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Unintended Consequences
Prison walls are typically built to keep people in. Similarly the Great Fire Wall of China is intended to keep Chinese inside the moderated Chinese “internet”. But, with the threat of a TikTok shutdown in the United States, hundreds of thousands of users of that service have opted to move to “Red Book“, an alternative…
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Hot Pepper
It turns out that birds are insensitive to the effects of hot peppers, or more specifically, the active ingredient capsaicin. You can feed them cayenne peppers or food coated in the stuff and they will not bat an eye. Mammals, on the other hand, are quite sensitive to capsaicin. It is this understanding that has…
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Care Package from Germany
The postal strike delayed the delivery of my care package — a selection of lebkuchen, sometime referred to in the vulgate as gingerbread — that I usually receive before Christmas. I was in fact so desperate that I made my own. Twice I have made them, and having passed the little granddaughter test, meaning they…
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Biphasic Sleep
I have found myself drifting into a biphasic sleep pattern. This is a pattern that consists of two distinct sleep phases within a 24-hour period, in contrast with monophasic sleep, where sleep occurs in a single, consolidated block, usually at night. Historically, biphasic sleep was a common sleep pattern before the advent of modern artificial lighting.…
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Retirement Day
Today marks 10 years of retirement. My last day of service was January 9th, 2015. January 10th 2015 was my first day of retirement. I haven’t looked back.
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