› added 3 years ago

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TIL until the mid-1990s the Italian-American mafia controlled trash collection in New York City, fixing prices by extorting or murdering competitors or requiring them to join the price-fixing cartel. After an undercover operation convicted the leaders, trash collection costs dropped by $600 million.

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j6RZv TIL (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay was recorded by Otis Redding just 72 hours before he died in a plane crash.
R74N9 TIL about Maroons, enslaved Africans who quickly escaped in the countries they were brought to and often joined indigenous populations to form warrior tribes with their own complex language, war and living cultures. Many Maroon warfare tactics have been co-opted into global army training today.
PYGye TIL The world's worst shark attack occurred on July 30, 1945, when the SS Indianapolis was torpedoed by Japanese submarines. Nearly 900 men went overboard - only 317 were rescued four days later, with hundreds directly killed by sharks
yDaJ TIL that according to the unpublished notes written by J.R.R Tolkien regarding ‘The Silmarillion’, 'Melkor’ (a Dark lord that preceded Sauron) was prophesised to return and wage an apocalyptic war, presumably thousands of years after the war of the ring.
yQJjl TIL about Bostrom's trilemma. If humans don't kill themselves off and reach the point of being able to simulate human brains, and don't develop universally believed ethics not to, then, statistically speaking, there is a higher chance you are a computer simulation than not.