Skip Navigation
TIL Costa Rica has had no military since 1949
www.thesoldiersproject.org Why Doesn’t Costa Rica Have a Military & Since When?

Find the answer to, “Why doesn’t Costa Rica have a military?” and other relevant information, like when it ceased its standing Army

Why Doesn’t Costa Rica Have a Military & Since When?

>The decision to demilitarize started from a proposal to put more money into education and healthcare by the then Defense Minister Edgar Cardona, who passed it to the Interior minister Alvaro Ramos and then, taken to the constitutional assembly by the provisional President at the time, Jose Figueres Ferrer.

>But even though Costa Rica has no Army, it has a special police force, officially called the Public Force of Costa Rica (Fuerza Pública). It was established in 1996 by the Ministry of Public Security to perform law enforcement, policing, and border patrol tasks. The force’s motto is “God, Fatherland, and Honor.”

>The Effects of Costa Rica not having an Army

>The budget previously dedicated to sustaining the Costa Rica Army is put into other aspects of the society like education and health care.

>This, in turn, allows for improved political, economic, and social stability. New schools and hospitals lowered the country’s infant mortality and heightened the literacy rate.

>Today, Costa Rica’s infant mortality rate is the second-lowest in the region, and the literacy rate is 98%. It also has a higher life expectancy, averaging 80 years old. So, overall, the standard of living has increased.

>In fact, in 2012, based on the Happy Planet Index, it was the happiest country in the world!

Population of 5 million.

19
JD Vance's past remarks on car seats deterring people from having kids go viral
  • "American families aren't having enough children. I think there's evidence that some of the things that we're doing to parents is driving down the number of children that American families are having," Vance says in the video.

    "In particular, there's evidence that the car seat rules that we've imposed, which of course I want kids to drive in car seats, have driven down the number of babies born in this country by over 100,000. So as we think about how to make kids safe here, I think we should do it in a way that's accommodating to American families."

    The weird part is "things that we're doing to parents". Guy want no rules, no safety standards, nothing. Libertarian weirdo.

  • When we started burning coal it was called the industrial revolution. Was there a name when we started burning oil? The car revolution?

    Yes I inverted it to burning coal is called the industrial revolution because I think it's neat way to look at it.

    I'm thinking through the history of energy: We burned wood. Then we burned coal. Then we burned oil. Then we burned atoms.

    39
    Terrorist: I speak perfect English
    2
    TIL of the Great Auk, a northern hemisphere species similar to penguins that was hunt to extinction. Penguins are named after them.

    >The great auk (Pinguinus impennis), also known as the Penguin or gare-fowl, is a species of flightless alcid that became extinct in the mid-19th century. It was the only modern species in the genus Pinguinus. It is unrelated to the Penguins of the southern hemisphere, which were named so after their resemblance to the northern species.

    >...the auk foraged in the waters of the North Atlantic, ranging as far south as northern Spain and along the coastlines of Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Ireland, and Great Britain.

    >Early European explorers to the Americas used the great auk as a convenient food source or as fishing bait, reducing its numbers. The bird's down was in high demand in Europe, a factor that largely eliminated the European populations by the mid-16th century. Around the same time, nations such as Great Britain began to realize that the great auk was disappearing and it became the beneficiary of many early environmental laws, but despite that the great auk were still hunted.

    >Its growing rarity increased interest from European museums and private collectors in obtaining skins and eggs of the bird. On 3 June 1844, the last two confirmed specimens were killed on Eldey, off the coast of Iceland, ending the last known breeding attempt.

