Have fun, win prizes, participate in our contests!
May 6th, 2021, 1:59 pm
Chi-WOW-a! Tiny dog is spotted wakeboarding behind a boat in Mexico
    Footage shows the small dog being towed behind a boat in Veracruz, Mexico
    The tiny dog balanced on the little blue board as its owner drove a motor boat
    Onlooker Hugo Severino who witnessed the scene said it made his day

Image

Most dogs seem content with a walk but not this daredevil pooch who was spotted wakeboarding behind a boat in Mexico.

Footage shows the tiny dog balancing on his own little blue board and being towed by a motorboat on the river in Alvarado, Veracruz, on May 2.

The unidentified pet owner and his dog passed under the bridge while practicing the extreme water sport together.

Image
Amused people who were jumping from a bridge into the water stopped to enjoy the scene

Image
Hugo Severino was walking along the bank of the Papaloapan river in Alvarado, Veracruz, on May 2 when he saw the dog, pictured, being towed on a blue wakeboard behind a motorboat

Amused locals diving from the structure to cool off in the water stopped in amazement to watch the cute pair enjoy their weekend recreation on the Papaloapan river.


Onlooker Hugo Severino said he was walking along the shore with a friend when the boat passed by and he noticed the spectacle.

He said: 'I was walking along the embankment when a person told me about the dog.

'At first I only saw the motorboat then I noticed the cute dog following behind on a board. He was so cool.

'My friend and I enjoyed watching them. It made our day.'

Severino said that the dog and the owner are well known in the area.

He added: 'I heard they usually visit here. People told me they are very close and are always doing things together.'

Image
You go girl! Eight-year-old rescue dog Sugar regularly surfs with her owner in California

The unidentified dog could have been inspired by a talented eight-year-old rescue who is a regular on the California surfing scene.

Incredible photos show Sugar hanging ten at Huntington Beach, California, a skill that she picked up not long after being rescued by her surfer owner Ryan Rustan, 39, in January 2011.

Other images show Sugar riding with her doggy pals, Kiwi and Titi, while also jumping onto a board with Rustan.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... exico.html
May 6th, 2021, 1:59 pm

Exodus A.D.: A Warning to Civilians by Paul Troubetzkoy [10000 WRZ$] Reward!
https://forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=5556807
May 6th, 2021, 2:07 pm
Man Nearly Dies After Drinking 5 Litres of Water Daily Thinking it Would 'Cure' His Covid Symptoms

Image

According to various international bodies, the way to stay safe in such times is by wearing a face mask, washing hands at regular intervals and staying home as much as possible.The deadly coronavirus had quite literally got the world to a standstill. Individuals and industries across the globe suffered majorly. It is because of the virus that the lockdowns were put and bans on travels were imposed. For the longest time, there had been no vaccination for the disease. Medical professionals till date continue to treat novel coronavirus patients on the basis of their symptoms.

Most people across the globe have been trying their own mechanisms to boost their immunity. Many people have, in fact, adopted home remedies for any minutely-related coronavirus symptom. According to various international bodies, the way to stay safe in such times is by wearing a face mask, washing hands at regular intervals and staying home as much as possible.

In a recent incident, a man tried to cure his COVID-19 symptom by drinking excessive water. According to a report in SRTnews, a 34-year-old man based out of Patchway, Bristol, drank excessive water to get rid of suspected novel coronavirus. Luke, who happens to be a civil servant, had drank almost double the amount of water that is recommended. As a result, the natural sodium from his body got flushed out and led him to the intensive care unit of a hospital.

The report mentions that Luke suffered from water intoxication. As a result of that, he collapsed in his bathroom. Fortunately enough, his wife Laura was around when the incident took place. She immediately called the paramedics and made sure he was rushed to the hospital. The doctors informed that due to excessive consumption of water, Luke’s brain had swollen. He was kept in the intensive care unit for 2-3 days and was also put on ventilator.

Describing the ordeal, Laura told the news portal, “He had been very poorly for a week and was advised to drink plenty of fluids. He went up to have a bath one night and, the next thing you know, there was a huge bang. The hospital reckoned he had a fit. This was down to his salt levels being flushed out by drinking too much water.”

Further, she has also lauded the hospital staff for brilliantly taking care of her husband. Laura mentions that the most difficult part about the entire episode was that she could not go inside the hospital due to the coronavirus restrictions. Apart from that, the doctors had also told her that the most critical time for the patient was the next 24 hours after he was admitted.
May 6th, 2021, 2:07 pm

Image
May 6th, 2021, 5:13 pm
7-year-old's 'rock snake' embraced by Toronto's Beaches community

Image

TORONTO -- On a grey day, there’s no missing the long and colourful line of painted rocks that stretches along the boardwalk on Kew Beach.

