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Interesting Stuff Thread

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    #6422
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Outlook bad for Jesus in New Zealand as 'No religion' officially overtakes Christianity in census:

    https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/no-religion-officially-overtakes-christianity-in-new-zealand-census-stats


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    #6423
    magicbastarder
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 48,391 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    Why do so many Americans hate the welfare state?
    Individualism runs deep in American culture. So too firm resistance to “big government”. Europeans look upon this state of affairs and tend to blame political leadership of the United States but Prof Elizabeth Anderson believes there’s a more fundamental source of resistance to egalitarian or progressive reforms. It comes from religion.
    https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/why-do-so-many-americans-hate-the-welfare-state-1.4057860


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    #6424
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    Good article and some quite interesting comments.


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    #6425
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Time for Gay Byrne to learn whether Stephen Fry was right or not. :(

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo


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    #6426
    magicbastarder
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 48,391 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    if this pans out as true, is phenomenal:

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died#

    it's a story about a paleontologist who may have discovered a rich site *within* the KT boundary, with actual evidence of the impact's effects.


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    #6427
    Cabaal
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Regional South East Moderators Posts: 28,462 Mod ✭✭✭✭Cabaal


    Shows just how very tiny we are

    https://neal.fun/size-of-space/

    Many people turn to religion because they simple cannot handle how small and in the scale of things unimportant we are


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    #6428
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    Cabaal wrote: »
    Shows just how very tiny we are

    https://neal.fun/size-of-space/

    Many people turn to religion because they simple cannot handle how small and in the scale of things unimportant we are

    I always liked the XDCD height of the universe to a logarithmic scale. I bought the wall poster for my daughter some years back who has since taken up physics and maths in UCD. Go figure as the yanks would say!

    height.png


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    #6429
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Ascension Healthcare is a catholic-controlled organization which runs around 2,600 hospitals, clinics and medical outlets across the US. Via something called 'Project Nightingale', Ascension is in the process of transferring what appears to be the unredacted medical details of around 50 million people to Google for reasons unknown. It seems that neither medical staff nor patients were consulted or even informed about the transfer:

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/12/google-medical-data-project-nightingale-secret-transfer-us-health-information

    Google recently purchased FitBit. It ran into trouble back in 2017 when it acquired patient records in the UK. The FT has also run a few (paywalled) articles recently about websites like WebMD which pass on medical details collected to Google, Facebook and other advertising companies.


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    #6430
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    I was reading about this earlier here. It looks like Amazon, Facebook and Oracle are at it as well and are in breach of GDPR in the process.


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    #6431
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    Following all the chit / chat about well proportion ladies on another thread, I found myself reading a rather entertaining post on Michelangelo's rendering of God's bum. What think ye, fellow heathens, well proportioned or not? :P


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    #6432
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 33,938 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    He says it's a bare bum when it clearly is the same colour as the robes.

    Life ain't always empty.



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    #6433
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    He says it's a bare bum when it clearly is the same colour as the robes.

    As an omnipotent being I daresay he's also an accomplished bum chameleon.


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    #6434
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    smacl wrote: »
    What think ye, fellow heathens, well proportioned or not?
    It's divine.

    Though missing from the picture is god's anus. Does He have one? If He has one, then does that mean that He poos?


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    #6435
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 33,938 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Holy sh1t :)


    Meanwhile, Joe Humphreys in the Irish Times has another odd little article about atheism - he has form in this regard. Start out on a false premise about atheism then get a religious apologist on to discuss it, ffs :rolleyes:

    https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/can-you-be-both-a-christian-and-an-unbeliever-1.4103063

    Life ain't always empty.



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    #6436
    spacecoyote
    Registered Users Posts: 8,438 ✭✭✭spacecoyote


    Interesting article on 538 about shifts in beliefs in the US:

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/millennials-are-leaving-religion-and-not-coming-back/

    In essence:

    Traditionally younger people have returned to religion as they got older, but "millenials" are bucking that trend & not returning to religion in later life.

    Also, in the US, there is a shift towards Political leaning driving religious belief, rather than the reverse, which is just causing the Dem-Rep divide to get ever further apart


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    #6437
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 33,938 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Made a complaint to ASAI about this load of old cobblers

    https://www.lidl.ie/en/p/happy-healthy/illuminated-salt-crystal-bowl/p33291

    498026.png

    Really need to put a stop to this sort of pseudoscientific bollocks.
    Benefits

    • Cleanses the air easing allergies & coughing
    • Increases energy levels
    • Improves sleep, mood & concentration
    • Environmentally friendly light source

    Isn't it amazing what some warm lumps of salt can do :rolleyes: and since when was an incandescent bulb an environmentally friendly light source?

    A few months back Aldi had some "healing crystals" :rolleyes: I wish I'd made a complaint about that, too.

    Some people actually believe in these bogus quasi-medical claims! Stupid people need protecting ;)

    Life ain't always empty.



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    #6438
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    A few months back Aldi had some "healing crystals"
    And Gwyneth Paltrow begat the Jade Egg, still available for $66 from her online shop:

    https://shop.goop.com/shop/products/jade-egg

    Guess where the Jade Egg goes? Yes, it goes in there.

    https://www.elle.com/life-love/sex-relationships/a46668/i-tried-the-goop-jade-egg/

    "Item is non-returnable", the website notes, a little coyly.


