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🔗 Time

The Doomsday rule is an algorithm of determination of the day of the week for a given date. It provides a perpetual calendar because the Gregorian calendar moves in cycles of 400 years. The algorithm for mental calculation was devised by John Conway in 1973, drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll's perpetual calendar algorithm. It takes advantage of each year having a certain day of the week, called the doomsday, upon which certain easy-to-remember dates fall; for example, 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12, and the last day of February all occur on the same day of the week in any year. Applying the Doomsday algorithm involves three steps: Determination of the anchor day for the century, calculation of the doomsday for the year from the anchor day, and selection of the closest date out of those that always fall on the doomsday, e.g., 4/4 and 6/6, and count of the number of days (modulo 7) between that date and the date in question to arrive at the day of the week. The technique applies to both the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendar, although their doomsdays are usually different days of the week.

The algorithm is simple enough that it can be computed mentally. Conway can usually give the correct answer in under two seconds. To improve his speed, he practices his calendrical calculations on his computer, which is programmed to quiz him with random dates every time he logs on.

🔗 Ancient Near East 🔗 Novels 🔗 Novels/Science fiction 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Literature 🔗 Classical Greece and Rome 🔗 Greece 🔗 Comedy 🔗 Assyria

A True Story (Ancient Greek: Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα, Alēthē diēgēmata; Latin: Vera Historia or Latin: Verae Historiae) is a novel written in the second century AD by Lucian of Samosata, a Greek-speaking author of Assyrian descent. The novel is a satire of outlandish tales which had been reported in ancient sources, particularly those which presented fantastic or mythical events as if they were true. It is Lucian's best-known work.

It is the earliest known work of fiction to include travel to outer space, alien lifeforms, and interplanetary warfare. As such, A True Story has been described as "the first known text that could be called science fiction". However the work does not fit into typical literary genres: its multilayered plot and characters have been interpreted as science fiction, fantasy, satire or parody, and have been the subject of much scholarly debate.

🔗 Volcanoes 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Geology 🔗 Indonesia

The Toba supereruption was a supervolcanic eruption that occurred about 75,000 years ago at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. It is one of the Earth's largest known eruptions. The Toba catastrophe theory holds that this event caused a global volcanic winter of six to ten years and possibly a 1,000-year-long cooling episode.

In 1993, science journalist Ann Gibbons posited that a population bottleneck occurred in human evolution about 70,000 years ago, and she suggested that this was caused by the eruption. Geologist Michael R. Rampino of New York University and volcanologist Stephen Self of the University of Hawaii at Manoa support her suggestion. In 1998, the bottleneck theory was further developed by anthropologist Stanley H. Ambrose of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Both the link and global winter theories are controversial. The Toba event is the most closely studied supereruption.

🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Paranormal 🔗 Cryptozoology

The following is a list of unidentified, or formerly unidentified, sounds. All of the sound files in this article have been sped up by at least a factor of 16 to increase intelligibility by condensing them and raising the frequency from infrasound to a more audible and reproducible range.

🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Epistemology

In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism (opposed to preintuitionism), is an approach where mathematics is considered to be purely the result of the constructive mental activity of humans rather than the discovery of fundamental principles claimed to exist in an objective reality. That is, logic and mathematics are not considered analytic activities wherein deep properties of objective reality are revealed and applied, but are instead considered the application of internally consistent methods used to realize more complex mental constructs, regardless of their possible independent existence in an objective reality.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 Human rights 🔗 Mass surveillance 🔗 Espionage 🔗 United States/FBI

Main Core is the code name of an American governmental database that is believed to have been in existence since the 1980s. It is believed that Main Core is a federal database containing personal and financial data of millions of United States citizens believed to be threats to national security.

🔗 Chemicals

Paraloid B-72 or B-72 is a thermoplastic resin that was created by Rohm and Haas for use as a surface coating and as a vehicle for flexographic ink. Subsequently, it has found popular use as an adhesive by conservator-restorers, specifically in the conservation and restoration of ceramic objects, glass objects, the preparation of fossils, the hardening of piano hammers, and can also be used for labeling museum objects.

🔗 Sports

Extreme ironing (also called EI) is an extreme sport in which people take ironing boards to remote locations and iron items of clothing. According to the Extreme Ironing Bureau, extreme ironing is "the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt."

Part of the attraction and interest the media has shown towards extreme ironing seems to center on the issue of whether it is really a sport or not. It is widely considered to be tongue-in-cheek.

Some other locations where such performances have taken place include a mountainside of a difficult climb; a forest; in a canoe; while skiing or snowboarding; on top of large bronze statues; in the middle of a street; underwater; in the middle of the M1 motorway; race; whilst parachuting; and under the ice sheet of a frozen lake. The performances have been conducted solo or by groups.

🔗 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.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Epistemology

The unexpected hanging paradox or hangman paradox is a paradox about a person's expectations about the timing of a future event which they are told will occur at an unexpected time. The paradox is variously applied to a prisoner's hanging, or a surprise school test. It could be reduced to be Moore's paradox.

Despite significant academic interest, there is no consensus on its precise nature and consequently a final correct resolution has not yet been established. Logical analysis suggests that the problem arises in a self-contradictory self-referencing statement at the heart of the judge's sentence. Epistemological studies of the paradox have suggested that it turns on our concept of knowledge. Even though it is apparently simple, the paradox's underlying complexities have even led to its being called a "significant problem" for philosophy.