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🔗 Telecommunications 🔗 Hungary 🔗 Journalism

The Telefon Hírmondó (also Telefonhírmondó, generally translated as "Telephone Herald") was a "telephone newspaper" located in Budapest, Hungary, which, beginning in 1893, provided news and entertainment to subscribers over telephone lines. It was both the first and the longest surviving telephone newspaper system, although from 1 December 1925 until its termination in 1944 it was primarily used to retransmit programmes broadcast by Magyar Rádió.

Three decades before the development of radio broadcasting, the Telefon Hírmondó was the first service to electronically deliver a wide range of spoken and musical programming to a diverse audience. Although its inventor envisioned that the technology could be eventually expanded to serve a national or international audience, the technical limitations of the time ultimately limited its service area to just the city of Budapest.

🔗 Ancient Near East 🔗 Assyria 🔗 Mythology 🔗 Intertranswiki/OKA

The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld (or, in its Akkadian version, Descent of Ishtar into the Underworld) or Angalta ("From the Great Sky") is a Sumerian myth that narrates the descent of the goddess Inanna (Ishtar in Akkadian) into the Underworld to overthrow its ruler, her sister Ereshkigal, the "Queen of the Dead." But following the removal of her adornments, she perishes and her corpse is suspended on a nail. The god Enki intervenes indirectly, restoring Inanna to life. However, on her return journey, Inanna is required to deliver another living human in exchange for her freedom. She selects Dumuzi, her spouse, who is abruptly transported to the Underworld. In response to the pleas of Dumuzi's sister, Geshtinanna, his circumstances are somewhat ameliorated: he is permitted to remain in the Underworld for only a portion of the year, with his sister assuming his role for the remaining duration.

The myth exists in two main versions: one in Sumerian and the other in Akkadian. The Akkadian version was first discovered and translated in the 1860s. The existence of the longer and older Sumerian version was first established in the early 20th century, but it required approximately fifty years for epigraphists to fully reconstruct and translate it.

The story of Descent of Inanna into the Underworld offers insights into Mesopotamian culture through its numerous characters and developed plot. The influence of this culture on subsequent civilizations is evident in the traces of Mesopotamian elements found in Greece, Phoenicia, and the Old Testament. In the 20th century, the story was used by some psychoanalysis theorists to illustrate psychic mechanisms.

🔗 History 🔗 Politics 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Politics/Oligarchy

The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory, first developed by the German sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book, Political Parties. It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an "iron law" within any democratic organization as part of the "tactical and technical necessities" of organization.

Michels's theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise.

Using anecdotes from political parties and trade unions struggling to operate democratically to build his argument in 1911, Michels addressed the application of this law to representative democracy, and stated: "Who says organization, says oligarchy." He went on to state that "Historical evolution mocks all the prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy."

According to Michels all organizations eventually come to be run by a "leadership class", who often function as paid administrators, executives, spokespersons or political strategists for the organization. Far from being "servants of the masses", Michels argues this "leadership class," rather than the organization's membership, will inevitably grow to dominate the organization's power structures. By controlling who has access to information, those in power can centralize their power successfully, often with little accountability, due to the apathy, indifference and non-participation most rank and file members have in relation to their organization's decision-making processes. Michels argues that democratic attempts to hold leadership positions accountable are prone to fail, since with power comes the ability to reward loyalty, the ability to control information about the organization, and the ability to control what procedures the organization follows when making decisions. All of these mechanisms can be used to strongly influence the outcome of any decisions made 'democratically' by members.

Michels stated that the official goal of representative democracy of eliminating elite rule was impossible, that representative democracy is a façade legitimizing the rule of a particular elite, and that elite rule, which he refers to as oligarchy, is inevitable. Later Michels migrated to Italy and joined Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party, as he believed this was the next legitimate step of modern societies. The thesis became popular once more in post-war America with the publication of Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union (1956) and during the red scare brought about by McCarthyism.

This is a list of phrases and formatting conventions typical of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, with real examples taken from Wikipedia articles and drafts. Note that not all text featuring the following indicators is AI-generated; large language models, which power AI-chatbots, have been trained on human writing, and humans might happen to have a writing style similar to that of an AI. Be cautious when relying on automated artificial intelligence detection software such as GPTZero. While these services perform better than random chance, they should not replace human judgment.

Beyond simply being indicators, the following phrasings and conventions often violate Wikipedia's Manual of Style or introduce a promotional or non-neutral tone; therefore appropriate use of AI chatbots on Wikipedia should not exhibit any of these indicators.

