9nGQluzmnq3M

It's difficult if not impossible to transcribe something in an unknown writing system, since you can't even be sure which glyphs are the same. Wikipedia has a few attempts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript#Transcripti...

Is there a solid source on what was actually collected?

Correction: Keyhole became Google Earth. (Fun fact: the K in KML is Keyhole.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#History

Google Maps stems from an Australian company called Where2, which AFAIK was not funded by spooks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Acquisitions

Of all Murakami's books, the one that made the biggest impression on me was "Underground", his non-fiction book consisting entirely of interviews with survivors of the Aum Shinrikyo sarin attacks in Tokyo. It's simultaneously fascinating and absolutely horrifying, and it goes into a lot of depth on the lives of the people both before and after the attack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(Murakami_book)

They can be trademarked, which is why you can't use "Harry Potter" without permission.

I've gotten those too. The letters/emails are carefully worded so the subject screams "Pending domain registration!" to make you think it's your actual domain expiring, but the small print says that the service they offer is "registering" your domain in some random "world business directory". This way it's not an outright scam, in that they do render a (completely useless) service in exchange for your money, but of course they hope that the random admin/manager who sees the "bill" won't realize the difference and will pay up.

Tungsten costs around $30k/ton, so you'd be looking at a cool $15M for that 500T cube.

Lead goes for around $2k/ton, so this might be a more feasible compromise.

This proposal would likely be a lot more economic if they could reuse existing holes, like abandoned mines. However, mines tend not to dig down vertically and the cost of retrofitting and maintenance would be non-trivial.

I've worked for several companies that offered paid time off for volunteering. (With plenty of conditions and limits, of course.)

Midlife crisis is a thing in itself. One day you realize 20 years have passed, your spouse is no longer the person you married, you don't like your kids, you hate your job and -- here's the crisis part -- it dawns on you that this is it and you'll follow your current trajectory of quiet unhappiness for the rest of your life.

In reaction some people buy a Harley, some seek escape in adultery, some commit suicide... and a few disappear and start a new life.

In Japan you need guarantors even for mundane things like renting an apartment. This is particularly difficult for immigrants if they don't know anybody and their employer won't sponsor them.

The key insight (that older people count out seconds faster) is based on experimental science. The rest is more speculation.

FWIW, I'm convinced that seconds felt slower when I was a child, and they now tick up faster than they used to. Obviously there's no way to measure this, because this is my perception, not measurable reality.

The modern Korean writing system (hangul) is unrelated to Chinese.

Also, it's quite common for languages to be written in scripts originally developed for completely unrelated languages. Maltese is related to Arabic but written in the Latin (English) alphabet, Mongolian uses Cyrillic (Russian), Thai/Lao/Khmer derive from South Indian scripts, etc.

As always, Chinese takes this to the next level, since there are historical characters for which both meaning and pronunciation have been lost.

A famous one is 篪, used exactly once in the Classic of Poetry (1000 BC), whose meaning was unknown until another text surfaced describing it as a type of flute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapax_legomenon#Chinese_and_Ja...

Good = tasty! As a random example, Yang's Dumpling http://www.xysjg.com/ sells exactly one thing, shengjianbao dumplings, and all their outlets have lines out the door. Even the holes in the wall with 20+ items tend to focus on a well-defined theme, eg. you might have hand-cut noodles with a variety of toppings but little beyond that.

And yes, higher-end restaurants do tend to have longer menus, because in China these cater mostly to large groups and entertaining businessmen, and a key part of Chinese banquets is to order way too much food -- so much so that there's now an official CCP campaign to stamp out the practice.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/china-food-waste-o...

I presume you're talking about America, since I can assure you that in Asia QR codes are alive and well. In China in particular everything is done with QR.

I'd beg to differ. Really good Chinese restaurants in China tend to specialize ruthlessly, selling only a few items.

If anything, the "matrix menu" where you have X proteins in Y sauces for X*Y stir-fry combos is usually a "restaurant smell" indicating that they don't really care about the end product (satay salmon, anyone?).

Tampering with ballots will still be illegal, even if the company is private.

That's also a bit of weird argument, since we're right now seeing how the USPS can easily be bent by political pressure precisely because it is a govt institution and presidents already get to appoint their cronies to run it.

But should the USPS be a public institution? Many countries have opted to privatize their postal services, admittedly with varying results, but with quite a few successes as well: you may have heard the package division of what was once Deutsche Bundespost, now known worldwide as DHL.

I do agree that right now is not a great time for radical changes though!

Is my summary inaccurate? The article is very careful not to extend any political slant to its data and findings, please extend me the same courtesy. (I'm not even American.)

TL;DR: DeJoy's changes appear to have made USPS slightly slower (0.1-0.5 days) in some places, but much less than the delta caused by a holiday like July 4th (see note buried at the very end).

The 737 is a far larger plane. The Celera has capacity for 6 passengers, while you can cram over 200 into a 737.

For a better comparison, the world's most popular aircraft, the four-seater Cessna 172, needs under 500 feet to take off in optimal conditions, although you might need 1500 feet if fully loaded and high up.

http://www.dmjwilliams.co.uk/gbsep_performance.htm (in meters, not feet)

However, the Cessna Citation M2 business jet, which targets a similar market as the Celera, also requires ~3000 ft (again depending on weight, altitude, conditions). So not seeing a huge difference here.

https://prijet.com/performance/Cessna%20Citation%20M2

Japan has an IPv4-like block system: a typical address is Prefecture City District 1-2-3-45, with 1-2-3 representing increasingly small divisions and the (optional) 4th element representing the apartment number.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system

For a sneak peek into some of the most unexpectedly fascinating architecture in the Soviet Union (some brutalist, some very much not so), don't miss Soviet Bus Stops: http://herwigphoto.com/soviet-bus-stops/

Who's criticising? The Octonauts is an awesome show, and this concept is awesome too!

I know these sound like conspiracy theories, but Ballard was actually on a secret US Navy mission to find some subs when he accidentally stumbled on the Titanic:

https://www.wearethemighty.com/titanic-discovered-top-secret...

And the Glomar Explorer was an actual CIA operation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer

...but dragging Epstein into this? Really?

I suspect somebody was inspired by the Octonauts' Octopod, down to the "liquid door" hatch inside:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/octopod/images/f/fd/Octo...

Here's a story of travelling a similar route, but finishing off by taking the highest train ride in the world to Tibet instead:

https://driftingclouds.net/2018/07/01/from-siberia-to-tibet-...

The line to central Singapore has been closed, but there is still a pathetic shuttle service that crosses the causeway from Johor Bahru:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KTM_Intercity#Operational_serv...

There are plans to replace this with a metro service and eventually build high-speed rail between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, but both have been repeatedly bogged down by politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johor_Bahru%E2%80%93Singapore_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuala_Lumpur%E2%80%93Singapore...