Turn Your Keyboard Into A Typewriter

I once read that American actor and filmmaker, Tom Hanks is a typewriter obsessive. He collects Remingtons, Triumphs, Vosses and Cole Steels the way Imelda Marcos collected shoes. 

 

"They are each different in design, action and sound – each one stamps into paper a permanent trail of imagination through keys, hammers, cloth and dye", he wrote in an opinion piece "I Am TOM. I Like to TYPE. Hear That?" in the New York Times, published August 03, 2013. 

 

Hanks sees beauty in the fact that you can type the word “typewriter” using just one row of the Qwerty keyboard. He can tell a typewriter’s brand just by its sound. 

 

And in August 2014, Hanx Writer, an iPad app that Hanks (right) designed, became the most popular free app ever in the Apple store. It simulates a typewriter keyboard, complete with clickety-clack sounds and the distinctive ding at the end of each line, on your iPad. 

 

You can even “insert” new pages too. Once you’ve typed the text you can email it, print it or share it from the app. 

 

Hanx Writer is a skeuomorph – a design that adopts the look and feel of another object – rather than a retro fashion statement. According to Clinton Mills of Hitcents, the creative agency that brought Hanks’s idea to fruition, there is an element of nostalgia to the app, but “it’s not gimmicky. It’s to show iPad users that whenever you type, the sounds of the typewriter make you feel like you’re composing something special”. 

 

When manufacturers tried bringing out “noiseless” typewriters in the 1920s, few people bought them, because they found it hard to imagine writing in silence. And businesses wouldn’t buy them because they preferred to monitor activity by the sound of typewriters clicking and clacking. 

 

Anyway, yesterday, on Boing Boing, I discovered daktilo ("typewriter" in Turkish, pronounced "duck-til-oh", derived from the Ancient Greek word δάκτυλος for "finger") which turns your normal, everyday computer keyboard into a typewriter. An old, clacking, ringing, belligerently loud typewriter, perfect for the coffee shop, library or tranquil workplace. 

 

It is actually a small command-line program that plays typewriter sounds every time you press a key. It also offers the flexibility to customize keypress sounds to your liking. You can use the built-in sound presets to create an enjoyable typing experience! 

 

This cool product is available for Linux, Windows and MacOS, so you have no reason not to do this.

 

And if that doesn’t do it for you, you can always get a real typewriter, insert some paper and have yourself some real action.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday, Celtic encountered another Champions League defeat when they were beaten 2-1 by Lazio.

 

Kyogo Furuhashi showed great composure to slide in the game's first goal in the twelfth minute to give the defending Scottish champions hope of a rare home win in this competition – but the Serie A club hit back seventeen minutes later. 

 

Then, Celtic had to endure a late heartbreak when the Italians netted a 95th-minute winner. 

 

This consigned Brendan Rodgers' side to the bottom of Group E with zero points after two games.

India Reveals More Toxic Cough Syrups

My August 03, 2023 post “Death by Cough Mixture” refers. 

 

According to a Hindu BusinessLine report published June 20, 2023 – it would appear that I had missed out this news – Indian authorities had ordered a cough syrup manufacturer linked to the deaths of a dozen children in Cameroon to stop production, the latest drugmaker the country has taken action against after a spate of tainted medical exports. 

 

Photographs of a box of Naturcold medication show a manufacturing licence number matching that of Riemann Labs Pvt Ltd, based in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. However, the photos, provided by Eko Eko Filbert, a regional health official in Cameroon, don’t show the manufacturer’s name. 

 

The drugs in the photo “look like ours”, said a director at Riemann, Navin Bhatia, in a phone interview. He said Riemann follows strict quality controls and couldn’t have made tainted medicine, and that counterfeiting is common. 

 

The revelation raised the prospect of a third mass death event linked to exported Indian cough syrups in less than a year. Medicines from two other Indian companies killed 66 children in Gambia and 18 in Uzbekistan last year. 

 

And yesterday, Mint, an Indian business and financial daily newspaper reported “India's drug regulator (have) found that a cough syrup and an anti-allergy syrup made by Norris Medicines are toxic, according to a government report, months after Indian-made cough syrups were linked to 141 children's deaths worldwide”. 

 

HG Koshia, commissioner of Gujarat state's Food and Drug Control Administration, told Reuters on Wednesday that they inspected Norris's factory last month and ordered it to suspend production and recall their medications. 

 

The federal drug regulator, Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), also found three batches of COLD OUT syrup made by Fourrts (India) Laboratories contaminated with diethylene glycol (DEG) and ethylene glycol (EG), according to their list of "not of standard quality/spurious/adulterated/misbranded" drugs for August uploaded on their website. 

