24 hours in a tropical bubble as a desperate attempt to escape winter
I'd never heard of Tropical Islands before and didn't know it was a thing, but I'm not surprised given that there are ski slopes in Dubai.
An hour outside of Berlin, Tropical Islands (T.I.) fills an airfield hanger originally built in 1938 for the Nazi Luftwaffe. The Red Army overtook the site in 1945 and the Soviet Air Force stayed until 1992. A Malaysian company purchased the hanger at a steep discount in 2003, after some kind of German cargo-blimp enterprise went bankrupt. T.I. opened a year later.
The scale of T.I. is so impressive and instantly invoked memories of The Truman Show.
Posted 26th Mar 2019 @ 12:00
Facebook staff 'flagged Cambridge Analytica fears earlier than thought'
This is of course not a surprise at all and it's unlikely there will be anything other than a fine which makes no difference to how 'big tech' operates. John Gruber noted as much when Google were hit with a new $1.7 billion fine by the EU.
Posted 25th Mar 2019 @ 17:54
Hawaii may increase legal smoking age to 100
I'm all for wiping out smoking completely and while I've heard lots of evidence in favour of legalizing drugs, I cannot understand the appeal of cigarettes at all. I can understand seeking a high but to choose to regularly put toxic chemicals into your body just seems insane.
The new bill, HB 1509, suggests that the smoking age should go up to 30 in 2020, 40 in 2021, 50 in 2022, and 60 in 2023 - until finally, in 2024, people would need to be 100 years old to buy cigarettes. He told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald that a "ridiculously bad industry" had designed the cigarette to be "highly addictive, knowing that it is highly lethal". "We don't allow people free access to opioids, for instance, or any prescription drugs," he said.
It's the last part I've heard lots about recently and perhaps it's the quality of the product rather than the existence of it. If it's designed to be addictive then that should be the first point of attack, not its availability.
Posted 25th Mar 2019 @ 14:54
Rafi Eitan: Mossad spy who captured Adolf Eichmann dies
Netflix recently released a film on Rafi Eitan's mission called Operation Finale. I watched it over a couple of days and at the end thought what a crazy story before I had to remind myself that it was based on real life events.
Posted 25th Mar 2019 @ 12:00