🔗 Chemicals 🔗 Palaeontology 🔗 Geology 🔗 Evolutionary biology 🔗 Limnology and Oceanography

The Great Oxidation Event (GOE), sometimes also called the Great Oxygenation Event, Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Holocaust, or Oxygen Revolution, was a time period when the Earth's atmosphere and the shallow ocean experienced a rise in oxygen, approximately 2.4 billion years ago (2.4 Ga) to 2.1–2.0 Ga during the Paleoproterozoic era. Geological, isotopic, and chemical evidence suggests that biologically induced molecular oxygen (dioxygen, O₂) started to accumulate in Earth's atmosphere and changed Earth's atmosphere from a weakly reducing atmosphere to an oxidizing atmosphere, causing almost all life on Earth to go extinct. The cyanobacteria producing the oxygen caused the event which enabled the subsequent development of multicellular forms.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Computing/Computer science

Wirth's law is an adage on computer performance which states that software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster.

The adage is named after Niklaus Wirth, who discussed it in his 1995 article "A Plea for Lean Software".

🔗 Mathematics

In information visualization and graphic design, Truchet tiles are square tiles decorated with patterns that are not rotationally symmetric. When placed in a square tiling of the plane, they can form varied patterns, and the orientation of each tile can be used to visualize information associated with the tile's position within the tiling.

Truchet tiles were first described in a 1704 memoir by Sébastien Truchet entitled "Mémoire sur les combinaisons", and were popularized in 1987 by Cyril Stanley Smith.

🔗 Biology 🔗 Astronomy 🔗 Color 🔗 Evolutionary biology

The Purple Earth Hypothesis (PEH) is an astrobiological hypothesis, first proposed by molecular biologist Shiladitya DasSarma in 2007, that the earliest photosynthetic life forms of Early Earth were based on the simpler molecule retinal rather than the more complex porphyrin-based chlorophyll, making the surface biosphere appear purplish rather than its current greenish color. It is estimated to have occurred between 3.5 and 2.4 billion years ago during the Archean eon, prior to the Great Oxygenation Event and Huronian glaciation.

Retinal-containing cell membranes exhibit a single light absorption peak centered in the energy-rich green-yellow region of the visible spectrum, but transmit and reflect red and blue light, resulting in a magenta color. Chlorophyll pigments, in contrast, absorb red and blue light, but little or no green light, which results in the characteristic green reflection of plants, green algae, cyanobacteria and other organisms with chlorophyllic organelles. The simplicity of retinal pigments in comparison to the more complex chlorophyll, their association with isoprenoid lipids in the cell membrane, as well as the discovery of archaeal membrane components in ancient sediments on the Early Earth are consistent with an early appearance of life forms with purple membranes prior to the turquoise of the Canfield ocean and later green photosynthetic organisms.

🔗 Animation 🔗 Disney

Disney's twelve basic principles of animation were introduced by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation.^[a] The principles are based on the work of Disney animators from the 1930s onwards, in their quest to produce more realistic animation. The main purpose of these principles was to produce an illusion that cartoon characters adhered to the basic laws of physics, but they also dealt with more abstract issues, such as emotional timing and character appeal.

The book has been referred to by some as the "Bible of animation", and some of its principles have been adopted by traditional studios. In 1999, The Illusion of Life was voted the "best animation book[...] of all time" in an online poll done by Animation World Network. While originally intended to apply to traditional, hand-drawn animation, the principles still have great relevance for today's more prevalent computer animation.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Correction and Detention Facilities

Mark DeFriest (born August 18, 1960), known as the Houdini of Florida, is an American man known for his repeated escapes from prison, having successfully done so 7 times. Born in rural Florida, he was arrested for the first time in 1978, serving for a year. In 1980, DeFriest was sentenced to four years in prison for violating probation via illegal firearms possession, having initially been arrested for retrieving work tools that his recently deceased father had willed him before the will had completed probate. His sentence has since been repeatedly extended for having attempted to escape 13 times (including one count of armed robbery during one attempt), as well as collecting hundreds of disciplinary reports for minor infractions, leading to a cumulative stay of 34 years in prison.

DeFriest has cumulatively spent 27 years in solitary confinement. Following publicity, DeFriest was granted parole and released on 5 February 2019. Ten days later, he was rearrested as he checked into a mental health facility.