Fact For The Day

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In Colonial India, locals in Himalayas and Punjab region had used inflated bullock skins as boat service to carry passengers across rivers. The technique of using inflated animal skins as a floating raft has been practiced for centuries across cultures, from Babylon to China, from Tibet to Egypt. India too adopted this brilliant ancient technique.

The skin from the animal is taken in one piece and all orifices in the skin are closed except in one leg which is kept open for inflation. Then the boatman inflates the skin through that opening in the leg by blowing from his mouth. The skins have been made air-tight and inflated with air just as we inflate a floating device. As many of these skins are desired are fastened together by poles so that the ferry boat can be made any size.

Charpoys can be erected on top of the inflated skins to provide comfortable rides to passengers. The boatman would keep paddling the stream with his limbs steering it in the right direction and keep blowing air during the journey.

I really hope this isn’t some AI malarkey, btw

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How the fuck do you skin a cow in one piece?! Seems unlikely?

EDIT. So apparently it’s a thing and there’s a whole post on Reddit about it all :laughing:

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I’m eating my cornflakes, so I won’t be Googling that.

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Do they explain how they inflate them beyond ā€œthey were inflated just as we inflate floating devicesā€. I’m sceptical.

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That feeling of satisfaction when get the skin off a Bramley apple with a knife in a one-er. Can’t buy that :green_apple: :smile:

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The two guys are taking a toke out of a chillum in disguise. The guy on the left has clearly just had a hit of his - and it was a whopper judging by the look on his dish. But I don’t buy that those are bulls. Where’s the hoofs?! I’m no mug - Those are seals with rigor mortis that have washed up - then been used to disguise chillum puffing!

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Similar with goat skins!

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Salvador Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo in exchange for a lifetime supply.

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Most animals are skinned in one piece, it’s the most simple way to do it.

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image

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My nearest and dearest, a lifelong enthusiast of Westerns, just told me that Sergio Leone Ennio Morricone were at school together.:point_up_2:

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The first barcode was read in an Ohio supermarket in June 1974 when a packet of Juicy Fruit chewing gum was rung up. (via an article in the Guardian)

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Nikolai Fedorov, a russian librarian and philisopher inspired the soviet space program. Federov a Christian theist wrote philosophy on cosmos and the cureing of death, and proposed that death soon would be history.

The following overpopulation of earth would make it nessicarly to populate space. Hence, soviet started their space program. Crazy?

You have probably heard of how soviet reserchers keept a seprated dog head alive for days. That was also inspired by Fedorovs philosophy relating to the cure for death.

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The Soviets had all kinds of crazy ideas about cheating death with the Bolshevik God Builders. I find it all fascinating. Along with trying to make the perfect Soviet soldier by crossing a human with a chimp.

It’s now all the Silicon Valley twats who are chasing these fantasies.

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Viz did a strip about Richard Branson / Jeff Bezos / Elon Musk fighting to be the 1st person to have a wank on the moon

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