#dunk talked about how he went to japan with his family and he had 3 suitcases for him and one for his parents and sister

[khaopybara]

There are many layers to this.

The official subtitles say "I've heard that P'Khaotung and P'First are close", when Fourth says P'Book. Of course, First and Khaotung are close. Have you seen them?

Khaotung is a shopaholic apparently, but we already knew that. First always says that Khaotung takes him out to shop whenever they are abroad.

Even when First isn't there, he is there somehow.

[alamante]

Expect more. That’s the verdict of climate scientists to the record-high temperatures this spring and summer in vastly different climate zones.

The continental United States had its hottest month of May and the third-hottest month of June. Japan was walloped by record triple-digit temperatures, killing at least 86 people in what its meteorological agency bluntly called a “disaster.” And weather stations logged record-high temperatures on the edge of the Sahara and above the Arctic Circle.

Is it because of climate change? Scientists with the World Weather Attribution project concluded in a study released Friday that the likelihood of the heat wave currently baking Northern Europe is “more than two times higher today than if human activities had not altered climate.”

While attribution studies are not yet available for other record-heat episodes this year, scientists say there’s little doubt that the ratcheting up of global greenhouse gases makes heat waves more frequent and more intense.

Elena Manaenkova, deputy head of the World Meteorological Organization, said this year was “shaping up to be one of the hottest years on record” and that the extreme heat recorded so far was not surprising in light of climate change.

“This is not a future scenario,” she said. “It is happening now.”

What was like to be in these really different places on these really hot days? We asked people. Here’s what we learned.

Ouargla, Algeria: 124°F on July 5

At 3 p.m. on the first Thursday of July, on the edge of the vast Sahara, the Algerian oil town of Ouargla recorded a high of 124 degrees Fahrenheit. Even for this hot country, it was a record, according to Algeria’s national meteorological service.

Abdelmalek Ibek Ag Sahli was at work in a petroleum plant on the outskirts of Ouargla that day. He and the rest of his crew had heard it would be hot. They had to be at work by 7 a.m., part of a regular 12-hour daily shift.

“We couldn’t keep up,” he recalled. “It was impossible to do the work. It was hell.”

By 11 a.m., he and his colleagues walked off the job.

But when they got back to the workers’ dorms, things weren’t much better. The power had gone out. There was no air conditioning, no fans. He dunked his blue cotton scarf in water, wrung it out, and wrapped it around his head. He drank water. He bathed 5 times. “At the end of the day I had a headache,” he said by phone. “I was tired.”

Ouargla’s older residents told him they’d never seen a day so hot.

Hong Kong: Over 91°F for 16 straight days

In this city of skyscrapers on the edge of the South China Sea, temperatures soared past 91 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 consecutive days in the second half of May.

Not since Hong Kong started keeping track in 1884 had a heat wave of that intensity lasted so long in May.

Swimming pools overflowed with people. Office air-conditioners purred. But from morning to night, some of the city’s most essential laborers went about their outdoor work, hauling goods, guarding construction sites, picking up trash.

One blistering morning, a 55-year-old woman named Lin gripped the hot metal handles of her handcart. She pushed it up a busy road, glancing over her shoulder for oncoming cars. She had fresh leafy greens to deliver to neighborhood restaurants in the morning, trash to haul in the evening. Some days, she had a headache. Other days, she vomited.

“It’s very hot and I sweat a lot,” said Lin, who would only give her first name before rushing off on her rounds. “But there’s no choice, I have to make a living.”

Poon Siu-sing, a 58 year-old trash collector, tossed garbage bags into a mounting pile. Sweat plastered the shirt onto his back. “I don’t feel anything,” he maintained. “I’m a robot used to the heat of the sun and rain.”

Nawabshah, Pakistan: 122°F on April 30

Nawabshah is in the heart of Pakistan’s cotton country. But no amount of cotton could provide comfort on the last day of April, when temperatures soared past 122 degrees Fahrenheit, or 50 degrees Celsius. Even by the standards of this blisteringly hot place, it was a record.

The streets were deserted that day, a local journalist named Zulfiqar Kaskheli said. Shops didn’t bother to open. Taxi drivers kept off the streets to avoid the blazing sun.

