I spent a long time in Mexico this past winter. My wife and I traveled to Play Del Carmen and stayed there for months while she completed some rigourous scuba instructor training. While she was in the water, which was most days, I stayed ashore to write, drink and nosh. Many a chilled beverage was had on beach front patios (I was there for the WiFi, honest.) I squeezed lemons and limes into my drinks. They were amazingly fresh--like nothing I'd ever had up north. Apparently, I dodged a number of bullets.
On a sunny day in June, Amber Prepchuk spent an afternoon by the lake making margaritas for a group of friends. The following morning she ended up with much more than she bargained for — a painful side effect entirely unrelated to tequila.
"I can handle pain, but I woke the next morning and I was in pain. I was crying my eyes out." she told CBC's Radio Active. "I was covered in little blisters."
Amber Prepchuk... learned the hard way the meaning of 'margarita burn,' when she juiced limes in the sun and the next morning woke up with blisters all over her hands.
Margarita burn. Never heard the tell of that. So, I looked it up. Oh my stars and garters.
Margarita burn, better known as margarita photodermatitis, is a condition which occurs in folks who are exposed to a photo-sensitizing agent (lime juice, for example,) and ultraviolet light (ye olde sunlight.) According to Wikipedia, those dinged by Margarita burn will notice the first symptoms of the ailment within 24 hours of exposure to the photo-sensitizing agent that they came into contact with and ultraviolet light. It'll feel like a tingle and then, a burn. The skin in the afflicted area turns dark and can, in extreme cases, can even turn black. You'll enjoy incredibly painful blisters of the sort one might see with a second or third-degree burn. I mean look at this shit:
The scars and discoloration from a bout of margarita burn can last for months or even years before they start to fade. All because you wanted a damn lime in your drink.
Trump and his fan base became upset when a man at a June 2018 rally held up a photo of a smiling Donald Trump with his old friend, sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump ordered the man to be removed, delivering a scorching witticism as the protester was being hauled away by security: "Was that a man or a woman? Because he needs a haircut more than I do"
A protester was kicked out of this Trump rally in June of last year for holding a photo of the president and Jeffrey Epstein pic.twitter.com/wXdpSrA816
Not really related to the article, but more a culture thing I have recently come across. I just ordered one of these cards (like an hour ago, funny timing) because in the NL almost everywhere (including the largest grocery store chain) is card only. The kicker? They don't take Visa, MC, or Amex... 🤔🤔🤔... Apparently only some 10% of adults in the NL even have a credit card! It's nice that they don't have the debt culture that we have in America, but obviously makes thing like renting a car difficult. (also having this issue today, I don't have a license, and she does not have a CC). Looking forward to my monopoly maestro card!
Fintech startup Bunq is announcing a handful of new features today, such as a way to track group expenses without creating a joint account, a web app and better Siri integration.
If you usually track vacation expenses and group expenses from your phone, chances are you’ve been using two different products — a mobile app like Splitwise to track group expenses with your friends, and a peer-to-peer payment app to settle up balances.
Bunq is essentially bundling these two features with Slice Groups for owners of the Bunq Travel Card. Given that the Bunq app already lists all your transactions, adding transactions to a group is easier than with your average group payment tracking app.
After adding other people to your Slice Group, each person can add expenses to the group. You get a list of your most recent Bunq transactions and you can add them to a group. You also can add manual transactions in case you paid for something using cash, for instance.
This is just a group accounting feature. When you add a transaction to a Slice Group, your money remains in your account. But you can see who has a positive balance and who has a negative balance.
When you settle up a group, people who owe money get a push notification. They can then tap on the notification and send money from their Bunq account to your friends’ Bunq accounts.
This feature will work particularly well for groups of people who all use the Bunq Travel Card. But it doesn’t fundamentally change how you manage your money with groups.
Bunq now has two tiers of users. Free users get a travel card with an account that they can top up. Paid users get a full-fledged bank account with banking information.
Multiple paid users can already create joint accounts with their roommates or partner. You can then associate your Bunq card with a joint account and spend money from that joint account directly.
So if you have a Bunq Travel Card, Slice Groups are for you. If you have a Bunq bank account, joint accounts are for you.
Revolut doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, either, as you can only split individual card transactions with other users. It could take a while to settle all transactions after a long vacation. Revolut also lets you create Group Vaults. Those are sub-accounts to put some money aside and invite other people to contribute. But only the admin can withdraw and spend money from those vaults.
N26 has promised Shared Spaces so that you can create sub-accounts and share them with other people. But the feature isn’t live yet.
