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🔗 Death 🔗 China 🔗 Socialism

The Guangxi Massacre (simplified Chinese: 广西大屠杀; traditional Chinese: 廣西大屠殺; pinyin: Guǎngxī Dàtúshā), or Guangxi Cultural Revolution Massacre (广西文革大屠杀; 廣西文革大屠殺; Guǎngxī Wéngé Dàtúshā), was a series of events involving lynching and direct massacre in Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The official record shows an estimated death toll from 100,000 to 150,000. Methods of slaughter included beheading, beating, live burial, stoning, drowning, boiling, disemboweling, and more. In certain areas including Wuxuan County and Wuming District, massive human cannibalism occurred even though no famine existed; according to public records available, at least 137 people—perhaps hundreds more—were eaten by others and at least thousands of people participated in the cannibalism. Other researchers have pointed out that in a county alone, 421 people had been eaten, and there were reports of cannibalism across dozens of counties in Guangxi.

After the Cultural Revolution, people who were involved in the massacre or cannibalism received only minor punishments during the "Boluan Fanzheng" period; in Wuxuan County where at least 38 people were eaten, fourteen participants were prosecuted, receiving up to 14 years in prison, while ninety-one members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) were expelled from the party and thirty-nine non-party officials were either demoted or had a salary cut. Although the cannibalism was sponsored by local offices of Communist Party and militia, no direct evidence suggests that anyone in the national Communist Party leadership including Mao Zedong endorsed the cannibalism or even knew of it.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 Terrorism

The 1983 U.S. Senate bombing was a bomb explosion at the United States Senate on November 7, 1983, motivated by United States military involvement in Lebanon and Grenada. The attack led to heightened security in the DC metropolitan area, and the inaccessibility of certain parts of the Senate Building. Six members of the radical left-wing Resistance Conspiracy were arrested in May 1988 and charged with the bombing, as well as related bombings of Fort McNair and the Washington Navy Yard which occurred April 25, 1983, and April 20, 1984, respectively.

🔗 Internet culture 🔗 Scotland

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.

🔗 Blogging

Posterous was a simple blogging platform started in May 2008. It supported integrated and automatic posting to other social media tools such as Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, a built-in Google Analytics package, and custom themes. It was based in San Francisco and funded by Y Combinator.

Updating to Posterous was similar to other blogging platforms. Posting could be done by logging into the website's rich text editor, but it was particularly designed for mobile blogging. Mobile methods include sending an email, with attachments of photos, MP3s, documents, and video (both links and files). Many social media pundits considered Posterous to be the leading free application for lifestreaming. The platform received wide attention when leading social media expert Steve Rubel declared he was moving his blogging activity entirely to Posterous.

Posterous also had its own URL shortening service, which as of March 2010 could post to Twitter.

Posterous allowed users to point the DNS listing for a domain name or subdomain they already owned to their Posterous account, allowing them to have a site hosted by Posterous that used their own domain name.

In January 2010, the3six5, a Posterous-based storytelling project, launched. It was nominated for a Webby Award in 2011.

In May 2010, Posterous was recognized as one of the “2010 Hottest Silicon Valley Companies” by Lead411.

🔗 Mathematics

In number theory, the Pólya conjecture stated that "most" (i.e., 50% or more) of the natural numbers less than any given number have an odd number of prime factors. The conjecture was posited by the Hungarian mathematician George Pólya in 1919, and proved false in 1958 by C. Brian Haselgrove.

The size of the smallest counterexample is often used to show how a conjecture can be true for many cases, and still be false, providing an illustration for the strong law of small numbers.

