Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 Languages

The Dolgopolsky list is a word list compiled by Aharon Dolgopolsky in 1964. It lists the 15 lexical items that have the most semantic stability, i.e. they are the 15 words least likely to be replaced by other words as a language evolves. It was based on a study of 140 languages from across Eurasia.

The words, with the first being the most stable, are:

1. I/me
2. two/pair
3. you (singular, informal)
4. who/what
5. tongue
6. name
7. eye
8. heart
9. tooth
10. no/not
11. nail (finger-nail)
12. louse/nit
13. tear/teardrop
14. water
15. dead

The first item in the list, I/me, has been replaced in none of the 140 languages during their recorded history; the fifteenth, dead, has been replaced in 25% of the languages.

The twelfth item, louse/nit, is well kept in the North Caucasian languages, Dravidian and Turkic, but not in other proto-languages.

🔗 Telecommunications 🔗 Systems 🔗 Business 🔗 Systems/Operations research

Virtual queuing is a concept used in inbound call centers. Call centers use an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) to distribute incoming calls to specific resources (agents) in the center. ACDs hold queued calls in First In, First Out order until agents become available. From the caller’s perspective, without virtual queuing they have only two choices: wait until an agent resource becomes available, or abandon (hang up) and try again later. From the call center’s perspective, a long queue results in many abandoned calls, repeat attempts, and customer dissatisfaction.

Virtual queuing systems allow customers to receive callbacks instead of waiting in an ACD queue. This solution is analogous to the “fast lane” option (e.g. Disney's FASTPASS) used at amusement parks, which often have long queues to ride the various coasters and attractions. A computerized system allows park visitors to secure their place in a “virtual queue” rather than waiting in a physical queue.

In the brick-and-mortar retail and business world, virtual queuing for large organizations similar to the FASTPASS and Six Flags' Flash Pass, have been in use successfully since 1999 and 2001 respectively. For small businesses, the virtual queue management solutions come in two types: (a) based on SMS text notification and (b) apps on smartphones and tablet devices, with in-app notification and remote queue status views.

🔗 Mathematics

In information visualization and graphic design, Truchet tiles are square tiles decorated with patterns that are not rotationally symmetric. When placed in a square tiling of the plane, they can form varied patterns, and the orientation of each tile can be used to visualize information associated with the tile's position within the tiling.

Truchet tiles were first described in a 1704 memoir by Sébastien Truchet entitled "Mémoire sur les combinaisons", and were popularized in 1987 by Cyril Stanley Smith.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Religion 🔗 Iran 🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Astronomy 🔗 History of Science 🔗 Astrology 🔗 Middle Ages 🔗 Islam 🔗 Middle Ages/History 🔗 Central Asia 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophers 🔗 Anthropology 🔗 Watches 🔗 Philosophy/Medieval philosophy 🔗 India

Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973 – after 1050) was a Persian scholar and polymath. He was from Khwarazm – a region which encompasses modern-day western Uzbekistan, and northern Turkmenistan.

Al-Biruni was well versed in physics, mathematics, astronomy, and natural sciences, and also distinguished himself as a historian, chronologist and linguist. He studied almost all fields of science and was compensated for his research and strenuous work. Royalty and powerful members of society sought out Al-Biruni to conduct research and study to uncover certain findings. He lived during the Islamic Golden Age. In addition to this type of influence, Al-Biruni was also influenced by other nations, such as the Greeks, who he took inspiration from when he turned to studies of philosophy. He was conversant in Khwarezmian, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and also knew Greek, Hebrew and Syriac. He spent much of his life in Ghazni, then capital of the Ghaznavid dynasty, in modern-day central-eastern Afghanistan. In 1017 he travelled to the Indian subcontinent and authored a study of Indian culture Tārīkh al-Hind (History of India) after exploring the Hindu faith practiced in India. He was given the title "founder of Indology". He was an impartial writer on customs and creeds of various nations, and was given the title al-Ustadh ("The Master") for his remarkable description of early 11th-century India.

🔗 Mathematics

In geometry, the problem of dividing a circle into areas by means of an inscribed polygon with n sides in such a way as to maximise the number of areas created by the edges and diagonals, sometimes called Moser's circle problem, has a solution by an inductive method. The greatest possible number of regions, r_G = ( ⁿ
₄ ) + ( ⁿ
₂ ) + 1, giving the sequence 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 31, 57, 99, 163, 256, ... (OEIS: A000127). Though the first five terms match the geometric progression 2^{n − 1}, it diverges at n = 6, showing the risk of generalising from only a few observations.

🔗 Australia 🔗 Buses 🔗 Australia/Adelaide

The O-Bahn Busway is a guided busway that is part of the bus rapid transit system servicing the northeastern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. The O-Bahn system was conceived by Daimler-Benz to enable buses to avoid traffic congestion by sharing tram tunnels in the German city of Essen.

