> Videos on TikTok supporting a decades-old letter by Osama bin Laden criticizing the United States and its support of Israel surged in popularity this week

> The letter, titled “Letter to America,” was published a year after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that were orchestrated by Bin Laden

> By midday, as TikTok sought to block the content, searches on the site for “osama bin laden,” “bin laden letter” and “osama letter” and the hashtag #lettertoamerica yielded no results

Cancel culture comes for al-Qaeda.

> For some, a big part of bin Laden’s justification—American support for Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in what the U.N. deems a violation of international law—resonates with what’s going on now in the Middle East, leading them to renew calls for a Gaza ceasefire.

> If I could time-travel, I’d visit the Netherlands back when everyone wore hand carved footwear… wooden shoe?

My friend’s bakery burned down last night, so now his business is toast.

Etymology of the day: to negotiate - from nec (“not”) + otium (“leisure, ease, inactivity”).

Word of the morn: Fermi bubble -- “Fermi” bubbles are bursting from our galaxy. Their origins remain a mystery

OK

This question is absolutely infuriating me

This seems extremely straightforward, but I have no clue what the answer is

And it's annoying me

I also hear the phrase as "grey carry sickness"

But that doesn't make any sense

I've done a bunch of research around the circumstances of the clip and nothing has shed any light on it

It's from testimony by Patricia ("Patti") Monahan in the highly-televised murder trial of Betty Broderick

Anyone have any ideas?

> A paraplegic former member of the Canadian military shocked MPs on Thursday by testifying that the Department of Veterans Affairs offered her, in writing, the opportunity for a medically assisted death. She said she had been fighting for a home wheelchair ramp for five years and expressed her concerns about the assisted dying offer in a recent letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

cbc.ca/news/politics/…

Word of the day: to spot (someone, for someone) - I can’t do a back handspring unless somebody spots me.

@alphabet That's basically the same as me!

Montaigne quote of the day: Je vouldray premièrement bien sçavoir ma langue et celle de mes voisins, où iay plus ordinairement commerce. C'est un bel et grand adgencement sans doubte que le grec et le latin, mais on l'achepte trop cher. 1580.

Frank Zappa quote of the day: If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

French senator in custody of the day: Joël Guerriau. Joel Guerriau, a centrist senator from western France, was being held for "administering to a person without their knowledge a substance likely to diminish their judgement or self-control to commit a rape or sexual assault," prosecutors said on Thursday. While the prosecutors named the victim only as "a woman, who filed a complaint", several sources familiar with the case told AFP she was an MP.

ecr.co.za/news/news/…

Facepalm

Paume faciale

> Tests revealed that she had ecstasy in her system, investigators added, prompting her to file a criminal complaint.

Any person can commit a crime. One can take some prevention steps like self-educating, but the brain is a very complicated machine, you can't plug all the gaps.

@Araucaria-Him And in a mere 11 months. Granted, my answers are less detailed explanations of phonetic phenomena and more definitions of the word snort. In my earlier answers I had a tendency to Dunning-Kruger myself but I think I'm slowly getting better (though your corrections remind me that I still have much to learn and should be less hasty).

@alphabet I have no idea. I even asked ChatGPT:

Nothing I said extra about the courtroom scene, or previous questions by the the lawyer seemed to help.

The question seems really out of place.

But that exhausts my puzzle solving energy for the day.

From now on its all system I fast thinking reactions.

Or stories.

Last night, coming home in the dark, I interrupted a raccoon in our trash bin. As we drove up, the raccoon was popping out of the bin.

If I were inside a trash bin, feasting on the humans' leftovers and past sale-by-date meats, and some bright headlights and slamming car doors interrupted, yeah I'd be somewhat miffed.

As a human, my advice would be to hunker down in the bin until the humans have gone inside... they would have -no- idea.

From the look of that raccoon, he is -not- underfed.

Chunk town

Chunk city

Chunkalicious

Raccoon-a-donk-donk

Big boi wash bear

Chow down now, snack on your face afterwards

@Mitch At least you're not one of those humans who tries to "secure" their trash cans closed. They are not allies.

I want to share a difficult time I'm going through this month. I ordered a GPU from a well known ecommerce site in India worth $250. It got delivered but seal was already broken and invoice was invalid so the GPU brand confirmed I won't get any warranty support. The product is working though. However, I feel scammed. The website claims to protect customers and they told me that even if it's non returnable, they will help if you face such issues.

