All posts tagged: conquered

Full steam ahead: how ‘navy curry’ conquered hearts in Japan | Japan

Full steam ahead: how ‘navy curry’ conquered hearts in Japan | Japan

Published by Sam Flores

The sailors aboard the navy vessel Hashidate know what’s for lunch long before the telltale aromas escape from the galley. Yosuke Oyama, the ship’s chef, has been up since dawn, softening onions and occasionally stirring a pot of chicken stock that has been simmering for several hours. He slices carrots and potatoes, places strips of beef on a tray and performs a quick inventory of the other ingredients – among them a selection of spices, apple puree, ginger and garlic and, for extra umami, a red wine and honey reduction. After a chorus of “Itadakimasu” – bon appétit – the mess deck is silent except for the appreciative noises made by the ravenous men and women of Japan’s maritime self-defence forces (SDF). Justin’s Navy curry 1 “The crew love hamburgers, steak, sushi and ramen … they eat a lot like children,” jokes Oyama, a navy chef for three decades who is more accustomed to cooking for up to 500 sailors at a time. “And curry is always a winner.” With each spoonful, they are upholding …

‘You feel you’ve conquered the world’: a Thames swimmer on the river’s first bathing site in London | Swimming

‘You feel you’ve conquered the world’: a Thames swimmer on the river’s first bathing site in London | Swimming

Published by Sam Flores

Some people think we are odd for swimming in the Thames. “Isn’t it cold?” they ask with a shiver, like they are the ones who just took the plunge. Er, yes, that’s the whole point. Cold water ignites the central nervous system and reboots the mind. “Isn’t it dirty?” they ask. Yes, sometimes, particularly when it’s rained. Then we don’t get in the Thames, we get in a rage instead, taking contamination measurements and signing petitions challenging the behaviour of the water company that spews sewage into the river. The truth is there are plenty of days when the water acquires a yellow foam on the surface and you can no longer see your hands below the surface. Even the dogs don’t get in. But there are lots of people who love the water and the rivers just as much as we do, even if they don’t get in for a swim. People who have been frustrated by the way the private sector has treated something we feel belongs to us. That is why the …

How Critical Role and Dimension 20 conquered the world one campaign at a time

How Critical Role and Dimension 20 conquered the world one campaign at a time

Published by skeptic

The biggest hit on the internet right now isn’t a scripted sitcom or a big-budget movie. It’s a group of friends sitting around a table, rolling dice, and creating fantastic worlds for four hours at a time. Shows like Critical Role and Dimension 20 have conquered both the internet and live audiences across the world with their imaginations and hysterical banter. But cultural phenomenons like these aren’t forged overnight. It takes years worth of Initiative, Charisma checks and Nat 20s for these campaigns to get to where they are today. And we are going to break down why Actual Play sorcerers like Critical Role and Dimension 20 succeeded and how they hit. Source link

How rats conquered Earth – Big Think

How rats conquered Earth – Big Think

Published by Jenni Sidey

When a tiny poof of a bird shows up at a backyard feeder in a snowstorm, people see perseverance. When ants band together to drag a large crumb, they see teamwork. When a delicate butterfly flaps into the sky, we feel hope. But when a rat escapes a trap or makes a home in a dumpster, what do we experience? It might well be disgust or dismay, but it’s rarely awe or wonder.  Yet rats may be one of the most awe-worthy animals on the planet. They have survived global apocalypses, far-flung abandonments, and targeted eradication campaigns. According to Bobby Corrigan, an urban rodentologist of more than 30 years, trying to suppress a rat population is like trying to bail out the ocean. “Ever since the caveman days, we have tried to control rats,” he tells Big Think. “We poison them. We trap them. We do horrible things to these animals.” And just when we think we’ve won? “They rebound.” No one wants to find rat droppings next to the Pop-Tarts in the pantry or …