Lydia’s take on group expenses works more like Bunq’s joint accounts. You can create sub-accounts and share those accounts with other people. Everyone can then top up that account and attach a payment method, such as a payment card or a virtual card in Apple Pay or Google Pay. You also can move expenses from one sub-account to another. When you’re back from vacation, you can associate your card with your personal Lydia account again.
In addition to Slice Groups, Bunq is launching a web interface to access your bank account. It works a bit like WhatsApp’s web app. You scan a QR code with your phone and you can then control the mobile app from a desktop web browser.
Bunq should also work better with Siri. You can now send money using your voice or change card settings. Finally, the startup has also made improvements to its business accounts with a few new features. For instance, you can now automatically put money aside to pay back VAT later down the road.
Only in Florida. "caused an A-10C Thunderbolt II to accidentally release three bombs"
According to the FAA, over 14,000 bird strikes happen every year at US airports. Most of the time they’re inconsequential, occasionally they can cause a lot of damage, but things could have been especially catastrophic on Monday when a bird strike caused an A-10C Thunderbolt II to accidentally release three bombs over…
This is floating on the web — I don’t know who came up with it:
The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the center is the South End. This is not to be confused with South Boston, which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South End is East Boston, and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
“We say the cows laid out Boston,” wrote Emerson. “Well, there are worse surveyors.”
As many of you know my girlfriend is Dutch. Wish us luck.
The Netherlands haven’t exactly been the free-flowing, highlight-making, net-assaulting bunch at this World Cup that their talent and our expectations would’ve predicted, though I’m sure the Dutch and their endearingly rabid fans aren’t too bothered by that. Not after today, when the Oranje beat Sweden and won…
The United States Women’s National Team—a squad headed to the World Cup Final this weekend—has spent the duration of the tournament kicking ass and having fun. England—a squad not headed to the World Cup Final—have spent the last week of the tournament wringing their hands over the USWNT’s habit of scoring cool goals,…
Cori “Coco” Gauff is still a teenager, but her legend precedes her. The first story I ever heard involving the American prodigy was about her serving incomprehensible heat while she was barely a teenager. Soon enough there were official figures to back that up. Last year at the Wimbledon junior tournament, Gauff, 14,…
The European Union is making a major safety push to add fake noises to electric vehicles, but some may sound goofier than others and that’s causing disagreement in the UK.
In this delightful crowd-pleaser shown at a 1998 Microsoft conference, right around the kickoff of the federal antitrust case against the company, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer take on the characters of Doug and Steve Butabi. Too bad they couldn't get Steve Jobs to play Richard Grieco.
On Tuesday, a clip went viral of U.S. Women’s National Team star forward Megan Rapinoe informing a reporter that she would not be “going to the fucking White House,” should the USWNT win the World Cup. You knew right then and there that somehow, eventually, we would get a Tweet.
Prosthetic limbs are getting better, but not as quickly as you’d think. They’re not as smart as our real limbs, which (directed by the brain) do things like automatically stretch out to catch ourselves when we fall. This particular “stumble reflex” was the subject of an interesting study at Vanderbilt that required its subjects to fall down… a lot.
The problem the team is aiming to help alleviate is simply that users of prosthetic limbs fall, as you might guess, more than most, and when they do fall, it can be very difficult to recover, because an artificial leg — especially for above-the-knee amputations — doesn’t react the same way a natural leg would.
The idea, explained lead researcher and mechanical engineering Professor Michael Goldfarb, is to determine what exactly goes into a stumble response and how to recreate that artificially.
“An individual who stumbles will perform different actions depending on various factors, not all of which are well known. The response changes, because the strategy that is most likely to prevent a fall is highly dependent on the ‘initial conditions’ at the time of stumble,” he told TechCrunch in an email. “We are hoping to construct a model of which factors determine the nature of the stumble response, so when a stumble occurs, we can use the various sensors on a robotic prosthetic leg to artificially reconstruct the reflex in order to provide a response that is effective and consistent with the biological reflex loop.”
The experimental setup looked like this. Subjects were put on a treadmill and told to walk forward normally; a special pair of goggles prevented them from looking down, arrows on a display kept them going straight, and a simple mental task (count backwards by sevens) kept their brain occupied.
Meanwhile an “obstacle delivery apparatus” bode its time, waiting for the best opportunity to slip a literal stumbling block onto the treadmill for the person to trip over.
When this happened, the person inevitably stumbled, though a harness prevented them from actually falling and hurting themselves. But as they stumbled, their movements were captured minutely by a motion capture rig.
