Albener Pessoa

Never worry about where to put your banana again! #9gag

This is the most comfortable sleeping position ever! #9gag

That facial expression… #9gag

Fly you fools! #9gag @awwclub

More good management.

Here’s the previous installment.

This $3,500 hot tub is a plastic bowl with a metal tube sticking out of the side that functions as a heat exchanger.

The good news is that it’s safe for children, if you consider an open flame three feet away from a child to be safe.

 

leading-blind-bats:

thedarklordsay10:

priestlyandtish:

drunkenspeecheson-sobriety:

reblogging again because it’s absolutely incredible

important as fuck

can i put this on my refrigerator

I’m tapping this inside my locker and my room and looking at it everyday, this needs to be seen.

Archive

I need a hug. #9gag

Wise words. #9gag

A stable relationship. #9gag

Benders, benders everywhere. #9gag

My life since I discovered the internet. #9gag

Archive

Oooh Japan, you never fail to amuse me… #9gag

Okay I’m pretty sure McDonalds Coke is way different from normally bottled Coke. Next time you have it, close your eyes and think of apple pie, and taste the interesting resemblance. Or am I crazy. Comments here.

Archive

New submitter structural_biologist writes: Genes normally have a 50-50 chance of being passed from parent to offspring, but scientists may have figured out a way to create genes that show up in offspring with a much higher frequency. "One type of gene drive influences inheritance by copying itself onto chromosomes that previously lacked it. When an organism inherits such a gene drive from only one parent, it makes a cut in the chromosome from the other parent, forcing the cell to copy the inheritance-biasing gene drive—and any adjacent genes—when it repairs the damage." When introduced into the wild, organisms containing gene drives would breed with the population, quickly spreading the modified genes throughout the ecosystem. While the technology could help prevent the spread of malaria and manage invasive species, many scientists worry about the wide-ranging effects of such a technology and are calling for its regulation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The working paper (pdf) describes it in this way:

Filecoin is a distributed electronic currency similar to Bitcoin. Unlike Bitcoin’s computation-only proof-of-work, Filecoin’s proof-of-work function includes a proof-of-retrievability component, which requires nodes to prove they store a particular file. The Filecoin network forms an entirely distributed file storage system, whose nodes are incentivized to store as much of the entire network’s data as they can. The currency is awarded for storing files, and is transferred in transactions, as in Bitcoin. Files are added to the network by spending currency. This produces strong monetary incentives for individuals to join and work for the network. In the course of ordinary operation of the Filecoin network, nodes contribute useful work in the form of storage and distribution of valuable data.

The mother site is here.  File under…arbitrage.

For the pointer I thank J.

To enlist in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), potential recruits have to take tests. To make sure their sons and daughters pass, families pay up. At one recruitment office in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangxi, this year’s going rate, depending on your guanxi, or connections, is as much as 99,000 yuan ($16,000), says Wang, a recruitment officer in the province who asked that his full name not be used because he isn’t authorized to speak publicly. Limited openings, plus a high failure rate on the fitness exam, push parents to buy spots for their children during the annual enlistment drive that runs through September. Success offers a stable job and, for some, an escape from rural poverty.

The price varies, Wang says. His old army friends “asked me what the current price tag is, and I said ‘around 80,000 to 90,000 yuan for you guys.’ If your guanxi was really strong, it’d cost you around 50,000 to 60,000 yuan; if it was just so-so, you would have to spend 100,000 yuan at least.”

So how formidable a fighting force are they?  There is more here.

Dan Ariely and co-authors have an interesting new paper looking at moral behavior, specifially cheating, in people who grew up in either East or West Germany.

From 1961 to 1989, the Berlin Wall divided one nation into two distinct political regimes. We
exploited this natural experiment to investigate whether the socio-political context impacts
individual honesty. Using an abstract die-rolling task, we found evidence that East Germans
who were exposed to socialism cheat more than West Germans who were exposed to
capitalism. We also found that cheating was more likely to occur under circumstances of
plausible deniability.

…If socialism indeed promotes individual dishonesty, the specific features of this socio-political
system that lead to this outcome remain to be determined. The East German socialist regime
differed from the West German capitalist regime in several important ways. First, the system
did not reward work based to merit, and made it difficult to accumulate wealth or pass
anything on to one’s family. This may have resulted in a lack of meaning leading to
demoralization (Ariely et al., 2008), and perhaps less concern for upholding standards of
honesty. Furthermore, while the government claimed to exist in service of the people, it failed
to provide functional public systems or economic security. Observing this moral hypocrisy in government may have eroded the value citizens placed on honesty. Finally, and perhaps most
straightforwardly, the political and economic system pressured people to work around official
laws and cheat to game the system. Over time, individuals may come to normalize these types
of behaviors. Given these distinct possible influences, further research will be needed to
understand which aspects of socialism have the strongest or most lasting impacts on morality.