Adelaide's O-Bahn was introduced in 1986 to service the city's rapidly expanding north-eastern suburbs, replacing an earlier plan for a tramway extension. The O-Bahn provides specially built track, combining elements of both bus and rail systems. Adelaide's track is 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) long and includes three interchanges at Klemzig, Paradise and Tea Tree Plaza. Interchanges allow buses to enter and exit the busway and to continue on suburban routes, avoiding the need for passengers to transfer to another bus to continue their journey. Buses can travel at a maximum speed of 100 km/h (60 mph), but are now restricted to 85 km/h (53 mph). As of 2015, the busway carries approximately 31,000 people per weekday. An additional section including a 670-metre (2,200 ft) tunnel opened in 2017 at the city end to reduce the number of congested intersections buses must traverse to enter the Adelaide city centre.

The development of the O-Bahn busway led to the development of the Torrens Linear Park from a run-down urban drain into an attractive public open space. It has also triggered urban development around the north-eastern terminus at Modbury.

🔗 Computing

A Gödel machine is a hypothetical self-improving computer program that solves problems in an optimal way. It uses a recursive self-improvement protocol in which it rewrites its own code when it can prove the new code provides a better strategy. The machine was invented by Jürgen Schmidhuber (first proposed in 2003), but is named after Kurt Gödel who inspired the mathematical theories.

The Gödel machine is often discussed when dealing with issues of meta-learning, also known as "learning to learn." Applications include automating human design decisions and transfer of knowledge between multiple related tasks, and may lead to design of more robust and general learning architectures. Though theoretically possible, no full implementation has been created.

The Gödel machine is often compared with Marcus Hutter's AIXItl, another formal specification for an artificial general intelligence. Schmidhuber points out that the Gödel machine could start out by implementing AIXItl as its initial sub-program, and self-modify after it finds proof that another algorithm for its search code will be better.

🔗 Department of Fun

An article about or described by any of the following can be safely assumed to fit into the set of unnecessary articles:

