Cool :)

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Give Me A Break, Give Me A Break for that...
Nestle says 413,793 KitKat candy bars stolen en route from Italy to Poland

Swiss food giant Nestlé says about 12 tons, or 413,793 candy bars, of its KitKat chocolate brand were stolen after leaving its production site in Italy earlier this week for Poland.

The company, based in Vevey, Switzerland, said in a statement Friday that “the vehicle and its load are still nowhere to be found.”

The shipment of the crunchy bars, made of waffles covered with chocolate, disappeared last week while en route between production and distribution locations. The chocolate bars were to be distributed throughout Europe.

Somebody has a sweet tooth.

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Q: "What is the latest slogan promoting tourism to Poland?" [long pause,,,, curious audience...]

A: "Come to Poland! Your car is already here!" [audience bursting out laughing]

From a 1990s German Late Night TV show whose famous host frequently aired such stereotypes. Unimaginable nowadays (rightly so).

The ancient reason there are 60 minutes in an hour

A mysterious 5,000-year-old decision led directly to how we still count time today.

At the origin are the Sumerians, an ancient people who lived in Mesopotamia (roughly modern-day Iraq) from around 5300-1940BC and one of the first civilisations to ever form cities. Along with many other inventions including irrigation and the plough, they are credited with creating the first known writing system. This happened to include a number system based on the concept of 60.

Its ease of use, however, is clear. Sixty can be divided by one, two, three, four, five, six, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 and 60 without the need for fractions or decimals. Contrast that with 10, which can be divided only by one, two, five and 10 and its advantages start to become clear. "If you're developing numbers for very practical purposes, like accounting, taxes or measuring fields and dividing fields for your sons' inheritance, having an easy way to do these mathematical operations can be really helpful," [...]

Sports... FIFA Soccer Worldcup 2026 U.S.A.

Italy won its fourth world championship in 2006 against France. The greatest Italian team in history.

In 2010 and 2014, Italy did not get past the initial group stage in the world cup. A bewildered soccer giant. Painful to watch.

In the following years it get worse. Italy failed to qualify for the world cup of 2018 (in Russia) and 2022 (Qatar). Btw. in 2018 the Icelandic vikings took part; a nation of less than 400K people.

Yesterday, the final qualification playoffs for the 2026 championship in the U.S.A. (largest contest ever: 48 nations, 16 from Europe). Btw. the Dutch dominion Curaçao (150K people) in the Caribbean qualified. (okay, they 'cheated'; hired the former Dutch national coach).

Quo vadis Italia?

Yesterday they lost their playoff match against Bosnia-Hercegovina after penalties. Bosnia? Yes, Bosnia. This war-torn, economically struggling remnant of Yugoslavia in the Balkans. They will compete in the U.S.A. Impressive!

The once-great soccer nation Italy is shattered. Three consecutive world-cups missed... A whole generation of soccer kids cannot cheer for their national heroes. Traumatic.

FIFA World Cup Qualifying - European Play-offs - Finals Bosnia-Herzegovina win 4 - 1 on penalties against Italy

World Cup 2026 will be my 16th & the 1st one I won't be watching.
Reasons are genuine but this is the Cafe not Politics thread.

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Grant
Darwin NT

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Grant
Darwin NT

Just for something different- posting here about an issue with the BOINC forums.
After a multi-hour problem where trying to use the forums got a database error message, after the forums came back, i could no longer post.

Unable to handle request
To create a thread you must have computing credit.

That was last night and i've still got the same problem this morning.

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Grant
Darwin NT

I see Jord posted on the BOINC message board @ Grumbles, Glory and All Your Off Topic Discussions
Posted: 11 Apr 2026, 21:56:18 UTC

So, it's so nice and quiet here because y'all can't post due to lack of forum credits. It's been reported to David, let's wait what comes out of that.

Can now post to BOINC forums again.

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Grant
Darwin NT

I was the same way.

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