How American Camouflage Conquered the World

How American Camouflage Conquered the World

Published by skeptic

The design students didn’t start out in the field or on a hunting range. “You start in your Adobe suite, right?” Thompson says. “ Go right in digitally, create it, print it, make uniforms out of it. Tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak.” It was a lot of guesswork. There wasn’t really a reliable measurement for testing the effectiveness of camo. “ The human eye and the user and the guy in the field know what’s good or bad, but to make that be a test that you could replicate across different forces would be very, very hard,” Thompson says. And yet, Crye Precision was pretty sure it had found something special. In the early 2000s, they presented their concept for multi-environment camo to the United States military. Crye made it clear that they intended to patent this pattern, an early design of which was called Scorpion. In 2004 they did, and christened it MultiCam. Around that same time, when the military had an open call for submissions for a new Army camo, Crye proposed MultiCam. It was …

K-Pop Demon Hunters, BTS, and How Korea Conquered American Culture

K-Pop Demon Hunters, BTS, and How Korea Conquered American Culture

Published by Daniella Wilson

Growing up in Toronto, Maggie Kang felt she needed to conceal her obsession with H.O.T., the mid-1990s idol group whose tightly synchronized choreography, chantable hooks and lurid crimson hair — sometimes topped with ski goggles — helped define the template for modern K-pop. “I had to hide that I liked K-pop,” says Kang, co-writer and co-director of KPop Demon Hunters. “Even my Asian friends thought it was lame. But it was just part of me — it wasn’t escapism, it was identity.” These days, Kang no longer is hiding. On March 15, her hyperkinetic animated Netflix hit — in which a K-pop girl group, Huntrix, juggles global superstardom while slaying soul-eating demons disguised as a rival boy band — made history by winning best animated feature at the Academy Awards. Its self-affirmation anthem, “Golden,” currently being belted by 10-year-olds and their parents from Los Angeles to Osaka, became the first tune by a K-pop act ever to win best original song.  Accepting the award, Kang tearfully apologized that it took so long “for those of …

Overdrawn, underpaid and over it: how four people conquered their debt mountains | Money

Overdrawn, underpaid and over it: how four people conquered their debt mountains | Money

Published by Sam Flores

Abbie Marton Bell, a National Debtline adviser, is often the first person her clients will speak to about their debt, after years of carrying the weight of their financial worries alone. Most of the time, they haven’t even told their partner or family, she says, and “you can literally hear the relief in their voice”. Debt carries a lot of shame, but it’s more common than people might think. In the UK, 84% of adults had some form of credit or loan in the year leading up to May 2024. The average household holds about £2,700 in credit card debt, and it’s only getting worse. Borrowing has been rising at its fastest rate for almost two years, with those hit hardest by the cost of living crisis increasingly using credit to pay for essentials. When the National Debtline reopened after Christmas last year, they had 1,400 calls for help – their busiest day on record. “There just isn’t enough money to go around,” says Bell. “About 43% of the people who give us details about …

Weak ants conquered Earth using sheer numbers

Weak ants conquered Earth using sheer numbers

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Here’s a fun (and creepy) fact: The Earth is home to approximately 20 quadrillion ants. To put zeroes on it, that’s around 20,000,000,000,000,000 of the six-legged insects living all around us. How did such diminutive creatures attain their prominent—and ecologically vital–role on the planet? According to one team of entomologists, the answer may be an evolutionary preference for quantity of quality. Their findings are explored in a study published today in the journal Science Advances, and may help explain genetic complexities in much bigger animals. “Ants are everywhere,” University of Cambridge zoologist and study co-author Arthur Matte explained in a statement. “Yet the fundamental biological strategies which enabled their massive colonies and extraordinary diversification remain unclear.” To investigate, Matte and his collaborators focused on each insect’s cuticle. For humans, a cuticle usually refers to the thick, protective layer of skin near fingernails and toenails. Ants grow a cuticle layer over their entire exoskeleton. Aside from guarding them against predators, disease, and …