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π Willy's Chocolate Experience
Willy's Chocolate Experience was an unlicensed event based on the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory franchise, held in Glasgow, Scotland, in February 2024. The event was promoted as an immersive and interactive family experience, illustrated on its website with "dreamlike" AI-generated images. When customers discovered that the event was held in a sparsely decorated warehouse, many complained and the police were called to the venue. The event went viral on the Internet, garnering international media attention.
The event drew comparisons to the Tumblr fan convention DashCon in 2014 and Billy McFarland's Fyre Festival in 2017.
π List of countries by tax rates
A comparison of tax rates by countries is difficult and somewhat subjective, as tax laws in most countries are extremely complex and the tax burden falls differently on different groups in each country and sub-national unit. The list focuses on the main indicative types of taxes: corporate tax, individual income tax, and sales tax, including VAT and GST, but does not list capital gains tax.
Some other taxes (for instance property tax, substantial in many countries, such as the United States) and payroll tax are not shown here. The table is not exhaustive in representing the true tax burden to either the corporation or the individual in the listed country. The tax rates displayed are marginal and do not account for deductions, exemptions or rebates. The effective rate is usually lower than the marginal rate. The tax rates given for federations (such as the United States and Canada) are averages and vary depending on the state or province. Territories that have different rates to their respective nation are in italics.
Discussed on
- "List of countries by tax rates" | 2016-10-10 | 25 Upvotes 13 Comments
π Number 16 (Spider)
Number 16 (c. 1974 β 2016), also known as #16, was a wild female trapdoor spider (Gaius villosus, family Idiopidae) that lived in North Bungulla Reserve near Tammin, Western Australia. She lived an estimated 43 years and became the longest-lived spider on record, beating a 28-year-old tarantula who previously held the title. When Number 16 finally died in 2016, it was not of old age but from a parasitic wasp sting.
Discussed on
- "Number 16 (Spider)" | 2024-05-22 | 327 Upvotes 125 Comments
π Utility Monster
The utility monster is a thought experiment in the study of ethics created by philosopher Robert Nozick in 1974 as a criticism of utilitarianism.
Discussed on
- "Utility Monster" | 2020-05-14 | 59 Upvotes 67 Comments
π Wikipedia has deprecated and will blacklist archive.today
The English Wikipedia has decided to stop using archive.today and its related websites. This decision was taken after a request for comment with more than 200 participants and is due to multiple concerns, including the site using editors' and readers' computers to run a denial-of-service attack and evidence that the website has tampered with some archived pages.
The addition of links to these websites is already being blocked by the edit filter, and it will likely be added to the spam blacklist in the future. Before that happens, we need everyone's help to replace or remove links to these websites. As of FebruaryΒ 28, 2026, the citation templates in popular use on Wikipedia (WP:CS1 and WP:CS2) will not render Archive.today and affiliated archive URLs.
Note: Archive.org, or web.archive.org, run by the Internet Archive and the most-used web archive on Wikipedia, is uninvolved with and entirely separate from archive.today. Please keep using archive.org.
Discussed on
- "Wikipedia has deprecated and will blacklist archive.today" | 2026-02-20 | 16 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Rational Dress Society
The Rational Dress Society was an organisation founded in 1881 in London, part of the movement for Victorian dress reform. It described its purpose thus:
The Rational Dress Society protests against the introduction of any fashion in dress that either deforms the figure, impedes the movements of the body, or in any way tends to injure the health. It protests against the wearing of tightly-fitting corsets; of high-heeled shoes; of heavily-weighted skirts, as rendering healthy exercise almost impossible; and of all tie down cloaks or other garments impeding on the movements of the arms. It protests against crinolines or crinolettes of any kind as ugly and deforming... [It] requires all to be dressed healthily, comfortably, and beautifully, to seek what conduces to birth, comfort and beauty in our dress as a duty to ourselves and each other.