 

The World Health Organisation said in August that a batch of COLD OUT sold in Iraq had unacceptable levels of DEG and EG. 

 

Indian pharmaceutical executives and regulators have reportedly told Reuters that it is common practice among some manufacturers in the country to substitute cheaper, commercial-grade ingredients when making cough syrups. An unnerving disclosure.

Amazon River’s Pink and Grey Dolphins Are Dying

The carcasses of 120 river dolphins – the famous pink river dolphins (called “boto” in Brazil) as well as the grey river dolphins (called “tucuxi”) – have been found floating in a tributary of the Amazon River in Brazil since last week in circumstances that experts suspect were caused by severe drought and heat.

The scientists are working to rule out other causes, such as a bacterial infection that could have killed the dolphins. But at least 70 of the carcasses surfaced late last week when the temperature of Lake Tefe’s water reached 39C (102F), more than 10 degrees higher than the average for this time of the year. 

A research group at Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá in Tefé, western Brazilian Amazon, said two more dead dolphins were found on Monday in the region around Tefe Lake, an ecological hotspot for freshwater life in the Brazilian Amazon. 

Video provided by the institute showed vultures picking at dolphin carcasses washed up on the lakeside, while local media report thousands of fish have also died. 

Experts are now warning that many more dolphins are also at risk of death, if the water in the region's lakes doesn't cool down soon. The Brazilian government last week sent teams of veterinarians and aquatic mammal experts to investigate the deaths.

Miriam Marmontel (right), a researcher at the said institute said roughly eight of every 10 carcasses being found are pink dolphins and could represent 10 percent of their estimated population in Lake Tefe.

“Ten percent is a very high percentage of loss, and the possibility that it will increase could threaten the survival of the species in Lake Tefe”, she said. 

Note: The Amazon river dolphin, more popularly known as pink river dolphin (Scientific name: Inia geoffrensis) is different from the grey river dolphin (Scientific name: Sotalia fluviatilis) in that it bears more resemblance to the marine dolphin with its bottlenose and habit of leaping out of the water. And as its name suggests, the pink river dolphin is most recognizable by its unique color. Both are freshwater dolphins and are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of threatened species. 

Ayan Fleischmann, the Mamirauá Institute's geospatial co-ordinator,  said the drought had also had a major effect on the riverside communities in the Amazon region, with some more isolated communities unable to be reached due to rivers drying up.

A New Addition to a Critically Endangered Species

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceros (Scientific name: Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), the smallest and hairiest of the five extant rhino species, was born in Indonesia last week in a conservation area, the government announced yesterday. 

 

Weighing about 27kg, the yet-to-be named female calf was born on Saturday at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary facility in Way Kambas National Park, Lampung province in southern Sumatra. 

 

Covered in black hair, the newborn stood about 45 minutes after her birth. On the next day, she began to walk around the jungle, as informed by the environment ministry. The mother, 22-year-old Ratu, was in a healthy condition. 

 

Ratu is a native of Lampung, while her mate, Andalas, aged 23, was born at Cincinnati Zoo in the United States, but has since moved to the same park as Ratu. The pair previously had Delilah in 2016 and Andatu in 2021. 

 

“This is happy news, not only for Indonesia but for the world”, environment minister Siti Nurbaya said in the statement. 

 

There were just 80 Sumatran rhinos left in the world, based on a 2019 assessment of threatened species by the Indonesian government. 

 

The critically endangered species was decimated by poaching and habitat loss in the past, but today observers say the small and fragmented nature of their populations, and a correspondingly low birthrate, is the biggest threat to their survival. 

 

The Sumatran rhinoceros is already extinct in Malaysia. The country’s last rhino, Iman, died after a long battle with uterine tumors on November 23, 2019. Tam, Malaysia’s last male rhino, died of old age in May of that year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As conservationists from the Borneo Rhino Alliance did with the previous captive rhinos in Malaysia, all of which died of illness without ever managing to breed in captivity, they had stored cell cultures from Iman. They hope that, when the technology is in place, these cells can be turned into viable embryos and transplanted into a surrogate rhino.

Canada Salutes Ukrainian-Canadian Nazi

The Canadian parliament, on September 22, 2023, loudly and joyfully hailed a Nazi war veteran, a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) – you know, the one accused of mass murdering Jews, Poles and Ukrainians in Poland and Ukraine as well as committing other atrocities. 

 

During Ukrainian President [V]ladimir [Z]elensky's visit to Canada, and following his predictably bombastic pan-handling speech, House Speaker Anthony Rota went on to gush praise over his guest, a Ukrainian-Canadian in parliament and calling Yaroslav Hunka, “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero” and thanking him for his service! 