“It’s a snake made out of rocks,” is how Lucas Walker describes it—and he should know. The 7-year-old started it last week, an idea born from boredom.

“He’s just been stuck in the house with the pandemic and everything going on,” Lucas’s father Nick told CTV News Toronto. “He came up with an idea to get his mom and his brother and some of his friends involved.”

The snake started simply: with just four rocks and a hand painted sign. The sign reads, “I’m just a rock snake, here to make you smile. Paint a rock, add it to my body, help me grow a mile.”

And grow is something the rock snake hasn’t stopped doing. Dozens and dozens of brightly coloured rocks now line the boardwalk at the foot of Lee Avenue.

Image

Surveying the ever-expanding snake, Lucas exclaims, “I feel it’s like awesome!”

Even on a rainy afternoon, the rock snake stops those passing by.

Some look, others take photos. The rock snake has its own Instagram account featuring photos of the rocks people have left. Several kids arrive with painted rocks to add, and just about everyone who notices it smiles.

“The people over there, it’s bringing joy to them,” Lucas says. His father agrees. “Everyone likes to see art, everyone likes to smile and I think it’s good for the community too.”

Lucas says he’s excited to watch his pandemic project grow, one rock, and one smile at a time.

Image
May 6th, 2021, 5:13 pm

Image
Buzz is the best doggo ever.
Online
May 6th, 2021, 7:31 pm
A couple moved in to Europe’s first printed house

Image

A retired Dutch couple have become Europe’s first inhabitants of a 3D-printed house. Elize Lutz and Harrie Dekkers (main picture above) moved into the boulder-shaped bungalow in Eindhoven at the weekend. They are renting the two-bedroom place for €800 (£695) per month.

A far cry from the winsome, wonky townhouses synonymous with the Netherlands, the squat structure is the world’s first habitable 3D-printed property with load-bearing walls.

Proponents of the technology say it could slash building costs, making properties more affordable, as well as reducing the amount of cement used in construction. Cement is responsible for an estimated 8 per of the world’s CO2 emissions.

Prof Theo Salet from Eindhoven University of Technology said the home, one of five planned by the construction firm Saint-Gobain Weber Beamix, was a “major step” toward scaling up 3D printing technology. “Digitisation from design to implementation leads to sustainable and affordable homes, tailor-made to the wishes of the resident,” he added.
May 6th, 2021, 7:31 pm

Image
May 6th, 2021, 9:06 pm
'Sperminator' who's close to fathering 100 children says 'don't focus on me'

Ari Nagel has been helping women get pregnant around the world with sperm donations

Image
Ari Nagel (middle) has made multiple television appearances since news broke on his
numerous sperm donations. Here he is pictured with Anthony Anderson (left) and Anthony
Carbone (right) on ABC's "To Tell the Truth." (Eric McCandless/ABC via Getty Images)


New York college professor Ari Nagel has fathered more than 80 children and has more on the way.

The 44-year-old educator has made headlines in the past for his frequent sperm donations, which has earned him the nickname "The Sperminator" from national tabloids. He will be providing a life update in a new interview with Dr. Mehmet Oz.

In a clip Oz shared to Twitter on Tuesday, the pair briefly discuss the 77 children he has fathered so far.

"I have 77 children, that's true, but then you look at the three women that we just saw on the screen and they don't have 77 children," Nagel says in the clip. "For them, it's about them having their first child or their second child. So it's not so much — don't focus on me, you more focus on them, who just, they want to have a family."

However, in an interview Nagel gave the "Claire Byrne Live" show in early March suggested he has fathered 78 children. At the time of the interview, Nagel said 13 women were expecting to give birth to children conceived from his sperm.

The mothers he has donated sperm to live in the U.S. or abroad and most conceive children through artificial insemination. Nagel told British journalist Claire Byrne that "around a dozen" of his children were "conceived the old fashioned way," but that was much earlier in his donation journey.

The sperm donations Nagel makes have all been free of charge, according to multiple reports and interviews he has provided news outlets over the years.

By March 10, Nagel told Australia’s "The Morning Show" that his family count had grown to 80 children with 12 on the way. When asked if he ever vets who gets a sperm donation, Nagel said he has "no vetting process" for the women who request his assistance, and he "[tries] to help whoever asks."

Nagel tells Fox News his family has gotten even larger in the last two months. He also provided an explanation for the discrepency in his family size from "The Dr. Oz Show" clip.

"I have 15 women currently pregnant in AL, CT, FL, MD, NY, NJ, TN and TX plus one in Europe," Nagel wrote. "I have 84 children born, Dr. Oz taped a few weeks ago."

Image
Some men throughout history have reportedly fathered hundreds of children through
artificial insemination or reproductive means. (iStock)


While Nagel’s fathering may sound extreme to most people, he is not an official record holder.

