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 submit these nine theses to Wikipedia’s community and to the world. I do this, as Martin Luther said when he posted his famous 95 theses, “Out of love for the truth and the desire to elucidate it.”

A quarter of a century ago, Jimmy Wales’ company Bomis hired me to start a free encyclopedia. The first draft, from which we learned much, was Nupedia—it made slow progress. So, a year later, on January 2, 2001, when a friend told me about wikis, I immediately began imagining a wiki encyclopedia. I proposed it to Jimmy, then CEO of Bomis. He agreed and installed the software, and I went to work getting things ready. After I named it, we launched Wikipedia on January 15, 2001, and just nine days later, I was able to write, “Wikipedia has definitely taken on a life of its own; new people are arriving every day and the project seems to be getting only more popular. Long live Wikipedia!”

The title I claimed at the time was “chief instigator.” My daily leadership for the 14 months after that was essential to transforming a completely empty, blank wiki into what would soon become the largest written resource in the history of the world. I was responsible for several policies that were and are fundamental to the project: the exclusive focus on an encyclopedia; neutrality; “no original research”; “be bold”; aspects of the verifiability policy; and other things. I even proposed the tongue-in-cheek “rule” to “ignore all rules.” For more, see this page on my role in Wikipedia, my Slashdot memoir, and my book, Essays on Free Knowledge. I say these things not to brag but to show why my proposals deserve a careful hearing.

I carefully chose and worded the following nine theses to appeal to the universal concern for truth and justice. I have worked for many months on this project. I am confident that every thesis stands on solid ground. Some Wikipedians, wedded to the current system, might be inclined to reject them; but many others, as well as the broader world, will be able to see that they are quite reasonable. I hope that the Wikipedia community will do the necessary introspection and find ways to make these proposals a reality. I also hope the broader world will join the discussion on each point and press Wikipedia’s leadership as well as rank-and-file editors to adopt them, for the good of all.

Please note that there are nine lengthy essays to go with the nine theses.

🔗 Fungi 🔗 Plants

A mycorrhizal network (also known as a common mycorrhizal network or CMN) is an underground network found in forests and other plant communities, created by the hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi joining with plant roots. This network connects individual plants together. Mycorrhizal relationships are most commonly mutualistic, with both partners benefiting, but can be commensal or parasitic, and a single partnership may change between any of the three types of symbiosis at different times. Mycorrhizal networks were discovered in 1997 by Suzanne Simard, professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Simard grew up in Canadian forests where her family had made a living as foresters for generations. Her field studies revealed that trees are linked to neighboring trees by an underground network of fungi that resembles the neural networks in the brain. In one study, Simard watched as a Douglas fir that had been injured by insects appeared to send chemical warning signals to a ponderosa pine growing nearby. The pine tree then produced defense enzymes to protect against the insect.

The formation and nature of these networks is context-dependent, and can be influenced by factors such as soil fertility, resource availability, host or mycosymbiont genotype, disturbance and seasonal variation. Some plant species, such as buckhorn plantain, a common lawn and agricultural weed, benefit from mycorrhizal relationships in conditions of low soil fertility, but are harmed in higher soil fertility. Both plants and fungi associate with multiple symbiotic partners at once, and both plants and fungi are capable of preferentially allocating resources to one partner over another.

Mycorrhizal associations have profoundly impacted the evolution of plant life on Earth ever since the initial adaptation of plant life to land. In evolutionary biology, mycorrhizal symbiosis has prompted inquiries into the possibility that symbiosis, not competition, is the main driver of evolution.

Referencing an analogous function served by the World Wide Web in human communities, the many roles that mycorrhizal networks appear to play in woodland have earned them a colloquial nickname: the "Wood Wide Web". Many of the claims made about common mycorrhizal networks, including that they are ubiquitous in forests, that resources are transferred between plants through them, and that they are used to transfer warnings between trees, have been criticised as being not strongly supported by evidence.

🔗 Books 🔗 Skepticism

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by the astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan. (Four of the 25 chapters were written with Ann Druyan.) In it, Sagan aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking. He explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and should stand up to rigorous questioning.