And so, Riaz Soomro had to scour his neighborhood for a cab that could take his ailing 62-year-old father to a hospital. It was Ramadan. The family was fasting. The father became dehydrated and passed out.

The government hospital was packed. In the hallways sat worn-out heatstroke victims like his father. Many of them had been working outdoors as day laborers, Mr. Soomro said.

Throughout the area, hospitals and clinics were swamped. There weren’t enough beds. There weren’t enough medical staff. The power failed repeatedly throughout the day, adding to the chaos.

“We tried our best to provide medical treatment,” said Raees Jamali, a paramedic in Daur, a village on the outskirts of Nawabshah. “But because of severity of the heat, there was unexpected rush and it was really difficult for us to deal with all patients.”

Every day that week, the high temperature in Nawabshah was no less than 113 degrees, according to AccuWeather.

Oslo: Over 86°F for 16 consecutive days

“Warning! We remind you about the total ban on fires and barbecuing near the forest and on the islands.”

This was the text message that Oslo residents got from city officials on a Friday afternoon in June.

May had been the warmest in 100 years. June was hot, too. By mid-July, a village south of Oslo recorded 19 days when the temperature shot up past 86 degrees Fahrenheit, or 30 Celsius, according to MET Norway.

Spring rains were paltry, which meant that grass had turned brown dry and farmers were having trouble feeding their livestock. Forests had turned to tinder. And city officials put a stop to one of the most popular Norwegian summer pastimes: heading out to the woods with a disposable barbecue.

“People not being used to this heat, they’re used to leaving a barbecue and nothing happens, Marianne Kjosnes, a spokeswoman for the Oslo Fire Department, said. “Now if a little spark catches the grass, you have a grass fire going.”

Public parks are off limits to barbecuing. So are the islands in the nearby fjord. The Oslo Fire Department’s Facebook page is trying to get the word out.

Per Evenson, a fire watchman posted in the tower on Linnekleppen, a rocky hill southeast of Oslo, counted 11 separate forest fires in one day in early July. Here and there, white smoke rose in the distance. By July 19, the civil protection department had tallied 1,551 forest fires, more than the numbers of fires in all of 2016 and 2017. The department said 22 helicopters were simultaneously fighting fires.

Wildfires were also erupting in Sweden. And one Swedish village just above the Arctic Circle, hit an all time record high, peaking above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

“This is really frightening if this is the new normal,” Thina Margrethe Saltvedt, an energy industry analyst who lives in Oslo, wrote in an email.

Los Angeles: 108°F on July 6

At least Marina Zurkow had air conditioning.

Ms. Zurkow, an artist, has long been grappling with climate change in her work. But she was still surprised when a day of extreme weather impacted one of her projects in a big way.

The name of that project, which was designed to make people think about the impact of climate change on how we eat, is “Making the Best of It.” It is only half in jest.

“It’s both trying to make the best of a bad situation,” she said, “and in another way it’s a commitment to making things as delicious as possible.”

The latest iteration of that project was to host a dinner for a new era of dry, hot weather in California. Less Mediterranean, more Mojave Desert.

Ms. Zurkow’s partners, a team of two private chefs called Hank and Bean, prepared an elaborate meal designed to make their guests chew on the impact of climate change. The menu included sage fritters, stuffed rabbit, flatbreads made of cricket and mealworm, and jellyfish. Lots of jellyfish.

There was jellyfish crudo with a Greek salad at the top of the meal. There was a jellyfish jelly, with redwood tip infusion and pine syrup at the end of the meal.

Why jellyfish? Because it’s considered invasive and therefore plentiful, Ms. Zurkow reasoned. It’s also zero fat and good protein. “American dream food,” she added, also only half in jest.

They had planned to serve dinner al fresco in the courtyard of a downtown Los Angeles test kitchen.

But nature had other ideas.

That day, the first Friday of July, air from the Mojave blew westward and stalled, compressed and extra hot, over Los Angeles. Downtown hit a high of 108 degrees. It was too hot to eat outside.

“Even if you’re talking about climate change, you can’t torture invited guests,” Ms. Zurkow said. “We had to move the dinner into the kitchen.”

Somini Sengupta reported from New York and Los Angeles, Tiffany May from Hong Kong, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan.

