ReHacked vol. 256: Inside North Korea’s Forced-Labor Program in China, 'Scam Manual' Written to Help Immigrants Not Become Victims, Pleasures by Aldous Huxley and more

A Peek Inside a 'Scam Manual' Written to Help Immigrants Not Become Victims - Atlas Obscura #history #books #security #longread

Written by inventor-turned-journalist William Lange and published in 1912, it was called Modern Swindles: A romp through early 20th century con-games, frauds, and fallacies. Pankratz published it for the first time in English in 2022.

The chapter titled “The Con of the Matchmaker” describes how American con artists published their own newspapers, filled with ads for women looking for husbands. Anyone who answered such an ad would have their finances scrutinized and then wrested from them by a so-called marriage broker, with no actual wife at the end of the ordeal. A few pages later, Lange warns readers of the shifty sort who sells a fine watch and then swaps it for an older, less expensive one at the end of a transaction.

Make a donation - support Ukraine. My favourite: Support the Armed Forces of Ukraine | via National Bank of Ukraine. More options if you want alternatives. Also, very important Come Back Alive Foundation - Charity Organization.

Щира подяка. Разом до перемоги!

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Inside North Korea’s Forced-Labor Program in China | The New Yorker #crimes #longread

The workers, all of whom are women, described conditions of confinement and violence at the plants. Workers are held in compounds, sometimes behind barbed wire, under the watch of security agents. Many work gruelling shifts and get at most one day off a month. Several described being beaten by the managers sent by North Korea to watch them. “It was like prison for me,” one woman said. “At first, I almost vomited at how bad it was, and, just when I got used to it, the supervisors would tell us to shut up, and curse if we talked.” Many described enduring sexual assault at the hands of their managers. “They would say I’m fuckable and then suddenly grab my body and grope my breasts and put their dirty mouth on mine and be disgusting,” a woman who did product transport at a plant in the city of Dalian said. Another, who worked at Jinhui, said, “The worst and saddest moment was when I was forced to have sexual relations when we were brought to a party with alcohol.” The workers described being kept at the factories against their will, and being threatened with severe punishment if they tried to escape. A woman who was at a factory called Dalian Haiqing Food for more than four years said, “It’s often emphasized that, if you are caught running away, you will be killed without a trace.”

Pleasures by Aldous Huxley #philosophy

The horrors of modern "pleasure" arise from the fact that every kind of organized distraction tends to become progressively more and more imbecile. There was a time when people indulged themselves with distractions requiring the expense of a certain intellectual effort.

Why you almost never see a clock at the mall - The Hustle #psychology #economy

The longer you stay, the more you spend

Casinos are unique in their aim. No other industry builds a world designed to maintain a customer’s fantasy so that they continue to partake in an activity that, in the long run, advantages the house. But retailers share at least one common goal with casinos: They want to keep people inside.

“The goal of the retailer is to make sure that they find ways to increase the time we spend in the store, the number of items we see at the store, and end up buying not just what we came in for but ideally a few additional things,” says Vassilis Dalakas, a business professor at California State University San Marcos who has researched consumer psychology.

Microsoft Is Driving Users Away #software

What will be the end of Windows? Microsoft.

I’ve been a lifelong Windows user since the 90s and even MS-DOS back in the 80s, but things are changing. I’ve been using other operating systems more and more. MacOS and Linux are getting mixed into my workflow more and Windows less. Why? Microsoft is actively angering it power users by removing features. By trying to simplify Windows they are actively making administering it worse.

How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds - Open RSS #internet #history

Although RSS feeds are alive and still heavily used today, their level of adoption has suffered because of how difficult a handful of popular technology companies have made it to use them. Google, especially, has relied on the open web RSS protocol to gain so much market share and influence, but continues to engage in behavior that exploits the open web at the expense of its users. As a result, Google has single-handedly contributed to the reason many users who once relied on RSS feeds have stopped using them.

Moon landing: US clinches first touchdown in 50 years | Reuters #space #engineering

A spacecraft built and flown by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines landed near the moon's south pole on Thursday, the first U.S. touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century and the first ever achieved by the private sector.
NASA, with several research instruments aboard the vehicle, hailed the landing as a major achievement in its goal of sending a squad of commercially flown spacecraft on scientific scouting missions to the moon ahead of a planned return of astronauts there later this decade.
But initial communications problems following Thursday's landing raised questions about whether the vehicle may have been left impaired or obstructed in some way.
The uncrewed six-legged robot lander, dubbed Odysseus, touched down at about 6:23 p.m. EST (2323 GMT), the company and NASA commentators said in a joint webcast of the landing from Intuitive Machines' (LUNR.O), opens new tab mission operations center in Houston.

Satoshi - Sirius emails 2009-2011 #blockchain #history

1,000-Year-Old 'Naked Men' Festival Held for the Last Time #culture #history

Naked men festivals are held in several destinations throughout Japan, with the most well-known event taking place in Okayama Prefecture. This Thursday is the Hadaka Matsuri (naked festival) at Owari Okunitama Shrine in the city of Inazawa, Aichi Prefecture. For the first time, women are participating. Around 40 females will join the festivities, wearing happi coats. They’ll participate in the naoizasa ritual, which sees people running into the shrine grounds carrying bamboo grass wrapped in cloth. They won’t partake in the momiai ritual, which has been known to become quite rowdy.

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Dainius