🔗 United States 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Applied Linguistics 🔗 Writing systems 🔗 United States/Utah 🔗 English Language 🔗 Latter Day Saint movement

The Deseret alphabet ( (listen); Deseret: 𐐔𐐯𐑅𐐨𐑉𐐯𐐻 or 𐐔𐐯𐑆𐐲𐑉𐐯𐐻) is a phonemic English-language spelling reform developed between 1847 and 1854 by the board of regents of the University of Deseret under the leadership of Brigham Young, the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). George D. Watt is reported to have been the most actively involved in the development of the script,^: 159 as well as being its first serious user.^: 12

The Deseret alphabet was an outgrowth of the idealism and utopianism of Young and the early LDS Church. Young and the Mormon pioneers believed "all aspects of life" were in need of reform for the imminent millenniumand the Deseret alphabet was just one of many ways they sought to bring about a complete "transformation in society",^: 142 in anticipation of the Second Coming of Jesus. Young wrote of the reform that "it would represent every sound used in the construction of any known language; and, in fact, a step and partial return to a pure language which has been promised unto us in the latter days," the Adamic language spoken before the Tower of Babel.

In public statements, Young claimed the alphabet would replace the traditional Latin alphabet with an alternative, more phonetically accurate alphabet for the English language. This would offer immigrants an opportunity to learn to read and write English, he said, the orthography of which is often less phonetically consistent than those of many other languages.^: 65–66 Similar neographies have been attempted, the most well-known of which for English is the Shavian alphabet.

Young also prescribed the learning of Deseret to the school system, stating "It will be the means of introducing uniformity in our orthography, and the years that are now required to learn to read and spell can be devoted to other studies."

During the alphabet's heyday between 1854 and 1869, scriptural passages in newspapers, selected church records, a $5 gold coin, and occasional street signs and correspondence used the new letters. In 1868-9, after much difficulty creating suitable fonts, four books were printed: two school primers, the full Book of Mormon, and a portion of it titled the Book of Nephi.

Despite heavy and costly promotion by the early LDS Church, the alphabet never enjoyed prolonged widespread use and has been regarded by historians as a failure. However, in recent years, aided by digital typography, the Deseret Alphabet has been revived as a cultural heirloom.

🔗 United States 🔗 Library of Congress 🔗 Geography 🔗 Maps 🔗 Libraries

The Waldseemüller map or Universalis Cosmographia ("Universal Cosmography") is a printed wall map of the world by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, originally published in April 1507. It is known as the first map to use the name "America". The name America is placed on what is now called South America on the main map. As explained in Cosmographiae Introductio, the name was bestowed in honor of the Italian Amerigo Vespucci.

The map is drafted on a modification of Ptolemy's second projection, expanded to accommodate the Americas and the high latitudes. A single copy of the map survives, presently housed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Waldseemüller also created globe gores, printed maps designed to be cut out and pasted onto spheres to form globes of the Earth. The wall map, and his globe gores of the same date, depict the American continents in two pieces. These depictions differ from the small inset map in the top border of the wall map, which shows the two American continents joined by an isthmus.

🔗 Electronics 🔗 Electrical engineering

The trancitor as the combined word of a "transfer-capacitor" is to be considered as another active-device category besides the transistor as a "transfer-resistor". As observed in the table shown, four kinds of active devices are theoretically deduced. Among them, trancitors are missing to be the third and fourth kinds, whereas transistors, such as bipolar junction transistor (BJT) and field-effect transistor (FET), were already invented as the first and second kinds, respectively. Unlike the transistor switching the current at its output (i.e., current source), the trancitor transfers its input to the voltage output (i.e., voltage source), so an inverse relationship with each other.

🔗 Video games 🔗 Computing 🔗 Books

Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals is a book on game design by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, published by MIT Press.

🔗 Genetics 🔗 Molecular Biology/Molecular and Cell Biology

In genetic engineering, a gene gun or biolistic particle delivery system is a device used to deliver exogenous DNA (transgenes), RNA, or protein to cells. By coating particles of a heavy metal with a gene of interest and firing these micro-projectiles into cells using mechanical force, an integration of desired genetic information can be induced into cells. The technique involved with such micro-projectile delivery of DNA is often referred to as biolistics.

This device is able to transform almost any type of cell and is not limited to the transformation of the nucleus; it can also transform organelles, including plastids and mitochondria.