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[travelling-trooper-blog]

By the time Trevor and I reached Takayama, it was already 9:30. We bought our bus tickets to Shirakawago and got in the gigantic line. As we got closer to the front, I noticed a poster on a pole that promoted a tour of Shirakawago and Gokayama. I asked a woman walking by if there were any tickets available left for the tour. She went inside and confirmed that there were. The bus left in fifteen minutes, and there were only three tickets left, so we had made it just in time.

Gokayama and Shirakawago are tiny little rural villages inhabited by silk farmers. The villages are lined with traditional thatched roof houses called gassho-zukuri. The most impressive thing about these houses is that they are built without a single nail; they use nothing but wood from the massive trees that grow here, straw rope, wedges, and sapling.

The 60 degree roofs are meant to prevent snow from piling up, but as you can see, the system isn’t perfect.

The roofs have to be replaced every 30-40 years, though it used to be every 40-50 years before people started using electricity to heat their homes rather than relying solely on the fire place. The re-thatching is done in the spring using kariyasu grass that was harvested in the Fall. Despite the huge size of these roofs, they are usually re-thatched in a single day thanks to an amazing collaborative effort requiring 100-200 villagers. The re-thatching method is passed on from one generation to the next.

Walking towards the village.

Gokayama

At some point, I must have smudged my lens with my finger. I didn’t notice it until now. Looking back, a lot of my recent photos had smudges on them in the same spot. Lesson learned: Always put the lens back on your lens when you’re not using it, no matter how annoying it is.

I bet even the snow in Japan tastes better.

They were that really beautiful fat, fluffy type of snowflakes.

Safety first.

Of course, the downside to large organized tours like this is that you can’t take your sweet time. That meant that I didn’t have time to check out the gun powder museum. On the other hand, I got to visit both Gokayama and Shirakawago, which I didn’t think I’d be able to do. So, on we went to Shirakawago after an all-too brief stop in Gokayama.

First, though, it was time for lunch. Considering how much the tour costs, I was happy that lunch was provided. I was seated across from a Spanish girl and her mother, which gave me the rare opportunity to practice my Spanish. I don’t remember where in Spain they were from, but their accents were really difficult to understand. All of the words kind of slurred together. Sometimes I was just nodding and smiling.

Shirakawago is down there somewhere behind me.

We were given 90 minutes to explore Shirakawago, but alas, a car had gotten stuck in front of us on our way to Shirakwago and we couldn’t pass it. This cut our time by twenty minutes.

With those twenty minutes gone, I didn’t have time to explore the open-air museum, where you could actually walk through the houses.

Nonetheless, it was a beautiful little Winter Wonderland. It was well worth the trip.

This impressive little bell tower took a whopping 1425 people to build.

I also ventured into a temple. There was a bunch of machinery and tools on the second and third floors. I had no idea what they might be for. Upon reading my brochure later, I learned that these attic spaces were often used for silkworm cultivation and farming.

Before I knew it, it was already 3:02; we had eight minutes to run back to the bus. Crap!

We started hustling as quickly as we could, making sure not to slip on the slippery snow. The guide had said we would leave at 3:10 SHARP because some people had to catch their trains from Takayama Station. Every second counted at this point. We weaved my way past slowly-walking families, hurdled over children, and stiff-armed grandmothers who couldn’t get out of our way. We had to catch that bus. I’d missed a bus once before in San Francisco after losing track of time as I enjoyed the greatest portabella mushroom and blue cheese burger of my life, and I didn’t want to repeat that mistake. God knows how much a taxi back to Takayama would run me.

Then I saw ice cream.

Don’t judge me; it was ice cream coated with green tea powder. I know it sounds weird, but that stuff was deeee-lish!

We made it back to the bus in the nick of time. As we walked towards our seat at the very back of the bus, everybody flashed us a friendly laugh or smile. I could just imagine how my hair must have looked after running through that thick and fluffy snowfall. It must have glistened. I must have glowed like an angel.

Once back at Takayama, we hopped on a bus back to the hotel.

The plan for the evening was to grab a quick dinner, and get in some blogging before I completely ran out of energy.

The previous night we’d gone left from the hotel to a nearby restaurant, so tonight we went right to a place called Ken Ken. The first thing that jumped out at me from the menu was beef innards. I figured I’d try it just because it was different. It wasn’t bad. The beef and noodles were delicious, sopped in some juicy sauce.

