Today I learned

Apparently “nowdays” isn’t a word.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/2879916

TL;DR for the title:

Employees [from this investigation] can be seen removing the intestines of dead, disease-infected piglets and mixing them with piglet feces in a blender — a mixture to be fed to the adult breeding pigs — causing one worker to gag.

The practice, called “feedback,” is common in the pork business (or “controlled oral exposure” in industry jargon).

The article itself goes into more depth about all the horrific things in the pork industry such as these

The pork industry has pushed pigs to their biological limits, leading to many bizarre practices beyond feedback, many of which are inhumane. To name one example recently in the news: There are horse farms that impregnate horses, extract their blood for a serum, abort their pregnancies, and then sell the serum to pig farms to induce puberty in young female pigs and produce larger litters. Holden Farms, like most pig breeding farms, confine pregnant pigs in gestation crates, cages so small they can’t turn around for practically their entire lives.

Archive Link - National Wastewater Surveillance System

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2003433

In February 1956, the proposals were put to a referendum, in which 75 per cent voted 'Yes'. However, owing to a boycott called for by the opposition parties (who felt that the proposals had been forced through) and the Roman Catholic Church (which saw its status threatened), only 60 per cent of the electorate came out to vote. There were reservations in Westminster that the Maltese MPs would be able to hold the balance of power in the House of Commons. In 1957, the closure of British naval docks had a devastating effect on the local economy (a quarter of the workforce was employed in defence related activities.) This effectively killed off the integrationist cause, and Mintoff's Labour Party espoused independence. Malta gained independence in 1964, becoming a republic within the Commonwealth a decade later.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1898671

It is accessible only by helicopter, on foot or by mule. Supai is 8 miles (13 km) from the nearest road and has no automobiles in the community.

After the Romans departed, systematic construction of paved highways in the United Kingdom did not resume until the early 18th century. The Roman road network remained the only nationally managed highway system within Britain until the establishment of the Ministry of Transport in the early 20th century.

The idea that "Inuit" have a single language is evidently the first issue, but the idea behind the myth seemingly came from an 1800s anthropological study that mentioned four separate words. Many of the languages apparently have agglutinative qualities (like German, where you can just moosh more things on the end of a word to make a new one) as well as their cultures having a lot to do with snow (and thus likely having more jargon around it) leading to people running with ever-increasing numbers of words for snow that these "rudimentary" people had for "such a simple concept".

As per the treaty signed in 1842 the British were allowed to use the forests and their natural products against which they had to pay around 3,000 silver coins to the five kings. Currently the kings receive a monthly political pension by the Government of India, which is the main source of their income. This payment is continued even though all privy purses for the Princely states of India were stopped in 1970 since the agreement was between then monarchy of Dangs and the British

Jean-Pierre Luminet calculated all of that back in 1979 using the IBM 7040 mainframe, an early transistor computer with punch card inputs. The machine generated isolines for his image that were "directly translatable as smooth curves using the drawing software available at the time," he told Engadget in an email.

To create the final image though, he relied on his other passion: art. Using numerical data from the computer, he drew directly on negative image paper with black India ink, placing dots more densely where the simulation showed more light. "Next, I took the negative of my negative to get the positive, the black points becoming white and the white background becoming black."

https://www.engadget.com/2017-04-19-black-hole-image-jean-pierre-luminet.html

Once out of Texas, he sent a death certificate to the prison stating he had died.

Ant hair is about 98% reflective, and is very similar to how fiber optics work. SEM images in the link for fellow nerds.

On shaving ants:

Speaking to MailOnline, Willot confirmed this 'was indeed a tricky procedure. They are very reactive and won't stop struggling once caught, preventing any shaving attempt if not anaesthetised.'

This was done by exposing the ants for a few seconds to carbon dioxide, then strapping them down firmly.

Hairs were removed using a high-power binocular telescope and a very sharp blade.

'It's the same as shaving your own chin: the scalpel blade has to move in the opposite direction of the hair's growth. It has to be a delicate and gentle motion,' said Willot.

After practising on large soldier ants, he found that a smaller worker ant could be entirely shaved in an hour of delicate work.

He estimates around 40 ants were shaved altogether to produce seven good examples for the experiments.

Not to mention the fact that horses in the blood farms are also forced into pregnancy over and over to extract PMSG. They are also intentionally underfed, put in all kinds of severe restraints, and much more

Without these dots, the glass could become loose and eventually fall out of the frame. These frits are also there for aesthetic purposes.