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🔗 Beauvais Cathedral
The Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais (French: Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais) is a Roman Catholic church in the northern town of Beauvais, Oise, France. It is the seat of the Bishop of Beauvais, Noyon and Senlis.
The cathedral is in the Gothic style, and consists of a 13th-century choir, with an apse and seven polygonal apsidal chapels reached by an ambulatory, joined to a 16th-century transept.
It has the highest Gothic choir in the world: (48.50 m) under vault. From 1569 to 1573 the cathedral of Beauvais was, with its tower of 153 meters, the highest human construction of the world. Its designers had the ambition to make it the largest gothic cathedral in France ahead of Amiens. Victim of two collapses, one in the 13th century, the other in the 16th century, it remains unfinished today; only the choir and the transept have been built.
The planned nave of the cathedral was never constructed. The remnant of the previous 10th-century Romanesque cathedral, known as the Basse Œuvre ("Lower Work"), still occupies the intended site of the nave.
Discussed on
- "Beauvais Cathedral" | 2023-01-26 | 49 Upvotes 22 Comments
🔗 The Real Book
The Real Book is a musicians' fake book – a compilation of lead sheets for jazz standards. Fake books had been around at least since the late 1920s, but their organization was haphazard, and their content did not always keep pace with contemporary musical styles. The Real Book was initially produced by two students at the Berklee College of Music in the 1970s, as an updated fake book. It became so popular that the books was eventually "legitimized" by publisher Hal Leonard, and re-released in a series of editions and transpositions for various instruments.
Discussed on
- "The Real Book" | 2023-01-26 | 61 Upvotes 39 Comments
🔗 Thomas of Cana Copper Plates
The Thomas of Cana copper plates (Malayalam: Knai Thoma Cheppedu), or Knanaya copper plates, dated variously between 345 C.E. and 811 C.E., are a lost set of copper-plate grants issued by the unidentified Chera/Perumal king of Kerala "Co-qua-rangon" to Syriac Christian merchants led by Knai Thoma (anglicized as Thomas of Cana) in the city of "Makotayar Pattinam" (present day Kodungallur), south India. The royal charters were reportedly engraved in ”Malabar”, Chaldean and Arabic on both sides of two copper plates (joined by a ring). Archbishop Francis Ros notes in his 1604 account M.S. ADD 9853 that the plates were taken to Portugal by the Franciscan Order.
Scholar M.G.S. Narayanan tentatively identifies king “Co-qua-rangon” with king Rama Rajasekhara (Co-qua-rangon → Ko Kotai Iraman → Rajadhiraja Rama) of the 9th century Chera Empire.
The Knanaya or the people of Knai Thoma were historically associated with the southern portion of the Chera/Perumal headquarters Kodungallur until in 1524 they were dispersed from the city due to conflict between the Kingdom of Cochin and the Kingdom of Calicut. The plate was cherished by the Knanaya as evidence of their arrival in Kerala under the leadership of Knai Thoma as well as a notation of the historical, economic, and social rights bestowed upon them by the Chera Perumal. The native Christian tradition places the arrival of Thomas of Cana in 345 C.E.
Translations of the existing Kollam Syrian Plates of the 9th century made by the Syrian Christian priest Ittimani in 1601 as well as the French Indologist Abraham Anquetil Duperron in 1758 both note that the one of the plates mentioned a brief of the arrival of Knai Thoma.It is believed that this was a notation of the previous rights bestowed upon the Christians by Cheraman Perumal. The contemporary set however does not mention this paragraph and is believed to be incomplete or a later inscription. Scholar of Early Christian history István Percvel theorizes that at one time the Kollam Syrian plates and the Thomas of Cana plates were kept together.
🔗 Kaktovik numerals – A base-20 number system that is visually easy too
Kaktovik numerals are a featural positional numeral system created by Alaskan Iñupiat.
Arabic numeral notation, which was designed for a base-10 numeral system, is inadequate for the Inuit languages, which use a base-20 numeral system. Students in Kaktovik, Alaska, invented a base-20 numeral notation in 1994 to rectify this issue, and this system spread among the Alaskan Iñupiat and has been considered in other countries where Inuit languages are spoken.
The image at right shows the digits 0 to 19. Twenty is written as a one and a zero (\ɤ), forty as a two and a zero (Vɤ), four hundred as a one and two zeros (\ɤɤ), eight hundred as a two and two zeros (Vɤɤ), etc.
