User tinkerbellthinks shared this photo of a newspaper notice from the Xerox company admonishing whoever would read their message not to use their brand name to refer to the act of "photocopying" because it damages the trademark of that company.
In one of the comments, user Bluenette was reminded of an ad made by Velcro, the company who invented the hook and loop, which also urged people not to use their trademark to refer to their product. So remember it's not a Xerox, it's a photocopy. Don't say Velcro, it's a hook and loop.
You don't need to be psychic to understand how someone is feeling or what someone is thinking about, because people usually give off nonverbal cues that signal their thoughts and feelings. We just need to pay attention and understand what these subtle cues are telling us.
In this clip, former FBI agent Joe Navarro explains the different ways we communicate through our actions, our tics and mannerisms, and other body language that convey what we don't or can't say. -via Dark Roasted Blend
In a country as diverse as India, there are at least 20 different languages being spoken by at least a million people, so one could imagine the difficulty to communicate with one another. Of course, many people speak more than one language so it's not really a problem.
But when Union Home Minister Amit Shah proposed the 'one nation, one language' policy, actor Rajinikanth weighed in on the issue and said that such a thing is not possible for India.
Speaking to reporters, Rajinikanth said, “Any country that has a common language will find it beneficial to its growth and unity. Unfortunately, we cannot have that in India.
Language is power and whatever is the dominant or ruling language gives the speakers of that language preeminence and social mobility. So despite making communication easier, having one language spoken by all will still alienate and isolate certain groups of people. There will always be people who are left out of the conversation.
No matter how hard one trains their body to build strength and endurance, there will always be limits to how much we can do or take. Even the Marines who are some of the fittest and most well-equipped people, both physically and mentally, get exhausted and need help with some labor-intensive work.
Fortunately, the Marine Corps is looking to get some help with their heavy duty physical work from a full-body autonomous exoskeleton suit, similar to the one used by Ripley in "Alien".
"It keeps the human instinct and intelligent judgment and combines it with a robotic precision, strength and endurance to get to a more efficient, effective, more productive -- and frankly safer -- work environment," said Jim Miller, Sarcos Robotics' vice president of defense solutions.
The intuitive, autonomous suit can be used by operators ranging from 5 foot, 4 inches, to someone who's just over 6-and-a-half-feet tall. It stays powered for up to eight hours on a single charge and can repeatedly lift 200-pound objects without fatigue or strain.
Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin were considered the Big Three of the Allied Forces in WWII. If any of them were captured or assassinated, it would have spelled the end for the Allied Forces and history would have been much different than it is today.
However, when the planned assassination mission called Long Jump, which was led by Otto Skorzeny, had been put into motion, the Axis didn't realize that the Soviets had learned about their plan through one of their guerrillas who infiltrated their ranks.
When Hitler was putting together a team to attempt the assassination of the Big Three, Skorzeny was the man he turned to as the leader. The plan they developed was called Long Jump.
Meanwhile, the Soviets had a group of guerrillas operating in the Ukraine which was occupied by the Germans. One of the guerrillas was Nikolai Kuznetsov, the famed Soviet espionage officer, who spoke perfect German and was masquerading as a German lieutenant.
He became friends with SS-Sturmbannführer Ulrich von Ortel, who gave details of the Long Jump plan one night while they were drinking together. Ortel even offfered to introduce Kuznetsov to Skorzeny.
The Soviets were now aware of the German plans but allowed them to continue to proceed without intervening.
Learn more about the details of the event and the outcome at War History Online.
No doubt the sleeping giant has awakened and has become one of the most terrifying economic and political powerhouses in the world. As it flexes its muscles in the region, several governments are being affected immensely by the policies being implemented by the Chinese government. Here are some of the highlights from Foreign Policy's China Brief.
As robotics and artificial intelligence continue to surge forward, we might find these machines more ubiquitous than we could have possibly imagined when the first computers came out. But not all robots do specialized and highly technical tasks. Here are 13 retro robots that do things we humans normally do.
YouTuber Half-Asleep Chris was worried when his cat Ralph stayed out all night. Ralph wouldn't disclose where he went, so Chris outfitted Ralph (and his brother Tom) with a GPS tracker to find out. What resulted is a combination of cute cat video, investigation, and comedy, as Chris wryly tells the story of two very normal cats and their wacky shenanigans. There are even original songs! -via Digg
The fires engulf the Amazon rainforest, as the smoke rises up into the sky. Brazil’s indigenous Manoki watch helplessly as the flames tear their places apart.
“The fires did irreversible damage to the places we hunt and collect medicine. Huge trees that took centuries to grow have been cut and burned,” tribe member Giovani Tapura, 38, told VICE News from the Amazon’s smaller Irantxe Indigenous Territory, where the Manoki live.
As much as they fear losing their hunting grounds, Tapura and other Manoki also fear losing their very own language, which could mean the end for their cultural heritage.