A man named Louis in the Netherlands has reportedly fathered 200 children through sperm donation, according to The Guardian. Meanwhile, an English man named Simon Watson told the BBC he’s fathered 800 children.

Throughout history, records and rumors have suggested that several rulers and scientists have fathered hundreds of kids, including King Sobhuza II of Swaziland (1899 to 1982), King Augustus II of Poland (1670 to 1733) and Austrian physiologist Bertold Wiesner (1901 to 1972).

The man who is thought to have fathered the most children of all time is Moroccan Sultan Ismail Ibn Sharif (1645 to 1727) with a total of more than 1,000, according to Guinness World Records. This number has not been officially confirmed, however.
May 6th, 2021, 9:06 pm
May 6th, 2021, 9:20 pm
UK: After Magical Disappearance, Flu and Pneumonia are Back! Now Killing More Than Coronavirus

Previously in the UK: The Flu Magically Disappears, Cases Plummet by 95% as Totally Unrelated Coronavirus Rises

Hey! Vaccines are working! We told you so! Nowadays, everyone’s dying from the flu.

These are totally obviously not the same deaths that were blamed on coronavirus before.

Image

Image

Image

Now we’re getting closer to truly fixing this mess.

We only need to figure out why masks and social distancing work against coronavirus but not against the flu, and we’ll be back to the Old Normal in no time. :lol:

Daily Mail:
    More people are now dying from flu and pneumonia than Covid in England and Wales for the first time since the second wave took off, official figures revealed today.

    Office for National Statistics data showed the virus was mentioned on 260 death certificates that occurred in the week ending April 23 — down 30 per cent on the week before.

    But Covid was only listed as the underlying cause for 176 of the victims. For comparison, flu and pneumonia was behind 278 deaths in the same seven-day spell but mentioned on 1,203 certificates.

    Covid was the leading cause of death during the second wave, claiming more than 1,000 lives a day at the peak of the crisis in January.

    Experts said a successful vaccine roll-out forcing down Covid deaths, combined with more mixing leading to a resurgence in pneumonia-causing infections was behind the trend.



    Professor Lawrence Young, a molecular biologist at Warwick Medical School, said flu and pneumonia were now behind more deaths than Covid because of vaccinations and lockdown easing measures.

Remember, this comes after they came out and told you that the flu had disappeared.

They actually said in February that not a single case had been detected.

Image

Who knows what the hell these people are up to.

In theory, they could move all of the “coronavirus” deaths back to the “flu” category, and then say that the vaccine worked.

As we know, there never was a “coronavirus,” and it was always just the flu. So this plan would work.

But is the goal of the UK government actually to end the pandemic by saying the vaxx worked? We’re not seeing any signs of that anywhere else in the world. But it is possible with most of the goyim in the UK vaxxed they’re ready to start really pushing the vaxx passport thing, and then waiting a while before coming out with some “new variant.”

https://dailystormer.su/uk-after-magica ... ronavirus/
May 6th, 2021, 9:20 pm

Exodus A.D.: A Warning to Civilians by Paul Troubetzkoy [10000 WRZ$] Reward!
https://forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=5556807
May 7th, 2021, 7:03 am
Menu from 1913 found in rafters of British cafe

Image

https://www.facebook.com/ExploreLiverpo ... 20/?type=3

Workers doing renovations on a cafe in England made a surprising discovery inside the ceiling -- a menu from the restaurant that occupied the building in 1913.

Natalie Haywood, owner of Leaf in Liverpool, said workers doing renovations on the building found a menu for Yamen Cafe and Tea Rooms, dated Jan. 15, 1913, in the rafters.

Haywood said the workers also found a waiter's hat embroidered with the word "Yaman" and the instructions for a card game called "whist and bottles."

"Down came fluttering from the ceiling this menu from 108 years ago. It's in absolutely unbelievable condition," Haywood told CNN.

Haywood told the BBC the menu is "like a time capsule hidden in the walls."

She said Leaf plans to try to recreate some of the dishes listed on the menu.

"To see what they were doing then, how forward-thinking and creative as a restaurant, is so inspiring," she said.
May 7th, 2021, 7:03 am

Image

Believe me, you are someone's crush. Yes, you are!
May 7th, 2021, 12:21 pm
Image

I sometimes get REALLY DEPRESSED reviewing the news these days.
It's always about a global pandemic threatening life as we know it,
protests around the world, stupid politicians, natural disasters,
or some other really bad story.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Welcome to The mobi weekly news magazine
IN OTHER NEWS
FRIDAY MAY 7

What is it?
Here is your chance to become an "ACE REPORTER" for our weekly news magazine.
It is your job to fine weird, funny or "good feel" stories from around the world and share them with our readers in our weekly magazine