The server typed “Country” into her phone to ask where I was from just a one of the young guys in the room behind us came out. I replied that I was from Canada, and the young guy jumped right in. “Canada? Toronto?”

“Yeah!” I replied.

“Raptors! DeRozan slam dunk!”

“Yeah, that’s right!” I laughed. He sat down and we started talking sports.

He asked me what my favourite sport was and I said I liked American football, expecting that he wouldn’t know anything about the NFL.

Wrong.

“NFL?” he asked.

“Yeah!” I shouted, probably louder than necessary.

“I like Adrian Peterson. What is your favourite team?”

“I like the Green Bay Packers.”

“Aaron Rodgers. He is a machine!” He made a throwing gesture as he said machine.

I cannot express how much I loved this guy at this point.

At this point, his friends came down and joined us. Turns out they worked at the hotel where I was staying. One of them even greeted me that morning, but I didn’t recognize him. He was from Tokyo and spoke the best English of the three of them. They were all working there working for a few months. “I’ve never heard him talk about the Packers before,” he chuckled.

The Peterson fan stepped in and asked me who I thought was the best Packer of all time. I answered with Rodgers, but he had his own opinion. “Rodgers is a machine, but Brett Favre…” At this point, he thumped his chest before finishing, “Brett Favre had heart.” He explained that he started watching football because of Brett Favre.

This guy was officially the coolest Japanese person I’d met.

He was from some small town that, by the sounds of it, had more animals than people living in it. He was quite proud of it, though. He kept bringing it up in conversation throughout the night. I think the place was called Tokushima or something. He’d say things like “Tokushima number one! Best ramen in Japan!” The others laughed at his level of delusion, which made me laugh even more.

The guy from Tokyo was 36 and a travel enthusiast with some Couch Surfing experience. His name was Yuta. He and I spent most of the night talking about this and that.

The girl was 24, and since she didn’t speak much English, she just sat back with her sake and enjoyed the show. All that I learned about her was that she loves her sake. In fact, I think Yuta said she enjoyed sake more than the guys.

I had so much fun with those guys. Before I knew it, I was 5 beers and 3 sake shots in, and it was time for bed. Trevor and I had to be up at 5:45 tomorrow to catch the train back to Hiroshima.

We walked back to the hotel, and the trio escorted me right to my door. We took a selfie, I went inside, and lay down, promising myself that I’d only be down for a couple minutes. I still wanted to hit the onsen one last time before saying goodbye.

I never made it. I must have passed out in 30 seconds.

Kompai, guys. Thanks for a great unexpected night.

The Travelling Trooper Tours The Traditional Villages Of Shirakawago and Gokayama By the time Trevor and I reached Takayama, it was already 9:30. We bought our bus tickets to Shirakawago and got in the gigantic line.

[itsiotrecords-blog]

http://ift.tt/2qw4D79

Water, with all of its life-affirming and throat-quenching qualities, is seemingly quite benign. But in the wrong hands, water can bring death upon any poor soul who is subjected to its deadly power. Our humble race has found many a way to use water against each other, for the purpose of causing as much pain as possible. Here are some of the worst.

#1 Waterboarding Strongly associated with the Bush and Cheney years, waterboarding has actually been around since 16th century Europe. We heard the term so much in recent years, yet many never really knew what it entailed. Far too many, in fact, dismissed it as a possible form of torture by scoffing, “it’s just water.” It’s so much more though. Waterboarding involves strapping somebody to a table on their back, causing them to become immobile. Afterwards, a cloth is placed over their eyes, nose and mouth. When they are nice and secure, the torturer proceeds to pour water directly onto the face, in intervals. This gives the poor victim the unpleasant sensation of being underwater and drowning ever so slowly. The worst part though, is the in-between moments of alleviation for the victim, when the water stops pouring. This momentary relief is just a mirage, meant to break them psychologically, as they go right back to drowning again. This process is repeated until the victim completely submits.