🔗 Soviet Union 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Cold War 🔗 Cold War 🔗 Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history

On 26 September 1983, the nuclear early-warning radar of the Soviet Union reported the launch of one intercontinental ballistic missile with four more missiles behind it, from bases in the United States. These missile attack warnings were suspected to be false alarms by Stanislav Petrov, an officer of the Soviet Air Defence Forces on duty at the command center of the early-warning system. He decided to wait for corroborating evidence—of which none arrived—rather than immediately relaying the warning up the chain-of-command. This decision is seen as having prevented a retaliatory nuclear attack against the United States and its NATO allies, which would likely have resulted in an escalation to a full-scale nuclear war. Investigation of the satellite warning system later determined that the system had indeed malfunctioned.

🔗 Languages 🔗 Argentina 🔗 Wales

Patagonian Welsh (Welsh: Cymraeg y Wladfa) is a variety of the Welsh language spoken in the Patagonia region's Y Wladfa, Welsh settlements located in Chubut Province, Argentina. Though Patagonian Welsh is distinct from the several dialects used in Wales itself, the dialects have a high degree of mutual intelligibility, and speakers from Wales and Patagonia are able to communicate readily. Numerous toponyms throughout the Chubut Valley are of Welsh origin.

Teachers are sent from Wales to teach the language and to train local tutors in the Welsh language. There is some prestige in knowing the language, even among those not of Welsh descent. Welsh education and projects are mainly funded by the Welsh Government, British Council, Cardiff University and the Welsh–Argentine Association. In 2005, there were 62 Welsh classes in the area and Welsh was taught as a subject in two primary schools and two colleges in the region of Gaiman. There is also a bilingual Welsh–Spanish language school called Ysgol yr Hendre situated in Trelew, and a college located in Esquel. In 2016, there were three bilingual Welsh–Spanish primary schools in Patagonia.

In 2024–25, the number of registered learners—encompassing students in schools and adult programs—reached 1106, a significant increase from 623 in 2020.

The formal Eisteddfod poetry competitions have been revived, and are now bilingual in Welsh and Spanish.

🔗 Internet 🔗 Internet culture 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Alternative Views

The dead Internet theory is a theory that asserts that the Internet now consists almost entirely of bot activity and automatically generated content, marginalizing human activity. The date given for this "death" is generally around 2016 or 2017.

In 2012, YouTube removed billions of video views from major record labels, such as Sony and Universal, as a result of discovering that they had used fraudulent services to artificially increase the views of their content. The removal of the inflated views aimed to restore credibility to the platform and improve the accuracy of view counts. The move by YouTube also signaled a change in the way the platform would tackle fake views and bot traffic.

🔗 Lists 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Countries

Breakfast, the first meal of the day eaten after waking from the night's sleep, varies in composition and tradition across the world.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Medicine 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Scotland

Scottish man Angus Barbieri (1939 – 7 September 1990) fasted for 382 days, from June 1965 to July 1966. He lived on tea, coffee, soda water, and vitamins while living at home in Tayport, Scotland, and frequently visiting Maryfield Hospital for medical evaluation. He lost 276 pounds (125 kg) and set a record for the length of a fast.

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Languages 🔗 Medicine/Neurology

The bouba/kiki effect is a non-arbitrary mapping between speech sounds and the visual shape of objects. It was first documented by Wolfgang Köhler in 1929 using nonsense words. The effect has been observed in American university students, Tamil speakers in India, young children, and infants, and has also been shown to occur with familiar names. It is absent in individuals who are congenitally blind and reduced in autistic individuals. The effect was investigated using fMRI in 2018.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Canada 🔗 Death 🔗 Law

Garry Hoy (January 28, 1954 – July 9, 1993) was a Canadian lawyer who died when he fell from the 24th floor of his office building at the Toronto-Dominion Centre in Toronto, Ontario. In an attempt to prove to a group of prospective articling students that the building's glass windows were unbreakable — a stunt he had performed without incident many times before — he threw his body against the glass; however, this time the entire window frame gave way, and Hoy fell to his death.