How do you play?
Just post a story that you have come across that made you smile, laugh, feel good...
BUT NOTHING DEPRESSING :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

EXAMPLE POST
Naked sunbather chases wild boar through park after it steals his laptop bag
Image
A naked sunbather was seen chasing wild boar through a park after it stole his laptop bag.
Amusing photographs from Germany show the man running after the animal to try and claim the plastic bag back.
But the cheeky boar and its two piglets appear to be too quick for the sunbather, who can't keep up with their speedy little trotters.
As the incident unfolds, groups of friends and family sat on the grass watch on and laugh.
Heads are seen turning in surprise and amusement in the hilarious photographs.
The incident happened at Teufelssee Lake - a bathing spot in the Grunwell Forest in Berlin, Germany.

Rules:
Each Edition of IN OTHER NEWS will be open for 7 days...
You may post One Story in any 24 hour period
So in other words, you can enter only once a day
Each news day will start when I post announcing it
OR at:
9:00 AM CHICAGO TIME (UTC -5)
2:00 PM GMT (UTC -0)

on those days I space out and forget to post or can't due to Real Life :lol:
Stories may be accompanied with images - but No big images, please! 800x800 pixels wide maximum
Videos are allowed, but please keep them to under a minute, and post a short summary for those that don't like to click on videos
No Duplicate stories - Where a post has been edited resulting in duplicates, then the last one in time gets disallowed.
And please limit this to reasonably family friendly stories :lol: :lol: :lol:

Reward:
Each news story posted that I feel is acceptable (must be a real story, too few words or simply a headline are not considered acceptable) will earn you 50 WRZ$
If you post multiple stories on any given day, you will only earn 50 WRZ$ for the first story of the Day
All payments will be made at THE END of the weekly news cycle.
Special Bonus - Each week I will award "The Pulitzer Prize" for the best story of the week
The weekly winner of the "The Pulitzer Prize" will receive a 100 WRZ$ bonus
It's just my personal opinion, so my judgement is final

So help bring GOOD news to the members of mobi, and join our reporting team...

IN OTHER NEWS


Image
May 7th, 2021, 12:21 pm

Image
Image
May 7th, 2021, 12:26 pm
Woman thinks she's been burgled after her dog destroys sofa and breaks down door

Vickie Shelton, 51, was left distraught after returning home and finding her sofa destroyed, before discovering it was her beloved two-year-old dog Bo who had caused the damage

Image

A woman had the shock of her life after returning home to find her sofa ripped to pieces.

Mum Vickie Shelton, 51, thought she'd been robbed but soon discovered the culprit was her two-year-old dog Bo.

The naughty pooch had destroyed her sofa while Vickie was at work, leaving fluff all over the room.

Vickie, 51, from Benton, Tennessee, USA, decided to keep Bo in the spare room while at work the next day, in order to avoid more damage.

But determined Bo chewed his way out of the wire crate and broke down the door.

Vickie, who works in HR, said: “We’d only had the couch for four months when it all happened.

Image

“Bo sleeps on the couch a lot, that is definitely his domain. He loves it.

“I was at work, and I was getting alerts from my pet camera that something was happening, but I thought it was just Bo being Bo.

“Never in a million years did I think he was destroying my couch.

“I got home that afternoon and the dogs were greeting me at the door. I took a few steps inside and started seeing this white fluff everywhere.

Image

“Once I got to the living room, that’s when I saw the couch. My first thought was that I had been robbed and vandalised.

“But then I saw the TV on the wall, and I thought, well why would they tear the couch up and leave the TV?

“Bo then sits down in the middle of the mess, wagging his tail. He was very happy with himself.

“That’s when it all clicked. I couldn’t believe it.

“It took over two hours to clean it all up, and there were six huge plastic bags full of fluff.”
The next morning, Vickie kept Bo in her son’s room in a crate while she was at work to help keep him out of the way.

But when she returned, he had chewed through the wire and broken down the door.

She said: “I put the crate in my son’s bedroom and closed the door.

“I turned on the TV with calming sounds, put on the fans, put his toys in with him. I thought he’s going to have a good day.

“When I came home from work, there he was at the door. I thought ‘oh no, this cannot be good’.

“There was a massive hole in my son’s door, and he had chewed his way through the crate.

“I panicked because I thought he had cut his mouth to pieces, so I took him to the vet. But he was totally fine.”

After visiting the vet, Bo was diagnosed with severe separation anxiety and has been put on a low dose of ‘puppy xanax’ to help keep him calm.

Thankfully the pooch is doing a lot better and went viral after Vickie shared photos of the damage on social media.

Vickie said: “The medicine seems to be working, I think it’s just what he needed. It is helping him stay calm and happy during the times when I’m not around.


