The New Coffee Room

taiwan_girl

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/sam-kean-book-dinner-with-king-tut-modern-mummy-ancient-egypt?rid=0823FBB1C64AFDF36D6412549D147289&cmpid=org%3Dngp%3A%3Amc%3Dcrm-email%3A%3Asrc%3Dngp%3A%3Acmp%3Deditorial%3A%3Aadd%3DDaily_NL_Friday_TopStories_20251031&rnd=1762200314384&loggedin=true

Cultures throughout history have mummified their dead, and a handful still do today, but Egyptian mummies remain the most iconic. Unfortunately, the Egyptians wrote down virtually nothing about their embalming process. This leaves experimental archaeology as one of the few avenues available for understanding mummification, and several practitioners have indeed recreated mummies in modern times. In most cases, they work with animals, but a few intrepid souls have mummified human beings, most famously when Bob Brier and Ronn Wade did so in 1994.

taiwan_girl

@Doctor-Phibes That is awesome.

When he is elected for his first award, make sure your TNCR friends are invited.

taiwan_girl

@jon-nyc said in Friends in high places:

Saying he didn’t know who the guy was who he just sold a pardon to looked like a gotcha moment to me.

Yeah, I heard about that. Kind of funny

“My sons are involved in crypto much more than I— me. I— I know very little about it, other than one thing. It’s a huge industry,” he said. “And if we’re not gonna be the head of it, China, Japan, or someplace else is.”

Despite saying he didn’t know who CZ is, Trump said Zhao “was treated really badly by the Biden administration.”

“They sent him to jail and they really set him up. That’s my opinion. I was told about it,” the president said.

“I don’t know the man at all. I don’t think I ever met him,” Trump went on. “I have no idea who he is. I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.”

Trump’s claim that he knows nothing about a high-profile clemency recipient comes as he and Republicans have asserted that pardons issued by Biden using an “autopen” are invalid because, they contend, the president was not aware of what he was signing.

taiwan_girl

@LuFins-Dad said in Personally? I like DST…:

Sorry, but my sleep cycle follows the sun.

Trying to find the article, but there was a lady who lived in a cave (intentionally for research) for 14(?) months without any access to clocks. If I remember, her sleep/awake cycle ended up being something like 30 some hours. Sleep for 14 hours. Awake for 20.

taiwan_girl

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3129786/andrew-had-40-prostitutes-brought-to-bangkok-hotel#google_vignette

Disgraced former prince Andrew once had 40 prostitutes brought to his five-star hotel over four days during a taxpayer-funded trip to Thailand, his biographer has claimed.

Andrew engaged with the women over a four-day stretch, royal historian and author Andrew Lownie alleged,

and

“There was a famous trip to Thailand. … Andrew is representing his country and insists on staying in a five-star hotel rather than the embassy, which he always did,” Lownie told the Daily Mail podcast “Deep Dive: The Fall of the House of York”.

Lownie said multiple sources, including a very senior Thai official, had backed up the allegation.

taiwan_girl

@Klaus said in Weird manual transmission thing…:

Yeah, that sounds very unusual. I'm used to 1-3-5 and 2-4-6.

+2

But the car I am used to driving is

Top. 1-3-5
Btm 2-4-R

taiwan_girl

Economic Data.jpg

Lot of missing data, so hard to take any conclusions. Numbers in BLUE are not up to date (mainly from end August rather then end Sept), as the US government shutdown means many data is not yet released.

taiwan_girl

Fall colors of trees is so neat and pretty.

taiwan_girl

https://apnews.com/article/kimberly-clark-kenvue-tylenol-98d5fd39c12b25524e3188da2e840436

Kimberly-Clark is buying Tylenol maker Kenvue in a cash and stock deal worth about $48.7 billion, creating a massive consumer health goods company.

Shareholders of Kimberly-Clark will own about 54% of the combined company. Kenvue shareholders will own about 46% in what is one of the largest corporate takeovers this year. The deal must still be approved by the shareholders of both companies.

The combined company will have a huge stable of household brands under one roof, putting Kenvue’s Listerine mouthwash and Band-Aid side-by-side with Kimberly-Clark’s Cottonelle toilet paper, Huggies and Kleenex tissues. It will also generate about $32 billion in annual revenue.

taiwan_girl

I am pretty confident people will adapt. New job types will be formed, etc.

I read somewhere that the % of people employed as blacksmiths in the late 1800's was quite high. 20 years later, the need for blacksmiths was way way down.