#2 Chinese Water Torture “Chinese water torture” is actually something of a misnomer, since the practice actually has nothing to do with China. In actuality, the origins of its name can be traced back to magician Harry Houdini’s stunt, the “Chinese Water Torture Cell.” In this stunt, Houdini entered a tank filled with water, upside down and bound, and had to make an escape before he died. As a form of torture, this practice came about in 15th century Italy, by a lawyer (of course it would be a lawyer) named Hippolytus de Marsili. Marsili created the torture after witnessing a constant drip of water impacting a stone. And in that lawyer mind of his, the first thing he thought of was how this could be used on a human to torture a confession out of them. The way the process works is to strap someone by their head and body, and on their back. Then, a simple drop of water would proceed to drip on the victim’s forehead. Sounds harmless, right? Well, it doesn’t seem so harmless when the victim is strapped for days at a time, with that drip of water never stopping. The torture is as psychological as it is physical, as the victim starts to see every drop coming, with the feeling magnified after every drip. It is even said that, after a long enough duration, the water starts to penetrate the skin. Now we know where the phrase “water on the brain” comes from.

#3 Dunking The Salem Witch trials were an infamous time in early American colonial history, and came complete with its own form of torture. The inhumane practice known as dunking was used often against those accused of being witches. But the goal wasn’t to inflict pain, but rather to test, hence the term “ordeal by water.” The test went like this: a person accused of being a witch was tied to a chair and dunked into the water. If the victim floated, they were witches, as it was believed back then that all witches floated. Of course, virtually nobody could pass this test, since human bodies naturally float and all. The victim was never acquitted, thus prolonging the torture and ultimately condemning the victim. In rare cases, the person would simply drown before they could be brought back up, which acquitted them of all charges or something. Water was the main judge here, as it was viewed as the ultimate holy purifier. In addition, if the torturers were not satisfied with the result, they would repeatedly dunk the victim, even strapping them to devices to accomplish this awful task.

#4 Boiling Water A couple drips of boiling hot water on your skin sure is painful, right? Well, take that pain, and amplify it by about a million times. Welcome to being boiled alive. Brought to you by the sadistic minds of the Middle Ages, this torture was quite simple in its effectiveness. When it was time to boil somebody, a large cauldron was filled with cold or tepid water. After it was filled to the executioner’s heart’s content, the victim was inserted into the cauldron. Then, either a low flame was set for prolonged agony, or a higher flame for quicker torture gratification. So why was the water cold or tepid to begin with? This was to ensure that the victim undergoes every stage of being cooked alive. In some circumstances, a small amount of water was placed in the cauldron. This gave the added effect of frying the victim. Fourth degree burns would occur, with deterioration of the skin and its layers. Then, the fat in the tissue would cook. After, the muscle underneath would start to show. Finally, the veins and arteries would pop, due to the heat. Henry VIII made boiling to death an official punishment in England, and one of its earliest victims — the Bishop of Rochester’s murderer, Richard Rice — suffered so graphic an execution that pregnant women fainted at the sight and had to be carried away from the scene.

#5 Water Curing Talk about a misnomer, since about the only thing this torture cures is the disease of a long, fruitful life. The water cure method is somewhat similar to waterboarding in posture, as the victim is rendered immobile and on their back. But while waterboarding involves pouring water all over the victim’s face, the water cure involves pouring water straight down their throat. Over and over again, endlessly. See, drinking too much water is in actuality a very, very bad thing, and can cause death. This is called “water intoxication,” the end game of the water cure. The mouth of the victim is pried open, and a funneling device is thrust into the throat. Water is then poured into the funnel and directly into the victim’s stomach. This is done until either the victim either dies from water intoxication or hemorrhages to death due to an eruption in the stomach. Sometimes, the torturer would be creative and make the victim vomit all of the previously ingested water, so that the torture could be done ad infinitum. Think about that the next time you wax nostalgic about how much nicer people were back in the day.

#6 Nazi Water Chamber During World War II, the Hungarian Nazi Party turned a regular 19th century villa in Budapest into something much more nefarious. Their administrative building is now referred to as “the House of Terror,” which sounds like a cheap thrill ride at a haunted theme park, but was unfortunately very real. The House of Terror was replete with all kinds of tortures, including the water chamber. This was not an intricate or complicated method, but that doesn’t lessen its horror any. It was little more than large hole filled with ice cold water, with a small platform in the middle where the sleep-deprived victim was forced to stand. If the person became weak or fell asleep, they would fall, directly into the frozen water. And this would be repeated time and again. To make matters worse, after Hungary was “liberated” by the Soviets, the Communists moved right into the House of Terror, taking over the lease from the Nazis, and resuming much of the torturous procedures from the previous regime.

