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🔗 California 🔗 Law

The Mulford Act was a 1967 California bill that repealed a law allowing public carrying of loaded firearms. Named after Republican assemblyman Don Mulford, and signed into law by governor of California Ronald Reagan, the bill was crafted with the goal of disarming members of the Black Panther Party who were conducting armed patrols of Oakland neighborhoods, in what would later be termed copwatching. They garnered national attention after Black Panthers members, bearing arms, marched upon the California State Capitol to protest the bill.

Assembly Bill 1591 was introduced by Don Mulford (R) from Oakland on April 5, 1967, and subsequently co-sponsored by John T. Knox (D) from Richmond, Walter J. Karabian (D) from Monterey Park, Frank Murphy Jr. (R) from Santa Cruz, Alan Sieroty (D) from Los Angeles, and William M. Ketchum (R) from Bakersfield. AB-1591 was made an “urgency statute” under Article IV, §8(d) of the Constitution of California after “an organized band of men armed with loaded firearms [...] entered the Capitol” on May 2, 1967; as such, it required a 2/3 majority in each house. It passed the Assembly (controlled by Democrats, 42:38) at subsequent readings, passed the Senate (controlled by Democrats, 20:19) on July 26 by 29 votes to 7, and was signed by Governor Ronald Reagan on July 28, 1967. The law banned the carrying of loaded weapons in public.

Both Republicans and Democrats in California supported increased gun control, as did the National Rifle Association of America. Governor Ronald Reagan, who was coincidentally present on the capitol lawn when the protesters arrived, later commented that he saw "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons" and that guns were a "ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will." In a later press conference, Reagan added that the Mulford Act "would work no hardship on the honest citizen."

The bill was signed by Reagan and became California penal code 25850 and 171c.

🔗 Mathematics

In mathematics before the 1970s, the term umbral calculus referred to the surprising similarity between seemingly unrelated polynomial equations and certain "shadowy" techniques used to "prove" them. These techniques were introduced by John Blissard (1861) and are sometimes called Blissard's symbolic method. They are often attributed to Édouard Lucas (or James Joseph Sylvester), who used the technique extensively.

🔗 Novels 🔗 Children's literature 🔗 Novels/Science fiction 🔗 Novels/Short story

"The Toynbee Convector" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury. First published in Playboy magazine in 1984, the story was subsequently featured in a 1988 short story collection also titled The Toynbee Convector.

🔗 Germany 🔗 Denmark 🔗 Automobiles

The CityEl is a 3-wheel lightweight electric car originally designed and manufactured in Denmark, but currently made in Germany by Citycom GmbH.

🔗 Biography

Joybubbles ((1949-05-25)May 25, 1949 – (2007-08-08)August 8, 2007), born Josef Carl Engressia Jr. in Richmond, Virginia, was an early phone phreak. Born blind, he became interested in telephones at age four. He had absolute pitch, and was able to whistle 2600 hertz into a telephone, an operator tone also used by blue box phreaking devices. Joybubbles said that he had an IQ of "172 or something". Joybubbles died at his Minneapolis home on August 8, 2007(2007-08-08) (aged 58). According to his death certificate, he died of natural causes with congestive heart failure as a contributing condition.

🔗 Star Trek

Star Trek Continues is an American fan-made web series set in the Star Trek universe. Produced by the nonprofit charity Trek Continues, Inc. and Dracogen, and initially co-produced by Far from Home LLC and Farragut Films, the series consists of 11 episodes released between 2013 and 2017. The series is an unofficial direct continuation of Star Trek: The Original Series, and emulates its visual and storytelling features to achieve the same look and feel. Those who made the show have said in interviews that the intent was to finish the original five-year mission of the show, and this is borne out in the plot lines of the final two episodes.

The series was fan-created and all episodes were released to watch on YouTube. As with all such Star Trek fan productions, use of copyrighted and trademarked properties from the original series was allowed so long as the production was not commercial. A portion of the funds necessary to produce the episodes was raised through successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, to which thousands of backers contributed.

Star Trek Continues won a Webby Award for "People's Choice – Long Form Drama" in 2016, a Geekie Award for "Best Web Series" in 2014, and numerous Telly and Accolade awards. The series was very positively received by critics, who praised the quality of the production and stated that the show set a new standard for Star Trek fan films.

After the 11th episode was released in late 2017, the Star Trek Continues series ended.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Food and drink

An anti-café (sometimes called a pay-per-minute café or a time club) is a venue that offers working space, food and drink, where customers pay only for the time they spend there. Anti-cafés became popular around 2011 in Russia and some CIS countries, with further independent anti-cafés opening across the world. Anti-cafés include the Ziferblat chain, founded by Russian writer Ivan Mitin in December 2010 in Moscow, the "Slow Time" café in Wiesbaden opened in 2013, and "Dialogues" in Bangalore.

Anti-cafés mostly target entrepreneurs, digital nomads, students, and creatives who need a cheap and convenient place to get their work done and meet other professionals. They can also be used by companies as a place give presentations and press conferences at low cost.

🔗 Soviet Union 🔗 Russia 🔗 Russia/technology and engineering in Russia 🔗 Environment 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Energy 🔗 Russia/history of Russia 🔗 Science Policy

The Kyshtym disaster, sometimes referred to as the Mayak disaster or Ozyorsk disaster in newer sources, was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a plutonium production site for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel reprocessing plant located in the closed city of Chelyabinsk-40 (now Ozyorsk) in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.

The disaster was the second worst nuclear incident (by radioactivity released) after the Chernobyl disaster. It measured as a Level 6 disaster on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), making it the third highest on the INES (which ranks by population impact), behind Chernobyl (evacuated 335,000 people) and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster (evacuated 154,000 people) which are both Level 7 on the INES. At least twenty-two villages were exposed to radiation from the Kyshtym disaster, with a total population of around 10,000 people evacuated. Some were evacuated after a week, but it took almost two years for evacuations to occur at other sites.

The disaster spread hot particles over more than 52,000 square kilometres (20,000 sq mi), where at least 270,000 people lived. Since Chelyabinsk-40 (later renamed Chelyabinsk-65 until 1994) was not marked on maps, the disaster was named after Kyshtym, the nearest known town.

🔗 Climate change 🔗 Economics 🔗 Electrical engineering

Different methods of electricity generation can incur significantly different costs, and these costs can occur at significantly different times relative to when the power is used. The costs include the initial capital, and the costs of continuous operation, fuel, and maintenance as well as the costs of de-commissioning and remediating any environmental damage. Calculations of these costs can be made at the point of connection to a load or to the electricity grid, so that they may or may not include the transmission costs.

For comparing different methods, it is useful to compare costs per unit of energy which is typically given per kilowatt-hour or megawatt-hour. This type of calculation assists policymakers, researchers and others to guide discussions and decision making but is usually complicated by the need to take account of differences in timing by means of a discount rate. The consensus of recent major global studies of generation costs is that wind and solar power are the lowest-cost sources of electricity available today.

🔗 Television 🔗 Media

TV-B-Gone is a universal remote control device for turning off a large majority—about 85%—of the available brands of television sets in 2015. It was created to allow people in a public place to turn off nearby television sets. Its inventor has referred to it as "an environmental management device". The device is part of a key-chain, and, like other remote devices, is battery-powered. Although it can require up to 72 seconds for the device to find the proper code for a particular television receiver, the most popular televisions turn off in the first few seconds.