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๐ Accumulation by Dispossession
Accumulation by dispossession is a concept presented by the Marxist geographer David Harvey. It defines neoliberal capitalist policies that result in a centralization of wealth and power in the hands of a few by dispossessing the public and private entities of their wealth or land. Such policies are visible in many western nations from the 1970s and to the present day. Harvey argues these policies are guided mainly by four practices: privatization, financialization, management and manipulation of crises, and state redistributions.
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- "Accumulation by Dispossession" | 2025-12-15 | 21 Upvotes 1 Comments
๐ Chladni Figures
Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni (German: [หษสnst หfloหสษns หfสiหdสษชรง หkladnษช]; 30 November 1756ย โ 3 April 1827) was a German physicist and musician. His most important work, for which he is sometimes labeled the father of acoustics, included research on vibrating plates and the calculation of the speed of sound for different gases. He also undertook pioneering work in the study of meteorites and is regarded by some as the father of meteoritics.
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- "Chladni Figures" | 2018-07-24 | 41 Upvotes 9 Comments
๐ Mathematical Manuscripts of Karl Marx
The mathematical manuscripts of Karl Marx are a manuscript collection of Karl Marx's mathematical notes where he attempted to derive the foundations of infinitesimal calculus from first principles.
The notes that Marx took have been collected into four independent treatises: On the Concept of the Derived Function, On the Differential, On the History of Differential Calculus, and Taylor's Theorem, MacLaurin's Theorem, and Lagrange's Theory of Derived Functions, along with several notes, additional drafts, and supplements to these four treatises. These treatises attempt to construct a rigorous foundation for calculus and use historical materialism to analyze the history of mathematics.
Marx's contributions to mathematics did not have any impact on the historical development of calculus, and he was unaware of many more recent developments in the field at the time, such as the work of Cauchy. However, his work in some ways anticipated, but did not influence, some later developments in 20th century mathematics. These manuscripts, which are from around 1873โ1883, were not published in any language until 1968 when they were published in the Soviet Union alongside a Russian translation. Since their publication, Marx's independent contributions to mathematics have been analyzed in terms of both his own historical and economic theories, and in light of their potential applications of nonstandard analysis.
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- "Mathematical Manuscripts of Karl Marx" | 2024-01-17 | 18 Upvotes 11 Comments
๐ Crinkle Crankle Wall
A crinkle crankle wall, also known as a crinkum crankum, serpentine, ribbon or wavy wall, is an unusual type of garden wall built in a serpentine pattern with alternating curves.
The crinkle crankle wall economizes on bricks, despite its sinuous configuration, because it can be made just one brick thin. If a wall this thin were to be made in a straight line, without buttresses, it would easily topple over. The alternate convex and concave curves in the wall provide stability and help it to resist lateral forces.
"Crinkle crankle" is an ablaut reduplication, defined as something with bends and turns, first attested in 1598 (though "crinkle" and "crankle" have somewhat longer histories). However, it was not until the 18th century that the term began to be applied to wavy walls. At that time these garden walls were usually aligned east-west, so that one side faced south to catch the warming sun and were historically used for growing fruit.
Many crinkle crankle walls are found in the East Anglia region of England where the marshes of The Fens were drained by Dutch engineers starting in the mid-1600s. The walls' construction is attributed to these engineers who called them slangenmuur, meaning snake wall.ย The county of Suffolk claims at least 50 examples, twice as many as in the whole of the rest of the country, and where crinkle crankle is said to derive from a local dialect. In the estate village of Easton the noted crinkle crankle wall running from the former manor house to All Saints' Church is supposed to be the longest existing example. In Lymington, Hampshire, there are at least two examples of crinkle crankle walls. The oldest is thought to have been constructed at the time of the Napoleonic Wars (1803โ1815) by exiled Hanoverian soldiers living in the adjacent house.
As a minor part of a larger system of fortification, such a wall may have been used to force oncoming troops to break ranks from closed to open ranks, and further expose them to defensive assault.
Thomas Jefferson (1743โ1826) incorporated so-called serpentine walls into the architecture of the University of Virginia, which he founded. Flanking both sides of its landmark rotunda and extending down the length of the lawn are ten pavilions, each with its own walled garden separated by crinkle crankle walls. Although some authorities claim Jefferson invented this design, he was merely adapting a well-established English style of construction. A university document in his own hand shows how he calculated the savings and combined aesthetics with utility.
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- "Crinkle Crankle Wall" | 2019-11-16 | 214 Upvotes 56 Comments
๐ Inverted totalitarianism
The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin coined the term inverted totalitarianism in 2003 to describe what he saw as the emerging form of government of the United States. Wolin analysed the United States as increasingly turning into a managed democracy (similar to an illiberal democracy). He uses the term "inverted totalitarianism" to draw attention to the totalitarian aspects of the American political system while emphasizing its differences from proper totalitarianism, such as Nazi and Stalinist regimes.
The book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012) by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco portrays inverted totalitarianism as a system where corporations have corrupted and subverted democracy and where economics bests politics. Every natural resource and living being is commodified and exploited by large corporations to the point of collapse as excess consumerism and sensationalism lull and manipulate the citizenry into surrendering their liberties and their participation in government.
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- "Inverted Totalitarianism" | 2023-11-12 | 11 Upvotes 3 Comments
- "Inverted Totalitarianism" | 2021-08-26 | 33 Upvotes 3 Comments
- "Inverted totalitarianism" | 2013-12-14 | 240 Upvotes 158 Comments
- "Inverted Totalitarianism" | 2013-12-02 | 20 Upvotes 5 Comments
๐ Decimal Time
Decimal time is the representation of the time of day using units which are decimally related. This term is often used specifically to refer to the French Republican calendar time system used in France from 1794 to 1800, during the French Revolution, which divided the day into 10 decimal hours, each decimal hour into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds (100000 decimal seconds per day), as opposed to the more familiar standard time, which divides the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds (86400 SI seconds per day).
