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๐ Feminism in Japan
Feminism in Japan began with women's rights movements that date back to antiquity. The movement started to gain momentum after Western thinking was brought into Japan during the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Japanese feminism differs from Western feminism in that less emphasis is placed on individual autonomy.
Prior to the late 19th century, Japanese women were bound by the traditional patriarchal system where senior male members of the family maintain their authority in the household. After the reforms brought by Meiji Restoration, women's status in Japanese society also went through series of changes. Trafficking of women was restricted, women were allowed to request divorces, and both boys and girls were required to receive elementary education. Further changes to women's status came about in the aftermath of World War II. Women received the right to vote, and a section of the new constitution drafted in 1946 was dedicated to guarantee gender equality.
In 1970, in the wake of the antiโVietnam War movements, a new women's liberation movement called ลซman ribu (woman lib) emerged in Japan from the New Left and radical student movements in the late 1960s. This movement was in sync with radical feminist movements in the United States and elsewhere, catalyzing a resurgence of feminist activism through the 1970s and beyond. The activists forwarded a comprehensive critique of the male-dominated nature of modern Japan, arguing for a fundamental change of the political-economic system and culture of the society. What distinguished them from previous feminist movements was their emphasis on sexual liberation (ๆงใฎ่งฃๆพ, sei no kaihล). They did not aim for equality with men, but rather focused on calling for men's liberation from the oppressive aspects of a patriarchal and capitalist system.
In 1979, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. The Japanese government ratified it in 1985.
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- "Feminism in Japan" | 2024-02-18 | 20 Upvotes 4 Comments
๐ EncroChat
EncroChat was a Europe-based communications network and service provider that offered modified smartphones allowing encrypted communication among subscribers. It was used primarily by organized crime members to plan criminal activities. Police infiltrated the network between at least March and June 2020 during a Europe-wide investigation. An unidentified source associated with EncroChat announced on the night of 12โ13 June 2020 that the company would cease operations because of the police operation.
The service had around 60,000 subscribers at the time of its closure. As a result of police being able to read unencrypted EncroChat messages, at least 1,000 arrests had been made across Europe as of 22 December 2020.
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- "EncroChat" | 2024-02-15 | 63 Upvotes 14 Comments
๐ Eigen's Paradox
In evolutionary biology and population genetics, the error threshold (or critical mutation rate) is a limit on the number of base pairs a self-replicating molecule may have before mutation will destroy the information in subsequent generations of the molecule. The error threshold is crucial to understanding "Eigen's paradox".
The error threshold is a concept in the origins of life (abiogenesis), in particular of very early life, before the advent of DNA. It is postulated that the first self-replicating molecules might have been small ribozyme-like RNA molecules. These molecules consist of strings of base pairs or "digits", and their order is a code that directs how the molecule interacts with its environment. All replication is subject to mutation error. During the replication process, each digit has a certain probability of being replaced by some other digit, which changes the way the molecule interacts with its environment, and may increase or decrease its fitness, or ability to reproduce, in that environment.
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- "Eigen's Paradox" | 2024-02-15 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
๐ Visual calculus
Visual calculus, invented by Mamikon Mnatsakanian (known as Mamikon), is an approach to solving a variety of integral calculus problems. Many problems that would otherwise seem quite difficult yield to the method with hardly a line of calculation, often reminiscent of what Martin Gardner called "aha! solutions" or Roger Nelsen a proof without words.
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- "Visual calculus" | 2024-02-13 | 231 Upvotes 41 Comments
๐ Atsugiri Jason
Jason David Danielson (born April 9, 1986), known professionally as Atsugiri Jason (ๅๅใใธใงใคใฝใณ, Atsugiri Jeison, lit. "Thick-sliced Jason"), is an American comedian based in Japan and associated with Watanabe Entertainment. Danielson's comedic narrative is based on his confusion with kanji, ending with the punchline, "Why Japanese people?!"
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- "Atsugiri Jason" | 2024-02-11 | 11 Upvotes 2 Comments
๐ Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60
F60 is the series designation of five overburden conveyor bridges used in brown coal (lignite) opencast mining in the Lusatian coalfields in Germany. They were built by the former Volkseigener Betrieb TAKRAF in Lauchhammer and are the largest movable technical industrial machines in the world. As overburden conveyor bridges, they transport the overburden which lies over the coal seam. The cutting height is 60ย m (200ย ft), hence the name F60. In total, the F60 is up to 80ย m (260ย ft) high and 240ย m (790ย ft) wide; with a length of 502ย m (1,647ย ft), it is described as the lying Eiffel tower, making these behemoths not only the longest vehicle ever madeโbeating Seawise Giant, the longest shipโbut the largest vehicle by physical dimensions ever made by humankind. In operating condition, it weighs 13,600ย metricย tons making the F60 also one of the heaviest land vehicles ever made, beaten only by Bagger 293, which is a giant bucket-wheel excavator. Nevertheless, despite its immense size, it is operated by only a crew of 14.
The first conveyor bridge was built from 1969 to 1972, being equipped with a feeder bridge in 1977. The second was built from 1972 to 1974, having been equipped with a feeder bridge during construction. The third conveyor bridge was built from 1976 to 1978, being provided with a feeder bridge in 1985. The fourth and fifth conveyor bridges were built 1986โ1988 and 1988โ1991 respectively.
There are still four F60s in operation in the Lusatian coalfields today: in the brown coal opencast mines in Jรคnschwalde (Brandenburg, near Jรคnschwalde Power Station), Welzow-Sรผd (Brandenburg, near Schwarze Pumpe Power Station), Nochten and Reichwalde (Saxony, both near Boxberg Power Station). The fifth F60, the last one built, is in Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf and is accessible to visitors.
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- "Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60" | 2024-02-10 | 36 Upvotes 11 Comments
๐ The purpose of a system is what it does
The purpose of a system is what it does (POSIWID) is a systems thinking heuristic coined by Stafford Beer, who observed that there is "no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do." The term is widely used by systems theorists, and is generally invoked to counter the notion that the purpose of a system can be read from the intentions of those who design, operate, or promote it. When a system's side effects or unintended consequences reveal that its behavior is poorly understood, then the POSIWID perspective can balance political understandings of system behavior with a more straightforwardly descriptive view.
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- "The purpose of a system is what it does" | 2024-02-10 | 31 Upvotes 6 Comments
๐ Light Characteristic
A light characteristic is all of the properties that make a particular navigational light identifiable. Graphical and textual descriptions of navigational light sequences and colours are displayed on nautical charts and in Light Lists with the chart symbol for a lighthouse, lightvessel, buoy or sea mark with a light on it. Different lights use different colours, frequencies and light patterns, so mariners can identify which light they are seeing.
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- "Light Characteristic" | 2024-02-08 | 60 Upvotes 7 Comments
๐ Cyclomatic Complexity
Cyclomatic complexity is a software metric used to indicate the complexity of a program. It is a quantitative measure of the number of linearly independent paths through a program's source code. It was developed by Thomas J. McCabe, Sr. in 1976.
Cyclomatic complexity is computed using the control-flow graph of the program: the nodes of the graph correspond to indivisible groups of commands of a program, and a directed edge connects two nodes if the second command might be executed immediately after the first command. Cyclomatic complexity may also be applied to individual functions, modules, methods or classes within a program.
One testing strategy, called basis path testing by McCabe who first proposed it, is to test each linearly independent path through the program; in this case, the number of test cases will equal the cyclomatic complexity of the program.
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- "Cyclomatic Complexity" | 2024-02-08 | 91 Upvotes 49 Comments