“I posted the photos online to a group, not expecting much of it. Before I knew it, the post had blown up. People thought it was hilarious.”

The pooch was dumped in a cardboard box in a supermarket car park with his siblings as puppies but is now loving his life.

“Bo was four weeks old when I found him. He was dumped in a box with two of his siblings in the middle of a supermarket parking lot," said Vickie

“Sadly, one of the puppies had already died. A young couple were parked next to me and said if we took the male they would take the female.

“Bo was an unexpected gift, but it was just meant to be. I couldn’t imagine life without him.

“He has definitely got his own unique personality and I wouldn’t trade him for the world.”
May 7th, 2021, 12:26 pm

Twitter: Fatima99@fatima99_mobi
Image
May 7th, 2021, 12:29 pm
Recipes Against Racism launched

Image

Chefs at some of London’s leading Asian restaurants have contributed to a new cookbook that aims to use food to tackle racism. The digital book is a response to research that revealed an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes since the outbreak of coronavirus, which is believed to have originated in China.

Recipes Against Racism brings together dishes from lauded establishments such as Chinese Laundry, Farang and Kiln. All profits from the book go towards the charities Stop Hate UK and End the Virus of Racism.

Londoners Claire Sachiko Fourel and Lex Shu Chan (pictured) came up with the idea. “We were horrified by the growing anti-Asian race crimes during the pandemic and wanted to help drive awareness and change,” they said. “Activism can come in many forms, and food can be a vehicle to challenge ‘othering’ stereotypes and celebrate multi-ethnic and multicultural identities and heritage.”
May 7th, 2021, 12:29 pm

Image
May 7th, 2021, 12:42 pm
Comic Strip Artists Celebrate ‘No Pants Day’ On May 7
05/05/2021 03:29 pm ET Updated 1 day ago *

Image
via AP
This image released by Kings Features shows a frame from the Dennis The Menace comic strip promoting No Pants Day. More than 25 cartoonists are celebrating the quirky holiday to help charities get clothing to those in need. Participating artists are drawing their characters without trousers and urging readers to donate clothing to thrift and second-hand stores hard-hit by COVID-19. (Kings Features via AP)


NEW YORK (AP) — Fans of newspaper comics will instantly notice something missing in many of the strips this Friday — pants.

More than 25 cartoonists behind strips from “Blondie” to “Zippy the Pinhead” are celebrating the quirky holiday No Pants Day in a way that helps charities get clothing to those in need.

Participating artists are drawing their characters without trousers and urging readers to donate clothing to thrift and second-hand stores hard-hit by COVID-19.

“This was a great way to help bring communities together but also have a little bit of a laugh,” said Tea Fougner, comics editor at King Features Syndicate. “Just the idea of No Pants Day, I think, is something that everybody can feel a little bit closer to this year than in previous years.”

No Pants Day, held on the first Friday in May, is believed to have been started by a group of students at the University of Texas who thought leaving the pants at home on the first Friday in May would be a fun way to end the semester. A winter spin-off was created called No Pants Subway Ride.

Comics creators have noticed that the COVID-19 pandemic has effected people’s ability to get clothing and charities have not gotten as many donations as typical.

In a gracious move among comic strip distributors, King Features reached out to fellow syndicators Tribune Content Agency, Andrews McMeel Universal and Washington Post Writers Group to pull off Friday’s event.

“We may be business competitors, but we’re all part of the same family,” said Fougner. “We all love comics and we love our communities. And, at the end of the day, that’s really what cartooning is about. So we want as many cartoonists as possible to take part in initiatives like this.”

Cartoonists were contacted in February about the project, and the finished comics started to come in by March. In some cases, artists needed a quick brainstorming session to figure out ways to approach the request.

Not Bill Griffith, the artist behind “Zippy the Pinhead.” “He emailed me back right away and he said, ‘Well, not wearing pants is Zippy’s thing,’” said Fougner.

Organizers left it up to the individual cartoonists — some other participating strips include “Shoe,” “Arctic Circle,” “Hi and Lois,” “Rhymes with Orange,” “Mallard Fillmore” and “Sally Forth” — how to incorporate the message. The strips range from medieval knights to modern office workers, all sporting underwear.

“You’ll see a variety from some cartoonists who took a really direct approach where they have their characters in the comic donating clothing to people,” said Fougner. “And some folks just depicted the characters not wearing pants or put a little happy No Pants Day message in the comic.”

Olive Brinker’s “Rae the Doe” has a character donating clothes at an LGBT center while “Dennis the Menace” urges readers: “Give to a charity that helps people in need of clothing, like Room to Grow.”