As they say, the only thing constant is change.

taiwan_girl

https://executivewanderlust.com/lifestyl_details/10-banned-books-everyone-should-read,-according-to-these-published-authors

01
of 10
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
“Vulnerable and honest, this memoir wrestles with some heavy themes but they are balanced out with really joyful family stories. When I first encountered this book it felt unlike anything else I'd read before, especially for a YA audience. I love a queer memoir and I hope the challenges against this book only bring it to a wider audience."

02
of 10
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
“[Nineteen Minutes] is a novel about a school shooting, and it explores the nightmare that becomes real with horrifying frequency: A troubled, likely bullied, young person morphs into a monster. It’s a tale that could help discourage gun violence ... but, of course, that means people have to be able to read it.”

03
of 10
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
"The House on Mango Street packs a punch for a short novel. Cisneros weaves together a medley of vignettes into one unified narrative that captures Esperanza Cordero’s childhood and adolescence in her Mexican American neighborhood of Chicago. Banned or challenged in schools for a myriad of themes including sexuality, racism, and poverty, this book brilliantly evokes Esperanza’s journey from girl to young woman. I love so much what Cisneros does in this book, from dialogue to characterization, but my favorite part is the language itself, which is so lush and bright it seems to shine right off the page.”

04
of 10
Beloved by Toni Morrison
“Toni Morrison's Beloved tells with such depth, beauty, and pain, the racial tensions that have long crossed—and still cross—the United States of America. But the value of Beloved goes far beyond the borders of a single country ... Toni Morrison makes the story of Sethe and Denver a universal parable, with sumptuous, elegant, magnificent prose ... Beloved moves us to tears, makes us participate in a circumstantial and timeless tragedy, elevates our spirit, infuses new strength into our desire for justice, makes us more human than we would be without reading it.”

05
of 10
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
“Yaa Gyasi's beautiful, heartbreaking, and unforgettable Homegoing should be required reading for every American. A generational saga spanning three centuries, the novel begins with two sisters in Gold Coast Africa who are divided forever by slavery. Gyasi’s spellbinding storytelling and artful fictional realization of these difficult moments in our shared history offer an empathetic platform for facing and discussing the legacies of enslavement and forced immigration. The fact that it has been banned in many communities is testament to the power of the blow it lands.”

06
of 10
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
"A Time to Kill depicts the brutal, racially motivated rape of a very young girl and the trial of her father that follows in the wake of his grief-fueled murder of her attackers. In addition to being a riveting legal thriller, A Time to Kill is, importantly, an extremely accessible look at the complex intersection of racism and the American justice system. Counterintuitively and—I would argue, disingenuously—the book has been repeatedly banned precisely because of the racism and terrifying sexual violence it depicts. However, never has a society or its youth changed for the better by trying to pretend its greatest horrors do not exist."

07
of 10
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
“One could say that Lolita should be read precisely because of the empathy it inspires for the character of Humbert Humbert, a pedophile—which demonstrates literature’s capacity to transport us into realities far removed from our own. Yet, this position would be as moralistic as wanting to ban Lolita. Instead, I think we should read Lolita to remind ourselves that, in a world where people and institutions seek to ban myriad works of art out of bigotry and prejudice, a native Russian speaker was able to emigrate to the United States and write one of the greatest masterpieces of English-language literature—a book so powerful that some still want to ban it seventy years after it was written.”

08
of 10
The Rabbits' Wedding by Garth Williams
“One of my favorite children’s banned books was published in April of 1958, long before challenged books became viral. The Rabbits’ Wedding, by uber talented author and illustrator Garth Williams, depicts an enchanting woodland wedding ... The sweet story and glorious watercolor illustrations give children a first glimpse of true love. Unfortunately, it was banned when the White Citizens Council in Alabama challenged the book and had it removed from libraries because the male rabbit was black and the female rabbit was white. This white-supremacist group argued that the book would condition preschoolers to cross the color line.”

09
of 10
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
“The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood has long been my favorite banned book. This gripping book positions you in a future of censorship and government control that feels all too possible. It follows the story of a woman whose fertility is so prized in a future of low birth rates that she has become the possession of a wealthy family, forced to bear children for them. The book is as tangible and moving today as it was when it was written in 1985 and the dystopian society of Gilead is fascinating and terrifying in equal measure. Margaret Atwood has produced an incredibly detailed, well-considered dystopian world that will pull you in and characters who will remain with you permanently as a chilling reminder of what could be.”