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    #6439
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 33,938 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Jaypers*. When she's not steaming her fanny she's shoving eggs up it! :eek:
    Goop claims it gives you sexual energy. Doctors say it could give you TSS.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae8t-QKPVY4


    * This was one of many of my grandfather's minced oaths for Jesus. I only realised what they were after he was dead. Others included jakers, bejakers, bejapers... usually uttered when he was teaching me how to play rummy at age 8. Happy times :)

    Life ain't always empty.



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    #6440
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    Jaypers* - This was one of many of my grandfather's minced oaths for Jesus. I only realised what they were after he was dead.
    Strange you should mention that - it was only a few days ago I was chatting with my kid about my deceased gran's use of the word "foother", roughly the same meaning as "faff", as in "I saw him foothering around in the kitchen the other day". I'd always thought that it had derived from the French "foutre" ("fuck"), thereby unintentionally turning my ever-modest gran into a splendidly sweary trooper. But no, it's from the Irish "fústar", meaning "fuss about" or "fidget".

    Oh well.


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    #6441
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    The Guardian with an interesting piece about how fake news - anti-islam, pro-trump, anti-corbyn mainly - is created, disseminated and monetized:

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/06/inside-the-hate-factory-how-facebook-fuels-far-right-profit


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    #6442
    mikhail
    Registered Users Posts: 3,863 ✭✭✭mikhail


    Just for the season, and probably well known here, but X-mas is actually a Christian abbreviation rather than some attempt to secularise the holiday. It comes from the Greek for Christ, Χριστός. The Χ here was originally the Greek letter Chi, and not its lookalike Latin X.


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    #6443
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 33,938 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Yes it's chi not X, but that didn't stop some slightly unhinged minds reading waaay too much into things when Windows XP was released.

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-desktop/what-does-the-xp-in-windows-stand-for/7837db59-55be-45e1-99ff-2e57083e23c1

    498339.png

    The chi-rho commonly appears on priestly vestments

    https://www.zieglers.com/gothic-chasuble-overlay-stole-set-chi-rho-rolled-collar-dark-green-slabbinck/church-goods/apparel-and-vestments/chasubles/

    $1,275? I'm in the wrong industry.

    Life ain't always empty.



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    #6444
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    $1,275? I'm in the wrong industry.
    If you're in Rome, it's worth dropping into Gammarelli's - they're just around the corner from the Pantheon and have a cracking line in purple, episcopal socks. The Ireland-Italy six-nations match takes place every second year in Rome and we try to take the time to drop by to renew our inner footwear. The good people behind the counter never batted an eyelid first time we were there and one friend of mine and I pretended to be a couple of itinerant, tipsy Irish bishops.

    https://www.gammarelli.com/


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    #6445
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 33,938 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Are there special pants too, or is that just the Mormons?

    Life ain't always empty.



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    #6446
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    Are there special pants too, or is that just the Mormons?
    Not sure about episcopal or papal underwear, but there's certainly plenty to choose from on the website.


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    #6447
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    The effect of having Christmas dinner with in-laws on gut microbiota composition

    From the abstract:
    de Clercq, Frissen, Levin, Davids et al wrote:
    In participants visiting in-laws, there was a significant decrease in all Ruminococcus species, known to be associated with psychological stress and depression.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452231719300090


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    #6448
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    Watching an episode of 'who wants to be a millionaire'. A rerun from some years back.

    The 10 wannabee contestants were asked to rank, in order of their appearance in The Lords Prayer, the words: hallowed, kingdom, heaven, father.

    Only 1 person got it right!

    Progress!

    In other news which you've doubtlessly heard, ethical veganism has been legally deemed a philosophical belief system. Philosophies = beliefs. Who would have thunk.


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    #6449
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,716 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Watching an episode of 'who wants to be a millionaire'. A rerun from some years back.

    The 10 wannabee contestants were asked to rank, in order of their appearance in The Lords Prayer, the words: hallowed, kingdom, heaven, father.

    Only 1 person got it right!

    Progress!

    In other news which you've doubtlessly heard, ethical veganism has been legally deemed a philosophical belief system. Philosophies = beliefs. Who would have thunk.

    Yep, noted this a couple of days ago here. While one definition of philosophy is "the most basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of an individual or group" there's a wee bit more to it than that as you're no doubt aware.


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    #6450
    magicbastarder
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 48,391 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    The 10 wannabee contestants were asked to rank, in order of their appearance in The Lords Prayer, the words: hallowed, kingdom, heaven, father.
    bleedin' nora. whoever set that question should have been fired.


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    #6451
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Fake news game confers psychological resistance against online misinformation
    Abstract wrote:
    The spread of online misinformation poses serious challenges to societies worldwide. In a novel attempt to address this issue, we designed a psychological intervention in the form of an online browser game. In the game, players take on the role of a fake news producer and learn to master six documented techniques commonly used in the production of misinformation: polarisation, invoking emotions, spreading conspiracy theories, trolling people online, deflecting blame, and impersonating fake accounts. The game draws on an inoculation metaphor, where preemptively exposing, warning, and familiarising people with the strategies used in the production of fake news helps confer cognitive immunity when exposed to real misinformation.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0279-9

    and the online game:

    https://getbadnews.com/


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