Le savez-vous

Hey everyone 👋
I'm still around and not going anywhere.
Every now and then, I just need a break from the socials.
Did I miss any major moves?

🇨🇭 In Switzerland, every resident has a spot in a shelter designed for emergency situations: armed conflict, natural disasters, or human-made crises.

👥 The majority of the population lives in buildings equipped with their own shelters. If needed, public shelters are available close to residential areas. Coverage varies by canton, and some municipalities are further boosting their network.

This amounts to 9 million spots spread across nearly 370,000 private and public shelters. That's a coverage rate of over 100%!

Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, New Zealand, and Antarctica don't have any native snakes!

Thanks to their geographic isolation and unique climates, these spots are naturally snake-free.

An ant can't die from a drop.
Due to their incredibly lightweight, sturdy exoskeleton, and wings, the maximum fall speed of an ant isn't enough to kill or injure it upon impact.

In simple terms, they could survive a drop from 400 meters and walk away unscathed.

🛫 From the comfort of your home, you can tune in live to the radio exchanges between pilots and air traffic control at many major international airports.

These communications use aviation frequencies that are intentionally unencrypted to ensure smooth and safe air traffic.

Result: they can be freely listened to, especially via specialized radios or certain online services.

🎧 However, be cautious:
👉 Listening is allowed,
🚫 Transmitting is strictly prohibited without an official license.

💰 YOUR "SALARY" COMES FROM SALT!

The origin of the word "salary" dates back to Ancient Rome! The powerful and conquering Roman legions were sometimes given a ration of salt or a sum of money to buy it, known as "salarium" (from sal, the Latin word for salt). It was compensation for their service.

Back then, salt was an extremely valuable commodity. So valuable that it literally served as a medium of exchange and payment.

Salt was vital for food preservation, especially before the invention of refrigerators. Without salt, no preserved meat, no long journeys, no fed armies! It was worth its weight in gold, hence its nickname "white gold."

📈 22% pump: XLM back in the spotlight ✓

The recent surge in Stellar ($XLM ), driven by use cases related to payments and salaries, marks a new milestone towards real-world adoption of blockchain tech.

If transaction activity keeps climbing and confirms this momentum, we could be looking at more than just a short-term bullish move.

👀 The next adoption indicators are gonna be closely watched.

#Stellar #XLM #Crypto_Jobs🎯 #blockchains #AdoptionCrypto

Bill Benter is regarded as one of the best bettors of all time.

After some serious studies, he leveraged his skills in blackjack, grinding through the casinos of Las Vegas. He then pivoted to horse racing, crafting a particularly sophisticated statistical model. This algorithm allowed him to rake in hundreds of millions, and his net worth is now estimated to be close to a billion dollars.

The guy who drove the trains in New York... without ever being hired

In 1981, Darius McCollum hopped into the cab of an E train in New York. He made the announcements, hit all the stops, and rolled in on time.

No passengers had a clue. But he wasn't actually a conductor: he had just memorized the entire transport network since he was 8 years old.
Diagnosed late with an autism spectrum disorder, he was arrested over 29 times for stealthily driving subways and buses. Still, he always followed the right route and never caused a single accident.

The New York transport authority, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, turned him down for a job. The courts hit him with multiple convictions.

In 2010, Sam Ballard, a 19-year-old Aussie rugby player, swallowed a slug during a bet with his mates.

The critter was carrying the parasite Angiostrongylus cantonensis, commonly known as the "rat lungworm." Shortly after, Sam contracted severe meningoencephalitis and slipped into a coma that lasted 420 days.

When he finally woke up, he was paralyzed and required constant care. Despite the support from his loved ones, his condition worsened until he passed away nine years later, at the age of 28. A tragedy born from a silly bet with irreversible consequences.

In November 2012, José Salvador Alvarenga, a Salvadoran fisherman, sets out from Mexico for a fishing trip that was supposed to last a few days. A devastating storm takes out the engine, the radio, and he's left drifting out in the open sea, without a way to call for help.

He survives 438 days in the Pacific Ocean, that's nearly 14 months relying on natural resources: rainwater, fish, birds, and turtles for food. His companion, Ezequiel Córdoba, passes away after several months. Alvarenga promises him to never touch his body after death; he stays close for a few days before letting him go.

On January 30, 2014, he finally reaches the Marshall Islands, thousands of kilometers from where he started. In a fragile state, emaciated, but alive. His story has been extensively covered and analyzed: the ocean drift models match his estimated journey.

