#TodayILearned that Bing Crosby was the world's very first major investor in magnetic recording tape, specifically so he could record his daily live New York show and re-broadcast it in California later. He spent today's equivalent of several million dollars on the first experimental machines, thus allowing for more R&D and arguably laying the groundwork for the entire resulting computer industry. Thanks, @clive! https://www.honest-broker.com/p/how-bing-crosby-made-silicon-valley
#TodayILearned that there was a meme called “The Benadryl Hat Man” in the 2000s, that claimed taking too much Benadryl will make you hallucinate and see a shadowy figure wearing a wide-brimmed hat.
Today is the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Stop rolling your eyes, this isn't a patriotic post! You know me better than that.
This is about spilling the tea... about the British East India Company's spilled tea, and what that had to do with Bengal, textile workers, and famine.
See, BEIC was using its private armies to open markets around the world to their trading policies, and to install local rulers who would keep the goods and money flowing. They did this in Bengal, one of the world's biggest producers of textiles in the mid-1700s.
Then, in 1768, drought hit Bengal and crops failed. People began to go hungry, but the BEIC's puppet rulers just continued to collect taxes--and, in some cases, to profiteer off the sale of food. Over the next two years, these practices exacerbated the food shortages, leading to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770, in which 7 - 10 million people are estimated to have starved to death. That's at least 25% of the entire Bengali population of the time.
This put a big dent in the profits of the BEIC (oopsie, who knew famine profiteering could have negative economic impacts?), leading to a financial crisis in England. This is also why BEIC was unloading tea for cheap in the American colonies, to get some of those revenues back.
So yeah, "no taxation without representation" was the rallying cry, but isn't it interesting that we (USians, I mean) were never taught that the REASON colonists were worried about this is because they felt they had something in common with starving Bengalis: namely, the vulnerability to a multinational corporation which clearly demonstrated its depraved indifference to human suffering in pursuit of profit.
Couple of little nuggets I left out because I'm trying to be concise (ha), but they're so interesting:
The BEIC was able to unload tea in the American colonies because the English parliament, rather than let the company fail, bailed it out. Part of the bailout conditions were that they got a monopoly over tea sales in the colonies. Same as it ever was, eh?
BEIC agents who wrote letters and contacted the media (such as it was) to spread the word, and the outrage, about the completely unnecessary famine, were possibly the world's first whistleblowers.
"Long time no see" originated in the United States as "a jocular imitation of broken English."
"Long time no see" is similar to the Chinese phrase 好久不 見 (Mandarin traditional), 好 耐 冇 見 (Cantonese), 好久不见 (Mandarin simplified), meaning "haven't seen [you] in a long time", further meaning "we have not seen each other in a long time".
Similarly, "Look-see" is also attributed to Chinese pidgin English by the Oxford English dictionary.
How did I come across this, you may ask?
Because I found myself saying the phrase "No tickee, no shirtee!" to my children, because I grew up hearing it, and never thought anything of it, and thought - maybe I should look that up, because it's probably racist. And it was:
"No ____, no ____" predates the origin of Chinese Pidgin English, but is also a notable example of fabricated pidgin English: (沒 票 沒 襯衣) meaning "If you don't have a laundry receipt, I won't give you your shirts", said to be a fabricated pidgin English inaccurately attributed to the Chinese laundry proprietors.
In 1886, a New York City bill cited this phrase in reference to Chinese-owned dry cleaning establishments.
In 1921 a movie titled "No Tickee No Shirtee" further popularized the saying.
Another famous use of this phrase is "No money, no talk" (冇錢冇得傾 (Cantonese)), which simply means "If you don't have the money, don't try to bargain with me".
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!
Maybe common knowledge, but #todayilearned#windows will show you detailed info about the #wifi networks in the area- ssid, Network type, authentication, encryption, all BSSIDs that can be seen with signal %, channel, radio type (n, ac, etc), basic & other rates per BSSID. Type netsh wlan show networks mode=BSSID from an admin command prompt.
TIL: DMA kann neben "Direct Memory Access" auch "Digital Markets Act" meinen.
Ist ja fast so schlimm wie DRM, das nicht nur für "Digital Rights Management" steht, sondern auch für den "Direct Rendering Manager". Das ist die von allen gängigen PC-Grafiktreibern genutzte Basis-Infrastruktur von Linux, die daher auch "DRM-Treiber" heißen.
Wow my perception of jq as like a grep for json has been changed it is so much more like an awk for json. very cool Thank you @FLOX_advocate and #seagl2023#jq#todayilearned
#TodayILearned that Richard M Daley is even more awful than I thought. As mayor of Chicago in 2008, he sold more than 36,000 parking spots to a company financed by Morgan Stanley and the Emir of Abu Dhabi to operate for SEVENTY FIVE YEARS for the measly sum of $1.16B.
Today, the company has made over $1.6B back on its investment, and it has SIXTY MORE YEARS to keep raking in money.
This is possibly one of the worst municipal privatization disasters, because you can bet that company will use some of the money it rakes in to obstruct legislation that might turn Chicago into anything BUT a congested, car-centric city for the rest of our lifetimes.
“Chicago has a problem until the year 2083.” by Stand-Up Maths
#TodayILearned that there is a car/bicycle modding subculture in #NewZealand that focuses around installing loudspeakers (“sirens”) on cars and playing music as loudly and cleanly as possible.