    >The word "penguin" first appears in the sixteenth century as a synonym for "great auk".[20] Although the etymology is debated, the generic name "penguin" may be derived from the Welsh pen gwyn "white head", either because the birds lived in New Brunswick on White Head Island (Pen Gwyn in Welsh) or because the great auk had such large white circles on its head. When European explorers discovered what today are known as penguins in the Southern Hemisphere, they noticed their similar appearance to the great auk and named them after this bird, although biologically, they are not closely related.[21]: 10

    15
    World's shortest runway - Twin Otter STOL at Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport

    1,312 ft, 400 m long

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juancho_E._Yrausquin_Airport

    3
    TIL about Haitian Independence Debt

    >The Haitian independence debt involves an 1825 agreement between Haiti and France that included France demanding an indemnity of 150 million francs in five annual payments of 30 million to be paid by Haiti in claims over property – including Haitian slaves – that was lost through the Haitian Revolution in return for diplomatic recognition. Haiti was forced to take a loan for the first 30 million,[a] and in 1838 France agreed to reduce the remaining debt to 60 million to be paid over 30 years, with the final payment paid in 1883.[1][2][b] However, The New York Times estimates that because of other loans taken to pay off this loan, the final payment to debtors was actually in 1947. They approximated that in total 112 million francs was paid in indemnity, which when adjusted for the inflation rate would be $560 million in 2022, but considering that if had been invested in the Haitian economy instead, it could be valued at $115 billion.[4][5][c]

    >Restoration France's demand of payments in exchange for recognizing Haiti's independence was delivered to the country by several French warships in 1825, twenty-one years after Haiti's declaration of independence in 1804.[7][8] Despite several revolutions in France after that date (July Revolution, French Revolution of 1848, Paris Commune), successive governments, be they imperial, monarchist or republican, continued enforcing the debt and coercing Haiti to pay.[d] Haiti had to take a loan in 1875 to pay back the final portion of the original loan, and the bank that benefited most from this was Crédit Industriel et Commercial.[9] Even after the indemnity was paid, Haiti had to continue paying the other loans, and the government of the United States funded the acquisition of Haiti's treasury in 1911,[10] and in 1922, the rest of Haiti's debt was moved to be paid to American investors.[11] The New York Times states that it took until 1947 for Haiti to finally pay off all the associated interest to the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank).[10][12] In 2016, the Parliament of France repealed the 1825 ordinance of Charles X, though no reparations have been offered by France.[5] These debts have been denounced by some historians and activists as responsible for Haiti's poverty today and a case of odious debt.[3]

    19
    TIL about Aviation biofuel

    >Biofuels are biomass-derived fuels from plants, animals, or waste; depending on which type of biomass is used, they could lower CO2 emissions by 20–98% compared to conventional jet fuel.[4] The first test flight using blended biofuel was in 2008, and in 2011, blended fuels with 50% biofuels were allowed on commercial flights. In 2023 SAF production was 600 million liters, representing 0.2% of global jet fuel use.[5]

    >Aviation biofuel can be produced from plant or animal sources such as Jatropha, algae, tallows, waste oils, palm oil, Babassu, and Camelina (bio-SPK); from solid biomass using pyrolysis processed with a Fischer–Tropsch process (FT-SPK); with an alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) process from waste fermentation; or from synthetic biology through a solar reactor.

    >SAF technology faces significant challenges due to feedstock constraints. The oils and fats known as hydrotreated esters and fatty acids (Hefa), crucial for SAF production, are in limited supply as demand increases. Although advanced e-fuels technology, which combines waste CO2 with clean hydrogen, presents a promising solution, it is still under development and comes with high costs. To overcome these issues, SAF developers are exploring more readily available feedstocks such as woody biomass and agricultural and municipal waste, aiming to produce lower-carbon jet fuel more sustainably and efficiently.[7]

    11
    Why Aren't Swing Wing Aircraft Made Any More?

    I thought about making a TLDW, but it's a good video with lots of info. Just watch it.

    2
    Turtle
    imgur.com ?

    Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users like Lellevent.

    ?
    5
    Political Memes @lemmy.world BarqsHasBite @lemmy.world
    Lincoln impersonator watching news

    Found on Imgur https://imgur.com/gallery/centralillife-seriffsmatter-aRLvBOi

    15
    A collection of Behind the Scenes "Star Trek" photos (from TOS to Enterprise)
    imgur.com A collection of Behind the Scenes "Star Trek" photos (from TOS to Enterprise)

    Discover topics like movies and tv, star trek, behind the scenes, nostalgia, sci fi, and the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from us...

    A collection of Behind the Scenes "Star Trek" photos (from TOS to Enterprise)

    Found randomly on imgur.