It’s interesting that Ariely et al. try to explain cheating as a result of socialism. My own approach would look more to the virtue ethics of capitalism and Montesquieu who famously noted that

Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule, that wherever we find agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable manners.

See Al-Ubaydli et al. for a market priming experiment and especially McCloskey on The Bourgeoise Virtues for more work consistent with this theme.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Fist kiss is always awkward… #9gag

Richard Stevens of Diesel Sweeties has created an amusing comic that features the kinds of posts that are unlikely to be made on social media. The one featuring Thor is particularly timely.

image via The Nib on Medium

Vejam que história!

Há alguns meses, um norte-americano chamado Jeremiah estava brincando com sua filhinha de 7 anos, Emily, quando ela lhe perguntou:

– Papai, posso ser uma princesa de verdade?

E ele, diferentemente de 99,99999% dos pais, respondeu:

– Claro, filha! Por que não?

Ou melhor, talvez 99,99999% dos pais realmente respondam isso, mas depois expliquem à criança que, bem, o mundo não é um conto de fadas, é difícil ser uma princesa de verdade, talvez nem seja um cargo dos mais legais, e que ela poderia continuar sendo sua princesa, ou a princesa de todas as brincadeiras dali por diante.

Mas Jeremiah foi além. Ele buscou na internet para saber se existia algum território ainda sem dono no mundo. E encontrou um dos poucos restantes: um pedaço de deserto improdutivo, pequeno e montanhoso, entre o Egito e o Sudão, chamado Bir Tawill. A região, de pouco mais de 2.000 km², não é reivindicada por nenhum dos dois países que lhe fazem fronteira. CLIQUE AQUI para ver onde Judas perdeu uma de suas botas.

Depois de descobrir isso, Jeremiah foi além de novo: viajou até aquele fim do mundo, com a permissão do governo egípcio, e cravou uma bandeira no local — bandeira desenhada por sua “princesa” junto com seus outros dois filhos.

Clique para exibir o slide.

E agora ele quer seriamente reclamar aquele pedaço de terra como seu reino, se autoproclamar rei daquele território sem moradores e, consequentemente, transformar Emily em uma princesa. Para isso, precisa convencer tanto o Egito como o Sudão e, a bem da verdade, a ONU e o resto do mundo. Mas ele promete que fará isso, porque “esta nação é reivindicada por amor”. E Emily já ganhou até uma coroa de presente.

Enquanto eu lia esta incrível história, no jornal “Bristol Herald Courier“, eu me peguei pensando dois pensamentos totalmente inversos e simultâneos:

1) Que fofo! Fazendo de tudo para agradar à filhinha! Levando a sério promessas feitas a uma criança! Alimentando um sonho infantil! Mostrando que nada é impossível! E que legal que exista um pedaço de terra ainda abandonado neste mundão de deus! Que máximo que deve ser começar um mundo todo do zero, com as próprias leis e ordens, na tentativa de que, desta vez, algo dê certo!

2) Que lunático! Quer ser rei de um pedaço de deserto que ninguém quer só para atender aos caprichos da filha! Ela nunca vai aprender que nem tudo é possível nesta vida! Vai se tornar uma mulher mimada, que não aceita ouvir um não! Ou será que ele é que é um megalomaníaco, que tem o sonho secreto de governar o mundo, ao estilo Pinky e Cérebro? Afinal, ele chegou a concorrer a uma vaga no Congresso dos Estados Unidos em 2012 — e, sem surpresa, perdeu. Nesse caso, seria até uma maldade com a pobre Emily!

Como não consegui me decidir entre as duas linhas de raciocínio opostas, preferi a terceira via, do humor, e me diverti bastante com o vídeo feito pelo próprio jornal de Virgínia, EUA.

CLIQUE AQUI para assistir ao vídeo (infelizmente, sem legenda) e ler a reportagem original, publicada em 10 de julho e assinada por Allie Robinson Gibson.

Depois me diga: com qual das duas linhas de raciocínio você concorda mais? :D

 

Leia outros posts sobre sonhos realizados (ou não):

• O índio que virou médico
• O garoto que construiu um fliperama de papelão
• A casa dos meus sonhos
• Você ainda se lembra de como sonhar?

Arquivado em:Crônicas e Contos, Noticiário Tagged: Allie Robinson Gibson, Bir Tawil, Bristol Herald Courier, conto de fadas, crianças, deserto, Egito, Emily, Estados Unidos, fé, fim do mundo, impossível, Jeremiah Heaton, princesa, reinado, reino, Sonho, Sonhos, Sudão, território sem dono, Virginia