peaceful-jp-scenery posted a photo:

Inawashiro Herb Garden
猪苗代ハーブ園

There was a display of umbrellas inside the greenhouse. I’m going to share a few photos from the "sparkly" series.

ハウス内に傘の展示がありました。
少々、キラキラシリーズで掲載します。

Inawashiro-machi, Fukushima pref, Japan

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: At a BMW factory in South Carolina, a human-shaped robot with a screen for a face recently stepped from a charging station toward a stack of green plastic boxes. It grasped an auto part from one of the boxes, pivoted, placed the part in a trolley, then pulled the trolley across the floor. The robot's slow, stiff movements suggested a worker with a bad hangover rather than a technological revolution. "They're still slower than humans," Ulrich Wieland, a BMW vice president in charge of logistics at the factory, in Spartanburg, told reporters invited to see the robot in June. But, he added, "they're advancing fast."

Automakers have used robots for decades, but they are usually powerful, one-armed machines that are fixed in place and perform repetitive tasks like welding body frames or applying adhesives to door panels. Now, most major automakers are betting that robots designed to resemble human beings, known as humanoids, will usher in a new wave of automation and efficiency. Equipped with artificial intelligence, they are expected to move around and do tasks now done by humans without any modifications to factories or heavy equipment.

Unlike most of the robots now in use, humanoids would respond to voice commands and theoretically solve problems and react to unforeseen events. They would never take a lunch break, join a union or require health insurance. To optimists, robots could rescue U.S. manufacturing by increasing productivity, solving shortages of skilled workers and giving Western carmakers a fighting chance at competing with Chinese rivals that enjoy lower costs. Boring but important jobs like sorting parts would be done by robots, freeing humans for more interesting and specialized work.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From a 500-year-old inn in the Italian Dolomites to a log cabin in Finland’s lake district, these boltholes offer a tranquil and restorative getaway

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There is dignity and tenderness to this drama based on the real story of the Sixties Scoop – the scandal of First Nations children who were forcibly taken from their parents and adopted by white families

Here’s one you’ll like: a man comes home to find his wife handcuffed to the wall and his young children missing. They have been taken by child protection services due to the lack of a fridge in the house, which is treated as a sign of neglect. When he confronts law enforcement officials outside, they beat him to death. Decades later, one of the children, now adopted into a Jewish home in Montreal, goes looking for the family she lost, risking the collapse of her new life to do so. I never said it was a joke. Although it turns out there was a fridge, behind the house.

Watching Little Bird (18 August, 9pm, Sky Atlantic), I was reminded that TV is capable of more than mere entertainment, something we lose sight of when we think of it as a purely profit-or loss-making enterprise. I felt the visceral anger and sadness of this story of a First Nations woman caught between cultures, robbed by forces beyond her control and stonewalled by the authorities. Set in Canada, the attitude, if not the events, feel shamefully familiar.

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Five multiple-choice questions – set by children – to test your knowledge, and a chance to submit your own junior brainteasers for future quizzes

• ​Submit a question

Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a podcast answering children’s questions. Do check out her books, Everything Under the Sun and Everything Under the Sun: Quiz Book, as well as her new title, Everything Under the Sun: All Around the World.

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From lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon and second childishness to George W Bush describing ‘some weird shit’, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which English cheese cannot be made in its namesake village?
2 What did George W Bush reportedly describe in January 2017 as “some weird shit”?
3 What is the UK’s only aquatic songbird?
4 In the church year, what is Ordinary Time?
5 Clara Rockmore was a virtuoso on what electronic instrument?
6 Which actor injured his achilles tendon while playing Achilles?
7 Carting Lane, off the Strand, has London’s last type of what lamp?
8 Which 1980 TV docudrama caused a crisis in Anglo-Saudi relations?
What links:
9 Chief mourner at Nelson’s funeral; chair of British Railways; Spider-Man?
10 Batgirl; Coyote v Acme; Nothing Lasts Forever; The Day the Clown Cried?
11 Barbary; Gold; Grain; Ivory; Pepper; Skeleton?
12 Infant; schoolboy; lover; soldier; justice; pantaloon; second childishness?
13 Wooderson; Bannister; Ibbotson; Coe; Ovett; Cram; Kerr?
14 Juliet; Reach Out I’ll Be There; December 1963?
15 Middlemarch; Das Kapital; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; Watch Out!?

