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๐ Sรผtterlin
Sรผtterlinschrift (German pronunciation: [หzสtษliหnหสสษชft], "Sรผtterlin script") is the last widely used form of Kurrent, the historical form of German handwriting that evolved alongside German blackletter (most notably Fraktur) typefaces. Graphic artist Ludwig Sรผtterlin was commissioned by the Prussian Ministry of Science, Art and Culture (Preuรisches Ministerium fรผr Wissenschaft, Kunst und Volksbildung) to create a modern handwriting script in 1911. His handwriting scheme gradually replaced the older cursive scripts that had developed in the 16th century at the same time that letters in books had developed into Fraktur. The name Sรผtterlin is nowadays often used to refer to all varieties of old German handwriting, although only this specific script was taught in all German schools from 1915 to 1941.
๐ Waffle House Index
The Waffle House Index is an informal metric named after the Waffle House restaurant chain and is used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to determine the effect of a storm and the likely scale of assistance required for disaster recovery.
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- "The Waffle House Index" | 2022-09-11 | 52 Upvotes 13 Comments
- "Waffle House Index" | 2020-03-25 | 15 Upvotes 5 Comments
๐ All American Five radio receivers
The term All American Five (abbreviated AA5) is a colloquial name for mass-produced, superheterodyne radio receivers that used five vacuum tubes in their design. These radio sets were designed to receive amplitude modulation (AM) broadcasts in the medium wave band, and were manufactured in the United States from the mid-1930s until the early 1960s. By eliminating a power transformer, cost of the units was kept low; the same principle was later applied to television receivers. Variations in the design for lower cost, shortwave bands, better performance or special power supplies existed, although many sets used an identical set of vacuum tubes.
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- "All American Five radio receivers" | 2022-12-21 | 71 Upvotes 70 Comments
๐ Celebrity Bond
A celebrity bond is commercial debt security issued by a holder of fame-based intellectual property rights to receive money upfront from investors on behalf of the bond issuer and their celebrity clients in exchange for assigning investors the right to collect future royalty monies to the works covered by the intellectual property rights listed in the bond. Typically backed by music properties, the investment vehicle was pioneered in 1997 by rock and roll investment banker David Pullman through his $55 million David Bowie bond deal.
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- "Bowie Bonds" | 2020-05-07 | 20 Upvotes 6 Comments
- "Celebrity Bond" | 2018-09-02 | 33 Upvotes 5 Comments
๐ Gridcoin: An open source cryptocurrency that rewards work performed on the BOINC
Gridcoin (ticker: GRC) is an open source cryptocurrency which securely rewards volunteer computing performed on the BOINC, a distributed computing platform that is home to over 30 science projects spanning a range of scientific disciplines.
Gridcoin attempts to address and ease the environmental energy impact of cryptocurrency mining through its proof-of-research and proof-of-stake protocols, as compared to the proof of work system used by Bitcoin.
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- "Gridcoin: An open source cryptocurrency that rewards work performed on the BOINC" | 2021-02-23 | 220 Upvotes 115 Comments
๐ Bicameral Mentality
Bicameral mentality is a hypothesis introduced by Julian Jaynes who argued human ancestors as late as the ancient Greeks did not consider emotions and desires as stemming from their own minds but as the consequences of actions of gods external to themselves. The theory posits that the human mind once operated in a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeysโa bicameral mind, and that the breakdown of this division gave rise to consciousness in humans. The term was coined by Jaynes who presented the idea in his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3,000 years ago, near the end of the Mediterranean bronze age.
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- "Bicameral Mentality" | 2023-11-26 | 17 Upvotes 1 Comments
๐ Miller Columns
Miller columns (also known as cascading lists) are a browsing/visualization technique that can be applied to tree structures. The columns allow multiple levels of the hierarchy to be open at once, and provide a visual representation of the current location. It is closely related to techniques used earlier in the Smalltalk browser, but was independently invented by Mark S. Miller in 1980 at Yale University. The technique was then used at Project Xanadu, Datapoint, and NeXT.
While at Datapoint, Miller generalized the technique to browse directed graphs with labeled nodes and arcs. In all cases, the technique is appropriate for structures with high degree (large fanout). For low-degree structures, outline editors or graph viewers are more effective.
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- "Miller Columns" | 2018-10-02 | 177 Upvotes 90 Comments
๐ Sverdlovsk Anthrax Leak
On 2 April 1979, spores of anthrax were accidentally released from a Soviet military research facility near the city of Sverdlovsk, Russia (now Yekaterinburg). The ensuing outbreak of the disease resulted in approximately 100 deaths, although the exact number of victims remains unknown. The cause of the outbreak was denied for years by the Soviet authorities, which blamed the deaths on consumption of tainted meat from the area, and subcutaneous exposure due to butchers handling the tainted meat. All medical records of the victims were removed to hide serious violations of the Biological Weapons Convention. The accident is sometimes referred to as "biological Chernobyl".
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- "Sverdlovsk Anthrax Leak" | 2020-02-01 | 19 Upvotes 2 Comments
๐ Wikipedia blackout page
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- "Wikipedia blackout page" | 2012-01-18 | 507 Upvotes 113 Comments
๐ Naumachia
The naumachia (in Latin naumachia, from the Ancient Greek ฮฝฮฑฯ ฮผฮฑฯฮฏฮฑ/naumachรญa, literally "naval combat") in the Ancient Roman world referred to both the staging of naval battles as mass entertainment, and the basin or building in which this took place.
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- "Naumachia" | 2021-06-27 | 54 Upvotes 3 Comments