10
of 10
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
"A trilogy of fantastical novels that are filled with the kind of adventures and oblong monsters one would expect, these books transcend by ultimately turning into examinations of a world without God. As our heroes come of age, they face rich and vital emotional conflicts which are buoyed by frank examinations of what it means to be a person, to be alive. Targeted in particular by the Catholic church, Pullman's oft-banned novels were my first true exposure to questions of existence, cloaked so perfectly in one of the most thrilling fantasy universes I've found."

taiwan_girl

Across the vast Pacific lies Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, home to the majestic moai statues that have long stirred human curiosity.

For centuries, the question persisted: How did ancient islanders move these colossal figures across rugged terrain without modern tools?

Now, a blend of physics, 3D modeling, and hands-on experimentation provides the most convincing answer yet.

Link to video

taiwan_girl

@LuFins-Dad said in Nobel Peace Prize Laureate is….:

The Trump nominations weren’t related to the newest Israel/Palestinian Peace Deal. They were based on ending the India/Pakistan conflict, The Congo and Rwanda Settlement, The Cambodia/Thailand Ceasefire, the Armenia/Azerbaijan settlement, and the earlier temporary ceasefire in Gaza.

So kindly let me know who has accomplished more this year, and that’s excluding the current peace plan in Gaza…

As I said in another thread

Has his foreign policy made the world a safer place?

MIddle East/Israel - I am not sure what has changed that will carry on for years.

India/Pakistan - India is moving much closer to China. Also, it can be an arguement that things with Pakistan and India did not really "flare up" until President Trump was in office. Nothing has really changed there. India and Pakistan have been "at odds" with various firing at each other for decades.

Ukraine/Russia - still waiting for that 24 hour time limit to start to bring peace there.

China relations/DPRK - relations with China continue to be downward, though that is actually a continuing from President Biden's time. I would say that DPRK is probably more powerful now than they were a year ago.

Thailand/Cambodia - I think that President Trump had something to do with the ceasefire, but the overall situation is really unchanged, other than the PM of Thailand has been removed and replaced.

Africa - dont know much about it Revisit in a year. (The biggest fighting group in Rwanda/Congo says that the agreement signed does not apply to them.)

taiwan_girl

Looks like a lot of fun!

(PS. Six bedrooms!! I will be right there!!)

taiwan_girl

@Horace Fighting!!!

taiwan_girl

@89th Interesting writing. I will have to re-read as I did not understand a lot of it.

taiwan_girl

@jon-nyc Interesting. I would not have guessed that. I would have thought it was younger 100+ years ago.

taiwan_girl

https://www.wired.com/story/22-cell-towers-one-vigilante-world-of-conspiracies/

As dawn spread over San Antonio on September 9, 2021, almond-colored smoke began to fill the sky above the city’s Far West Side. The plumes were whorling off the top of a 132-foot-tall cell tower that overshadows an office park just north of SeaWorld. At a hotel a mile away, a paramedic snapped a photo of the spectacle and posted it to the r/sanantonio subreddit. “Cell tower on fire around 1604 and Culebra,” he wrote.

In typical Reddit fashion, the comments section piled up with corny jokes. “Blazing 5G speeds,” quipped one user.

“I hope no one inhales those fumes, the Covid transmission via 5G will be a lot more potent that way,” wrote another, in a swipe at the conspiracy theorists who claim that radiation from 5G towers caused the Covid-19 pandemic.

The wisecracks went on: “Can you hear me now?”

“Free hotspot!”

“Great, some hero trying to save us from 5G.”

That self-styled hero was actually lurking in the comments. As he followed the thread on his phone, Sean Aaron Smith delighted in the sheer volume of attention the tower fire was receiving, even if most of it dripped with sarcasm. A lean, tattooed—and until recently, entirely apolitical—27-year-old, Smith had come to view 5G as the linchpin of a globalist plot to zombify humanity. To resist that supposed scheme, he’d spent the past five months setting Texas cell towers ablaze.

Smith’s crude and quixotic campaign against 5G was precisely the sort of security threat that was fast becoming one of the US government’s top concerns in 2021. Just two weeks after Smith’s fire popped up on Reddit, then FBI director Christopher Wray discussed the latest trends in political violence in a speech marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “Today, the greatest terrorist threat we face here in the US is from what are, in effect, lone actors,” he said, describing these people as moving “quickly from radicalization to action, often using easily obtainable weapons against soft targets.” And an increasing number of these individuals, Wray stressed, were turning violent after marinating in bizarre conspiracy theories.

The New Coffee Room

taiwan_girl

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