#2: "hi [professor], hope you're doing well! unfortunately, I'm [sick/stuck at work/dead] and won't be able to submit [assignment] by [due date]. could I please have an extension? if not, is there anything else I could do to make up this credit? thanks so much, [op]"

The FIRST SENTENCE is the thing you want the recipient to do. Do not make them guess.

I want to let you know about ... (This email is to inform someone of something not to ask them to do anything)

Could you please do ... (This is a request. You want them to do something).

I'm looking into x and wondering if you can help me (this is also a request but for information instead of an action).

People do not want to read an email and even if they do read it, most people are skimming and not interested. Tell them what you want first, then provide context or other information (when you need a thing is often key). If the email is informational, you can even add "you don't need to do anything, this is just to keep you informed!" People will appreciate not having to figure out what you want from them.

If you can't articulate what you want the recipient to do with the message, you are not ready to email them. I read too many emails where I have no idea what the person wants from me.

Pedestrian traffic lights

Starting off with the difference between formerly Eastern German traffic lights (upper images) and formerly Western German traffic lights (lower images):

The city of Erfurt had some additions, like an umbrella or a heart:

Same sex love in Marburg (upper image) and Frankfurt (lower image):

Traffic light lady in Bremen:

Karl Marx light in Trier:

Face of Friedrich Engels in Wuppertal:

Elvis in Friedberg (Hessen):

A sparrow (for the Golden Sparrow film awards) in Gera:

Winemaker in Bad Dürkenheim:

Mainzelmännchen (mascot of the public broadcasting service ZDF) in Mainz:

Otto Waalkes (German Comedian) in Emden:

Town musicians of Bremen in Bremen:

A miner in Pirmasens, Rheinland-Pfalz:

Bishop in Fulda:

Source: Saarbrücker Zeitung

Flamingos can survive in low oxygen, high altitude, high temperatures, low temperatures, high alkaline, they can and will drink boiling water and they can be completely frozen at night and still get up the next morning

(animal death) this is a real undoctored photograph (*though the body was stood up for the shot) of a dead flamingo on the surface of lake natron, a lake so salty and so alkaline that it’s naturally carbonated like soda and would eat through your stomach lining if you drank from it.

When this photo went viral years ago, most people assumed this poor flamingo must have been killed by the lake.

It is actually the lake where 75% of its global population are hatched. This is a photo from the same lake:

RATING: RELIABLE

Flamingos can survive in high altitudes, hypersaline conditions, and caustic lakes.

Source: ‘All flamingo species have evolved to live in some of the planet’s most extreme wetlands, like caustic “soda lakes”, hypersaline lagoons or high-altitude salt flats.’

They can survive water so alkaline it burns human skin.

Source: ‘More than a million lesser flamingos breed in Tanzania’s Lake Natron, for instance, a lake fed by hot springs with water so alkaline that it can strip away human skin (one pioneering flamingo researcher named Leslie Brown spent months in Nairobi General Hospital after burning his legs wading out to observe where the birds nested).’

They can drink water at near-boiling temperatures.

Source: ‘They can drink water at near boiling point to collect freshwater from springs and geysers at lake edges. If no freshwater is available, flamingos can use glands in their head that remove salt, draining it out from their nasal cavity.’

The lakes they inhabit can freeze overnight, and the flamingos can survive once it thaws in the morning.

Source: ‘The birds may seem to epitomize the tropics, but they also live in the Andes, 15,000 feet above sea level, where they rest on lakes that freeze around them overnight.

“You’ll see them sitting there like snowballs, frozen on ice,” Dr. Arengo said. “And as the temperature warms up, they thaw out, fluff themselves up and go about their business.”’

The photo is indeed from Lake Natron, taken by photographer Nick Brandt. The content of the lake chemically preserves animal corpses that die there. You can see more photos of this here.

It is also true that 75% of Lesser Flamingos are hatches on Lake Natron.

Source: ‘The lake’s landscape is surreal and deadly—and made even more bizarre by the fact that it’s the place where nearly 75 percent of the world’s lesser flamingos are born.’

Some species of Flamingo eat cyanobacteria or algae.

The Milmans returned from Tajikistan to their home in Krakow in the summer of 1946. They were greeted at the entrance to their former apartment building by the superintendent, who insisted that there was nothing for them there anymore, that the Germans had taken all the furniture. They walked around town, but found no one they had known. “The Jews were all gone.”

A nine-year-old boy…on July 4, 1946…report[ed] that he had been kidnapped and held captive for two days in the cellar of a building where a few hundred Jews…were living. While captive, he claimed to have witnessed the ritual murder of several Christian children…Soldiers and local policemen entered the building to search for Polish children and Jewish weapons. A shot was fired—no one knows by whom. “Some 20 people,” Baruch Dorfman, who was on the third floor recalled, “locked themselves in a small room. But they started shooting at us through the door, and they wounded one person, who later died from the injuries. They broke in. These were soldiers in uniform and a few citizens. I was wounded then. They ordered us to go outside. They formed a double toe. In the staircase there were already civilians and also women’s soldiers hit us with rifle butts. Civilians, men and women, also beat us…We came down to the square. Others who were brought out with me were stabbed with bayonets and shot at.” When it was over, some forty to forty-five Jews who had returned from the Soviet Union to make a home for themselves in Poland had been stoned to death, beaten to death, thrown from windows, shot, bayoneted. The number of Jews fleeing Poland increased dramatically as news of Kielce spread throughout the country.