1. You, your family, or the organization you work for.
2. Your band, which has only sold 47 copies of its one album. Even if you think it will sell 48. Or maybe 49! Or, if you get really lucky, you can pay off the record store owner so that he may buy one and your sales will have gone up to fifty!!! Keep dreamin', brotha.
3. Your imaginary friend or your imaginary friends that don't even exist.
4. The religion, language or even country that you made up with your friends in school one day.
5. The street you live on, unless it is on a Monopoly board. But since it is highly unlikely that you live on a Monopoly game board, we suggest that you not even try.
6. Any one of the 16 distinct regions in the Pokémon video game series or lieking mudkipz, or hering dat someon lieks mudkipz. Remember, not everyone is a Pokémon fanatic.
7. A stunt or trick only you have ever attempted, probably unsuccessfully.
8. Any movie you made yourself which has never been seen by more people at one time than can fit in your basement. Even if you have a really big basement.
9. Individual songs that have never been released as a single nor seen radio play, unless they're twenty minutes long or have led to a phone number becoming unusable or even have questioned the essence of music itself.
10. "(Anything) in popular culture." Anything at all.
11. Likewise "Hysterical Realism in the Works of (insert neither hysterical nor realistic author here)".
12. Your dormitory, university residence, or any suite therein.
13. Stuff nobody but that guy who changes his Spock ears more often than his underpants cares about, or the equivalent thereto. For example, a song about a custom map of a video game, unless you are famous and the song managed to release as a single.
14. Anything about which you cannot be buggered to write one complete sent
15. Subjects that cannot be studied, or the knowledge of which amounts only to the fact that it pertains to another topic. A favourite line from a movie or catchy lyric, a potent phrase used in argument, juicy facts of interest to fans, a punch-line or zinger; these are all very interesting, but usually all that can be informatively written about topic "X" is: "X is a _______ found in _______."
16. Just about everything listed on Wikipedia:Millionth topic pool.
17. For that matter, Wikipedia:Millionth topic pool.
18. Anything about your cat or dog and how cute it is (or your hamster, degu, or chinchilla).
19. Exploding Whales, or indeed Exploding Wales, or even Exploding Wales. Or blowing up any other animals, for example, exploding mice, or even exploding Velociraptor, for that matter. Most things that implode are pretty much off the list too, with a few exceptions.
20. Anything written under the influence of recreational substances or while tired and emotional.
21. An article about another article, written after the use of aforementioned substances.
22. A fork of an existing article for the sole purpose of adding some humor.
23. The weather in London. Not even a redirect. (Wowee).
24. Your guild in World of Warcraft or similar time wasters. Just because you have no life a personally fascinating hobby doesn't mean you get to tell the world about it. And don't write about this guy in your guild who wiped your raid, either.
25. Something you just saw on YouTube and, possibly, laughed at.
26. Something you just put on YouTube.
27. An article that haz badly grammar and/or speelling. Including, bad punctuation!!
28. Any meme, no matter how popular or important.
29. Anything you don't know the title of.
30. Your wiki or blog. It's probably not internationally famous. If it is, well go ahead, but let's face it; your blog of cute cats is not internationally famous (three readers is not fame).
31. Your new invention or research paper that will change the world. It will undoubtedly fail.
32. Anything about your cat named Bubba or your dog named Max. No one cares. Trust us.
33. Your nomination for the Noble (or even Nobel) Peace Prize.
34. Anything about how you were abducted by aliens.
35. An article on the dream you had last night. No matter how long you describe it, it will never be interesting: Even if dreaming that you were the inventor of the chalk board who had to overcome obstacles from the evil book binding lobbyists deeply moved you to tears upon waking up.
36. An article on the person that knocked on your door while you was writing the article about your dream last night, causing you to forget about the dream (but I’ll be honest, I feel for you).
37. An article about Wikpiedia, Wikipaedia, Wiokipedia, Wikipeedia, Wikipeadia, or any other Wikis that appear to be Wikipedia but aren't.
38. An article about the media response to the Wikipedia article about the barely notable thing that shouldn't even have an article (recursivity has its limits, even here).
39. The difference between Hoagy Carmichael and Stokely Carmichael.
40. An entry promoting your hilarious web series about Wikipedia.
41. Recreating this dumb list.
42. Anything about hashtags. #IHateHashtags
43. Anything about how fat you are or how much weight you're losing (trust us; no one cares).
44. Headlight flashing – I know, it's preposterous, even for Wikipedia. But when you're done laughing and/or crying, follow the link. It really exists.
45. Assumptions about the conclusions of scientific publications that you have seen the titles of, but not read.
46. Your self-published book.
47. McGannahan Skjellyfetti.
48. An article about your friend's latest selfie. Or, for that matter, selfie stick. They are banned in most places anyway.
49. Lists of times at which commercial breaks occurred during a sporting event.
50. Your personal opinions about your boyfriend or girlfriend.
51. An article on discussing the differences between you and your close friends. It does not matter to most people in the world.
52. An article about how Tyson Foods is run by a bunch of chicken fuckers because the main article is protected from vandalism by the legions of Internet trolls.
53. Yet another list of Google doodles.
54. A new sex position that you and your boys theory-crafted one night.
55. Times Scooby-Doo has defied the laws of reality.
56. A list of celebrity couples names for couples that you wish would get together but as of now haven't.
57. Your stupid esoteric programming language you made up to 'test the boundaries of computer programming language design'.
58. Any article related to odorous gas clouds, but particularly smelly farts.
59. Your youtube channel, unless you have millions of fangirls.
60. Your opinion and/or fascination about outer space, even if there are lots of unusual exoplanets out there. Yes, we know. They're weird. No need to tell us that.
61. Your opinion on time traveling to have dinner with the members of Bone Symphony or Bone Thugs-n-Harmony or Boney M. or The Right Honourable Bonar Law
62. The time you laughed about someone eating a red 5-pound gummy skull while wearing a jetpack while driving a limousine at 5 a.m. on a Tuesday in August 2018.
63. An article that uses templates to perform math for no apparent reason besides your entertainment
64. Your anus and how it had very good funny time with girl.
65. The time you laughed at someone living in Fortnite (Chapter 1), even though I get that they were eaten by a Black hole. Oh well, they came back!
66. Posting a video of yourself saying the n-word.
67. Posting an image of yourself falling off the Burj Khalifa.
68. Singing any Cardi B song.
69. Posting 69 (nice) useless messages made by bored editors of Wikipedia.
70. Your low-effort school play of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!"
71. A list of times you pinged @everyone on your Discord server.

🔗 Disability 🔗 Deaf

Tadoma is a method of communication used by deafblind individuals, in which the deafblind person places their little finger on the speaker's lips and their fingers along the jawline. The middle three fingers often fall along the speaker's cheeks with the little finger picking up the vibrations of the speaker's throat. It is sometimes referred to as tactile lipreading, as the deafblind person feels the movement of the lips, as well as vibrations of the vocal cords, puffing of the cheeks and the warm air produced by nasal sounds such as 'N' and 'M'. There are variations in the hand positioning, and it is a method sometimes used by people to support their remaining hearing.

In some cases, especially if the speaker knows sign language, the deaf-blind person may use the Tadoma method with one hand, to feel the speaker's face, and, at the same time, the deaf-blind person may use their other hand to feel the speaker sign the same words. In this way, the two methods reinforce each other, giving the deaf-blind person a better chance of understanding what the speaker is trying to communicate.

In addition, the Tadoma method can provide the deaf-blind person with a closer connection with speech than they might otherwise have had. This can, in turn, help them to retain speech skills that they developed before going deaf, and in special cases, to learn how to speak brand new words.

It is a difficult method to learn and use, and is rarely used nowadays. However, a small number of deafblind people successfully use Tadoma in everyday communication.

🔗 Internet 🔗 Marketing & Advertising

Domain tasting is the practice of temporarily registering a domain under the five-day Add Grace Period at the beginning of the registration of an ICANN-regulated second-level domain. During this period, a registration must be fully refunded by the domain name registry if cancelled. This was designed to address accidental registrations, but domain tasters use the Add Grace Period for illegal purposes.