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🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Systems 🔗 Systems/Chaos theory

In mathematics, the Weierstrass function is an example of a real-valued function that is continuous everywhere but differentiable nowhere. It is an example of a fractal curve. It is named after its discoverer Karl Weierstrass.

The Weierstrass function has historically served the role of a pathological function, being the first published example (1872) specifically concocted to challenge the notion that every continuous function is differentiable except on a set of isolated points. Weierstrass's demonstration that continuity did not imply almost-everywhere differentiability upended mathematics, overturning several proofs that relied on geometric intuition and vague definitions of smoothness. These types of functions were denounced by contemporaries: Henri Poincaré famously described them as "monsters" and called Weierstrass' work "an outrage against common sense", while Charles Hermite wrote that they were a "lamentable scourge". The functions were difficult to visualize until the arrival of computers in the next century, and the results did not gain wide acceptance until practical applications such as models of Brownian motion necessitated infinitely jagged functions (nowadays known as fractal curves).

🔗 Russia 🔗 Russia/technology and engineering in Russia 🔗 Russia/science and education in Russia 🔗 Geology

The Kola Superdeep Borehole (Russian: Кольская сверхглубокая скважина) is the result of a scientific drilling project of the Soviet Union in the Pechengsky District, on the Kola Peninsula. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust. Drilling began on 24 May 1970 using the Uralmash-4E, and later the Uralmash-15000 series drilling rig. Boreholes were drilled by branching from a central hole. The deepest, SG-3, reached 12,262 metres (40,230 ft; 7.619 mi) in 1989 and is the deepest artificial point on Earth. The borehole is 23 centimetres (9 in) in diameter.

In terms of true vertical depth, it is the deepest borehole in the world. For two decades it was also the world's longest borehole in terms of measured depth along the well bore, until it was surpassed in 2008 by the 12,289-metre-long (40,318 ft) Al Shaheen oil well in Qatar, and in 2011 by the 12,345-metre-long (40,502 ft) Sakhalin-I Odoptu OP-11 Well (offshore from the Russian island of Sakhalin).

🔗 Film 🔗 Lists 🔗 European Microstates 🔗 European Microstates/Vatican City

In 1995, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of cinema, the Vatican compiled a list of 45 "great films". The 45 movies are divided into three categories: religion, values, and art.

🔗 Software 🔗 Software/Computing 🔗 Musical Instruments 🔗 Electronic music 🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/Science and technology

UTAU is a Japanese singing synthesizer application created by Ameya/Ayame. This program is similar to the VOCALOID software, with the difference being it is shareware instead of under a third party licensing.

🔗 Marketing & Advertising

Ad creep is the "creep" of advertising into previously ad-free spaces.

The earliest verified appearance of the term "ad creep" is in a 1996 article "Creeping Commercials: Ads Worming Way Into TV Scripts" by Steve Johnson for the Chicago Tribune, however it may have been coined by a subscriber to Stay Free! magazine, according to another source.

While the virtues of advertising can be debated, ad-creep often especially refers to advertising which is invasive and coercive, such as ads in schools, doctor's offices and hospitals, restrooms, elevators, on ATMs, on garbage cans, on vehicles, on restaurant menus, and countless other items. In Steve Johnson's piece referenced above, he criticizes product placement and "creative advertising enhancements" as "one more manifestation of an environment in which the commercial assault is almost nonstop". Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization founded by Public Citizen "to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy" also characterizes "ad creep" as an assault, with ad companies fighting a "relentless battle to claim every waking moment, and what one executive called, with chilling candor, mind share". A 2017 Daily Express story in the UK suggests "the creeping incursion of adverts in Windows 10" has been an issue.

On the other hand, modern advertisers are compelled to react to changes in consumer habits. An article in The New York Times notes that "consumers’ viewing and reading habits are so scattershot now that many advertisers say the best way to reach time-pressed consumers is to try to catch their eye at literally every turn." And, the article suggests that ad agencies believe that as long as ads are entertaining, people may not mind the saturation. As people have turned from traditional media, advertisers have not only struggled to create brand awareness, but there is also a move to "microtarget people at precisely timed moments" as well, according to an article in Stay Free!.