    12
    Neutrality in Europe after 2022

    Really excellent video discussing the politics of neutrality, don't let the country balls fool you.

    0
    TIL there was an attempted coup of Montenegro in 2016 to prevent it from joining NATO

    >It is believed that the plot was designed as a last-ditch attempt by the Montenegrin pro-Serbian and pro-Russian opposition to prevent Montenegro's accession to NATO,[5] a move stridently opposed by Russia's government that had issued direct threats to Montenegro concerning such eventuality.[6][7][8][9][10] This theory was re-affirmed by the court verdict handed down in 2019.[11]

    >On the eve of 16 October 2016, the day of the parliamentary election in Montenegro, a group of 20 Serbian and Montenegrin citizens, including the former head of Serbian Gendarmery Bratislav Dikić, were arrested;[12][13] some of them, along with other persons, including two Russian citizens, were later formally charged by the authorities of Montenegro with an attempted coup d'état. In early November 2016, Montenegro's special prosecutor for organised crime and corruption, Milivoje Katnić, alleged that "a powerful organisation" that comprised about 500 people from Russia, Serbia and Montenegro was behind the coup plot.[14] In February 2017, Montenegrin officials accused the Russian 'state structures' of being behind the attempted coup, which allegedly envisaged an attack on the country's parliament and assassination of prime minister Milo Đukanović.[15][16]

    16
    The far right actually hates America: Its dark ideology has foreign roots
    www.salon.com The far right actually hates America: Its dark ideology has foreign roots

    Why do conservatives wrap themselves in the flag so desperately? Maybe because their ideas are un-American

    The far right actually hates America: Its dark ideology has foreign roots

    >Curiously, the agrarians, ur-Americans of Southern Protestant extraction, were influenced by the leading figure of the French Counter-Enlightenment, the arch-reactionary ultramontane Catholic Joseph de Maistre. Even in the present day, a Southern apologist for slavery has written a screed for something called the Abbeville Foundation extolling Maistre’s hatred of republics. Evidently, despising the very governmental foundation of the United States has become fashionable for a certain type of reactionary conservative.

    >Émile Faguet, a French author and critic, called Maistre “a fierce absolutist, a furious theocrat, an intransigent legitimist, apostle of a monstrous trinity composed of pope, king and hangman, always and everywhere the champion of the hardest, narrowest and most inflexible dogmatism, a dark figure out of the Middle Ages, part learned doctor, part inquisitor, part executioner."

    >Maistre hits many of the key themes of American conservatism: religious dogmatism, belief over evidence, anti-scientism, the imperative of obedience to hierarchy and a habitual brooding over violence.

    The author then continues on to wealth accumulation.

    Wiki Link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_de_Maistre

    19
    TIL Cessna made a budget Fighter Jet using Cessna jet engines and other Cessna parts.

    >The Scorpion is a tandem-seat twinjet aircraft with an all-composite material fuselage designed for light attack and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. Production costs were minimized by using common commercial off the shelf technology, manufacturing resources and components developed for Cessna's business jets; such as the flap drive mechanism is from the Cessna Citation XLS and Cessna Citation Mustang, the aileron drive mechanism is from the Citation X.[3][6][7][8][25] Textron AirLand calls the Scorpion an ISR/strike aircraft, instead of a "light attack" aircraft. The joint venture also states the Scorpion is intended to handle "non-traditional ISR" flights such as those performed by U.S. fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Scorpion is designed to cheaply perform armed reconnaissance using sensors to cruise above 15,000 ft, higher than most ground fire can reach, and still be rugged enough to sustain minimal damage.[26]

    >The Scorpion is designed to be affordable, costing US$3,000 per flight hour, with a unit cost expected to be below US$20 million.[22]

    Vs F-16 "more recent variants starting at $25 to $30 million but potentially reaching $60 to $70 million with improvements." and $22,000 per hour.

    Vid of it https://youtu.be/q7qwQGksyPk

    They hope it will replace the A-10.

    44
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)SO
    BarqsHasBite @lemmy.world
    Posts 98
    Comments 3.6K