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Hong Kong’s Facebook pages disappear following arrests
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Those pages are now gone, along with thousands of anonymous posts sharing gossip, seeking advice, and protesting against government policies. In August, police in Hong Kong arrested two administrators of the Facebook page Civil Servant Secrets on suspicion of sedition, without specifying what content they found problematic. Shortly after the arrests, many other popular pages each with tens of thousands of followers shut down, as people feared becoming the next targets of Hong Kong’s crackdown on dissent.
Xiaomi purifier hack with NFC tags
It's been over two years since my last rant.
I can now happily say this NFC tag hack works. No need to hack your purifier like with their previous kit (I almost purchased the kit -- but eventually decided against it; was it worth the trouble?).
But these NFC tags are significantly easier to use. After ignoring the "your filter is at 0%" for the past ~6 months, it's back at 100% with this. Remember to dust off and clean it once in a while (but even if you don't, the air coming out is still cleaner).
The Rush of Feeling Stressed
When Kevin lost his job at a tech startup during a round of mass layoffs two months ago, he suddenly felt way less stressed. He had spent countless hours as a customer service agent for a health app that rarely worked, fielding angry call after angry call. Now that he was unemployed, the stress disappeared, which, for him, was a problem. He desperately missed the high of the anxiety he experienced from work. “I thought I was depressed, but I think I was just relaxed for the first time and didn’t like it,” the 29-year-old tells me. “All that stress sucked, but it honestly kept me going.”
Bakfiets
Wish this was an option in Singapore -- sadly, driving a bike here is needlessly dangerous. But likely a viable mode of transportation when we move back to Europe.
Shifting Baseline Syndrome
“Due to short life-spans and faulty memories, humans have a poor conception of how much of the natural world has been degraded by our actions, because our ‘baseline’ shifts with every generation, and sometimes even in an individual. In essence, what we see as pristine nature would be seen by our ancestors as hopelessly degraded, and what we see as degraded, our children will view as ‘natural’.”
Source: Dense Discovery
In the US, since the first European settlers arrived, 90% of virgin or ‘old growth’ forest has been destroyed. Today’s forests could be better described as ‘tree farms’ as they do not resemble the richly biodiverse forests that once were.
Gecko
Using Van Der Waals force, geckoes are able to stick to pretty much any surface, including slippery windows. Their feet have millions of tiny hairs.
Pretty damn cool -- never thought about it (*) until Nerdland talked about it.
(*) Singapore has a lot of geckoes. They are considered to be pests here... But I love them... :)
Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss
- A new Chatham House report highlights that the global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss.
- Biodiversity loss will continue to accelerate, unless we change the way we produce food. Further destruction of ecosystems and habitats will threaten our ability to sustain human populations.
- The new report calls for an urgent reform of food systems, suggesting three interdependent actions: changing global dietary patterns, protecting and setting aside land for nature, and farming in a more nature-friendly and biodiversity-supporting way.