Stock Market

https://tickertape.tdameritrade.com/trading/trading-order-types-16082

# surprising things

 lintamande03/04/2019
I saw a cute video on my newsfeed about a gorilla bonding with her adoptive mom
her biological mom wasn't interested and abandoned her.

I was curious about this phenomenon so I Googled it, and - ugh many mammals abandon their babies whenever it's not actually a good time for them to have a baby. This is not surprising, and even mammals that don't do that will often abandon a sick or weak one. That's very reasonable, it's exactly what you'd expect from evolution. The pop coverage of this is really obnoxious. "Some mothers, through no lack of love, will reject or abandon their offspring shortly after birth.", the first Google result tells me.

Why did you feel the need to say 'through no lack of love'? I in fact feel like, yes, there is relevantly a lack of love.
________________________________________

Drowning does not look like a wild display. Passive downing usually is how it happens. A drowning person will usually grab you and pull you under, so it’s best to either throw something to them or approach from behind.
________________________________________
TowerNumberNine01/31/2019
Today I couldn’t find my electric razor, so ended up using an old electric razor my grandfather had had in the 1950s or 60s (designed in ‘51 I think but not sure when he bought it)

I was surprised to find that it was not only on par with modern electric razors but in some aspects actually superior. I knew the advertisements for modern razors were overblown, but I didn’t know they were that overblown!
________________________________________

It's just really wild to me that cockroaches have 10x the neurons of a lobster:

lobsters: 100,000
ant: 250,000
fruit fly: 250,000
honey bee: 960,000
cockroach: 1,000,000
Throne3d03/28/2019
Other observations: it makes sense to me that honey bees would have lots more neurons than ants, since they're, uh, "social" (I don't know much about details, this is a very layman perspective), but I'm surprised about cockroaches being about the same amount
also apparently African elephants have 257bn neurons, whereas humans only have 86bn (across the whole central nervous system. across just the cerebral cortex, African elephants have 5.6bn, and humans 16bn, so this is probably just a size thing)
also, "long-finned pilot whales" (a type of oceanic dolphin) actually have more cerebral cortex neurons than humans, at 37.2bn
I mean, yeah, neuronal numbers are proxies for complexity of structure
________________________________________

https://play.curio.io/?trackId=1peMsf7TuoJXViJojp1S8j&s=null&c=null#/get-started

Just off the blurb, I want to say that my reluctance to talk about bird love is rooted in a lack of knowledge of bird love, and I suspect this is true of others as well. Misgivings about human love don't come into it.
________________________________________

Lactose tolerance is actually rare even among humans, and is mostly seen in humans who are descendants of nomadic milk-animal-rearing populations:
https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-10-36
________________________________________

This is obvious in retrospect but I'm just reading about it and I'm fascinated
Plants can detect the presence of other place around them based on an abundance of lower frequency light!

This is possible because photosynthetic pigments absorb shorter wavelengths in the visible spectrum, creating local spectral changes with higher proportion of longer wavelength far-red (FR) light relative to red (R) light or other shorter-wavelength light. Phytochrome photochemistry is finely tuned to the detection of R:FR-ratio light. Phytochrome exists in two isomeric forms, an inactive R light-absorbing form, Pr, and an active FR light-absorbing form, Pfr. Exposure to red light photo-converts a high proportion of Pr to the active Pfr form, which promotes “photomorphogenic” development. Far-red light does the reverse, photo-converting Pfr to inactive Pr, with a consequential shift in development toward the “skotomorphogenic” state (Fig. 1). Therefore, the proportion of active phytochrome (Pfr/Ptot) strongly correlates with the perceived R:FR-ratio light. This provides a powerful mechanism to both detect and respond to neighboring plants that compete for resources. Plants grown in FR light-rich conditions that simulate dense vegetation patches, are typically more elongated with increased apical dominance, paler, and are early flowering, characteristics that are collectively referred to as the “shade avoidance” syndrome.
This is obvious in retrospect but this is so cool.
________________________________________
Crow06/16/2019
US banks typically have a policy of "If someone demands money give it to them" because the potential of a bank robber becoming violent and the bank thus losing customers is worse than handing over a relatively small sum of money (a few thousand dollars) that's insured anyway.