In the catalogue of its inaugural exhibition, it listed the attributes of "perfect" dress as:
1. Freedom of Movement.
2. Absence of pressure over any part of the body.
3. Not more weight than is necessary for warmth, and both weight and warmth evenly distributed.
4. Grace and beauty combined with comfort and convenience.
5. Not departing too conspicuously from the ordinary dress of the time.
Leading members of the Society were Lady Harberton (who created the divided skirt), Mary Eliza Haweis and Constance Wilde (Irish author). Oscar Wilde helped spread the word by publishing the essay "The Philosophy of Dress" in which he stressed the important relationship between clothing and oneβs soul. Woman cyclists, such as members of the Lady Cyclists' Association, were keen advocates of women's right to dress appropriately for the activity, as part of a belief that cycling offered women an opportunity to escape overly restrictive societal norms.
In 1889, a member of the Rational Dress Society, Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, staged a coup at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Newcastle upon Tyne, when she arranged an impromptu addition to the programme on the subject of rational dress. Her speech was reported by newspapers across Britain and the notion of rational dress was the biggest news from the meeting.
Discussed on
- "Rational Dress Society" | 2023-04-03 | 237 Upvotes 193 Comments
π Negative income tax
In economics, a negative income tax (NIT) is a welfare system within an income tax where people earning below a certain amount receive supplemental pay from the government instead of paying taxes to the government.
Such a system has been discussed by economists but never fully implemented. According to surveys however, the consensus view among economists is that the "government should restructure the welfare system along the lines" of one. It was described by British politician Juliet Rhys-Williams in the 1940s and later by American free-market economist Milton Friedman.
Negative income taxes can implement a basic income or supplement a guaranteed minimum income system.
In a negative income tax system, people earning a certain income level would owe no taxes; those earning more than that would pay a proportion of their income above that level; and those below that level would receive a payment of a proportion of their shortfall, which is the amount their income falls below that level.
Discussed on
- "Negative income tax" | 2016-02-18 | 31 Upvotes 11 Comments
π Time Cube
Time Cube was a personal web page, founded in 1997 by the self-proclaimed "wisest man on earth," Otis Eugene "Gene" Ray. It was a self-published outlet for Ray's theory of everything, called "Time Cube," which polemically claims that all modern sciences are participating in a worldwide conspiracy to teach lies, by omitting his theory's alleged truth that each day actually consists of four days occurring simultaneously. Alongside these statements, Ray described himself as a "godlike being with superior intelligence who has absolute evidence and proof" for his views. Ray asserted repeatedly and variously that "academia" had not taken Time Cube seriously.
Otis Eugene Ray died on March 18, 2015 at age 87. Ray's website domain names expired in August 2015, and Time Cube was last archived by the Wayback Machine on January 12, 2016. (January 10β14)
Discussed on
- "Time Cube" | 2019-10-12 | 27 Upvotes 4 Comments
- "Time Cube" | 2018-09-25 | 16 Upvotes 3 Comments
π US Supreme Court upholds state power to enforce compulsory vaccination (1905)
Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. The Court's decision articulated the view that the freedom of the individual must sometimes be subordinated to the common welfare and is subject to the police power of the state.
Discussed on
- "US Supreme Court upholds state power to enforce compulsory vaccination (1905)" | 2020-05-18 | 34 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Kayfabe
In professional wrestling, kayfabe (also called work or worked) is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true", specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not of a staged or predetermined nature of any kind. The term kayfabe has evolved to also become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect presence of the general public.
Kayfabe is often seen as the suspension of disbelief that is used to create the non-wrestling aspects of promotions, such as feuds, angles, and gimmicks in a manner similar to other forms of fictional entertainment. In relative terms, a wrestler breaking kayfabe during a show would be likened to an actor breaking character on-camera. Also, since wrestling is performed in front of a live audience, whose interaction with the show is crucial to its success, kayfabe can be compared to the fourth wall in acting, since hardly any conventional fourth wall exists to begin with. In general, everything in a professional wrestling show is to some extent scripted, or "kayfabe", even though at times it is portrayed as real-life.
Kayfabe was fiercely maintained for decades, but with the advent of the Internet wrestling community, and the sports entertainment movement, the pro wrestling industry has become less concerned with protecting so-called backstage secrets and typically maintains kayfabe only during the shows. Kayfabe is, however, occasionally broken during shows, usually when dealing with genuine injuries during a match or paying tribute to wrestlers.