#7 Japanese Deep Freeze Located deep within the isolated confines of Japanese-occupied Manchuria, China, Unit 731 was the brain child of evil genius Ishii Shiro. Shiro was a doctor by profession and, by all accounts, a nice guy and family man. But when it came time to ply his trade in Unit 731, his Mr. Hyde was unleashed upon the World War II POWs and natives who he considered “logs,” to be used, burned and discarded. Unit 731 was created to obtain vital medical data in a scientific environment. But when one examines the list of procedures, they read more like a madman’s to-do list, one that would make some medieval torture methods tame in comparison. One of the worst methods was the frostbite test. Manchuria gets very, very cold during the winter, and this did not escape Shiro at all. Taking advantage, he forced men and women to stand naked in the freezing cold, as soldiers doused the victim’s limbs with cold water, to speed up the onset of frostbite. This was done until the limbs were hard enough to elicit a ringing sound when they were hit with sticks. Afterwards, they would either have their limbs and fingers smashed off or immediately defrosted by hot water, which caused all of the flesh on the limbs to just slide off. Post-war, Unit 731 went under, with any surviving subjects killed off. While some serving in the unit were executed, Shiro died from natural causes in Japan, after giving the US all of his data.

#8 Hazing The more we learn about hazing, it seems less and less like innocent pranking, and far more like sadistic torture. Some of the tactics utilized in hazing have included physical beatings, sexual abuse, and deprivations. But one case stands out in that it involved the usage of water. The Chi Tau fraternity in Chico State University, California, was described by police as something like a medieval castle dungeon, with the words, “In the basement, no one can hear you scream” scrawled all over the basement walls. This was the stage for the “initiation” of 21-year-old Matthew Carrington, on February 2nd, 2005. Carrington was forced to go into the basement and engage in rigorous calisthenics, surrounded by raw sewage that accumulated on the floor. He was then forced to do numerous pushups in the dirty water. His body, soaking wet, was blasted with cold air from fans, which made the experience even more excruciating. He was also expected to continually drink water from a five-gallon container, which was repeatedly refilled. According to reports, all of this was too much for Carrington’s body, which broke under the strain. He went into seizures and in the hospital, and his heart stopped. The cause of Carrington’s death was swelling of the brain and lungs, developed from acute water intoxication. Unfortunately, the frat brothers did not do much for Carrington, as they took their time in calling for any help. Two men, Gabriel Maestretti and Jerry Lim, were charged with Carrington’s death, but ultimately, they both received light sentences.

#9 Republican Marriage While plenty of Obama supporters would consider marrying a Republican torture all by itself, that’s not where this term originated. Its origins actually derive from the Republican government of the 1790’s French revolutionaries. It was called a marriage since both a male and female would suffer the same fate simultaneously. This torture was especially popular during the Reign of Terror, which lasted from 1793-1794. It was the brainchild of Maximilien Robespierre, leader of the Committee of Public Safety. Jean-Baptiste Carrier, a revolutionary representative in the city of Nantes, was the main initiator of the Marriages. First, a man and woman would be stripped naked, and then tied together. While they were tied, sometimes they would be stabbed beforehand, just in case. Then they would be chucked into the Loire River, to sink and drown. These simple-yet-horrible executions happened regularly between 1793 and 1794. The worst part of it all, was that children were very likely victims of its wrath as well.

#10 The Coffin Humans cannot go more than three days without water, before we dry up and perish. With that in mind, here’s the Coffin, a torture that involves taking away any and all water from the victim, proving that the wet stuff doesn’t even have to show up to play a role in somebody’s slow and painful death. The accused would be apprehended and placed into a metal cage-like apparatus, usually shaped to conform to the human body. The victim would then be taken to a pre-determined spot, usually in a location that absorbed the most heat from the sun. Then they would be abandoned there, sweating and sweltering in the heat, without a drop of water to alleviate their suffering. In addition, the coffin was porous enough to allow animals access to the victim, which resulted in the victim being mauled and eaten while still alive. Suffice it to say, the victim usually did not make it to day three, but if they did, their death from dehydration would have been the absolute worst.

Source: TopTenz