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Conservative authority says site is not safe for vulnerable people charity serves or general public

Westminster council is making it “impossible” for soup kitchens to operate by complaining about the “crowds of vulnerable people” who turn up to be fed, a charity has said.

Steven Stuart, who founded Friends of Essex & London Homeless (FOELH) with his wife, Cheryl, a decade ago, said constant complaints from the council could force the soup kitchen to shut down.

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Published for the first time this month, the Irish writer’s record of his months in pre-war Germany is a fascinating insight into his understanding of, and unease with, Nazism

War was not yet on the immediate horizon when Samuel Beckett visited the German city of Hamburg in October 1936, but after watching the apoplexy that Adolf Hitler’s braying induced in ordinary Germans, the Irish playwright was certain that peace could not last. “They’ll need to fight soon (or burst),” he noted in his diary on 6 October.

The six notebooks that Beckett compiled during his six-month journey across Germany between late September 1936 and April 1937, published for the first time by German publisher Suhrkamp on 20 August this year, put paid to a commonly held view of the author of Waiting for Godot as a poet of pure pessimism, interested in despair and stasis but unconcerned by real-life politics.

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The stark figures show that since the hardliners seized power in 2021, women have been erased from public life, poverty is forcing hopeless families to marry off their daughters and healthcare is on the brink of failure

‘I married off my daughter so that none of us would die of hunger.” Malika hesitated before saying the words aloud. The 46-year-old lives with her husband and four youngest children (three girls and a boy) in Chihil Dukhtarān, one of Kabul’s poorest neighbourhoods.

Poverty pushed the family to the brink before Malika and her husband made what they describe as the hardest decision of their lives: marrying off their eldest daughter, Maryam, for 200,000 afghanis (£2,270). She was still a teenager.

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Avoid getting into debt at university with tricks to save cash, earn extra funds and have a good time

Over the past two years university student Erin has been giving Martin Lewis a run for his money when it comes to hunting down the best hacks, tips and tricks to save cash and earn money.

The 21-year-old has seen Oasis for free; earned tickets to race days; made money from selling secondhand clothes (£200 in one weekend alone); and enjoyed cut-price treats with friends.

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Yorkshire common was thought to be the only known site of dark bordered beauty moths in England – until now

• Vote here for your favourite invertebrate of the year

Dave Wainwright first surveyed Wallington in Northumberland for a rare custard-and-chocolate coloured moth in 2004. He parked two miles from the site, hauled a moth trap across, and was bitten by a million flies.

He did not find a single dark bordered beauty that night. The ground was heavily grazed by sheep, and the creeping willow the caterpillars depend on was “quite well plucked”.

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Vannacht is er bewolking gekomen en verspreid gaan er vandaag enkele buien vallen. Dat is vooral vanochtend en in het begin van de middag, en de meeste kans op een bui is er in het westen.

Terwijl zonaanbidders hun geluk niet op kunnen met de temperaturen van deze week, moesten Yolanda, Marian en hun collega’s van de Dierenambulance juist een tandje bij zetten. Op zomerse dagen zijn er namelijk altijd meer meldingen over dieren in nood. “Als meer mensen naar buiten gaan, is er altijd meer kans dat ze gewonde dieren tegenkomen.”

In dit liveblog houden we je op de hoogte van het belangrijkste en meest opvallende 112-nieuws van zaterdag 15 augustus.

In dit liveblog houden we je op de hoogte van het belangrijkste en meest opvallende 112-nieuws van zaterdag 15 augustus.

In dit liveblog houden we je op de hoogte van het belangrijkste en meest opvallende 112-nieuws van zaterdag 15 augustus.

Aan de Orionstraat in Rotterdam-Hillegersberg is vrijdagavond een man geëlektrocuteerd. Dat gebeurde nadat hij op straat zat te rommelen aan een uitstekende stroomkabel. De man is naar het ziekenhuis gebracht.

Een gemiddeld agrarisch huishouden heeft €88.200 per jaar te besteden. Dat is fors meer dan het Nederlandse gemiddelde. Tegelijk zit het vermogen van boeren vaak niet op de bank, maar vast in grond, stallen, machines en vee.

