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🔗 China/Chinese history 🔗 China 🔗 Toys 🔗 Project-independent assessment

The bamboo-copter, also known as the bamboo dragonfly or Chinese top (Chinese zhuqingting (竹蜻蜓), Japanese taketonbo 竹蜻蛉), is a toy helicopter rotor that flies up when its shaft is rapidly spun. This helicopter-like top originated in Jin dynasty China around 320 AD, and was the object of early experiments by English engineer George Cayley, the inventor of modern aeronautics.

In China, the earliest known flying toys consisted of feathers at the end of a stick, which was rapidly spun between the hands and released into flight. "While the Chinese top was no more than a toy, it is perhaps the first tangible device of what we may understand as a helicopter."

The Jin dynasty Daoist philosopher Ge Hong's (c. 317) book Baopuzi (抱樸子 "Master Who Embraces Simplicity") mentioned a flying vehicle in what Joseph Needham calls "truly an astonishing passage".

Some have made flying cars [feiche 飛車] with wood from the inner part of the jujube tree, using ox-leather (straps) fastened to returning blades so as to set the machine in motion [huan jian yi yin chiji 環劍以引其機]. Others have had the idea of making five snakes, six dragons and three oxen, to meet the "hard wind" [gangfeng 罡風] and ride on it, not stopping until they have risen to a height of forty li. That region is called [Taiqing 太清] (the purest of empty space). There the [qi] is extremely hard, so much so that it can overcome (the strength of) human beings. As the Teacher says: "The kite (bird) flies higher and higher spirally, and then only needs to stretch its two wings, beating the air no more, in order to go forward by itself. This is because it starts gliding (lit. riding) on the 'hard wind' [gangqi 罡炁]. Take dragons, for example; when they first rise they go up using the clouds as steps, and after they have attained a height of forty li then they rush forward effortlessly (lit. automatically) (gliding)." This account comes from the adepts [xianren 仙人], and is handed down to ordinary people, but they are not likely to understand it.

Needham concludes that Ge Hong was describing helicopter tops because "'returning (or revolving) blades' can hardly mean anything else, especially in close association with a belt or strap"; and suggests that "snakes", "dragons", and "oxen" refer to shapes of man-lifting kites. Other scholars interpret this Baopuzi passage mythologically instead of literally, based on its context's mentioning fantastic flights through chengqiao (乘蹻 "riding on tiptoe/stilts") and xian (仙 "immortal; adept") techniques. For instance, "If you can ride the arches of your feet, you will be able to wander anywhere in the world without hindrance from mountains or rivers … Whoever takes the correct amulet and gives serious thought to the process may travel a thousand miles by concentrating his thoughts for one double hour." Compare this translation.

Some build a flying vehicle from the pith of the jujube tree and have it drawn by a sword with a thong of buffalo hide at the end of its grip. Others let their thoughts dwell on the preparation of a joint rectangle from five serpents, six dragons, and three buffaloes, and mount in this for forty miles to the region known as Paradise.

This Chinese helicopter toy was introduced into Europe and "made its earliest appearances in Renaissance European paintings and in the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci." The toy helicopter appears in a c. 1460 French picture of the Madonna and Child at the Musée du Palais de Tesse’ in Mans depicting the Child holding a toy copter sitting in Mary’s lap next to St Benôit (unknown artist), and in a 16th-century stained glass panel at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. A picture from c. 1560 by Pieter Breughel the Elder at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Children's Games, depicts a helicopter top with three airscrews.

"The helicopter top in China led to nothing but amusement and pleasure, but fourteen hundred years later it was to be one of the key elements in the birth of modern aeronautics in the West." Early Western scientists developed flying machines based upon the original Chinese model. The Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov developed a spring-driven coaxial rotor in 1743, and the French naturalist Christian de Launoy created a bow drill device with contra-rotating feather propellers.

In 1792, George Cayley began experimenting with helicopter tops, which he later called "rotary wafts" or "elevating fliers". His landmark (1809) article "On Aerial Navigation" pictured and described a flying model with two propellers (constructed from corks and feathers) powered by a whalebone bow drill. "In 1835 Cayley remarked that while the original toy would rise no more than about 20 or 25 feet (6 or 7.5 metres), his improved models would 'mount upward of 90 ft (27 metres) into the air'. This then was the direct ancestor of the helicopter rotor and the aircraft propeller."

Discussing the history of Chinese inventiveness, the British scientist, sinologist, and historian Joseph Needham wrote, "Some inventions seem to have arisen merely from a whimsical curiosity, such as the 'hot air balloons' made from eggshells which did not lead to any aeronautical use or aerodynamic discoveries, or the zoetrope which did not lead onto the kinematograph, or the helicopter top which did not lead to the helicopter."

🔗 Agriculture 🔗 Birds 🔗 Veterinary medicine

Chicken eyeglasses, also known as chicken specs, chicken goggles, generically as pick guards, and under other names, were small eyeglasses made for chickens intended to prevent feather pecking and cannibalism. They differ from blinders in that they allow the bird to see forward, whereas blinders do not. One variety used rose-colored lenses, as the coloring was thought to prevent a chicken wearing them from recognizing blood on other chickens, which may increase the tendency for abnormal injurious behavior. They were mass-produced and sold throughout the United States as early as the beginning of the 20th century.

🔗 Aviation 🔗 Project-independent assessment

$100 hamburger ("hundred-dollar hamburger") is aviation slang for the excuse a general aviation pilot might use to fly.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Computing/Early computers 🔗 Project-independent assessment

MUMPS ("Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System"), or M, is an imperative, high-level programming language with an integrated transaction processing key–value database. It was originally developed at Massachusetts General Hospital for managing patient medical records and hospital laboratory information systems.

