasn't invented by the Parker Brothers, nor the man they gave it credit for. In 1904, Monopoly was originally called The Landlord's Game, and was invented by a radical woman. Elizabeth Magie's original game had not one, but two sets of rules to choose from.
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".

HT Tumblr.com/soberscientistlife

jentrification, to random
@jentrification@mastodon.social avatar

from reddit /TIL: a family in Georgia claimed to have passed down a song in an unknown language from the time of their enslavement; scientists identified the song as a genuine West African funeral song in the Mende language that had survived multiple transmissions from mother to daughter over multiple centuries

https://www.harrisnecklandtrust.org/amelia-s-song

PChoate, to til
@PChoate@mas.to avatar

that ’s mother was maybe even more cool than Jack Black.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Love_Cohen

mdmrn, (edited ) to LEGO
@mdmrn@urusai.social avatar

Today I learned that LEGO has a program where you can send them your old LEGO (bricks, pieces, mini-figs, etc). LEGO will then take them in, wash / sterilize them, and donate them to children in need!

They even pay for the shipping for you.

If you want to know more, you can check out their website here: https://www.lego.com/en-us/sustainability/environment/replay

rixx, to til
@rixx@chaos.social avatar

The Tunnel of Eupalinos was built in the 6th century BCE in Greece. It's just over 1km long, goes through a mountain, and was built from both sides.

And! It was built as an aqueduct, so it has two parts; a footpath and a lower water channel. It was in use for a thousand years before the channel silted over.

AND! It still exists and can be visited and we mostly know about it and rediscovered it due to Herodotus mentioning it. How cool is this?? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_of_Eupalinos

Cross-section schematic of the tunnel: the upper part is the tunnel and footpath, with a narrow shaft/hole at the right hand side leading down to a water pipe, which is roughly half as wide as the tunnel.

castarco, to til Spanish
@castarco@hachyderm.io avatar

that was invented by and a bad psychologist to discredit a female hostage who didn't trust the cops after they did nothing to protect the captive employees during a bank heist.

Her "crime" was trying to negotiate with the criminals to protect her own life, while the police and the state preferred having dead hostages over closing any deal with the thieves.

https://www.stadafa.com/2020/12/stockholm-syndrome-discredit.html

kmherkes, to til
@kmherkes@wandering.shop avatar

the United States Fish & Wildlife Service maintains a searchable, public-access photographic Feather Database.

It's exactly as amazing as you might imagine. You can browse by family or species, and/or identify feathers you find lying about.

In related news, I came across a feather from a Northern Flicker on my lunchtime walk today.

https://www.fws.gov/lab/featheratlas/index.php

manisha, to til
@manisha@neuromatch.social avatar

that elephants purr!

"Stand near an elephant herd, and you may feel a strange vibration in your chest. That’s not your heart beating in terror because you’re, well, standing next to an elephant herd. Or at least that’s not all it is. It’s also a sign that the elephants are talking to one another. Elephants are famous for their trumpeting, of course, but they also produce rumbles pitched so low that humans can’t hear them, only feel them as a sort of physical buzzing. Exactly how elephants do this has been a mystery — and while solving that mystery is not of first-order importance in understanding and preserving this largest of land animals, it would add new insight into how a whole range of species vocalize."

The Mystery of the Purring Elephant

wortkomplex, to til German
@wortkomplex@chaos.social avatar

Eine wohl sehr beliebte Fahrradklau-Masche: Fahrradbügel ansägen, möglichst unauffällig kaschieren und dann einfach „abernten“. Fällt kaum auf, vor allem wenn die Ständer sowieso beklebt sind oder man es eilig hat. Mir ausnahmsweise mal nicht selbst passiert – hat aber ein Polizist auf Fahrradjagd erzählt, jetzt auch mal in live gesehen. Da wundern auch die neulich vielen Metallspäne vor der Haustür nicht.

Angesägter Fahrradbügel Nummer 2

niconiconi, to til
mdione, to til
@mdione@en.osm.town avatar

  • very few land places have a land antipode
rakyat, to til
@rakyat@hachyderm.io avatar

about the Great Male Renunciation

“The Great Male Renunciation is the historical phenomenon at the end of the 18th century in which Western men stopped using brilliant or refined forms in their dress, which were left to women's clothing. Coined by psychoanalyst John Flügel in 1930, it is considered a major turning point in the history of clothing in which the men relinquished their claim to adornment and beauty.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Male_Renunciation?wprov=sfti1

denny, to til

: "If you see an unaccompanied service dog in a vest, follow it."

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/service-dog-owner-help/

strypey, to til
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz avatar

about Kazarma, a bridge between ActivityPub and @matrix protocol networks:

https://technostructures.org/en/projects/kazarma/

@smallcircles

josep, to til
@josep@freiburg.social avatar

https://tube.network.europa.eu is a thing, The seems to really get going on their based social network

jwyg, to SelfDrivingCars

just arrived in san francisco and learning about "coning" or "unicorning" - the practice of "placing traffic cones on self-driving cars" 😂🦄🚗🚫

more at
@SafeStreetRebel https://www.safestreetrebel.com/

efertone, to linux

TIL: Unix hidden file (dotfiles) was a bug caused by a "naaaah we can simplify it" approach.

tl;dr: Originally the code for ls supposed to exclude . and .., but the check to hide it was not:

if (strcmp(name, ".") == 0 || strcmp(name, "..") == 0) continue;

instead it was a simple check on the first character:

if (name[0] == '.') continue;

as no one really used dot at the beginning of their file, it was not a bit issue, and later people started to implement their programs the same way and started to use "dotfiles" to hide config files and spam the home directory as "it's not visible, who cares", but in reality the ls command still iterates over them, but it does not print it stdout.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180827160401/https://plus.google.com/+RobPikeTheHuman/posts/R58WgWwN9jp

pizzaroquette, to til French
@pizzaroquette@mastodon.social avatar

: "relou" s'accorde en genre et en nombre, d'après le Petit Robert.

metaphil, to til
@metaphil@chaos.social avatar

💡 that, aside from fancy and workstations and servers, legendary manufacturer also sold an ​maker for ca. 190 DM in Germany.

(Image: CC0 Wikimedia Commons, Wolfgang Stief)

emoses, to til
@emoses@hachyderm.io avatar
jeremy, to til
@jeremy@mapstodon.space avatar

The "&" logogram, called esperluette in french - & which I'm quite fond of - is called ampersand in english.

Its etymology is at least as poetic as the sign itself: ampersand means "and, per se, and".

Both its french and english Wikipedia pages are worth reading if you enjoy diving into the history of typography (caution, rabbit's hole):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperluette

The attached image comes from the WP page. Ain't it beautiful?

JohnBarentine, to til
@JohnBarentine@astrodon.social avatar

that fortunately someone has already invented a term that was on my mind but for which no word seemed to already exist.

Thank you, Urban Dictionary: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spacewashing

freddy, to til
@freddy@security.plumbing avatar

Oh . The whole "AI" scraping bots are obviously not paying attention to nofollow, noindexand so on. So now all kind of "SEO" spam prevention stuff you do on your websites is pointless now. Cool, cool, cool.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • JUstTest
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • tacticalgear
  • mdbf
  • InstantRegret
  • magazineikmin
  • Youngstown
  • thenastyranch
  • rosin
  • slotface
  • Durango
  • cubers
  • ngwrru68w68
  • anitta
  • cisconetworking
  • GTA5RPClips
  • modclub
  • tester
  • khanakhh
  • everett
  • provamag3
  • osvaldo12
  • Leos
  • normalnudes
  • ethstaker
  • megavids
  • lostlight
  • All magazines