After 196 stumbling blocks and 190 stumbles, the researchers had collected a great deal of data on how exactly people move to recover from a stumble. Where do their knees go relative to their ankles? How do they angle their feet? How much force is taken up by the other foot?
Exactly how this data would be integrated with a prosthesis is highly dependent on the nature of the artificial limb and the conditions of the person using it. But having this data, and perhaps feeding it to a machine learning model, will help expose patterns that can be used to inform emergency prosthetic movements.
It could also be used for robotics: “The model could be used directly to program reflexes in a biped,” said Goldfarb. Those human-like motions we see robots undertaking could be even more human when directly based on the original. There’s no rush there — they might be a little too human already.
When the United States Women’s National Team takes the field for their World Cup knockout-round game against Spain today, they will try to forget everything else: their personal drama, their fears, their ambitions. Oh, and the gender discrimination lawsuit they filed against U.S. Soccer, the sport’s governing body.…
by Prachi Gupta on Jezebel, shared by Barry Petchesky to Deadspin
Carrying an 8-pound being inside your body during the entirety of waking hoursis a super-human feat, probably as physically draining as running 5,000 marathons over a terrain of hot coals and quick sand. Now research more or less backs this up: A new study published in Science Advances found, per Quartz, that the…
Futebol, Fußball, football, soccer ... No matter where you’re from, it’s one of the most popular sports all over the world. Tomorrow, the FIFA Women's World Cup France 2019™ will kick off, and here’s how Google can help you keep up with the tournament and your favorite teams.
Be in the know with Search and the Assistant
If you’re busy during a match, Search can help you find the information you need including stats, news, and lineups. If you search for any match, you’ll see a timeline with photos, commentary and every important play as it happens. You can also subscribe to receive notifications and updates about your favorite team by looking it up on the Google Search app and tapping “Follow.”
You’ll also be able to track up to three real-time game scores right on your Android phone screen. Search for the match you’re looking for, then tap and drag to pin the match anywhere on your screen. Once the matches are over, click the pinned score to go back the game summary on Google Search and you will find a video with highlights and exciting plays immediately after every game.
As always, the Google Assistant is here to help with questions like, “Hey Google, when does France play next in the Women's World Cup?” or ”Ok Google, show me the Women's World Cup standings.” And if your country is competing, you’ll see custom Google Doodles by local artists from the participating countries. All Google Doodles will all be available as they are unveiled at google.com/doodles.
Women’s World Cup Doodles from around the world.
See more on YouTube
FIFA, alongside a number of their FIFA World Cup broadcast partners, will upload comprehensive highlights to every game on their YouTube channels, as well as top FIFA World Cup moments and behind-the-scenes content. Broadcasters include the BBC in the UK, ARD and ZDF in Germany, J SPORTS in Japan, Fox Sports and Telemundo in the U.S. and beIN in the Middle East, North Africa and selected Asian territories.
Don’t miss a moment with Google News
Keep your eye on the ball as the action happens with a dedicated FIFA Women’s World Cup Google News interactive tracker for Android. Quickly find scores, upcoming matches and watch game highlights. From the group stage to the final showdown, explore the tournament through full coverage and analysis of your favorite teams and players.
Contribute to the history of women in soccer
It was not long ago when women were actually prohibited from playing in countries such as Brazil, England, France and Germany. To rediscover the history of women in soccer, Google Arts & Culture is working with the Football Museum in Brazil to create a living digital archive of the years when women were banned. Everyone is invited to contribute with photos, articles from local newspapers, audio and video files about women's soccer from their personal collections. Together we can fill the historical gaps and tell the history of women in soccer.
Grab your jersey and claim your spot on the couch—the games start tomorrow!
If you frequent the New York City subway’s 4, 5, 6 line, you’ve probably seen the new terminals at a variety of stations like Union Square and Grand Central. Located between turnstiles, they’ve all been sporting a curious “Test Phase/Coming Soon” screen. That finally changes this week.
Google already announced its mobile pay solution would be arriving this week, and now its chief competitor is getting in on the action. Apple Pay is hitting select stations this Friday, May 31. When that kicks in, riders will be able to swipe their iPhone or Apple Watch to catch a ride.
The kiosks are actually active, at present, but using them requires a software update — iOS 12.3 and watchOS 5.2.1, respectively. Then a debit or credit card needs to be associated with Express Transit in Apple Wallet, using Face or Touch ID. Once installed, it should work on the iPhone 6s and SE or later, along with the Apple Watch Series 1, 2 and 3, using NFC to get you in.