So far they've reigstered my complain but doesn't look like want to solve invoice issue. The only other way is to take help of law. But it's India. It will consume far more energy, money and lawyers. Which I'm really able to do it.

@Mitch Interesting fact: raccoons fatten up substantially during the fall, and can lose up to half their body weight over the winter.

So stop the body shaming.

I feel so bad and depressed now. Also I keep blaming myself why I bought it from that site because they have a history of bad consumer support. I don't know how I will recover from this kind of pain.

If it were Amazon, they would solve it pretty easily.

Now I can't stop blaming myself and feeling bad about it.

(Which I'm really not* able to do it.)

@Vikas At least it's working. I would blame the scammers.

Amazon (in the US) has had a real problem with people selling counterfeit goods. Fortunately you can return them...but you might not identify a counterfeit easily.

I wish I were in a country like USA. I'm sure I could report such issues easily and get a fair justice.

This is the only thing I hate about India. We claim to have so much, but we don't have the quality or facts.

Amazon is pretty good at that stuff. A while back I ordered something from Amazon and never got the package; I don't know if it was lost in transit or stolen after delivery. I told them and they just...refunded me the entire cost, without asking questions, which took me by surprise.

@alphabet Yeah I respect Amazon so much. I've also experienced such things and they never made me feel bad about it.

@Vikas Have things been getting better or worse recently?

I think they will keep claiming things are getting better. Because election is coming.

Modi is daily claimining many things. Like he is doing better things for farmers.

@alphabet As long as the mess stays inside the bin, have at it.

@alphabet shaming shmshmaming I worry about their cardiovascular health.

@alphabet Don't even talk about having Dunning-Kruger in your earlier answers lol

mornin, campers

Hi pal.

today's camp rules review: there is no P in POOL. please keep it that way

Is there any T in STOOL though?

or R in RULE?

🤔

@Mitch beriberi?

CC @alphabet

I haven't heard the clip but if you pronounce it funny it could sound like "gray carry"

There's also a "gray baby syndrome" but AFAIK it's unrelated to alcohol.

@alphabet Ali Express refunded me my order after it did not arrive for several months. And several months later, it did arrive. But it was some small bicycle light, not expensive.

@CowperKettle better not be. have some coffee

@MetaEd nooo, but it's so satisfying!

Word of the eve: jhana (a kind of meditative state)

> We conducted a highly exploratory study to investigate the neurophenomenology of jhanas in an intensively sampled adept meditator case study (4 hr 7T fMRI collected in 27 sessions) who performed jhana meditation and rated specific aspects of experience immediately thereafter. academic.oup.com/cercor/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/…

> Dhyāna, Pali jhana, from Proto-Indo-European root *√dheie-, "to see, to look", "to show".[9][10] Developed into Sanskrit root √dhī and n. dhī,[10] which in the earliest layer of text of the Vedas refers to "imaginative vision" and associated with goddess Saraswati with powers of knowledge, wisdom and poetic eloquence.

> In the sutras, jhāna is entered when one 'sits down criss-cross apple-sauce and establishes mindfulness'.

"neurophenomenology" sounds made up.

Ironically, maybe so is consciousness

I understand the criss cross part but not the applesauce part

This means you haven't reached the arupa state.

@CowperKettle to reach arupa state you need to consume 6000 Calories a day

O_O

French expression: haut comme trois pommes (as high as three apples) - spoken about someone small, like a child

Nice song, although totally dense to my understanding

@CowperKettle The phrase "criss-cross apple-sauce" sounds...deeply out of place when describing religious rituals.

@M.A.R. nah it really sounds like he is clearly saying " 'gray carry' sickness", but the problem is that those two words just don't go together at all (and their isn't some idiom with those two like that). 'beriberi' sounds very different in English...well the first part

@alphabet there's surely an ELU question about that...it's very childish sounding. The 'way to say it's is 'cross legged'

It's the law firm of Gray, Cary. Link in comment

@Mitch @M.A.R. @alphabet ^^^

@CowperKettle ugh.

@MetaEd This is not some psychobabble or esoteric stuff, just a talk about neural nets, he's a neural net and cognitive AI researcher :)

> Psychedelic science is facing serious challenges that threaten the validity of core findings and raise doubt regarding clinical efficacy and safety. In this paper, researchers introduce the 10 most pressing challenges and provide a roadmap for tackling these challenges. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20451253231198466

This is so far out, man