 

Preening Canadian lawmakers emphatically cheered and [Z]elensky raised his fist in acknowledgement as Hunka saluted from the gallery during not one but two separate standing ovations. 

 

As Canadian researcher Tamara Lorincz noted, while everyone applauded the Ukrainian Nazi, “Not one MP called for peace, ceasefire and negotiations”. 

 

Two days later, Rota issued an apology and two days afterward, he resigned from his post. In the meantime, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pleaded ignorance. 

 

Whether Trudeau (and his Stepan Bandera-sympathizing deputy PM Chrystia Freeland) knew about Hunka or not, the question remains: why was he never brought to justice? He, or any of the other 2,000 SS Nazis Canada reportedly took in in the years following WW2. Having been accepted as anti-communist refugees with little to no scrutiny, these suspected war criminals and collaborators have been allowed to live out the rest of their days in peace, and most of them have done so openly under their own names, as the Simon Wiesenthal Center have repeatedly reported. 

 

There is much to be said about Canada's history with Ukrainian Nazis. Not only did it take them in after WW2, but the government-backed Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which, until recently, listed Nazi-collaborator veterans’ organizations as members, as well as government-funded Ukrainian ‘youth centers’ that celebrate Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich. There are even monuments honoring Nazi collaborators and Ukrainian Insurgent Army criminals still standing in Canadian cities. 

 

And in case you don’t know, Canada has also supported modern-day Nazis in Ukraine itself, by training members of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion on Canadian soil, although Canadian corporate media has in recent years attempted to downplay this. 

 

This Nazi tribute is reprehensively repugnant and opprobriously offensive! Canada stinks to high heaven!

Wildlife Trade Kingpin Jailed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A US court on September 21, 2023 sentenced a wildlife trade kingpin to 18 months in prison for conspiring to traffic hundreds of kilos of rhino horns, in a ruling conservation groups said would cause a major disruption to the illicit business. 

Teo Boon Ching, a 58-year-old Malaysian dubbed “the Godfather” by investigators, was part of a conspiracy to smuggle illegal rhino horns to international buyers, including in Manhattan, according to a news release from the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. 

 

According to the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency, Teo specialised in trafficking and smuggling rhinoceros horns, elephant ivory and pangolin scales to clandestine markets, with the illegal goods fetching exorbitant prices. 

 

The international NGO said Teo had been in the business for more than two decades and played a key role in logistics and helping to conceal and pack the goods for criminal networks which smuggled the contraband items into Asia through Malaysian ports. 

 

The EIA described him as “a specialist transporter” assisting Vietnamese and Chinese syndicates in trafficking wildlife between Africa and Asia. He claimed in 2017 to have cleared 80 containers, with only one seized since he started operations. 

 

Teo first came into the news in Thailand in 2015 when he was arrested with about 135kg of ivory in tow, valued at over RM650,000 at the time. However, he was only punished with a fine and appeared to have carried on with business as usual. 

 

On June 29, 2022, Teo was arrested in Thailand at the request of US authorities and extradited to the United States in the same year, on October 07. 

 

Prosecutors said a covert operation exposed Teo’s efforts to traffic about 219 kilograms (483 pounds) of rhino horns “resulting from the poaching of numerous rhinoceros” with an estimated value of $2.1 million. 

 

In August 2019, at the direction of law enforcement, a source bought 12 rhino horns from Teo with money that he believed were the proceeds of other illegal wildlife trafficking and was in bank accounts in New York, officials said. The horns were delivered in a suitcase in Thailand by those working for the wildlife trafficking organization. 

 

EIA, which supplied intelligence on Teo to US enforcement agents, said his jailing was a “body blow” to the illegal wildlife trade.

Budget Fiasco or Not, Joe Biden Vows to Stand By Ukraine

A US government shutdown – the fourth in a decade – was imminent. 

 

A shutdown affects nearly every corner of the US government, from the delivery of welfare cheques and publishing of national economic data to the operation of federal courts, museums and national parks. And hundreds of thousands of federal workers likely would be furloughed – temporarily forced to leave work without pay – while workers deemed essential would remain on the job but continue without a paycheque. 

 

It would have happened if Congress did not approve discretionary spending for the upcoming fiscal year, which began on October 01. A cabal of hardline Republicans had refused to support must-pass funding legislation unless massive spending cuts were made. 

 

Fortunately, on Saturday, Congress did pass a stopgap funding bill, averting for now a looming government shutdown. And President Joe Biden signed the bill after it was cleared by the Democratic-controlled Senate. [The House of Representatives had voted 335-91 to fund the government temporarily, with 209 Democrats supporting the measure compared with 126 Republicans in a show of rare unity that ended the stalemate]. 

 

The temporary measure had not included $6 billion in military aid for Ukraine – a pressing matter for the White House. 

