To stay up to date you can also follow on Mastodon.

🔗 Brands 🔗 Automobiles 🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/Car

The Toyota Century (Japanese: トヨタ・センチュリー, Hepburn: Toyota Senchurī) is a limousine produced mainly for the Japanese market, serving as Toyota's flagship car within Japan; globally the unrelated Lexus LS series is Toyota's flagship luxury model. Production of the Century began in 1967, and the model received only minor changes until redesigns in 1997 and 2018.

The Century derived its name from the 100th birthday of Sakichi Toyoda (born 14 February 1867), the founder of Toyota Industries. It is often used by the Imperial House of Japan, the Prime Minister of Japan, senior Japanese government leaders, and high-level executive businessmen. The Century is comparable in purpose to the Austin Princess/Daimler DS420, Cadillac Series 70, Mercedes-Benz 600 series, Chinese Red Flag, Rolls-Royce, and Russian ZIS/ZIL limousines.

The first-generation Century was available with only a V8 engine (the third post-war Japanese-built sedan so-equipped) at its introduction in 1967 until a full platform redesign in 1997. The second generation was only installed with a Toyota-designed and -built V12, an engine bespoke to the Century, until 2018, when the power-train reverted to a V8 with the addition of Toyota's hybrid technology.

While the Century is a premium, full-size luxury sedan, it is not available at Japanese Lexus dealerships; it can only be purchased at specifically identified Toyota Store locations. The gold phoenix logo used throughout is called the Hō'ō (鳳凰) or Fushichō (不死鳥) from Sinospheric mythology, representing the Imperial House of Japan, and the image can be found throughout Asia, such as the Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto.

The exterior styling of the Century has, with some modifications, remained unchanged since its introduction, primarily due to its perception as denoting conservative success. Its appearance is iconic in Asian countries and is usually painted black. The closest Japanese competitor was the Nissan President, with a similar status reputation although, during the 1960s and '70s, the high market positioning was also shared with the Mitsubishi Debonair. In the 1970s, two other Japanese competitors introduced large sedans — the Isuzu Statesman de Ville and the Mazda Roadpacer (both derived from General Motors-Australia products) — which were short-lived.

🔗 Computing

Constraint programming (CP) is a paradigm for solving combinatorial problems that draws on a wide range of techniques from artificial intelligence, computer science, and operations research. In constraint programming, users declaratively state the constraints on the feasible solutions for a set of decision variables. Constraints differ from the common primitives of imperative programming languages in that they do not specify a step or sequence of steps to execute, but rather the properties of a solution to be found. In addition to constraints, users also need to specify a method to solve these constraints. This typically draws upon standard methods like chronological backtracking and constraint propagation, but may use customized code like a problem specific branching heuristic.

Constraint programming takes its root from and can be expressed in the form of constraint logic programming, which embeds constraints into a logic program. This variant of logic programming is due to Jaffar and Lassez, who extended in 1987 a specific class of constraints that were introduced in Prolog II. The first implementations of constraint logic programming were Prolog III, CLP(R), and CHIP.

Instead of logic programming, constraints can be mixed with functional programming, term rewriting, and imperative languages. Programming languages with built-in support for constraints include Oz (functional programming) and Kaleidoscope (imperative programming). Mostly, constraints are implemented in imperative languages via constraint solving toolkits, which are separate libraries for an existing imperative language.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Maritime warfare 🔗 Ships 🔗 Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history

K-219 was a Project 667A Navaga-class ballistic missile submarine (NATO reporting name Yankee I) of the Soviet Navy. It carried 16 R-27U liquid-fuel missiles powered by UDMH with nitrogen tetroxide (NTO), and equipped with either 32 or 48 nuclear warheads.K-219 was involved in what has become one of the most controversial submarine incidents during the Cold War on Friday 3 October 1986. The 15-year-old vessel, which was on an otherwise routine Cold War nuclear deterrence patrol in the North Atlantic 1,090 kilometres (680 mi) northeast of Bermuda, suffered an explosion and fire in a missile tube. While underway submerged the seal in a missile hatch cover failed, allowing high-pressure seawater to enter the missile tube and owing to the pressure differential rupture the missile fuel tanks, allowing missile's liquid fuel to mix and ultimately combust. Though there was no official announcement, the Soviet Union claimed the leak was caused by a collision with the submarine USS Augusta. Although Augusta was operating within the area, both the United States Navy and the commander of K-219, Captain Second Rank Igor Britanov, deny that a collision took place.

The incident was novelized in the book Hostile Waters, which reconstructed the incident from descriptions by the survivors, ships' logs, the official investigations, and participants both ashore and afloat from the Soviet and the American sides.

🔗 Internet culture 🔗 Television 🔗 The Simpsons

Flanderization is the process through which a fictional character's essential traits are exaggerated over the course of a serial work. The term flanderization was coined by TV Tropes in reference to Ned Flanders of The Simpsons, who was caricatured over the show's run from a good neighbor who was religious among other characteristics into an evangelical "bible-thumper". Flanderization has been analyzed as an aspect of serial works, especially television comedies, that shows a work's decline.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Polynesia 🔗 Australia 🔗 Canada 🔗 New Zealand 🔗 Politics 🔗 Women 🔗 Biography/Royalty and Nobility 🔗 Women's History 🔗 United Kingdom 🔗 Biography/politics and government 🔗 Politics of the United Kingdom 🔗 South Africa 🔗 Zimbabwe 🔗 Caribbean 🔗 Melanesia 🔗 Scouting/Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting 🔗 Scouting 🔗 Current events 🔗 Malta 🔗 Commonwealth 🔗 Caribbean/Jamaica 🔗 Canada/Political parties and politicians in Canada 🔗 Polynesia/Niue 🔗 Caribbean/Antigua and Barbuda 🔗 Caribbean/Bahamas 🔗 Zimbabwe/Rhodesia 🔗 Polynesia/Cook Islands 🔗 Caribbean/Saint Kitts and Nevis 🔗 Polynesia/Tuvalu 🔗 Belize 🔗 Melanesia/Solomon Islands 🔗 Caribbean/Barbados 🔗 Grenada 🔗 Canada/Governments of Canada 🔗 Caribbean/Saint Lucia 🔗 Caribbean/Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 🔗 British Royalty 🔗 Melanesia/Papua New Guinea

Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days was the longest of any British monarch and the second-longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country. At the time of her death, Elizabeth was queen of 14 other Commonwealth realms in addition to the UK.

Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth). Her father acceded to the throne in 1936 upon the abdication of his brother, King Edward VIII, making Elizabeth the heir presumptive. She was educated privately at home and began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. In November 1947, she married Philip Mountbatten, a former prince of Greece and Denmark, and their marriage lasted 73 years until his death in April 2021. They had four children together: Charles III; Anne, Princess Royal; Prince Andrew, Duke of York; and Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex.

When her father died in February 1952, Elizabeth—then 25 years old—became queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon (known today as Sri Lanka), as well as Head of the Commonwealth. Elizabeth reigned as a constitutional monarch through major political changes such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, devolution in the United Kingdom, the decolonisation of Africa, and the United Kingdom's accession to the European Communities and withdrawal from the European Union. The number of her realms varied over time as territories have gained independence and some realms have become republics. Her many historic visits and meetings include state visits to China in 1986, Russia in 1994, the Republic of Ireland in 2011, and visits with five Popes.

Significant events include Elizabeth's coronation in 1953 and the celebrations of her Silver, Golden, Diamond, and Platinum Jubilees in 1977, 2002, 2012, and 2022, respectively. Elizabeth was the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch, and the second-longest verifiable reigning sovereign monarch in world history, only behind Louis XIV of France. She faced occasional republican sentiment and media criticism of her family, particularly after the breakdowns of her children's marriages, her annus horribilis in 1992, and the death of her former daughter-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. However, support for the monarchy in the United Kingdom remained consistently high, as did her personal popularity. Elizabeth died on 8 September 2022 at Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire. She was succeeded by her eldest son, Charles III.

🔗 Video games

Kanye Quest 3030 is a role-playing video game published on July 22, 2013 for Windows PCs. The game was unlicensed and unauthorised by musical artist Kanye West. It was created in RPG Maker by a user named "Phenix". The game describes itself as a hip hop-themed science fiction 2D role-playing game.

🔗 Books 🔗 Middle Ages 🔗 Middle Ages/History 🔗 Visual arts

The Black Hours, MS M.493 (or the Morgan Black Hours) is an illuminated book of hours completed in Bruges between 1460 and 1475. It consists of 121 pages (leaves), with Latin text written in Gothic minuscule script. The words are arranged in rows of fourteen lines and follow the Roman version of the texts. The lettering is inscribed in silver and gold and placed within borders ornamented with flowers, foliage and grotesques, on pages dyed a deep blueish black. It contains fourteen full-page miniatures and opens with the months of the liturgical calendar (folios 3 verso – 14 recto), followed by the Hours of the Virgin, and ends with the Office of the Dead (folio 121v).

MS M.493 has been in the collection of the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, since 1912. It is one of seven surviving black books of hours, all originating from Bruges and dated to the mid-to-late 15th century. They are so named for their unusual dark blueish appearance, a colourisation achieved through the expensive process of dyeing the vellum with iron gall ink. This dye is very corrosive and the surviving examples are mostly badly decomposed; MS M.493 is in relatively good condition due to its very thick parchment.

The book is a masterpiece of Late Gothic manuscript illumination. However, no records survive of its commission, but its uniquely dark tone, expense of production, quality and rarity suggest ownership by privileged and sophisticated members of the Burgundian court. The book is often attributed, on stylistic grounds, to a follower of Willem Vrelant, a leading and influential Flemish illuminator.

🔗 Canada

The Inco Superstack in Sudbury, Ontario, with a height of 381 metres (1,250 ft), is the tallest chimney in Canada and the Western hemisphere, and the second tallest freestanding chimney in the world after the GRES-2 Power Station in Kazakhstan. It is also the second tallest freestanding structure of any type in Canada, behind the CN Tower but ahead of First Canadian Place. It is the 51st tallest freestanding structure in the world. The Superstack is located on top of the largest nickel smelting operation in the world at Vale's Copper Cliff processing facility in the city of Greater Sudbury.

In 2018, Vale announced that the stack would be decommissioned and dismantled beginning in 2020. Two new, smaller stacks were constructed under the company's Clean Atmospheric Emissions Reduction Project. In July 2020, Vale announced that the Superstack had been officially taken out of service, but would remain operational in standby mode for two more months as a backup in the event of a malfunction in the new system, following which the dismantling of the Superstack would begin. As of August 2021, however, Vale has not yet announced the awarding of a demolition contract on the Superstack, and it remains unknown when demolition will actually begin.

In addition to further reducing sulphur dioxide emissions by 85 per cent, the decommissioning of the stack is expected to cut the complex's natural gas consumption in half.

🔗 Psychology 🔗 Altered States of Consciousness

The Dreamachine (a contraction of Dream Machine) is a stroboscopic flickering light art device that produces eidetic visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs' "systems adviser" Ian Sommerville created the Dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain.

🔗 Computer science

The Q notation is a succinct way to specify the parameters of a binary fixed point number format. A number of other notations have been used for the same purpose.