The event is the latest attempt by the comics community to help society. Last year, more than 70 comic strips and panels banded together to hide six symbols in the artwork to honor workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic.
May 7th, 2021, 12:42 pm

Image
May 7th, 2021, 12:56 pm
Barber left 'mortified' after asking awkward question to blind customer about haircut
A barber went into autopilot after finishing a haircut and asked one of his clients a stock question before realising the mistake - and they've now shared the awkward blunder online

Image
Others reassured them it happens all the time

A hairdresser says they were left feeling "mortified" by an interaction with a client - but other people told them not to beat themselves up over the "common" error.

The unnamed barber says they were giving a cut to a blind man, who was very specific about what he wanted, adding that he clearly had issues with his sight and walked with a cane.

Feeling "horrified" by their interaction at the end of the cut, the hairdresser turned to Reddit for support, writing: "I’m a barber and our customer base is mainly older men, a couple weeks ago a blind man came in to get his hair cut.

"He had a stick and his eyes were very foggy, I’m not very informed about the specific types of blindness, but he definitely couldn’t see himself in the mirror.

Image
The barber said he didn't know what to say next


"He was quite specific about how he wanted it done, so I asked him to feel it every so often to make sure he was happy with it so far. It was all going well and we were making good conversation.

"But typical me - I got to the end of his haircut and blew all the excess hair off before asking him, 'alright, all done, does it all look short enough for you?'

"Then I realised what I had done. I didn’t know what to say, I was horrified at what had just happened. He sat there awkwardly for a few seconds before feeling around and stating that his haircut was fine.

"I’m still mortified, but I’m feeling more comfort in sharing my experience. Won’t be making that mistake again, bless him."

After sharing the story online, two users rushed to the barber's defence.

One said: "He is blind, he lost his sight, not his sense of humour. You should've just said, 'I am so sorry' and laughed it off."

And another spoke from personal experience to say the barber had nothing to worry about, adding: "This happens. There are so many visual terms so commonly used by most people that trying to stop using them is more of a pain than it's worth.

"You'd never say hear you later, for example. It's just odd. I am blind, I promise for the most part we don't mind."
May 7th, 2021, 12:56 pm
May 7th, 2021, 1:27 pm
Bronze Age treasure found in Swedish forest by mapmaker

Image

A man surveying a forest for his orienteering club in western Sweden stumbled on a trove of Bronze Age treasure reckoned to be some 2,500 years old.

It includes about 50 items, such as necklaces, bracelets and clothing pins.

The cartographer, Thomas Karlsson, said "I first thought it might be a lamp, but when I looked closer I saw that it was old jewellery".

Swedish archaeologists say it is very rare to find such a hoard in a forest.

Ancient tribes usually left such offerings in rivers or wetlands.

The hoard was on the forest floor, next to rocks.

It is thought that one or more animals had disturbed the earth, leaving the many items semi-exposed. They have been dated to the period between 750 and 500BC.

Image
Experts say the jewellery was made for a woman, or women, of high status

Mr Karlsson said he had spotted the metallic glint while looking down at a map he was working on. At first he thought the ornaments were copies, as they were in such good condition. Then he emailed a local archaeologist while having a coffee in the forest, regional newspaper Goteborgs-Posten reported.

The forest is near the town of Alingsas, about 48km (30 miles) northeast of Gothenburg.

Archaeologists describe it as a "depot" find - that is, a hoard deliberately left as an offering to a god or gods, or to invest in life after death.

Image
The forest site where an orienteering enthusiast found bronze treasure

The jewellery "is extremely well preserved", said Prof Johan Ling, lecturer in archaeology at Gothenburg University.

"Most of the items can be linked to a woman, or women, of high status," he said, quoted by Goteborgs-Posten.

The treasure includes a type of rod used to spur on horses, previously found in neighbouring Denmark, but not in Sweden.

Image
Image

Swedish law requires anyone finding such antiquities to notify the police or local authority, as they are regarded as state property. The Swedish National Heritage Board then decides what reward, if any, the finder should receive.

Mr Karlsson said a reward "would be a nice bonus, but it's not very important to me.

"It's fun to be a part of exploring history. We know so little about that era, because there are no written sources."

In Scandinavia the Bronze Age ran from about 1700BC to 500BC, when it gave way to the Iron Age. The Iron Age continued until about AD800, when the Viking Age began.

Image
Archaeologist Mats Hellgren working at the site

Pernilla Morner, an antiquities expert for Vastra Gotaland region, said that "not since the bronze shields from Froslunda were excavated from a field in Skaraborg in the mid-1980s has such an exciting find from the Bronze Age been made in Sweden".

VGRfokus, a news site for Vastra Gotaland, says a team of Gothenburg archaeologists is now investigating the site in detail.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56943432
May 7th, 2021, 1:27 pm

Exodus A.D.: A Warning to Civilians by Paul Troubetzkoy [10000 WRZ$] Reward!
https://forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=5556807
May 7th, 2021, 2:00 pm
The Pastry A.I. That Learned to Fight Cancer
In Japan, a system designed to distinguish croissants from bear claws has turned out to be capable of a whole lot more.