The FBI claims that 54% of bank robbers are identified, and that the per-job haul averages around $7000. This suggests that the typical bank robber has a pretty short career. https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/bank-crime-statistics-2011/bank-crime-statistics-2011
________________________________________

"The World Health Organization says that globally, more than one in four deaths of children under 5 are related to air pollution." https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/7/16/20694781/volkswagen-emissions-cheating-pollution-child-health
________________________________________

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Community
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_stirpiculture
Julia Wise has written a bit about them
https://thewholesky.wordpress.com/2018/02/26/notes-on-oneida-community/
________________________________________

"The cost of invasive species’ impact and control efforts is an estimated five percent of the world’s annual economy." https://www.geneticbiocontrol.org/

hmm, some famous 2005 paper (Pimental et al) seems to think that damages caused by invasive species in the US cost $120 billion per year

US GDP - is GDP approximately the right thing? - was 13 trillion in 2005
So that's... 1%? And the US isn't terribly agricultural. But wait, maybe measuring by damages is bullshit(edited)
I don't money
also that's not The Globe

The US is very agricultural - farming's about 1% of GDP directly and about 5% of GDP if you account for related industries; we're the largest producer of corn, sorghum, soybeans, milk, and a few other things in the world, the second largest producer of eggs, the third largest producer of cotton, and of wool, and the single largest exporter of agricultural goods overall.
________________________________________

The impression I get is that we don't form close friendships the way we used to; something something atomic individualism
________________________________________

Today I learned: in 1849, a cholera epidemic killed about 1% of the American population. In big cities, it was higher. 3% of New Yorkers died. Chicago and Cincinnati were about 5%. The worst hit city was St. Louis, where 10% of people died. Peter Turchin claims 10% of the US population died, and his source The Encyclopedia Of Plague And Pestilence does mention that number, but nobody else says anything like this and my guess is that it is a typo for 1%. How do you just forget something like that? It boggles the mind.

Probably people forgot about that because the Civil War was 10 years afterward?
________________________________________

Tl;Dr, you can work out the frequency a submarine will make just based on an image of its propellers, and so in any photographs of them in dry dock the propellers will be covered
Not surprising in retrospect but definitely a "huh" moment
________________________________________

In 1931, Winston Churchill predicted the development of clean meat.
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/fifty-years-hence/

A very prescient speech in general! He thought instant comms would make face-to-face contact on the job more obsolete than it actually did, and totally failed to predict that we would realize being super racist is not good, but the rest is really good.
________________________________________

John Hinckley Jr, the man who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan is currently both alive and free; he was released from a mental institution in 2016 after he was ruled to have recovered to the point where he no longer poses a threat to himself or others.
________________________________________

In 2014, 4% of the US was (no meat) vegetarian. “Health” vs “ethical” vegetarian distinction usually means that people who identify strongly in one category or the other feel more “grounded” in their identity as a vegetarian (Fox, Ward 2008). Having a label on the type of vegetarian they consider themselves allows them to have a more concrete definition of their self.
________________________________________

The heart of a blue whale can weigh as much as a car.

pinterest.com/adamaero/fun-facts/

Kidney Donation Study

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/nep.12426

Appear the results are useless/meaningless.

• spouse donor = SD or to someone other than the spouse:
• non-spouse donor = ND

Of the 121 surveys sent to patients who donated a kidney, ten attrition, and the following completed the survey:

• 31 of 77 NDs
• 11 of 34 SDs

Only 41 surveys were completed. Is donating a kidney to a friend bad for your marriage? 

I guess I just don't think that the health of a relationship can be properly gauged with a survey...

I wonder if studies can be done with a combination of case studies, and another method. 

---

Fast facts

Medical specialty of nephrology ~ a nphrologist

Piano

insight on practicing

Practice is unwanted. But that's what it takes.
It doesn't take long, an hour or even two, before it gets better. Or by then, you will move on to better.
Either way, better!

Completely Unknown (2016) is a good movie ~ motivational for piano

Leadership Podcasts

iTunes

• The Look & Sound of Leadership
• Ignite Leadership (2008)

Jefferson Bible

28-177
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth

wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible

Classical Ethics

People to people relationships need a Kantian orientation, which has a relational component.  For instance, the Golden Rule and telling the truth and keeping promises.  However, in the context of government and large organizations you need some utilitarian considerations added to the mix.

~ quora.com

"The primary similarity between Kant’s ethics and utilitarianism is that there is an objective Good which can be sought." ~ quora.com