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π Project 2025
ProjectΒ 2025 is a plan to reshape the executive branch of the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Established in 2022, the project seeks to recruit tens of thousands of conservatives to Washington, D.C., to replace existing federal civil service workers it characterizes as the "deep state", to further the objectives of the next Republican president. Although participants in the project cannot promote a specific presidential candidate, many have close ties to Donald Trump and the Trump 2024 presidential campaign. The plan would perform a swift takeover of the entire executive branch under a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory β a theory proposing the president of the United States has absolute power over the executive branch β upon inauguration.
The development of the plan is led by the The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, in collaboration with over 100 partners including Turning Point USA led by Charlie Kirk; the Conservative Partnership Institute including former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as senior partner; the Center for Renewing America led by former Trump-appointee Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought; and America First Legal led by former Trump Senior Advisor Stephen Miller.
ProjectΒ 2025 envisions widespread changes across the entire government, particularly with regard to economic and social policy and the role of the federal government and federal agencies. The plan proposes slashing U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) funding, dismantling the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, gutting environmental and climate change regulations to favor fossil fuel production, and eliminating the cabinet Departments of Education and Commerce. Citing an anonymous source, The Washington Post reported ProjectΒ 2025 includes immediately invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and directing the DOJ to pursue Trump adversaries. Project Director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, said in September 2023 that Project 2025 is "systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state."
ProjectΒ 2025 consists largely of a book of policy recommendations titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise and an accompanying personnel database open for submissions. There is also an online course called the Presidential Administration Academy, and a guide to developing transition plans. Reactions to the plan included variously describing it as authoritarian, an attempt by Trump to become a dictator, and a path leading the United States towards autocracy, with several experts in law criticizing it for violating current constitutional laws that would undermine the rule of law and the separation of powers. Additionally, some conservatives and Republicans also criticized the plan, for example in relation to climate change. The Mandate states that "freedom is defined by God, not man."
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- "Project 2025" | 2024-03-03 | 31 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Wake Therapy
Wake therapy is a form of sleep deprivation used as a treatment for depression. The subject stays awake all night, or is woken at 1AM and stays awake all morning, and the next full day. While sleepy, patients find that their depression vanishes, until they sleep again. Combining this with bright light therapy make the beneficial effects last longer than one day. Partial sleep deprivation in the second half of the night may be as effective as an all-night sleep deprivation session.
Wake therapy is a therapy that falls under chronotherapeutics. Chronotherapy (treatment scheduling) is a process to manipulate biological rhythms and sleep that can help to improve affective disorders quickly.
Wake therapy is beneficial for those experiencing major depression along with unipolar, bipolar, and melancholic types of depression. Wake therapy is best used to jump start the effects of the use of an antidepressant. Wake therapy is the use of prolonged times of wakefulness, along with periods of recovering sleep. It is a fast way to improve symptoms of depression. This therapy is best used with other chronotherapeutic techniques. Months of use of this therapy and other therapies can be quite effective to help prevent relapse of depression.
Discussed on
- "Wake Therapy" | 2019-04-19 | 16 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Pantala Flavescens
Pantala flavescens, the globe skimmer, globe wanderer or wandering glider, is a wide-ranging dragonfly of the family Libellulidae. This species and Pantala hymenaea, the "spot-winged glider", are the only members of the genus Pantala. It was first described by Johan Christian Fabricius in 1798. It is considered to be the most widespread dragonfly on the planet with good population on every continent except Antarctica although rare in Europe. Globe skimmers make an annual multigenerational journey of some 18,000Β km (about 11,200 miles); to complete the migration, individual globe skimmers fly more than 6,000Β km (3,730 miles)βone of the farthest known migrations of all insect species.
Discussed on
- "Pantala Flavescens" | 2022-08-16 | 18 Upvotes 9 Comments
π Pykrete
Pykrete is a frozen ice alloy , originally made of approximately 14 percent sawdust or some other form of wood pulp (such as paper) and 86 percent ice by weight (6 to 1 by weight). During World War II, Geoffrey Pyke proposed it as a candidate material for a supersized aircraft carrier for the British Royal Navy. Pykrete features unusual properties, including a relatively slow melting rate due to its low thermal conductivity, as well as a vastly improved strength and toughness compared to ordinary ice. These physical properties can make the material comparable to concrete, as long as the material is kept frozen.
Pykrete is slightly more difficult to form than concrete, as it expands during the freezing process. However, it can be repaired and maintained using seawater as a raw material. The mixture can be moulded into any shape and frozen, and it will be tough and durable, as long as it is kept at or below freezing temperature. Resistance to gradual creep or sagging is improved by lowering the temperature further, to β15Β Β°C (5Β Β°F).