 

But on Sunday, Biden said Ukraine could "count on" US support. "We cannot, under any circumstances, allow US support to Ukraine to be interrupted", he insisted. 

 

"I can reassure [Ukraine] we'll get there, that we're going to get it done", he said on restoring funding for the [V]olodymyr [Z]elensky regime. Indeed, a misplaced priority! 

 

Still, the funding bill will only liquidate the government for a further 45 days which means renewed intense discussions lie ahead, in order to avert another potential shutdown. 

 

Therefore, if an agreement cannot be reached by November 17, millions of federal workers will, once again, face delayed paychecks, including many of the roughly two million military personnel and more than two million civilian workers across the nation. 

 

The United States is a broken country.

 

On Saturday, both Curtis Jones (26) and Diogo Jota (69) saw red as Liverpool fell to a last-gasp 2-1 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur. Cody Gakpo (45+4) scored the Reds' only goal.

 

And Joel Matip's own goal deep into stoppage time gave Spurs victory over nine-man Liverpool in this contentious Premier League encounter. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the match outcome could have been different but for the error made by the on-field team of match officials who failed to act after Luis Diaz's 34th-minute strike for a dubious offside call. Refereeing organisation PGMOL later admitted the goal should have stood. 

 

Meaning, if VAR had intervened, the goal would have been awarded. Blardy hell!

Migrants Keep Pouring Into the US

Migrants keep pouring into the United States. 

 

In fact, from 1990 to 2006, Border Patrol encounters nearly always topped one million a year, with a peak of 1.6 million in 2000 – but these numbers were considered vast undercounts because migrants often evaded authorities as they entered the country. Now, migrants often turn themselves in so they can request asylum. 

 

In recent years, the measures used to contain the Covid pandemic skewed the count. The government relied heavily on a public health tool called Title 42 to quickly eject people from the country. But there was no penalty so experts say migrants returned again and again, thus pushing up the statistics. 

 

Decades ago, migrants arriving in the US were almost all Mexican nationals. Experts and officials note that migrants today arrive from a vast array of countries across South and Central America and Africa, as well as supposedly from China and India. Their disparate countries of origin complicate deportations, because they have to be flown. In some cases, migrants can’t be deported because the US has no agreement with their native countries, notably Venezuela. 

 

As per a CNN report on September 21, Mexicans are still pouring in, even more than before. In July 2022, for example, US Customs and Border Protection figures indicate 4,000 Mexican family encounters at the border. A year later, that number had more than quadrupled, reaching nearly 22,000.

 

And then, the Joe Biden government on September 20, 2023 announced they were giving Temporary Protected Status to an estimated 472,000 Venezuelans who arrived in the country as of July 31. That makes it easier for them to work in the US. 

 

Venezuelans make up such a large proportion of the people coming to the country that changing their status has an outsized effect. In New York City, about 40 percent of the rough 60,000 asylum seekers the city is paying to house are from Venezuela. 

 

Not forgetting the fact that New York City (and Massachusetts) have right-to-shelter rules, meaning they must provide housing to people who need it with certain restrictions. 

 

One news report is already claiming that New York City is gearing up to pay over $1 billion on just hotels over the next 3 years to house illegal immigrants. 

 

But that’s just the hotel costs. NYC Mayor Eric Adams (left) estimates the total cost of the #migrantCrisis will be $12 billion over the next 3 years. 

 

“We are past our breaking point”, he said. “With more than 57,300 individuals currently in our care on an average night, it amounts to $9.8 million a day. Almost $300 million a month and nearly $3.6 billion a year”. 

 

What Adams is saying is that NYC is hard-pressed to fulfill its obligation. As it is, the US government are already in financial distress.

Donald Trump Re-enacts a Joe Biden Moment

This is oh so hilarious! 

 

Presidential candidate Donald Trump makes fun of the forty-sixth and current president of the United States by re-enacting a "Joe Biden getting lost on stage" moment! 

 

Actually, in the 2024 presidential race, I don't think anybody deserves a Biden-Trump rematch. Seriously. But then again, don't underestimate the Americans! They're not too smart – and so, they'll go for it!

 

Yesterday, Celtic edged a 2-1 win over Motherwell in a Scottish Premiership game. 

 

After 87 minutes without a goal, Celtic substitute Luis Palma whipped a dangerous cross across goal, which ended up finding the corner of the net. But within eight minutes, Motherwell equalised. 

 

Then, Matt O’Riley came to the rescue to give Celtic a last-gasp winner seven minutes into stoppage time when he converted a cushioned volley at the back post following Greg Taylor’s cross. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, Celtic return to Champions League action as they host Lazio on Wednesday.