It was already on the cusp of extinction, between population loss from Portuguese massacres and disease, and missionaries forbidding Manoki to speak their language. Of the 400 remaining Manoki left in Brazil, only eight speak the tribe’s native language, also called Manoki, according to Tapura.
[...]
They are far from alone with this problem: There are nearly 1 million indigenous Brazilians living in the Amazon, speaking roughly 200 languages, and almost half are endangered. The Amazon fires encroaching on many of their territories are heightening fears that if indigenous groups are driven out of the Amazon and forced into cities, their languages will go extinct.
JAPAN — Amidst one of Ginza’s many backstreets lies an L-shaped plot of land. This plot of land, which remained vacant for 3 years and hidden by the shadows of the tall buildings surrounding it, is only 2.7 meters wide (around 9 feet). Eventually, a developer stepped in.
The developer teamed up with So Teruuchi of SO&CO to create one of the district’s most skinniest buildings. Due to the nature of the property, the architect was faced with several constraints: not only did they have to leave enough room for scaffolding but they couldn’t fit any heavy machinery into the plot. So everything had to be done by hand.
But the result is a surprisingly minimal and elegant 4-story building. Unlike many people’s perception of a high-end and ritzy Ginza, the majority of backstreets are filled with drab, nondescript office buildings. This structure stands out like a gem. Titled “Ginza Tenant Building,” it was completed in early 2019.
Check out the interior of the building over at Spoon & Tamago.
We usually use Google Maps to view the places we’ve been to before. These places can be our childhood neighborhood, or any place that have been memorable to us and have been a part of us at some point in our lives. But Google Maps isn’t limited to that; it has many more uses we might not realize. Gizmodo lists 9 ways we can use the Google Maps Street View.
One of these uses is checking out tricky intersections:
This is one we do all the time—checking out the layout of tricky city intersections before a road trip, to be sure we know where we’re going. Even with the best mapping technology on your phone, it can be all too easy to get lost driving across multiple lanes and multiple intersections when you’re in a strange city, and even more so abroad. Check out the intersection on Street View first, and you at least know what’s coming your way.
You may have heard (and probably have seen) the viral memes about storming Nevada’s famed Area 51, which aim to discover the secrets that lurk inside the facility.
The US Air Force has already warned the general public that it will defend the area at all costs, and has discouraged people from storming the place.
For decades, the American imagination has run wild conjuring up all sorts of conspiracy theories about what is really going on at the site.
Is it a place where the US government is hiding UFOs and aliens? Or is it just a boring military base? And if it’s just a boring military base, why is the US government so obsessed with keeping everything about it a secret?
To get some answers to the questions about Area 51, without risking himself from getting shot at by the US military, Alex Ward of Vox called up Annie Jacobsen, author of the book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base.
To write the book, Jacobsen interviewed over 70 people who had first-hand knowledge of the secret facility, including 32 who lived and worked at Area 51. The result is basically the most comprehensive account of the history of Area 51 you can get without a super-high-level security clearance.
If anyone had answers for me, it was her. And boy did she. But she also left me with new mysteries I hadn’t even known to ask about.
As part of its McDelivery Night In promotion, fast food company McDonald’s enters the fast fashion world “with a line of free swag,'' which include Yoga pants covered with Big Macs and french fries, joggers striped with the Mcdonald’s color scheme, and a hoodie. Where’s the irony?
To get your hands on the limited-edition swag, place a delivery order from McDonald’s through Uber Eats on September 19 starting at 5 p.m. Order at least $10 worth of Big Macs, Filet O Fish, Quarter Pounders, or french fries (or whatever) from one of the many, many participating locations. (The map is here.)
Two boys have discovered something extremely fun- a pedal-activated trash can! I first saw this at reddit, where the comment thread has countless stories of dumb and/or dangerous things little boys did for fun, fondly remembered by the survivors. -via Bored Panda
Let's be clear: the semen is not manufactured at the facility; the bulls do that. This is where bull semen is cryogenically preserved until it is needed. A fire early Wednesday morning at Yarram Herd Services in Gippsland, Victoria, Australia, included an explosion of frozen semen supplies.
Country Fire Authority Gippsland commander Chris Loeschenkohl said the crew had to be wary of "projectiles" coming at them while they tackled the blaze.
"The liquid inside the cylinders was rapidly expanding and essentially the lids of the cryogenic cylinders were just popping off the top and projectiles were being thrown from the building," he told ABC.
Ten fire crews responded to the fire and extinguished the fire in about two hours. The facility lost around 100 cylinders of semen worth hundreds of dollars each, and some equipment. This will be a blow to local farmers who are approaching spring insemination season. However, it was a gift to the internet, as the jokes just wrote themselves. The Daily Dot has a rundown of them, which contains plenty of NSFW text.