Boeren klagen geregeld dat ze nauwelijks iets overhouden, terwijl nieuwe cijfers laten zien dat agrarische huishoudens gemiddeld juist financieel sterk staan. In 2022 kwam hun gemiddeld besteedbaar inkomen uit op €88.200 per jaar. Een gemiddeld Nederlands huishouden moest het doen met €51.200.

Dat betekent niet dat elke melkveehouder, akkerbouwer of varkenshouder elk jaar comfortabel leeft. De opbrengsten kunnen per sector en per seizoen enorm verschillen. Maar als groep behoren boerenhuishoudens opvallend vaak tot de financieel welvarendste Nederlanders.

Veel hoger inkomen dan gemiddeld

Het besteedbaar inkomen is wat een huishouden na belastingen en premies overhoudt. Bij agrarische huishoudens was dat in 2022 gemiddeld €88.200. Dat is bijna 72 procent hoger dan het gemiddelde van alle Nederlandse huishoudens.

Ook vergeleken met andere ondernemers doen boeren het goed. Huishoudens van zelfstandigen hadden gemiddeld €71.800 te besteden.

De inkomsten komen bovendien niet alleen van de boerderij. Van het totale inkomen van agrarische huishoudens komt gemiddeld 64 procent uit de onderneming zelf. Nog eens 27 procent bestaat uit loon uit werk in loondienst — bijvoorbeeld van een partner — en 9 procent uit uitkeringen of pensioen. vandaagenmorgen

Ruim twee derde zit in hoogste groep

Kijk je niet alleen naar inkomen, maar ook naar bezit, dan springen boeren er nog sterker uit. In 2022 behoorde 69 procent van de agrarische huishoudens tot de hoogste 20 procent van Nederland als inkomen en vermogen samen worden gewogen. Bij alle zelfstandigen was dat 37 procent. vandaagenmorgen

Dat hoge vermogen is niet vreemd. Een agrarisch bedrijf bezit vaak kostbare landbouwgrond, bedrijfsgebouwen, machines, installaties, vee en soms productierechten. Alleen al een boerenbedrijf met tientallen hectaren grond kan op papier miljoenen waard zijn.

Maar dat is iets anders dan een miljoenenrekening. Wie grond, een stal of machines verkoopt, kan doorgaans niet zonder gevolgen doorgaan met boeren. Bovendien staan er vaak flinke leningen, investeringen en lopende kosten tegenover die bezittingen.

De doorsneeboer heeft tonnen aan bedrijfsvermogen

CBS-cijfers over zelfstandigen laten zien dat het mediane bedrijfsvermogen in landbouw, bosbouw en visserij in 2024 €586.600 bedroeg. De mediaan betekent: de helft zit daarboven, de andere helft eronder. Bij zelfstandigen voor wie het ondernemerschap de belangrijkste inkomstenbron is, lag het mediane bedrijfsvermogen zelfs op €677.000.

Dat zijn bedrijfsvermogens en geen bedrag dat de boer vrij kan opnemen. De cijfers onderstrepen wel waarom veel agrarische huishoudens hoog eindigen in de welvaartsstatistieken: hun economische bezit is gemiddeld groot.

Armoede komt weinig voor

Slechts 0,7 procent van de agrarische huishoudens leefde in 2022 in armoede. Voor alle Nederlandse huishoudens lag dat aandeel op 4 procent. Langdurige armoede — drie jaar achter elkaar — kwam bij slechts 0,1 procent van de boerenhuishoudens voor.

De kanttekening is belangrijk: boeren kunnen financieel wel degelijk klem zitten door lage opbrengstprijzen, hoge rente of dure mest-, voer- en energiekosten. Een bedrijf met veel bezittingen kan tegelijk weinig liquiditeit hebben. Toch laten de cijfers zien dat de gemiddelde boer, gerekend over inkomen én vermogen, duidelijk niet tot de kwetsbaarste groep in Nederland behoort.

Tasmanian.Kris has added a photo to the pool:

This is all grid, glass and suspended time. The tiny figures across the tracks give it scale, but the real subject is the station’s huge indifferent geometry pretending not to notice anyone.