Paola Pioletti brought this curious construction to my attention! Thanks Paola!
The Coffee Pot is located in America, and more precisely in Pennsylvania, in Bedford.
It is described as an “example of programmatic architecture” created as a result of the increased number of motorists passing through on the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental road for automobiles in the United States, which opened in 1913 and runs for over 3,000 miles between New York City and San Francisco.
The Coffee Pot was built in 1927 by Bert Koonz to attract visitors to the service station.
In 1937, a hotel was built adjacent to the ‘coffee pot’ that served Coca Cola burgers and ice cream to travellers on Greyhound buses.
A hotel was later built adjacent to the structure.
In 2004 it was restored after Bedford County Fair in PA bought it for a dollar.
Taking a virtual tour around the coffee pot I found a very active community with a group of quilters: The Coffee Pot quilters.
Quilting is the art of sewing together several layers of fabrics of different colours and patterns, cutting them to create decorative patterns.
I really like that kind of quilting and we have several of them at home even if they are not made in communion as they are used in the States.
Did you know that we also have a national association in Italy? Quilt Italia.
The giant coffee pot in autumn is surrounded by a beautiful natural spectacle and the Bedford County Fair also organises a foliage festival.
The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) defines infant formula: “Baby Formula” as a food that purports to be or is represented for special dietary use exclusively as infant formula by reason of its simulation of human milk or its suitability as a complete food or partial substitute for human milk.
It may seem strange, but in the United States the various brands of Baby Formula on the market are produced almost exclusively by the same company: Abbott Nutrition.
Leaving aside issues of monopoly, this caused a huge problem when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Coordinated Outbreak Response and Evaluation (CORE) network, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local partners investigated consumer complaints and/or reports received by the FDA from September 2021 to February 2022 regarding illnesses among infants who allegedly consumed infant formula products from Abbott Nutrition’s Sturgis, MI, facility, advising consumers not to consume milk powder from certain batches.
Abbott initiated a voluntary, proactive recall of powdered formulas, including Similac, Alimentum and EleCare, manufactured in Sturgis, Michigan, one of the company’s manufacturing facilities.
Consumer complaints were related to Cronobacter sakazakii or Salmonella Newport found in infants who had consumed powdered infant formula produced at this facility.
This resulted in a drastic difficulty in sourcing powdered milk precisely because of the fact that virtually most of the production is from the same facility.
This is a huge problem, since infants whose mothers are not fortunate enough to have breast milk cannot feed on anything else.
Real special flights have been set up to solve this emergency: Open Fly Formula.
A protocol has been initiated to transport infant formula via an airlift procured by the DOD i.e., the Department of Defense.
The company that produces this infant formula reports that in order to move the infant formula from Zurich, Switzerland, to Plainfield, Indiana, in the United States, it takes about 21 days with a commercial plane to ship and clear customs so that it can enter distribution.
Instead, the cargo was transferred from Switzerland to Ramstein to be loaded onto two C-17s on Bravo alert in Germany and through USTRANSCOM i.e., U.S. Transportation Command, the transport was done under the auspices of this sort of motto: Regardless of whether the needs are in Ukraine, India or even here at home, from deploying combat-credible forces, to providing vaccines, food, water and supplies during a pandemic or natural disaster, USTRANSCOM will provide.
Can you tell me exactly what “combat-credible” means?
Undoubtedly the milk emergency had to be solved, what puzzles me is the mixing of “aid” and “military.”
Meanwhile, a kind of chain of solidarity was created among parents to find advice through Facebook groups in which, however, scammers and profiteers took over.
How did we do it before milk powder existed? I wonder, too. Were nannies the only alternative?
Stanislav Evgrafovič Petrov: not everyone knows this name, yet it is the name of a man to whom universal gratitude should go.
It was 1983, the year in which ARPANET adopted the TCP / IP protocol that has become the modern Internet, year in which Microsoft releases the first version of Word for MS-DOS, but also year in which Reagan gives the famous speech which launches the Strategic Defense Initiative: SDI, more commonly known as “space shield” which some mass media have also renamed Star Wars.
A speech based on the need to face a possible nuclear attack by the Soviet Union which ended as follows: My fellow Americans, tonight we’re launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history. There will be risks, and results take time. But I believe we can do it. As we cross this threshold, I ask for your prayers and your support.