One morning in the spring of 2019, I entered a pastry shop in the Ueno train station, in Tokyo. The shop worked cafeteria-style. After taking a tray and tongs at the front, you browsed, plucking what you liked from heaps of baked goods. What first struck me was the selection, which seemed endless: there were croissants, turnovers, Danishes, pies, cakes, and open-faced sandwiches piled up everywhere, sometimes in dozens of varieties. But I was most surprised when I got to the register. At the urging of an attendant, I slid my items onto a glowing rectangle on the counter. A nearby screen displayed an image, shot from above, of my doughnuts and Danish. I watched as a set of jagged, neon-green squiggles appeared around each item, accompanied by its name in Japanese and a price. The system had apparently recognized my pastries by sight. It calculated what I owed, and I paid.

I tried to gather myself while the attendant wrapped and bagged my items. I was still stunned when I got outside. The bakery system had the flavor of magic—a feat seemingly beyond the possible, made to look inevitable. I had often imagined that, someday, I’d be able to point my smartphone camera at a peculiar flower and have it identified, or at a chess board, to study the position. Eventually, the tech would get to the point where one could do such things routinely. Now it appeared that we were in this world already, and that the frontier was pastry.

Computers learned to see only recently. For decades, image recognition was one of the grand challenges in artificial intelligence. As I write this, I can look up at my shelves: they contain books, and a skein of yarn, and a tangled cable, all inside a cabinet whose glass enclosure is reflecting leaves in the trees outside my window. I can’t help but parse this scene—about a third of the neurons in my cerebral cortex are implicated in processing visual information. But, to a computer, it’s a mess of color and brightness and shadow. A computer has never untangled a cable, doesn’t get that glass is reflective, doesn’t know that trees sway in the wind. A.I. researchers used to think that, without some kind of model of how the world worked and all that was in it, a computer might never be able to distinguish the parts of complex scenes. The field of “computer vision” was a zoo of algorithms that made do in the meantime. The prospect of seeing like a human was a distant dream.

All this changed in 2012, when Alex Krizhevsky, a graduate student in computer science, released AlexNet, a program that approached image recognition using a technique called deep learning. AlexNet was a neural network, “deep” because its simulated neurons were arranged in many layers. As the network was shown new images, it guessed what was in them; inevitably, it was wrong, but after each guess it was made to adjust the connections between its layers of neurons, until it learned to output a label matching the one that researchers provided. (Eventually, the interior layers of such networks can come to resemble the human visual cortex: early layers detect simple features, like edges, while later layers perform more complex tasks, such as picking out shapes.) Deep learning had been around for years, but was thought impractical. AlexNet showed that the technique could be used to solve real-world problems, while still running quickly on cheap computers. Today, virtually every A.I. system you’ve heard of—Siri, AlphaGo, Google Translate—depends on the technique.

The drawback of deep learning is that it requires large amounts of specialized data. A deep-learning system for recognizing faces might have to be trained on tens of thousands of portraits, and it won’t recognize a dress unless it’s also been shown thousands of dresses. Deep-learning researchers, therefore, have learned to collect and label data on an industrial scale. In recent years, we’ve all joined in the effort: today’s facial recognition is particularly good because people tag themselves in pictures that they upload to social networks. Google asks users to label objects that its A.I.s are still learning to identify: that’s what you’re doing when you take those “Are you a bot?” tests, in which you select all the squares containing bridges, crosswalks, or streetlights. Even so, there are blind spots. Self-driving cars have been known to struggle with unusual signage, such as the blue stop signs found in Hawaii, or signs obscured by dirt or trees. In 2017, a group of computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out that, on the Internet, almost all the images tagged as “bedrooms” are “clearly staged and depict a made bed from 2-3 meters away.” As a result, networks have trouble recognizing real bedrooms.

It’s possible to fill in these blind spots through focussed effort. A few years ago, I interviewed for a job at a company that was using deep learning to read X-rays, starting with bone fractures. The programmers asked surgeons and radiologists from some of the best hospitals in the U.S. to label a library of images. (The job I interviewed for wouldn’t have involved the deep-learning system; instead, I’d help improve the Microsoft Paint-like program that the doctors used for labelling.) In Tokyo, outside the bakery, I wondered whether the pastry recognizer could possibly be relying on a similar effort. But it was hard to imagine a team of bakers assiduously photographing and labelling each batch as it came out of the oven, tens of thousands of times, for all the varieties on offer. My partner suggested that the bakery might be working with templates, such that every pain au chocolat would have precisely the same shape. An alternative suggested by the machine’s retro graphics—but perplexing, given the system’s uncanny performance—was that it wasn’t using deep learning. Maybe someone had gone down the old road of computer vision. Maybe, by really considering what pastry looked like, they had taught their software to see it.