Discussed on
- "Pykrete" | 2015-07-07 | 114 Upvotes 41 Comments
π Peak car
Peak car (also peak car use or peak travel) is a hypothesis that motor vehicle distance traveled per capita, predominantly by private car, has peaked and will now fall in a sustained manner. The theory was developed as an alternative to the prevailing market saturation model, which suggested that car use would saturate and then remain reasonably constant, or to GDP-based theories which predict that traffic will increase again as the economy improves, linking recent traffic reductions to the Great Recession of 2008.
The theory was proposed following reductions, which have now been observed in Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan (early 1990s), New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom (many cities from about 1994) and the United States. A study by Volpe Transportation in 2013 noted that average miles driven by individuals in the United States has been declining from 900 miles (1,400Β km) per month in 2004 to 820 miles (1,320Β km) in July 2012, and that the decline had continued since the recent upturn in the US economy.
A number of academics have written in support of the theory, including Phil Goodwin, formerly Director of the transport research groups at Oxford University and UCL, and David Metz, a former Chief Scientist of the UK Department of Transport. The theory is disputed by the UK Department for Transport, which predicts that road traffic in the United Kingdom will grow by 50% by 2036, and Professor Stephen Glaister, Director of the RAC Foundation, who say traffic will start increasing again as the economy improves. Unlike peak oil, a theory based on a reduction in the ability to extract oil due to resource depletion, peak car is attributed to more complex and less understood causes.
Discussed on
- "Peak car" | 2015-05-03 | 210 Upvotes 134 Comments
π Sea Anchor
A sea anchor (also known as a parachute anchor, drift anchor, drift sock, para-anchor or boat brake) is a device that is streamed from a boat in heavy weather. Its purpose is to stabilize the vessel and to limit progress through the water. Rather than tethering the boat to the seabed with a conventional anchor, a sea anchor provides hydrodynamic drag, thereby acting as a brake. Normally attached to a vessel's bows, a sea anchor can prevent the vessel from turning broadside to the waves and being overwhelmed by them.
Early sea anchors were crude devices, but today most take the form of a marine drogue parachute. These are so efficient that they need a tripping line to collapse the parachute for retrieval. Being made of fabric, a sea parachute may be bagged and easily stowed when not in use.
A similar device to the sea anchor is the much smaller drogue, which is streamed from a vessel's stern in strong winds so as to slow the boat to prevent pitchpoling or broaching in an overtaking sea. The fundamental difference between the sea anchor and the drogue is that the drogue will slow the boat while keeping the heading steady, and is intended to be launched from the stern. The parachute anchor is designed to be launched from the bow and effectively stop the boat's progress relative to the current in an open sea.
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- "Sea Anchor" | 2022-12-21 | 67 Upvotes 23 Comments
π Prince Rupert's Drop
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- "Prince Rupert's Drop" | 2023-05-30 | 117 Upvotes 35 Comments
- "Prince Rupert's Drop" | 2013-04-15 | 42 Upvotes 13 Comments
π Null Island
Null Island is a name for the area around the point where the prime meridian and the equator cross, located in international waters in the Gulf of Guinea (Atlantic Ocean) off the west African coast. In the WGS84 datum, this is at zero degrees latitude and longitude (0Β°N 0Β°E), and is the location of a buoy. The name 'Null Island' serves as both a joke based around the suppositional existence of an island there, and also as a name to which coordinates erroneously set to 0,0 are assigned in placenames databases in order to more easily find and fix them. The nearest land is a small islet offshore of Ghana, between Akwidaa and Dixcove at 4Β°45β²30β³N 1Β°58β²33β³W, 307.8Β nmi (354.2Β mi; 570.0Β km) to the north.
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- "Null Island" | 2023-08-03 | 19 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "Null Island" | 2019-12-22 | 46 Upvotes 56 Comments
π Mind benders: List of paradoxes
This is a list of paradoxes, grouped thematically. The grouping is approximate, as paradoxes may fit into more than one category. This list collects only scenarios that have been called a paradox by at least one source and have their own article. Although considered paradoxes, some of these are simply based on fallacious reasoning (falsidical), or an unintuitive solution (veridical). Informally, the term paradox is often used to describe a counter-intuitive result.
However, some of these paradoxes qualify to fit into the mainstream perception of a paradox, which is a self-contradictory result gained even while properly applying accepted ways of reasoning. These paradoxes, often called antinomy, point out genuine problems in our understanding of the ideas of truth and description.
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- "Mind benders: List of paradoxes" | 2009-07-07 | 15 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Medjed
In Ancient Egyptian religion, Medjed is a minor and obscure god mentioned in the Book of the Dead. His ghost-like portrayal in illustrations on the Greenfield papyrus earned him popularity in modern Japanese culture, including as a character in video games and anime.
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- "Medjed" | 2023-04-01 | 18 Upvotes 4 Comments