thematrixturtle (u/thematrixturtle)

thematrixturtle commented on Medieval skeleton puts a face on accounts of torture and violence (2019) arstechnica.com/science/2... · Posted by u/Tomte

JetAlone · 3 years ago

"What’s a little strange, however, is how little archaeological evidence of torture in the past has been found so far. Archaeologists have found evidence of violence between humans dating back to the Paleolithic, but the Milanese wheel victim is one of very few clear cases of actual torture, despite how often torture is mentioned in historical records beginning in ancient times."

My first hypothesis would be that mentioning torture far more often than using it proved effective? Make loud examples.

thematrixturtle · 3 years ago

The "third degree" of interrogation is actual torture. The less well known first degree was being shown the implements of torture, and the second degree was being made to watch somebody else get tortured.

thematrixturtle commented on Medieval skeleton puts a face on accounts of torture and violence (2019) arstechnica.com/science/2... · Posted by u/Tomte

Rodeoclash · 3 years ago

They had a similar museum in Bangkok which has since shut down. One method of death was being put in a wicker ball and being kicked around by an elephant.

thematrixturtle · 3 years ago

The problem with many of these museums and even the medieval sources they're based on is that there's a strong incentive to make things as gruesome as possible, including just making shit up. For example, everybody's heard of the Iron Maiden, but all existing devices appear to be "replicas" and there's no properly documented case of such a device actually being used for execution.

thematrixturtle commented on Head-On Crash: 2009 Chevrolet Malibu vs. 1959 Bel Air (2009) thecarconnection.com/news... · Posted by u/spking

bee_rider · 3 years ago

I bet the Malibu driver would have a sore neck for a while.

Wonder how whiplash cases have trended over time. Wouldn't be surprised if they've gone up -- more survivable crashes, haha.

thematrixturtle · 3 years ago

Whiplash is also popular for insurance/disability fraud. There was an interesting story on HN a while back about how the prevalence of whiplash after accidents in the US is far higher than in Europe, for no other easily explainable reason, but I can't find the link now.

thematrixturtle commented on Crazy Thin ‘Deep Insert’ ATM Skimmers krebsonsecurity.com/2022/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

Tijdreiziger · 3 years ago

> I think the magnetic strip needs to go.

Absolutely. Here in the Netherlands, magstripe payments are disabled by default. Only if you’re travelling outside Europe do you need to enable them manually (through your bank’s app or website).

thematrixturtle · 3 years ago

Magstripe is long dead throughout Asia as well. The US (as always) has been behind the curve on this, but contactless became pretty ubiquitous during COVID.

Posted by u/thematrixturtle 3 years ago

The Central Subway will cripple MUNI for years to come missionlocal.org/2022/09/...

thematrixturtle commented on Death by hockey sticks dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/0... · Posted by u/elahieh

strken · 3 years ago

Australian aboriginal land management probably kept the number of trees down, compared to what they would have been prior to human settlement. Dry season burns were used to clear away brush and deforest areas.

thematrixturtle · 3 years ago

The vast majority of Australia has been inhospitable desert since before the Aboriginals showed up. Trees can only grown on a comparatively narrow stretch of temperate or tropical, mostly coastal land.

thematrixturtle commented on The world’s first hydrogen trains started passenger service in Germany singularityhub.com/2022/0... · Posted by u/cheinyeanlim

joshlk · 3 years ago

Electrifying tracks can be more difficult than it first seems. For example in the UK on certain lines you have to replace most road bridges that go over the track. The bridges are not high enough to fit electric lines underneath. Tunnels can also have the same problem.

thematrixturtle · 3 years ago

As a reference point for just how expensive, the Caltrain electrification project in SF is currently estimated at $2.44 billion dollars for 82 km of track, and still climbing. And this is for what's almost a best-case infrastructurally: flat land, few bridges or overpasses, etc. (But, admittedly, what just might the world's worst regulatory environment.)

thematrixturtle commented on The AI Unbundling stratechery.com/2022/the-... · Posted by u/kaboro

Jevon23 · 3 years ago

>It's going to destroy the livelihoods of the majority of independent artists in a way that looks inevitable to me.

Why is SD going to destroy the livelihoods of artists when machine language translation hasn't put human translators out of work yet?

I don't think there's been any industry that's been ended by AI yet, and yet people are strangely confident that art is going to be the first.

thematrixturtle · 3 years ago

Machine translation has put a lot of human translators out of work. The per-word rates for text translation are pathetic these days, even for language pairs that Google Translate struggles with.

Of course, there are still some jobs for high-quality/high-importance translation like legal work, simultaneous translation etc, but these are quite niche.

thematrixturtle commented on Finland will be self-sufficient in electricity in a year or two, says minister yle.fi/news/3-12618297... · Posted by u/emptybits

hypertele-Xii · 3 years ago

On the other hand, most finns can switch to burning wood in an emergency. We have a lot of it. Just need some extra stoves.

thematrixturtle · 3 years ago

Citation needed for "most". Sure, there are wood stoves in summer cottage saunas and old rural houses, but this is not even close to possible for the average apartment dweller, and many of these apartments rely on district heating (kaukolämpö) to boot.

thematrixturtle commented on Finland will be self-sufficient in electricity in a year or two, says minister yle.fi/news/3-12618297... · Posted by u/emptybits

elgenie · 3 years ago

Finland has the benefit of a small population (5.5M) and thus a relatively small amount of electricity demand, a large territory with plenty of places where wind turbines aren't going to bother anyone, and humongous geopolitical incentives to avoid any energy dependency on its eastern neighbor.

thematrixturtle · 3 years ago

Wind power is nice, but the key is nuclear power, which covers 35% of Finland's needs already and that number is going to go up once they fully ramp up Olkiluoto 3.

Unfortunately it also took around 17 years to build the thing, so this playbook is not going to be particularly useful to anybody else who needs to wean themselves off Russian energy now.

u/thematrixturtle

KarmaCake day5361January 10, 2022View Original