Hisashi Kambe, the man behind the pastry A.I., grew up in Nishiwaki City, a small town that sits at Japan’s geographic center. The city calls itself Japan’s navel; surrounded by mountains and rice fields, it’s best known for airy, yarn-dyed cotton fabrics woven in intricate patterns, which have been made there since the eighteenth century. As a teen-ager, Kambe planned to take over his father’s lumber business, which supplied wood to homes built in the traditional style. But he went to college in Tokyo and, after graduating, in 1974, took a job in Osaka at Matsushita Electric Works, which later became Panasonic. There, he managed the company’s relationship with I.B.M. Finding himself in over his head, he took computer classes at night and fell in love with the machines.

In his late twenties, Kambe came home to Nishiwaki, splitting his time between the lumber mill and a local job-training center, where he taught computer classes. Interest in computers was soaring, and he spent more and more time at the school; meanwhile, more houses in the area were being built in a Western style, and traditional carpentry was in decline. Kambe decided to forego the family business. Instead, in 1982, he started a small software company. In taking on projects, he followed his own curiosity. In 1983, he began working with NHK, one of Japan’s largest broadcasters. Kambe, his wife, and two other programmers developed a graphics system for displaying the score during baseball games and exchange rates on the nightly news. In 1984, Kambe took on a problem of special significance in Nishiwaki. Textiles were often woven on looms controlled by planning programs; the programs, written on printed cards, looked like sheet music. A small mistake on a planning card could produce fabric with a wildly incorrect pattern. So Kambe developed SUPER TEX-SIM, a program that allowed textile manufacturers to simulate the design process, with interactive yarn and color editors. It sold poorly until 1985, a series of breaks led to a distribution deal with Mitsubishi’s fabric division. Kambe formally incorporated as BRAIN Co., Ltd.

For twenty years, brain took on projects that revolved, in various ways, around seeing. The company made a system for rendering kanji characters on personal computers, a tool that helped engineers design bridges, systems for onscreen graphics, and more textile simulators. Then, in 2007, brain was approached by a restaurant chain that had decided to spin off a line of bakeries. Bread had always been an import in Japan—the Japanese word for it, “pan,” comes from Portuguese—and the country’s rich history of trade had left consumers with ecumenical tastes. Unlike French boulangeries, which might stake their reputations on a handful of staples, its bakeries emphasized range. (In Japan, even Kit Kats come in more than three hundred flavors, including yogurt sake and cheesecake.) New kinds of baked goods were being invented all the time: the “carbonara,” for instance, takes the Italian pasta dish and turns it into a kind of breakfast sandwich, with a piece of bacon, slathered in egg, cheese, and pepper, baked open-faced atop a roll; the “ham corn” pulls a similar trick, but uses a mixture of corn and mayo for its topping. Every kind of baked good was an opportunity for innovation.

Analysts at the new bakery venture conducted market research. They found that a bakery sold more the more varieties it offered; a bakery offering a hundred items sold almost twice as much as one selling thirty. They also discovered that “naked” pastries, sitting in open baskets, sold three times as well as pastries that were individually wrapped, because they appeared fresher. These two facts conspired to create a crisis: with hundreds of pastry types, but no wrappers—and, therefore, no bar codes—new cashiers had to spend months memorizing what each variety looked like, and its price. The checkout process was difficult and error-prone—the cashier would fumble at the register, handling each item individually—and also unsanitary and slow. Lines in pastry shops grew longer and longer. The restaurant chain turned to brain for help. Could they automate the checkout process?

Read more:
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-o ... lot%20more.
May 7th, 2021, 2:00 pm
May 7th, 2021, 2:33 pm
They Melted Down 22,000 Firearms in Belgium, Recycling Them Into Steel

Image

Belgium recently melted down over 22,000 firearms into 60 tons of recycled steel.

Half of the firearms were collected from members of the Belgian public. The other half were police weapons that are no longer used.

Carina van Cauter, governor of East Flanders, said in a statement: “The result is impressive: 22,457 firearms have disappeared from our society… It is obviously positive for the security of our citizens that these weapons are no longer in use.”

This is the third time the Belgian police force has worked with the steel firm ArcelorMittal to recycle firearms—with this particular operation taking three days to complete, according to Reuters.

“Steel is endlessly recyclable without loss of quality. For us, steel is the cornerstone for a sustainable circular economy,” Karen Warnier of ArcelorMittal told Het Nieuwsblad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUzXGmI9d0I&feature=emb_imp_woyt
May 7th, 2021, 2:33 pm

Image
Online