The system works as you’d expect. Hold the phone or watch up to the display and it beeps you in with a big “Go” on the screen, and a “Done” registering on the device. As long as your credit card is up to date, you should be good to go. How quickly this all works when thousands of New Yorkers are all using the system is another question entirely, of course — there tends to be a kind of learning curve with these sorts of things. And no doubt there will be a bit of a logjam at the turnstiles before the novelty of the system wears off.
Of course, that’s why this is still a kind of test period. At present, the system will be limited to the 4, 5, 6 line between Grand Central-42 Street in Manhattan and Atlantic Ave-Barclays Center in Brooklyn (16 stations in all), along with Staten Island buses. In the case of the 4, 5, 6, that’s almost certainly the most heavily trafficked stations on the most heavily trafficked subway line, so this will be an interesting sort of trial by fire.
It’s also worth noting that the system is currently limited to single-ride passes. That means those who buy daily, weekly or monthly passes (which applies to many New Yorkers, myself included) won’t be able to use the system in that capacity. More fare options are coming by late 2020, by which time the MTA expects to have rolled out Apple on all subway lines and buses, so riders will never have to worry about losing that Metro Card again.
Jingoistic nationalism and promoting fossil fuels go hand in hand for the Trump administration. But the Department of Energy took that connection to a new level on Tuesday with a press release touting natural gas as “freedom gas” full of—I feel stupid even typing this—“molecules of U.S. freedom.” Which I guess means…
01/19/2019 UPDATE: When Gavin Taylor showed these algorithms to his students at the United States Naval Academy, they asked whether they themselves could dance for extra credit. He said yes. So here are the U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen dancing the InsertionSort algorithm:
Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison typed more than 1,700 works using a single finger of each hand. In 1999 Mike Keith set out to learn which words would be easiest for him to type. “Easy” means that successive letters are typed by alternate hands and that the hands travel as little as possible. (See the article for some other technicalities.)
Here are the easiest words of 4 to 13 letters; the score in parenthesis is the total linear distance traveled by the fingers, normalized by dividing by the length of the word (lower is better):
Just tried this but wish I would not have told my subject the experiment before hand. Interesting!
Get three empty matchboxes and put a weight in one of them. Lift the weighted box on its own, then put it down and lift all three boxes together. In tests by Isabel Won and her colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, 90 per cent of subjects who tried this said that the weighted box lifted on its own felt heavier than the three boxes lifted together.
“[T]he experience was so striking that subjects often spontaneously and astoundedly commented on its impossibility to the experimenter, and even requested to lift the objects again after the experiment was over,” the authors report. “Anecdotally, those subjects reported that the illusion persisted even during these repeated lifts, including when subjects placed all three boxes on their palm and then suddenly removed the two lighter boxes — distilling the phenomenon into a single impossible ‘moment’ wherein removing weight caused the sensation of adding weight.”
“We suggest that the space of impossible experiences is larger than has been appreciated, extending into a new sense modality. … Impossibility can not only be seen, but also felt.” See the paper for details.
The owners of the Williamstown, Kentucky creationist theme park Ark Encounter, home to a 510 foot long model of the biblical Noah's Ark, are suing their insurance carriers for not covering $1 million in damages caused by heavy rain. From Lex18:
According to the suit, heavy rains caused a landslide and some structural support damage near the Ark exhibit.
“Subsequent to heavy rains, a significant landslide occurred along portions of the slope, which eliminated the structural support for the roadway, caused significant damage to the road surface itself and the incorporated improvements, and rendered portions of the road unsafe and unfit for use,” reads the suit...
Initially, the suit alleges, the defendants cited faulty craftsmanship as the reason for the property damage and stated they were not liable. After an appeal, they conceded that only a small amount was covered by the policy.
The Midwest is hilarious. Also a question, how many eggs a week do you eat? (not in baked goods). I routinely have 2 eggs for breakfast for long stretches at a time and it seems every few months the flip gets switched on if eggs are good or bad for you. (10 is far too many for breakfast)
Ten eggs is a gargantuan breakfast order. Who would order 10 eggs, fried, sunny-side up, with no other items save perhaps a small stack of toast? Well, according to this morning’s episode of Fox & Friends... multiple people would. OR WOULD THEY??
Sounds weird, tastes great.
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When this happened, the person inevitably stumbled, though a harness prevented them from actually falling and hurting themselves. But as they stumbled, their movements were captured minutely by a motion capture rig.
Nope, that is not a typo.
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