The World Cup of Shame: scandals are piling up... with FIFA's complicit silence!\n\nThe 2026 World Cup in the United States kicks off in a tense atmosphere, with Somali referee Omar Artan turned away at the U.S. border despite holding a diplomatic passport, citing an inability to verify his background. Iraqi captain Aymen Hussein was interrogated for seven hours upon arrival, while supporters from Senegal and Uzbekistan had to go through metal detectors. Iran saw its ticket quota yanked at the last minute, and Scottish fans had their visa applications denied without explanation. Countries like Haiti find themselves stripped of any supporters due to the Trump administration's blacklist. In the face of these issues, FIFA remains silent, merely issuing a terse statement claiming it does not interfere with immigration procedures, far from its past promises. The governing body seems primarily concerned with safeguarding its economic interests, even if it means endorsing situations it would have once deemed unacceptable.

A guy in the U.S. scored over $500,000 in court after finding out, thanks to his phone recording left on during a colonoscopy, that some medical staff were clowning on him while he was under anesthesia.

The jury ruled that these insults were a major malpractice and hit the culprits with damages to the patient.

🇨🇳 Chinese engineers have developed a new fabric that can withstand temperatures up to 1200 °C without melting, burning, or shrinking, making it perfect for firefighters and other industrial workers.

Did you know that our pups are genetically super close to wolves?\n\nThey share about 99.9% of their DNA with gray wolves!\n\nThis explains why some dogs still have those "wild" behaviors like digging or howling.

A hot lake discovered in Kamchatka

Russian scientists have found a new steaming lake on the summit of the Chiveloutch volcano in Kamchatka. A bubbling hotspot is located in its center.

(NASA satellite image)

🇨🇳 Chinese doctors pull a rusty blade lodged in a man's skull for four years.

Li Fuyan, 30, had been suffering from severe headaches, bad breath, and breathing difficulties, but never knew why, said a spokesperson from the Yuxi City People's Hospital in Yunnan Province.

Li told doctors he was stabbed in the lower right jaw by a thief four years ago and that the blade had broken off inside his head without anyone realizing it, according to the director of the hospital's Communist Party committee.

The case, which one of the doctors called a "miracle", has been widely covered by Chinese media.

"We checked his mouth, but no injuries or scars were found. The way the blade entered his head is very strange," said Xu Wen, deputy director of the hospital's dentistry department, to the public broadcaster CCTV.

Declared dead and brought back to life, he claims his freedom… but the justice system says no

In 1997, Benjamin Schreiber was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Iowa for the brutal murder of a man with a hatchet handle. In March 2015, while serving his time, he developed severe septicemia caused by kidney stones, fell unconscious, and saw his heart stop. Doctors revived him five times, despite a do-not-resuscitate order he had signed. Armed with this extraordinary experience, Schreiber filed for release in 2018, arguing that his clinical death technically ended his sentence because he was sentenced to life in prison, "but not life plus one day." The Iowa Court of Appeals rejected his request on November 6, 2019, with a response as sharp as it was unassailable: "Schreiber is either alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or dead, in which case this appeal is moot." The argument, as original as it was desperate, proved futile: Benjamin Schreiber passed away in prison of natural causes on April 7, 2023, at the age of 70.

The world where night fades away

Have you heard of the midnight sun phenomenon? In regions beyond the Arctic Circle, the tilt of the Earth keeps the North Pole bathed in sunlight all summer long. This fascinating astronomical event means the sun never dips below the horizon: the light stays golden and constant, turning the biological cycle of locals and wildlife into an endless day.

Iconic places like the Svalbard archipelago in Norway, the town of Inuvik in Canada, or northern Finnish Lapland experience this reality every year. In Longyearbyen, for instance, the sun shines non-stop from mid-April to the end of August, providing over four months of total brightness. It's a unique sensory experience where time seems suspended, blurring the line between day and night.

The yogi who claimed to have neither eaten nor drunk anything for 70 years.

Prahlad Jani, an Indian mystic who passed away in 2020, asserted that he hadn't consumed food or water since the age of 11, thanks to a divine blessing from the Hindu goddess Amba. According to him, divine energy nourished him through a small orifice in his palate.

🥼 This isn't just a wild rumor. He was medically monitored in 2003 and again in 2010 by teams of Indian doctors. For over 15 days, he was reportedly locked up without food or water, without urinating or defecating, and the medical results... were normal.