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🔗 Economics 🔗 Basic Income 🔗 Taxation

In economics, a negative income tax (NIT) is a welfare system within an income tax where people earning below a certain amount receive supplemental pay from the government instead of paying taxes to the government.

Such a system has been discussed by economists but never fully implemented. According to surveys however, the consensus view among economists is that the "government should restructure the welfare system along the lines" of one. It was described by British politician Juliet Rhys-Williams in the 1940s and later by American free-market economist Milton Friedman.

Negative income taxes can implement a basic income or supplement a guaranteed minimum income system.

In a negative income tax system, people earning a certain income level would owe no taxes; those earning more than that would pay a proportion of their income above that level; and those below that level would receive a payment of a proportion of their shortfall, which is the amount their income falls below that level.

🔗 Civil engineering 🔗 Water

A qanat or kariz is a gently sloping underground channel to transport water from an aquifer or water well to surface for irrigation and drinking, acting as an underground aqueduct. This is an old system of water supply from a deep well with a series of vertical access shafts. The qanats still create a reliable supply of water for human settlements and irrigation in hot, arid, and semi-arid climates, but the value of this system is directly related to the quality, volume, and regularity of the water flow. Traditionally qanats are built by a group of skilled laborers, muqannīs, with hand labor. The profession historically paid well and was typically handed down from father to son. According to most sources, the qanat technology was developed in ancient Iran by the Persian people sometime in the early 1st millennium BCE, and spread from there slowly westward and eastward. However, some other sources suggest a Southeast Arabian origin.

🔗 History 🔗 Politics 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Politics/Oligarchy 🔗 Project-independent assessment

The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory, first developed by the German sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book, Political Parties. It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an "iron law" within any democratic organization as part of the "tactical and technical necessities" of organization.

Michels's theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise.

Using anecdotes from political parties and trade unions struggling to operate democratically to build his argument in 1911, Michels addressed the application of this law to representative democracy, and stated: "Who says organization, says oligarchy." He went on to state that "Historical evolution mocks all the prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy."

According to Michels all organizations eventually come to be run by a "leadership class", who often function as paid administrators, executives, spokespersons or political strategists for the organization. Far from being "servants of the masses", Michels argues this "leadership class," rather than the organization's membership, will inevitably grow to dominate the organization's power structures. By controlling who has access to information, those in power can centralize their power successfully, often with little accountability, due to the apathy, indifference and non-participation most rank and file members have in relation to their organization's decision-making processes. Michels argues that democratic attempts to hold leadership positions accountable are prone to fail, since with power comes the ability to reward loyalty, the ability to control information about the organization, and the ability to control what procedures the organization follows when making decisions. All of these mechanisms can be used to strongly influence the outcome of any decisions made 'democratically' by members.

Michels stated that the official goal of representative democracy of eliminating elite rule was impossible, that representative democracy is a façade legitimizing the rule of a particular elite, and that elite rule, which he refers to as oligarchy, is inevitable. Later Michels migrated to Italy and joined Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party, as he believed this was the next legitimate step of modern societies. The thesis became popular once more in post-war America with the publication of Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union (1956) and during the red scare brought about by McCarthyism.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Business 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Denmark

Agner Krarup Erlang (1 January 1878 – 3 February 1929) was a Danish mathematician, statistician and engineer, who invented the fields of traffic engineering and queueing theory.

By the time of his relatively early death at the age of 51, Erlang had created the field of telephone networks analysis. His early work in scrutinizing the use of local, exchange and trunk telephone line usage in a small community to understand the theoretical requirements of an efficient network led to the creation of the Erlang formula, which became a foundational element of modern telecommunication network studies.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Comedy 🔗 Politics 🔗 Biography/politics and government 🔗 Politics of the United Kingdom

Count Binface is a satirical perennial candidate created by the British comedian Jonathan David Harvey in 2018. He was a candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the 2019 United Kingdom general election against the then prime minister, Boris Johnson. He also stood in the London Mayoral elections in 2021 and 2024.

In earlier elections, Harvey stood as Lord Buckethead, but was forced to change the character due to a copyright dispute with the American filmmaker Todd Durham, who created Lord Buckethead for his 1984 science fiction film Hyperspace. Since then Harvey has used the forced name change to his advantage by using the platform of Binface to promote electoral participation, with the slogan, "Make your vote COUNT".

In 2019, another individual contested the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat as Buckethead, representing the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, to which Binface said he "look[s] forward to both the hustings and to challenging [him] to take part in a receptacle-to-receptacle debate".

When Johnson resigned as an MP in 2023, Binface again stood as a candidate in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, finishing eighth of 17. Originally standing as an independent, since 2023 his affiliation has been given as Count Binface Party on ballot papers. Count Binface plans to contest the seat of current UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, in Richmond and Northallerton, in the 2024 general election on 4 July.

🔗 Lists 🔗 Languages 🔗 Endangered languages

This is a list of extinct languages sorted by their time of extinction. A language is determined to be an extinct when its last native or fluent speaker dies. When the exact time of death of the last remaining speaker is not known, either an approximate time or the date when the language was last being recorded is given.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Computing/Free and open-source software 🔗 Typography

XeTeX ( ZEE-tekh or ; see also Pronouncing and writing "TeX") is a TeX typesetting engine using Unicode and supporting modern font technologies such as OpenType, Graphite and Apple Advanced Typography (AAT). It was originally written by Jonathan Kew and is distributed under the X11 free software license.

Initially developed for Mac OS X only, it is now available for all major platforms. It natively supports Unicode and the input file is assumed to be in UTF-8 encoding by default. XeTeX can use any fonts installed in the operating system without configuring TeX font metrics, and can make direct use of advanced typographic features of OpenType, AAT and Graphite technologies such as alternative glyphs and swashes, optional or historic ligatures, and variable font weights. Support for OpenType local typographic conventions (locl tag) is also present. XeTeX even allows raw OpenType feature tags to be passed to the font. Microtypography is also supported. XeTeX also supports typesetting mathematics using Unicode fonts that contain special mathematical features, such as Cambria Math or Asana Math as an alternative to the traditional mathematical typesetting based on TeX font metrics.

🔗 Plants 🔗 Project-independent assessment

Cyclanthera brachystachya, the exploding cucumber (but not to be confused with Ecballium elaterium), in the cucurbit or gourd family (Cucurbitaceae), is a herbaceous vine usually grown for its curiosity value, but the fruit is also edible.

🔗 United States 🔗 Languages 🔗 United States/Mississippi

"Thank God for Mississippi" is an adage used in the United States, particularly in the South, that is generally used when discussing rankings of U.S. states. Since the U.S. state of Mississippi commonly ranks at or near the bottom of such rankings, residents of other states also ranking near the bottom may say, "Thank God for Mississippi," since the presence of that state in 50th place spares them the shame of being ranked last.

Examples include rankings of educational achievement, business opportunities, political progressiveness, obesity rates, overall health, the poverty rate, life expectancy, or other objective criteria of the quality of life or government in the 50 states. The phrase is in use even among state government officials and journalists, though occasionally with a slight twist.

Mississippi's poor reputation is such a common trope in American culture that when Mississippi does indeed rank well in something, the phrase "Thank God for Mississippi" may get brought up just to discuss how it does not apply in the given circumstance. The saying comes from Mississippi's poor ranking as compared to the other 49 states, not from a global perspective.