On the other side of the world, likewise, they were ready to intercept any missile through the OKO satellite system, implemented with a new software: Krokus (which in my mind I visualize as a flower).
What’s more, the tension created by Reagan in calling Russia an “empire of evil,” on September 1, a Boeing departing from New York to Seoul is shot down for “trespassing into Soviet airspace.”
In this climate of extreme early warning, we arrive at September 26, a day that began just fourteen minutes when something happens that could cause a terrible chain reaction.
In front of the monitor in the Serpukhov 15 base there is an analyst, called to replace a colleague, when the system signals a missile and all the alarms start to sound.
In the following minutes the anxiety drops along with four other signals for a total of five missiles directed towards the Soviet Union.
What would you have done? How would you have reacted?
Fortunately for us, Stanislav Petrov was able to keep calm and above all he decided to follow his instinct, avoiding sending a call that would have proved fatal.
The verification on the radar in fact does not detect anything and shortly before the expected impact Krokus cancels the signals, resuming its normal operation.
Krokus was perhaps more sensitive to Nature than to technology since subsequent investigations revealed the cause of the “glare:” reflections of sunlight on clouds.
Molniya: Молния in Russian means lightning bolt and is the name given to a series of satellites, which were launched into a highly elliptical orbit to allow them to reach regions of the far north of the country.
These satellites that September 26 are aligned with the sun and the earth on which the rays fall perpendicular to the equinox and this causes deception, so much so as to go down in history as the Autumn Equinox Incident.
Fate also wanted Petrov to “align”, who should not have been on duty.
In an interview with Time, Petrov says, “If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it.“
But I would like to show you these short statements on the BBC
More than the words I was struck by the images. A simple man. Very few things. The only companion cigarettes. And those three books.
I cannot erase the image of those books from my mind: aged like him, thin, yellowed, lying down, lonely.
Not being able to read them, I try to read humanity on his face.
The ability to understand the possibility of error, to contemplate fallibility, to accept doubt and to follow instinct.
Gaia derives from Greek mythology and represents the mother goddess of all gods, personification of the earth, but in this case she becomes the engine of digital innovation in Europe.
In September 2020, 22 companies and organizations (11 from Germany and 11 from France) have taken an important milestone and finally transferred the joint project into solid structures: The 22 founding members signed the notarial founding documents in order to establish an international non-profit association (French: association internationale sans but lucratif, in short: AISBL) under Belgian law, the GAIA-X, European Association for Data and Cloud, AISBL.
From reading these words the first thing that emerges, for me, is the absence …
But in November our Ministry also attended the summit and on May 28 Confindustria kicked off the Italian hub by defining it as the moment of starting a shared path, aimed at aggregating and coordinating all the subjects interested in the development of projects that aim to enhance data, and an opportunity to get to know the European project and the methods of implementation in Italy.
What exactly are we talking about? Gaia X is a federated data infrastructure for Europe.
Talking about:
Energy Health Smart living Industry 4.0 Portability Interoperability Interconnectivity Identity & Trust Federated catalogue Sovereing data exchange Compliance
The main objectives are to develop ecosystems, to bundle national initiatives, and to provide a central point of contact to interested parties on their respective countries.
In fact, it is evident that the amount of data on a digital level is increasing day by day, and it is no coincidence that a whole series of new figures are emerging, among which the demiurge of big data particularly fascinates me.
Not to mention the parallel growth of IoT: Internet of things which involves a further exponential increase in connected devices.
But how important can a European Data Cloud be? How is the data handled now?
It is clear that this is an ongoing situation, and as it happens in a fiscal way for the giants of the web, armed with fragmentary, incomplete, if not non-existent regulations, the companies that manage the server farms act in an almost undisturbed pseudo-monopoly regime.
The need that is underlined is to achieve an autonomy that allows one to no longer have to make use of American or Chinese structures.
For example, I found huge data centers that China has built in a semi-desert area of Mongolia, previously dedicated to the breeding of the famous horses: The Mongolian National Data Center, established by a government resolution issued on June 24, 2009.
Or the Data Foundry in Texas founded in 1994 as one of the top 50 ISPs in the United States.
The aspect that in my opinion is not sufficiently taken into account is that “not everything that glitters is green” …
Servers need to be cooled, and this operation, although it is presented as a continuous search for innovation, consumes large amounts of energy.
