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π The Real Book
The Real Book is a musicians' fake book β a compilation of lead sheets for jazz standards. Fake books had been around at least since the late 1920s, but their organization was haphazard, and their content did not always keep pace with contemporary musical styles. The Real Book was initially produced by two students at the Berklee College of Music in the 1970s, as an updated fake book. It became so popular that the books was eventually "legitimized" by publisher Hal Leonard, and re-released in a series of editions and transpositions for various instruments.
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- "The Real Book" | 2023-01-26 | 61 Upvotes 39 Comments
π Tang Ping
Tang ping (Chinese: θΊΊεΉ³; pinyin: tΗng pΓng; lit. 'lying flat') is a lifestyle choice and social protest movement in China by some young people who reject societal pressures on hard work or even overwork (such as the 996 working hour system, which is generally regarded as a rat race with ever diminishing returns), and instead choose to "lie down flat and get over the beatings" via a low-desire, more indifferent attitude towards life. Novelist Liao Zenghu described "lying flat" as a resistance movement, and The New York Times called it part of a nascent Chinese counterculture. It has also been compared to the Great Resignation that began in America (and the western world) around the same time.
Unlike the hikikomori in Japan (who are socially withdrawn), these young Chinese people who subscribe to "lying flat" are not socially isolated, but merely choose to lower their professional and economic ambitions and simplify their goals, still being fiscally productive for their own essential needs, and prioritize psychological health over economic materialism.
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- "Tang ping, social protest movement to βlie down flat and get over the beatingsβ" | 2022-01-10 | 35 Upvotes 5 Comments
- "Tang Ping" | 2021-11-20 | 17 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Volcanic Winter
A volcanic winter is a reduction in global temperatures caused by volcanic ash and droplets of sulfuric acid and water obscuring the Sun and raising Earth's albedo (increasing the reflection of solar radiation) after a large, particularly explosive volcanic eruption. Long-term cooling effects are primarily dependent upon injection of sulfur gases into the stratosphere where they undergo a series of reactions to create sulfuric acid which can nucleate and form aerosols. Volcanic stratospheric aerosols cool the surface by reflecting solar radiation and warm the stratosphere by absorbing terrestrial radiation. The variations in atmospheric warming and cooling result in changes in tropospheric and stratospheric circulation.
π Nebraska Furniture Mart
Nebraska Furniture Mart is the largest home furnishing store in North America selling furniture, flooring, appliances and electronics. NFM was founded in 1937 by Belarus-born Rose Blumkin, universally known as Mrs. B., in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Under the motto "sell cheap and tell the truth," she worked in the business until age 103. In 1983, Mrs. B. sold a majority interest to Berkshire Hathaway in a handshake deal with Warren Buffett.
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- "Nebraska Furniture Mart" | 2019-09-21 | 170 Upvotes 72 Comments
π John Socha, Creator of Norton Commander
John Socha-Leialoha (born 1958) is a software developer best known for creating Norton Commander, the first orthodox file manager. The original Norton Commander was written for DOS. Over the years, Socha's design for file management has been extended and cloned many times.
John grew up in the woods of Wisconsin, earned a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from University of WisconsinβMadison, and his PhD in Applied Physics from Cornell University. He now lives in Bellevue, Washington with his wife. His son, John Avi, is a graduate of the University of Washington.
Starting in September 2010, John began working at Microsoft officially.
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- "John Socha, Creator of Norton Commander" | 2023-09-07 | 15 Upvotes 1 Comments
π The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary (abbreviated CatB) is an essay, and later a book, by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. It examines the struggle between top-down and bottom-up design. The essay was first presented by the author at the Linux Kongress on May 27, 1997 in WΓΌrzburg (Germany) and was published as part of the book in 1999.
The illustration on the cover of the book is a 1913 painting by Liubov Popova titled Composition with Figures and belongs to the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery. The book was released under the Open Publication License v2.0 around 1999.
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- "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" | 2023-04-29 | 24 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" | 2015-05-15 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
π A pair of pants is a special two-dimensional surface
Trousers or pants (American English) are an item of clothing that might have originated in Central Asia, worn from the waist to the ankles, covering both legs separately (rather than with cloth extending across both legs as in robes, skirts, and dresses).
Outside North America, the word pants generally means underwear and not trousers. Shorts are similar to trousers, but with legs that come down only to around the area of the knee, higher or lower depending on the style of the garment. To distinguish them from shorts, trousers may be called "long trousers" in certain contexts such as school uniform, where tailored shorts may be called "short trousers", especially in the UK.
The oldest known trousers were found at the Yanghai cemetery in Turpan, Xinjiang, western China and dated to the period between the 10th and the 13th centuries BC. Made of wool, the trousers had straight legs and wide crotches and were likely made for horseback riding.
In most of Europe, trousers have been worn since ancient times and throughout the Medieval period, becoming the most common form of lower-body clothing for adult males in the modern world. Breeches were worn instead of trousers in early modern Europe by some men in higher classes of society. Distinctive formal trousers are traditionally worn with formal and semi-formal day attire. Since the mid-20th century, trousers have increasingly been worn by women as well.
Jeans, made of denim, are a form of trousers for casual wear widely worn all over the world by both sexes. Shorts are often preferred in hot weather or for some sports and also often by children and adolescents. Trousers are worn on the hips or waist and are often held up by buttons, elastic, a belt or suspenders (braces).
π Jewish Nobel Laureates
Nobel Prizes have been awarded to over 900 individuals, of whom at least 20% were Jews although the Jewish population comprises less than 0.2% of the world's population. Various theories have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, which has received considerable attention. Israeli academics Dr. Elay Ben-Gal and Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, curious about the phenomenon, started to form an encyclopedia of Jewish Nobel laureates and interview as many as possible about their life and work.
Jews have been recipients of all six awards. The first Jewish recipient, Adolf von Baeyer, was awarded the prize in Chemistry in 1905. As of 2019, the most recent Jewish recipient was economics laureate Michael Kremer.
Jewish laureates Elie Wiesel and Imre KertΓ©sz survived the extermination camps during the Holocaust, while FranΓ§ois Englert survived by being hidden in orphanages and children's homes. Others, such as Walter Kohn, Otto Stern, Albert Einstein, Hans Krebs and Martin Karplus had to flee Nazi Germany to avoid persecution. Still others, including Rita Levi-Montalcini, Herbert Hauptman, Robert Furchgott, Arthur Kornberg, and Jerome Karle experienced significant antisemitism in their careers.
Arthur Ashkin, a 96-year-old American Jew was, at the time of his award, the oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize.
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- "Jewish Nobel Laureates" | 2013-10-12 | 48 Upvotes 76 Comments
π An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms β 723 CE
Wang ocheonchukguk jeon (Korean pronunciation:Β [waΛΕotΙΚ°ΚntΙΚ°ukkΝuktΙΝΚn]; pinyin: wΗng wΗ tiΔnzhΓΊ guΓ³ zhuΓ n; "An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms") is a travelogue by Buddhist monk Hyecho, who traveled from Korea to India, in the years 723 - 727/728 CE.
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- "An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms β 723 CE" | 2022-09-17 | 113 Upvotes 17 Comments
π The official term for the smell after it rains
Petrichor () is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. The word is constructed from Greek petra (ΟΞΟΟΞ±), meaning "stone", and Δ«chΕr (αΌ°ΟΟΟ), the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.
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- "Petrichor" | 2025-05-10 | 16 Upvotes 7 Comments
- "Petrichor" | 2022-12-27 | 151 Upvotes 44 Comments
- "The official term for the smell after it rains" | 2009-12-21 | 148 Upvotes 36 Comments