MUMPS technology has since expanded as the predominant database for health information systems and electronic health records in the United States. MUMPS-based information systems, such as Epic Systems', provide health information services for over 78% of patients across the U.S.

A unique feature of the MUMPS technology is its integrated database language, allowing direct, high-speed read-write access to permanent disk storage.

🔗 United States 🔗 Telecommunications 🔗 Marketing & Advertising 🔗 Invention 🔗 United States/American television

"You Will" was an AT&T marketing campaign that launched in 1993, consisting of commercials directed by David Fincher. Each ad presented a futuristic scenario beginning with "Have you ever…" and ending with "…you will. And the company that will bring it to you: AT&T."

The ads were narrated by Tom Selleck.

The creative team that created the ad campaign at N.W. Ayer & Partners were Copy Supervisor Gordon Hasse, Art Supervisor Nick Scordato and Producer Gaston Braun.

One of the first web banner ads ever sold was part of an AT&T campaign that ran on HotWired starting October 27, 1994, asking "Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? You Will".

In 2016, technology writer Timothy B. Lee commented that "overall, the ads were remarkably accurate in predicting the cutting-edge technologies of the coming decades. But the ads were mostly wrong about one thing: the company that brought these technologies to the world was not AT&T. At least not on its own. AT&T does provide some of the infrastructure on which the world's communications flow. But the gadgets and software that brought these futuristic capabilities to consumers were created by a new generation of Silicon Valley companies that mostly didn't exist when these ads were made."

The ads won a few different awards at the time, notably the first annual David Ogilvy Award for the most effective campaign supported by research, the 1994 PCIA (Personal Communications Industry Award), and two ADDY Awards.

🔗 United States 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Popular Culture 🔗 United States/Kentucky 🔗 United States/Louisville

The KFC Original Recipe is a secret mix of ingredients that fast food restaurant chain KFC uses to produce fried chicken.

By the very late 1930s, Harland Sanders' gas station in Corbin, Kentucky was so well known for its fried chicken that Sanders decided to remove the gas pumps and build a restaurant and motel in their place. While perfecting his secret recipe with 11 herbs and spices, Sanders found that pan frying chicken was too slow, requiring 30 minutes per order. Deep frying the chicken required half the time but produced dry, unevenly done chicken. In 1939, he found that using a pressure fryer produced tasty, moist chicken in eight or nine minutes. By July 1940, Sanders finalized what came to be known as his Original Recipe.

After Sanders formed a partnership with Pete Harman, they began marketing the chicken in the 1950s as Kentucky Fried Chicken; the company shipped the spices already mixed to restaurants to preserve the recipe's secrecy. He claimed that the ingredients "stand on everybody's shelf".

Sanders used vegetable oil for frying chicken. By 1993, for economic reasons, many KFC outlets had chosen to use a blend of palm and soybean oil. In Japan, the oil used is mainly the more expensive cottonseed and corn oil, as KFC Japan believes that this offers superior taste quality.

🔗 Psychology 🔗 Websites 🔗 Websites/Computing 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Discrimination 🔗 Sociology/social movements 🔗 Conservatism 🔗 Gender Studies 🔗 Feminism 🔗 Men's Issues

The manosphere is a varied collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. Communities within the manosphere include men's rights activists (MRAs), incels (involuntary celibates), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pick-up artists (PUA), and fathers' rights groups. While the specifics of each group's beliefs sometimes conflict, they are generally united in the belief that society is biased against men due to the influence of feminism, and that feminists promote misandry (hatred of men). Acceptance of these ideas is described as "taking the red pill", a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix.

The manosphere overlaps with the far-right and alt-right communities. It has also been associated with online harassment and has been implicated in radicalizing men into misogynist beliefs and the glorification of violence against women. Some sources have associated manosphere-based radicalization with mass shootings motivated by misogyny. The manosphere received significant media coverage following the 2014 Isla Vista killings in California, the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon, and the 2018 Toronto van attack, as well as the online harassment campaign against women in the video game industry known as GamerGate.

Major figures within the movement include various social media influencers, including Andrew Tate, Amrou "Myron Gaines" Fudl, Adin Ross, Roosh V, Carl Benjamin and Jordan Peterson.

🔗 Video games

Don't Buy This (also known as Don't Buy This: Five of the Worst Games Ever) is a compilation of video games for the ZX Spectrum released on 1 April 1985. As described on the box, it contains five of the poorest games submitted to publisher Firebird. Instead of rejecting the submissions, they decided to mock the original developers by releasing them together and publicly brand it as "unoriginal" and "awful". Firebird even disowned all their copyright to the game and encouraged buyers to pirate it at will.

Reviews for the game were universally negative, with critics questioning how to critique the game due to its publicity being based on it being a collection of bad games. Despite the negative reception, the game was a commercial success.

🔗 Internet culture

Italian brainrot is a series of surrealist Internet memes that emerged in early 2025 characterized by absurd photos of AI-generated creatures with pseudo-Italian names. The phenomenon quickly spread across social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, owing to its combination of synthesized "Italian" voiceovers, grotesque, funny visuals, and nonsensical narrative.

🔗 Typography

Ugly Gerry is a font whose characters consist of shapes of United States congressional districts, its intention being to protest gerrymandering. It was created by Ben Doessel and James Lee through the Leo Burnett Agency for RepresentUs.