Google presents its renewable energy project with a photo gallery, while admitting the following:
the 100% renewable energy milestone means we buy enough renewable energy over the course of a year to cover our entire annual electricity consumption, however it doesn’t mean that all of our facilities are powered by clean energy every hour of every day. To compensate for times and places where the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine, we buy a surplus of renewable energy at other times and in other places. Our ultimate goal is to achieve CO2-neutral energy supply for our operations in all locations, at all times. We are actively exploring strategies to achieve 24/7 CO2-neutral power supply to all of our data centers, closely monitoring our progress towards achieving this goal.
I conclude with the thing that scares me the most: the more we move forward, the more the main operations we carry out, from bank transactions to public certificates, from tax returns, to the signing of contracts, depend on applications and on telematic accesses, without which we would be practically paralyzed.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not calm. Am I wrong?
“What time is the end of the world?“ No, let’s start from the beginning: The War of the Worlds is a novel written by H. G. Wells, one of the forerunners of the science fiction genre, originally published in installments in 1897 on the Pearson’s Magazine in London. First curious anecdote: HG Wells took in part inspiration from Giovanni Schiaparelli’s theories about Mars (and if you always read me remember our save the date 🙂 ) The astronomer and director of the Brera Astronomical Observatory in Milan observed some lines on the surface of the red planet, and hypothesized that they could be natural channels for the transport of water as they changed from one observation to another. At this point there is another beautiful smile because what is one of the painful keys for all of us Italians? Knowledge of English! Why do I say this? Because its natural channels were translated with the wrong term that distorted the theory by transforming them into artificial canals. Hence the assumption that they had been excavated by … Martians, precisely. These famous “Martians” who populated the fantasies of many, embodying the most varied forms and descriptions, before being replaced by the most universal aliens. These famous “Martians” who inspired Wells first and then Welles, Orson Welles. Curious also this coincidence, one e above all and a patented invention separates them, another curious fact, always in 1897, always in London, and always by an Italian: Guglielmo Marconi. Why do I switch to radio? Because in the meantime we arrive in 1938, and the radio is still the fledgling mass media and, exactly as it works today for the internet, it is seen as a form of potentially dangerous communication. It is seen as a vehicle of social mutation, for the rapid diffusion to the easy reach of a large number of people, and above all harmful to the publishing giants, worried about losing their income. And precisely at CBS Orson Welles conducts The MercuryTheater on the Air: a program consisting of the narration of the great classics of literature, for the truth poorly paid and not much followed. But Orson, at that time a Shakespearean actor, expresses his genius by using the program also to deal a blow to the system, deciding to cut the news in real time, and in view of the imminent Halloween, structures the Martian invasion described in the book like a real-time radio commentary. It is in fact on October 30, 1938 when the reading of the opening words of The War of the Worlds is on air, interspersed with musical broadcasts, as usual, until an announcement interrupts the music and transposes the text setting it in the United States. With the help of screenwriter Howard Koch, completed with mock interviews with experts, imitations of press releases from the authorities, and sound effects to which Orson Welles pays special attention. At the beginning and during the transmission it is clearly stated that it is the transposition of the novel, but many tune in at different times and the illusion effect created artfully succeeds perfectly. It is said that a man called the New York Times to ask “what time is the end of the world?” to which the famous song written by Michael stipe of R.E.M. is inspired. There is a chorus that supports the exaggeration of the estimates that count people running in the street, panic scenes, or hysteria, and I honestly don’t intend to dwell on the numbers, since, especially in this period, we everyday hear tragic counts. In fact, in Grover’s Mills, New Jersey, there is a commemorative plaque with the following inscription: On the evening of October 30, 1938 Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre presented a dramatization of H.G. Wells The war of the worlds as adapted by Howard Koch. This was to become a landmark in broadcast history, provoking continuing thought about media responsibility, social psychology and civil defense. For a brief time as many as one million people throughout the country believed that Martians had invaded the earth, beginning with Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. The important thing that Orson Welles has more or less voluntarily shown us is that people are led to believe rather unconditionally what is communicated to them by the mainstream mass media. How many times have we heard “TV said it?” How many care to check the news? This time I went beyond coffee time, but today we can also indulge in chocolate, what do you say? Now I conclude with the last strange coincidence: in The War of the Worlds the Martians are defeated by a virus.
Hi I'm Claudia and this is KCDC.
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