Discussed on
- "Kaktovik Numerals" | 2023-01-25 | 180 Upvotes 70 Comments
- "Kaktovik numerals – A base-20 number system that is visually easy too" | 2021-03-04 | 39 Upvotes 2 Comments
🔗 Maximum Sum Subarray Problem
In computer science, the maximum sum subarray problem, also known as the maximum segment sum problem, is the task of finding a contiguous subarray with the largest sum, within a given one-dimensional array A[1...n] of numbers. Formally, the task is to find indices and with , such that the sum
is as large as possible. (Some formulations of the problem also allow the empty subarray to be considered; by convention, the sum of all values of the empty subarray is zero.) Each number in the input array A could be positive, negative, or zero.
For example, for the array of values [−2, 1, −3, 4, −1, 2, 1, −5, 4], the contiguous subarray with the largest sum is [4, −1, 2, 1], with sum 6.
Some properties of this problem are:
- If the array contains all non-negative numbers, then the problem is trivial; a maximum subarray is the entire array.
- If the array contains all non-positive numbers, then a solution is any subarray of size 1 containing the maximal value of the array (or the empty subarray, if it is permitted).
- Several different sub-arrays may have the same maximum sum.
This problem can be solved using several different algorithmic techniques, including brute force, divide and conquer, dynamic programming, and reduction to shortest paths.
Discussed on
- "Maximum Sum Subarray Problem" | 2023-01-24 | 12 Upvotes 2 Comments
🔗 Scuttlebutt: Decentralised, off-grid, mesh network and self-hosted social media
Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) is a peer-to peer communication protocol, mesh network, and self-hosted social media ecosystem. Each user hosts their own content and the content of the peers they follow, which provides fault tolerance and eventual consistency. Messages are digitally signed and added to an append-only list of messages published by an author. SSB is primarily used for implementing distributed social networks, and utilizes cryptography to assure that content remains unforged as it is propagated through the network.
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- "Secure Scuttlebutt" | 2023-01-22 | 151 Upvotes 82 Comments
- "Scuttlebutt: Decentralised, off-grid, mesh network and self-hosted social media" | 2021-09-22 | 31 Upvotes 3 Comments
🔗 I, Libertine
I, Libertine is a literary hoax novel that began as a practical joke by late-night radio raconteur Jean Shepherd who aimed to lampoon the process of determining best-selling books. After generating substantial attention for a novel that didn't actually exist, Shepherd approved a 1956 edition of the book written mainly by Theodore Sturgeon — which became an actual best-seller, with all profits donated to charity.
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- "I, Libertine" | 2023-01-22 | 150 Upvotes 21 Comments
🔗 Astronautilia
The Astronautilia (Czech: Hvězdoplavba; full title in Greek: Ποιητοῦ ἀδήλου ΑΣΤΡΟΝΑΥΤΙΛΙΑ ἢ ἡ Μικροοδύσσεια ἡ κοσμική; i.e. "An unknown poet's Starvoyage, or the Cosmic Micro-Odyssey") is the magnum opus, written in 1994 under the hellenised pseudonym Ἰωάννης Πυρεῖα, of Czech poet and writer Jan Křesadlo, one of the most unusual works of twentieth-century Czech literature. It was published shortly after his death, as a commemorative first edition.
While no full English translation exists as yet, there is a sample chapter translation online, and a German translation of the fully transcribed and annotated Greek text is in preparation.
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- "Astronautilia" | 2023-01-22 | 239 Upvotes 53 Comments
🔗 Ruby (Programming Language)
Ruby is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language which supports multiple programming paradigms. It was designed with an emphasis on programming productivity and simplicity. In Ruby, everything is an object, including primitive data types. It was developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan.
Ruby is dynamically typed and uses garbage collection and just-in-time compilation. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming. According to the creator, Ruby was influenced by Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, BASIC, Java and Lisp.
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- "Ruby (Programming Language)" | 2023-01-20 | 11 Upvotes 2 Comments
🔗 Elder Mother
The Elder Mother is an elder-guarding being in English and Scandinavian folklore known by a variety of names, such as the Danish Hyldemoer ("Elder-Mother") and the Lincolnshire names Old Lady and Old Girl.
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- "Elder Mother" | 2023-01-19 | 57 Upvotes 14 Comments