The main advantage of a decimal time system is that, since the base used to divide the time is the same as the one used to represent it, the representation of hours, minutes and seconds can be handled as a unified value. Therefore, it becomes simpler to interpret a timestamp and to perform conversions. For instance, 1h23m45s is 1 decimal hour, 23 decimal minutes, and 45 decimal seconds, or 1.2345 decimal hours, or 123.45 decimal minutes or 12345 decimal seconds; 3 hours is 300 minutes or 30,000 seconds. This property also makes it straightforward to represent a timestamp as a fractional day, so that 2024-01-15.54321 can be interpreted as five decimal hours and 43 decimal minutes and 21 decimal seconds after the start of that day, or a fraction of 0.54321 (54.321%) through that day (which is shortly after traditional 13:00). It also adjusts well to digital time representation using epochs, in that the internal time representation can be used directly both for computation and for user-facing display.
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- "Decimal Time" | 2024-01-13 | 42 Upvotes 47 Comments
๐ Turboencabulator
The turboencabulator or turbo-encabulator (and its later incarnations, the retroencabulator or retro-encabulator and Micro Encabulator) is a fictional machine whose alleged existence became an in-joke and subject of professional humor among engineers. The explanation of the supposed product makes extensive use of technobabble.
The gag was popular for many years. The following quote is from the original Students' Quarterly Journal article written by J. H. Quick in 1944. The citation in the later Time article misspells several of the technical terms. General Electric, Chrysler and Rockwell Automation use many of the same words.
The original machine had a base plate of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two main spurving bearings were in a direct line with the panametric fan. The latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzlevanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar waneshaft that side fumbling was effectively prevented. The main winding was of the normal lotus-o-deltoid type placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a nonreversible tremmie pipe to the differential girdlespring on the "up" end of the grammeters.
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- "Turboencabulator" | 2022-01-01 | 121 Upvotes 52 Comments
- "Turboencabulator" | 2013-11-30 | 25 Upvotes 11 Comments
๐ Yottabyte
The yottabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix yotta indicates multiplication by the eighth power of 1000 or 1024 in the International System of Units (SI), and therefore one yottabyte is one septillion (one long scale quadrillion) bytes. The unit symbol for the yottabyte is YB. The yottabyte, adopted in 1991, is the largest of the formally defined multiples of the byte.
- 1 YB = 10008bytes = 1024bytes = 1000000000000000000000000bytes = 1000zettabytes = 1trillionterabytes
A related unit, the yobibyte (YiB), using a binary prefix, is equal to 10248bytes (approximately 1.209 YB).
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- "Yottabyte" | 2013-06-10 | 53 Upvotes 40 Comments
๐ Terror management theory
Terror management theory (TMT) is both a social and evolutionary psychology theory originally proposed by Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski and codified in their book The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life (2015). It proposes that a basic psychological conflict results from having a self-preservation instinct while realizing that death is inevitable and to some extent unpredictable. This conflict produces terror, and the terror is then managed by embracing cultural beliefs, or symbolic systems that act to counter biological reality with more durable forms of meaning and value.
The most obvious examples of cultural values that assuage death anxiety are those that purport to offer literal immortality (e.g. belief in afterlife, religion). However, TMT also argues that other cultural valuesย โ including those that are seemingly unrelated to deathย โ offer symbolic immortality. For example, values of national identity, posterity, cultural perspectives on sex, and human superiority over animals have been linked to death concerns. In many cases these values are thought to offer symbolic immortality either a) by providing the sense that one is part of something greater that will ultimately outlive the individual (e.g. country, lineage, species), or b) by making one's symbolic identity superior to biological nature (i.e. you are a personality, which makes you more than a glob of cells).
Because cultural values determine that which is meaningful, they are also the foundation for self-esteem. TMT describes self-esteem as being the personal, subjective measure of how well an individual is living up to their cultural values.
TMT is derived from anthropologist Ernest Becker's 1973ย Pulitzer Prize-winning work of nonfiction The Denial of Death, in which Becker argues most human action is taken to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death. The terror of absolute annihilation creates such a profoundย โ albeit subconsciousย โ anxiety in people that they spend their lives attempting to make sense of it. On large scales, societies build symbols: laws, religious meaning systems, cultures, and belief systems to explain the significance of life, define what makes certain characteristics, skills, and talents extraordinary, reward others whom they find exemplify certain attributes, and punish or kill others who do not adhere to their cultural worldview. On an individual level, self-esteem provides a buffer against death-related anxiety.
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- "Terror management theory" | 2019-10-19 | 132 Upvotes 46 Comments
๐ Gibbs Phenomenon
In mathematics, the Gibbs phenomenon, discovered by Henry Wilbrahamย (1848) and rediscovered by J. Willard Gibbsย (1899), is the peculiar manner in which the Fourier series of a piecewise continuously differentiable periodic function behaves at a jump discontinuity. The nth partial sum of the Fourier series has large oscillations near the jump, which might increase the maximum of the partial sum above that of the function itself. The overshoot does not die out as n increases, but approaches a finite limit. This sort of behavior was also observed by experimental physicists, but was believed to be due to imperfections in the measuring apparatus.
This is one cause of ringing artifacts in signal processing.
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- "Gibbs Phenomenon" | 2021-06-01 | 40 Upvotes 27 Comments