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๐ 142,857
142857, the six repeating digits of 1/7, 0.142857, is the best-known cyclic number in base 10. If it is multiplied by 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, the answer will be a cyclic permutation of itself, and will correspond to the repeating digits of 2/7, 3/7, 4/7, 5/7, or 6/7 respectively.
142,857 is a Kaprekar number and a Harshad number (in base 10).
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- "142857" | 2015-08-05 | 100 Upvotes 22 Comments
๐ Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a 1963 book by political thinker Hannah Arendt. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power, reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, for The New Yorker. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1964.
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- "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" | 2023-11-15 | 30 Upvotes 6 Comments
๐ List of National Emergencies in the United States
A national emergency is a situation in which a government is empowered to perform actions not normally permitted. The 1976 National Emergencies Act implemented various legal requirements regarding emergencies declared by the President of the United States.
Between the enactment of the National Emergencies Act in 1976 through March 13, 2020, 61 emergencies have been declared; 27 have expired while 34 are currently in effect, each having been renewed annually by the president.
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- "List of National Emergencies in the United States" | 2019-02-15 | 19 Upvotes 2 Comments
๐ Secessio plebis
Secessio plebis (withdrawal of the commoners, or secession of the plebs) was an informal exercise of power by Rome's plebeian citizens, similar in concept to the general strike. During the secessio plebis, the plebs would abandon the city en masse and leave the patrician order to themselves. Therefore, a secessio meant that all shops and workshops would shut down and commercial transactions would largely cease. This was an effective strategy in the Conflict of the Orders due to strength in numbers; plebeian citizens made up the vast majority of Rome's populace and produced most of its food and resources, while a patrician citizen was a member of the minority upper class, the equivalent of the landed gentry of later times. Authors report different numbers for how many secessions there were. Cary & Scullard state there were five between 494 BC and 287 BC.
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- "Secessio plebis" | 2020-05-09 | 258 Upvotes 97 Comments
- "Secessio plebis" | 2018-09-04 | 88 Upvotes 59 Comments
๐ Wine-dark sea
The wine-dark sea is a traditional English translation of ฮฟแผถฮฝฮฟฯ ฯฯฮฝฯฮฟฯ (oรฎnops pรณntos, IPA: /รดiฬฏ.nops pรณn.tos/), from ฮฟแผถฮฝฮฟฯ (oรฎnos, โwineโ) + แฝฯ (รณps, โeye; faceโ). It is an epithet in Homer of uncertain meaning: a literal translation is "wine-face sea" (wine-faced, wine-eyed). It is attested five times in the Iliad and twelve times in the Odyssey, often to describe rough, stormy sea.
The only other use of oรฎnops in the works of Homer is for oxen (once in both his epic poems), where it seems to describe a reddish color, which has given rise to various speculations about what it could mean about either the state of Aegean Sea during antiquity or the color perception of Ancient Greeks.
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- "Wine-dark sea" | 2019-08-07 | 150 Upvotes 82 Comments
๐ Kindertransport
The Kindertransport (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938โ1939 during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust that was to come. The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government placed no numerical limit on the programme; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country.
Smaller numbers of children were taken in via the programme by the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Sweden, and Switzerland. The term "kindertransport" may also be applied to the rescue of mainly Jewish children from Nazi German territory to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. An example is the 1,000 Chateau de La Hille children who went to Belgium. However, most often the term is restricted to the organised programme of the United Kingdom.
The Central British Fund for German Jewry (now World Jewish Relief) was established in 1933 to support in whatever way possible the needs of Jews in Germany and Austria.
In the United States, the WagnerโRogers Bill was introduced in Congress, which would have increased the quota of immigrants by bringing to the U.S. a total of 20,000 refugee children, but it did not pass.
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- "Kindertransport" | 2024-03-19 | 13 Upvotes 1 Comments
๐ Stochastic Resonance
Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon where a signal that is normally too weak to be detected by a sensor, can be boosted by adding white noise to the signal, which contains a wide spectrum of frequencies. The frequencies in the white noise corresponding to the original signal's frequencies will resonate with each other, amplifying the original signal while not amplifying the rest of the white noise (thereby increasing the signal-to-noise ratio which makes the original signal more prominent). Further, the added white noise can be enough to be detectable by the sensor, which can then filter it out to effectively detect the original, previously undetectable signal.
This phenomenon of boosting undetectable signals by resonating with added white noise extends to many other systems, whether electromagnetic, physical or biological, and is an area of research.
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- "Stochastic Resonance" | 2018-03-10 | 125 Upvotes 26 Comments
๐ Nika Riots (532 C.E.)
The Nika riots (Greek: ฮฃฯฮฌฯฮนฯ ฯฮฟแฟฆ ฮฮฏฮบฮฑ, romanized:ย Stรกsis toรป Nรญka), Nika revolt or Nika sedition took place against Byzantine emperor Justinian I in Constantinople over the course of a week in 532 C.E. They are often regarded as the most violent riots in the city's history, with nearly half of Constantinople being burned or destroyed and tens of thousands of people killed.
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- "Nika Riots (532 C.E.)" | 2023-12-22 | 11 Upvotes 2 Comments
๐ You'll own nothing and be happy
You'll own nothing and be happy (alternatively you'll own nothing and you'll be happy) is a phrase originated by Danish Politician Ida Auken in a 2016 essay for the World Economic Forum. After appearing in a WEF video in 2016, the phrase began to be used by critics of the World Economic Forum (WEF) who accuse the WEF of desiring restrictions on ownership of private property.
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- "You'll own nothing and be happy" | 2023-05-22 | 70 Upvotes 52 Comments
๐ Anisotropic Filtering
In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering (abbreviated AF) is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces of computer graphics that are at oblique viewing angles with respect to the camera where the projection of the texture (not the polygon or other primitive on which it is rendered) appears to be non-orthogonal (thus the origin of the word: "an" for not, "iso" for same, and "tropic" from tropism, relating to direction; anisotropic filtering does not filter the same in every direction).
Like bilinear and trilinear filtering, anisotropic filtering eliminates aliasing effects, but improves on these other techniques by reducing blur and preserving detail at extreme viewing angles.
Anisotropic filtering is relatively intensive (primarily memory bandwidth and to some degree computationally, though the standard spaceโtime tradeoff rules apply) and only became a standard feature of consumer-level graphics cards in the late 1990s. Anisotropic filtering is now common in modern graphics hardware (and video driver software) and is enabled either by users through driver settings or by graphics applications and video games through programming interfaces.
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- "Anisotropic Filtering" | 2023-01-09 | 11 Upvotes 3 Comments