#TodayILearned that there is another sort of prequel to Stephen King's #DarkTower series called "The Little Sisters of Eluria".
Guess I should set aside some time to dive back into the world of Gilead.
#TodayILearned that the massive doses of Vitamin C that my parents made me take (mostly in the form of effervescent tablets) was because a paper by Nobel multi-prizewinner Linus Pauling became immensely popular in the 1970s. The paper suggested taking mega-doses of Vitamin C as a cure-all, and it caused the activity to go viral.
There was only one problem: the paper’s finding was rubbish, irreproducable, and/or fraudulent. Later examinations showed that the study was flawed and biased, and that high-dose Vitamin C was no better than placebo. In other words, Vitamin C could not, in fact, cure colds—or indeed cancer—as Pauling claimed.
Mega-dosing Vitamic C died out as a trend in the 1990s, but you can still buy the effervescent tablets my parents gave to me. Each tablet contains 1000 mg of Vitamin C, 40× the 25 mg daily recommended dose for a child. Tasted great, though!
#TIL #TodayILearned the first macaroni and cheese recipe was discovered in a cookbook from 1390!
The Forme of Cury - Wikipedia
#question #didyouknow #todayilearned #til
Windows is reinstating Recall,
Snapshots of screen saved every 3 seconds and fed to AI.
Previously introduced in May, 2024 to some backlash.
(...)"a gold mine for malicious insiders, criminals, or nation-state spies if they managed to gain even brief administrative access to a Windows device."
(...)"nothing stopping Recall from preserving sensitive disappearing content sent through privacy-protecting messengers such as Signal."
(...)"Windows 11 Build 26100.3902 preview version. Over time, the feature will be rolled out more broadly."
(...)"That would indiscriminately hoover up all kinds of User A's sensitive material, including photos, passwords, medical conditions, and encrypted videos and messages."
(...)"That level of detailed archival material will undoubtedly be subject to subpoena by lawyers and governments."
etc. etc.
Yeah...
1/2
A little northern California geography:
#TIL #TodayILearned
Lake Berryessa is one of the largest reservoirs in California!
But what was even more interesting was it is one of two reservoirs formed with Putah Creek, which originates in the mountains northwest of Berryessa. A few miles more at the base of the foothills Putah Creek is Lake Solano.
Putah Creek - Wikipedia
Today I learned about `plistlib` on Python 3, and used it to easily get the dimensions of a file using its metadata:
Gist: https://gist.github.com/juandesant/1984572bd48aeaf8254b9aff36972897
Plistlib: https://docs.python.org/3/library/plistlib.html
#TodayIlearned dass #Trettmann aus #Chemnitz ist. Ich habe den gedanklich irgendwie immer nach Dresden gepackt. Und realistisch lebt er seit Jahren in Hypezig äh Leipzig.
Today I learned, #Russia has also been invading #Georgia for a way long day. Not cool, and really freakin’ surreal to see and hear from people near the “current borders”.
#todayIlearned #TIL #invasion #Nebula
https://nebula.tv/videos/johnnyharris-the-invasion-russia-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about/
#TodayILearned (well, yesterday, actually) about #GoogleEarth Pro.
It's free *and* available for #Linux?!?!
(I can only thank #QueensPublicLibrary for once again being the one to introduce me to something new. Yes, this is on their computers.)
For those kitchen chemists and physicists out there - apparently, you can create plasma in your microwave with just a couple grapes!
=======
Scientists now know why microwaved grapes make plasma fireballs
https://www.snexplores.org/article/why-microwaving-grapes-makes-plasma-fireballs
#todayILearned that whales descended from a land mammal that looks like a dog. It walked on land and swam in the water. It had hooves and webbed feet, and eyes that were set high on its skull.
Its name is Pakicetus—the whale from Pakistan—because that’s where their fossils were found.
This sounds like an April Fool’s joke, but it isn’t.
https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/1025450/view/pakicetus-whale-ancestor-illustration
Did you know that there already was a #GulfofAmerica once?
Just north of North Korea, the gulf was named in 1906 and later the USSR changed it in 1972 so people wouldn’t think America owned it!
I've been working through my Pocket read-later queue. Saturday morning is spent catching up on the previous week’s saves and Sunday morning is going backwards to earlier saves.
I'm now into November 2023, so it is an interesting lens as to what I was curious about then.
Today, I learned about the Sieve of Eratosthenes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes
Have you learned anything interesting this weekend? 
In February 1969, #JohnnyCash had a party at his house (that) turned into a guitar pull, with some of Johnny's friends trying out their latest songs. " #BobDylan sang 'Lay Lady Lay,'" recalled Cash. " #KrisKristofferson sang 'Me and Bobby McGee.' #JoniMitchell sang 'Both Sides Now.' #GrahamNash sang 'Marrakesh Express.' And #ShelSilverstein sang 'A Boy Named Sue.'"
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30082/johnny-cashs-boy-named-sue-was-written-shel-silverstein
#TodayILearned that @oatmeal is on mastodon.
Unfortunately the account doesn't provide alt text / #ImageDescriptions for the comics :(
Did a double take on a link provided by @sacha
Did not realize that adding the suffix `#:~:text=<starting phrase>,<ending phrase>` would scroll a modern browser to that text, and highlight it.
#todayilearned it is not normally allowed to have red or salmon pink cables in Australian data centres, as they are reserved for secret data
Control: ISM-0926; Revision: 11; Updated: Dec-24; Applicability: NC, OS, P; Essential Eight: N/A
Non-classified, OFFICIAL: Sensitive and PROTECTED cables are coloured neither salmon pink nor red.
Control: ISM-1718; Revision: 1; Updated: Mar-23; Applicability: S; Essential Eight: N/A
SECRET cables are coloured salmon pink.
Control: ISM-1719; Revision: 1; Updated: Mar-23; Applicability: TS; Essential Eight: N/A
TOP SECRET cables are coloured red.
#TodayILearned that Robert Loggia heavily campaigned for the role of Frank Booth in David Lynch's 1986 "Blue Velvet." After being kept waiting three hours for his audition, just to be told that Dennis Hopper had already been hired, Loggia unleashed a profanity-filled rant on Lynch that he still remembered a decade later, which inspired him to invite Loggia to play a similar role in his 1997 "Lost Highway."
One thing I really enjoy; discovering a word I’ve never seen before and finding its definition hits that “oh, that's cool" portion of my brain.
I've been making good progress clearing up my Pocket (AKA ReadItLater) queue lately.
Found this while reading: https://alexcabal.com/posts/standard-ebooks-and-classic-web-tech
#TodayILearned that Warner Brothers originally created the #LooneyTunes cartoons because they had just acquired five popular music publishers at the beginning of the Great Depression, and wanted to heavily promote the songs they now owned so to encourage the sale of sheet music. For example, the very first Looney Tunes cartoon was called "Sinkin' in the Bathtub," created specifically to promote the 1929 song "Singin' in the Bathtub."
