Daily Shaarli

All links of one day in a single page.

July 1, 2022

How flowers are 'put to sleep' for long sea voyages - BBC News
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On arrival at Kenya's biggest seaport, Mombasa, the container is loaded onto a ship for a voyage to Europe of around 30 days. Despite their lengthy journey, they will still be sold to European shoppers with a vase-life of about a week.

So, how is this possible?

"The flowers will be kept at a temperature of 0.5 degrees celsius throughout the journey," says Elizabeth Kimani, the manager of quality and standards at Sian Flowers.

As well as controlling the temperature, the atmosphere system in the container reduces the oxygen level from 20% to 4%, while increasing the carbon dioxide level from 0.4% to 4%.

This technology is all part of the elaborate process of preserving the blooms for as long as possible. //

But flowers destined for such a long voyage need extra attention to prepare them, as soon as they are picked.

"We harvest them early in the morning, when it's still cool and they will be the first to go into the cold room," explains Linda Murungi from grower, Sian Flowers.

Freshly-harvested roses, for instance, are then dipped into a chemical mixture to protect them from the fungus, botrytis.

After that, the stems are put into buckets to absorb a hydration solution so they can survive the thirty days without water. They are also put in a solution that curbs the growth hormone, ethylene, which causes the ageing of the flowers.

Once that process is completed, the flowers are then packed into cartons with holes in the top and bottom, which allow air from the container's system to circulate. //

Kenya has become one of the world's biggest flower exporters thanks to its equatorial location, high altitudes and relatively cheap labour, it competes for dominance in the market with Colombia and Ecuador.

For years, the two Latin American countries have been exporting about 10% of their flowers by sea freight to North America and Europe.

As these flowers are at sea for a much shorter period of time, firms exporting from Latin America do not use controlled atmosphere, or post-harvest treatments.

Kenyan exporters however, have to be extra-careful. There is no direct shipping route in to Europe, instead, containers are transferred in the Middle East from smaller vessels to much larger ones.

The Best Managers Don’t Fix, They Coach — Four Tools to Add to Your Toolkit | First Round Review

Too often, managers feel the best way to add value is by fixing someone’s problem. “I know the answer, and I need to tell them,” we say to ourselves. But over-relying on fixing constrains our ability to lead and robs our team members of growth opportunities. //

But if they aren’t aware of it, most managers default to a single approach. Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and leadership author, studied 3,871 executives and identified six leadership styles: Commanding, Visionary, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, and Coaching. What he found was that the most effective leaders didn’t over-rely on a single style; they had mastered multiple styles and could skillfully match the right style to a situation.

How to Kick a User Off of a Linux System - Putorius

Find a List of Logged In Users

You can use the "who" command to find a list of users currently logged into the system. Using the -u (--users) option will also display the PID (process ID) of the users shell session.

End the Users Shell Process

When you are ready to kick the user, send the SIGHUP to the users shell process. A SIGHUP signal is the same signal the process would receive when the controlling terminal is closed.

 sudo kill -HUP 9940

The number at the end of the above command is the process ID of the users shell. We found the process ID using the who command above.

Sometimes there is a process that hangs. In that case we can send a SIGKILL (kill -9) to the PID. This is exactly what it sounds like. It will immediately terminate ANY process, so be careful.

sudo kill -9 9940
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IN MY ORBIT: Securing Justice Clarence Thomas' Legacy Is Mark Paoletta's Life Mission – RedState

The film, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas In His Own Words was released in 2020, and offered a unique glimpse into Justice Clarence Thomas’ life and judicial philosophy. Since his 1991 confirmation hearings, the legacy media has delighted in poisoning the well with lies, smears, and racist tropes about the Justice. With the assistance of documentary filmmaker Michael Pack, Mark Paoletta decided to dig a new well, one that allowed people to draw their conclusions from Justice Thomas’ own life, words, and writings.

Pack spent 25 hours filming Justice Thomas, and six additional hours with his wife Ginni — a voluminous amount of discourse that was reduced to a two-hour documentary. Sadly, this left a prodigious amount of information on who the Justice is as a person, as well as his writings and viewpoints, unexplored. So, Paoletta decided that a book of the same name was in order. //

I sat down with Paoletta for an hour, and he stated that he is making it his life’s mission to present a true, candid, and unadorned portrait of this consequential jurist.

It’s a fascinating conversation that gives a glimpse not only into Clarence Thomas the United States Supreme Court Justice, but into Clarence Thomas the man and the humanitarian.