ReHacked #175: When Cities Treated Cars as Dangerous Intruders, Citroen 2cv pages, Canada’s $50 million 1980s ghost town and more
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When Cities Treated Cars as Dangerous Intruders | The MIT Press Reader #history #urbanism #technology #society #longread
Today it is a commonplace that the automobile represents freedom. But to many Americans in the 1920s, the car and its driver were tyrants that deprived others of their freedom. Before other auto promoters, Charles Hayes saw that industry leaders had to reshape the traffic safety debate. As president of the Chicago Motor Club, Hayes warned his friends that bad publicity over traffic casualties could soon lead to “legislation that will hedge the operation of automobiles with almost unbearable restrictions.” The solution was to persuade city people that “the streets are made for vehicles to run upon.”
The fantastic Citroen 2cv pages #history #automotive
Visiting Canada’s $50 million 1980s ghost town – Justin McElroy: journalist/ ranker of stuff #history #urbanism #society
In the late 1970s, the American Metal Company placed a bet on mining molybdenum in Mount Widdzech, next to an inlet about 900 kilometres north of Vancouver.
It is a long way from any major city, and not accessible by road, so the company did what must have seemed logical: built a town pretty much from scratch, in an attempt to make a place that workers would want build a life in.
A couple of apartments and hospital remained from a work camp attempted a decade prior, but the rest was all new — a school and a gym, a mall and a community centre, apartments and single-family homes, winding roads and cute street lights.
If it looks like an EPCOT pavilion for small-town middle-class Canadiana in 1980, well, that’s what it was. A planned community, built for young families with a sense of adventure, people who wanted to take a flyer on an chance amongst the trees and waterfalls and bears of the west coast.
An eruption has started in Meradälar #nature
An eruption has started in Meradälar. A strong series of earthquakes has been going on in the Reykjanes Peninsula since Saturday. Here you can follow all the latest news about earthquakes and see the area where the last eruption occurred in the webcam.
MIT invents $4 solar desalination device #engineering #science
How it works: The new solar desalination device consists of several layers. Salt water is added to the top layer. Black paint draws the sun’s heat to that layer, causing the desired creation of water vapor for collection.
Any water left behind in that layer is then extra salty and, therefore, extra dense.
The very bottom layer of the device contains more saltwater. The layers between it and the top are designed to keep heat in the top layer, while allowing the super-dense saltwater to move downward to mix with the normal density saltwater under the power of natural convection.
Free online textbooks really work | Bill Gates #learning
If you haven’t directly experienced the pandemic’s impact on education—the months of learning that students have tragically lost, and the disproportionate impact on low-income students—you almost certainly have heard about it. What gets less attention, but is just as important, is COVID’s impact on teachers. Because of the strains created by the pandemic, more educators than ever are thinking about leaving the profession, and the rates are especially high among the most-experienced ones. As veteran teachers leave, more responsibility will fall on ones who have spent less time in the classroom. In short, there has never been a more important time to support teachers.
Even before the pandemic, supporting teachers was a core part of the Gates Foundation’s work in U.S. education. And this year marks the tenth anniversary of a project I fund personally, separately from the foundation, that has also learned a lot about that subject. It’s called the OER Project (OER is short for Open Educational Resources), and for the past decade, the team there has been creating free online courses and professional development for educators. Although OER courses won’t solve every problem that the pandemic has caused for schools, they’re an important part of making sure teachers get the support they deserve—and students get the high-quality curriculum they need—in such difficult times.
What Is the Cost of a Cashless Society? | The Walrus #economy #society
The trend toward digital payment could shortchange the country’s most vulnerable
I assure you, medieval people bathed. – Going Medieval #history
So, say you are an average-ass medieval person. That means you are a peasant, because 85% of the population or so were peasants. This meant that you were working very hard doing manual labour in a field. How would you stay clean? Well you would probably wash daily at home. This usually involved filling an ewer with water, heating it and then poring it into a larger basin which allowed for ease of scrubbing <…>
Skin exposure to UVB light induces a skin-brain-gonad axis and sexual behavior: Cell Reports #medicine
Ultraviolet (UV) light affects endocrinological and behavioral aspects of sexuality via an unknown mechanism. Here we discover that ultraviolet B (UVB) exposure enhances the levels of sex-steroid hormones and sexual behavior, which are mediated by the skin. In female mice, UVB exposure increases hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis hormone levels, resulting in larger ovaries; extends estrus days; and increases anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) expression. UVB exposure also enhances the sexual responsiveness and attractiveness of females and male-female interactions. Conditional knockout of p53 specifically in skin keratinocytes abolishes the effects of UVB. Thus, UVB triggers a skin-brain-gonadal axis through skin p53 activation. In humans, solar exposure enhances romantic passion in both genders and aggressiveness in men, as seen in analysis of individual questionaries, and positively correlates with testosterone level. Our findings suggest opportunities for treatment of sex-steroid-related dysfunctions.
Twitter confirms zero-day used to expose data of 5.4 million accounts #security
Twitter has confirmed a recent data breach was caused by a now-patched zero-day vulnerability used to link email addresses and phone numbers to users' accounts, allowing a threat actor to compile a list of 5.4 million user account profiles.
Last month, BleepingComputer spoke to a threat actor who said that they were able to create a list of 5.4 million Twitter account profiles using a vulnerability on the social media site.
The Scottish Highlands, the Appalachians, and the Atlas are the same mountain range, once connected as the Central Pangean Mountains - Vivid Maps #history #nature
The Central Pangean Mountains were a great mountain chain in the middle part of the supercontinent Pangaea that stretches across the continent from northeast to southwest during the Carboniferous, Permian Triassic periods. The ridge was formed as a consequence of a collision between the supercontinents Laurussia and Gondwana during the formation of Pangaea. It was similar to the present Himalayas at its highest elevation during the beginning of the Permian period.
The lost nuclear bombs that no one can find - BBC Future #history
It was a mild winter's morning at the height of the Cold War.
On January 17, 1966, at around 10:30am, a Spanish shrimp fisherman watched a misshapen white parcel fall from the sky… and silently glide towards the Alboran Sea. It had something hanging beneath it, though he couldn’t make out what it was. Then it slipped beneath the waves.
At the same time, in the nearby fishing village of Palomares, locals looked up at an identical sky and witnessed a very different scene – two giant fireballs, hurtling towards them. Within seconds, the sleepy rural idyll was shattered. Buildings shook. Shrapnel sliced towards the ground. Body parts fell to the earth.
Forever young, beautiful and scandal-free: The rise of South Korea's virtual influencers - CNN Style #society #internet #socialnetworks
She's got more than 130,000 followers on Instagram, where she posts photos of her globetrotting adventures. Her makeup is always impeccable, her clothes look straight off the runway. She sings, dances and models -- and none of it is real.
Rozy is a South Korean "virtual influencer," a digitally rendered human so realistic she is often mistaken for flesh and blood.
10 Years Since Landing, NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Still Has Drive #space #engineering #science
Despite signs of wear, the intrepid spacecraft is about to start an exciting new chapter of its mission as it climbs a Martian mountain.
Ten years ago today, a jetpack lowered NASA’s Curiosity rover onto the Red Planet, beginning the SUV-size explorer’s pursuit of evidence that, billions of years ago, Mars had the conditions needed to support microscopic life.
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