Occasionally, the term "Ad Creep" has been used to describe a process of slowly infusing more ads into places where ads have been expected (television shows, for example) such as in a 2011 Advertising Age article describing the increase in both the time devoted to ads and the number of ad messages in the Super Bowl. This is not a standard use of the term, but it is related. A 2017 blog post by the chief global analyst of Kantar Millward Brown, a marketing firm, notes "that average ad loads on national television in the U.S. continued to creep upwards from 10.4 minutes per hour in December 2014, to 10.9 minutes in December 2016". Although the increase is less than 5%, he suggests "marketers should be concerned because the evidence suggests that more clutter is a bad thing for brands."

🔗 Sociology 🔗 Organizations 🔗 Media 🔗 Culture 🔗 Sociology/social movements 🔗 Toys

The Barbie Liberation Organization or BLO, sponsored by RTMark, were a group of artists and activists involved in culture jamming. They gained notoriety in 1993 after switching voice boxes in talking G.I. Joes and Barbie dolls. The BLO performed "surgery" on a reported 300–500 dolls from retail and returned them to shelves, an action they refer to as shopgiving. Thus, Teen Talk Barbie dolls would say phrases such as "Vengeance is mine", while G.I. Joe dolls would say phrases such as "The beach is the place for summer!"

🔗 Technology 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/Science and technology 🔗 Japan/CJKV

Mojibake (Japanese: 文字化け; IPA: [mod͡ʑibake]) is the garbled text that is the result of text being decoded using an unintended character encoding. The result is a systematic replacement of symbols with completely unrelated ones, often from a different writing system.

This display may include the generic replacement character ("�") in places where the binary representation is considered invalid. A replacement can also involve multiple consecutive symbols, as viewed in one encoding, when the same binary code constitutes one symbol in the other encoding. This is either because of differing constant length encoding (as in Asian 16-bit encodings vs European 8-bit encodings), or the use of variable length encodings (notably UTF-8 and UTF-16).

Failed rendering of glyphs due to either missing fonts or missing glyphs in a font is a different issue that is not to be confused with mojibake. Symptoms of this failed rendering include blocks with the code point displayed in hexadecimal or using the generic replacement character. Importantly, these replacements are valid and are the result of correct error handling by the software.

🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Neuroscience

The 10 percent of the brain myth asserts that humans generally use only 10 percent (or some other small percentage) of their brains. It has been misattributed to many celebrated people, notably Albert Einstein. By extrapolation, it is suggested that a person may harness this unused potential and increase intelligence.

Changes in grey and white matter following new experiences and learning have been shown, but it has not yet been proven what the changes are. The popular notion that large parts of the brain remain unused, and could subsequently be "activated", rests in folklore and not science. Though specific mechanisms regarding brain function remain to be fully described—e.g. memory, consciousness—the physiology of brain mapping suggests that all areas of the brain have a function and that they are used nearly all the time.

🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Japan 🔗 Paranormal

Utsuro-bune (虚舟, 'hollow ship'), also Utsuro-fune, and Urobune, was an unknown object that allegedly washed ashore in 1803 in Hitachi province on the eastern coast of Japan. When defining Utsuro-bune, the bune part means "boat" while Utsuro means empty, or hollow. Accounts of the tale appear in three texts: Toen shōsetsu (1825), Hyōryū kishū (1835) and Ume-no-chiri (1844).

According to legend, an attractive young woman aged 18-20 years old, arrived on a local beach aboard the "hollow ship" on February 22, 1803. Fishermen brought her inland to investigate further, but the woman was unable to communicate in Japanese. She was very different from anyone else there. The fishermen then returned her and her vessel to the sea, where it drifted away.

Historians, ethnologists and physicists such as Kazuo Tanaka and Yanagita Kunio have evaluated the "legend of the hollow boat" as part of a long-standing tradition within Japanese folklore. Alternatively, certain ufologists have claimed that the story represents evidence for a close encounter with extraterrestrial life.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Travel and Tourism

Sabre Global Distribution System, owned by Sabre Corporation, is used by travel agents and companies around the world to search, price, book, and ticket travel services provided by airlines, hotels, car rental companies, rail providers and tour operators. Sabre aggregates airlines, hotels, online and offline travel agents and travel buyers.