Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 Video games 🔗 Computing

Nuclear Gandhi is an Internet meme and an urban legend about the video game Civilization. According to the legend, there was a bug in Civilization that eventually forced the pacifist leader Mahatma Gandhi to be extremely aggressive and to use nuclear weapons heavily.

The bug was first mentioned in 2012, two years after the release of Civilization V, and eventually became one of the most recognizable video game glitches; it has been used as an example of integer overflow in computer science and was included in other Civilization games as an easter egg.

In 2020, Sid Meier contradicted the urban legend, stating there had never been a bug of this sort in the original 1991 game. Nuclear Gandhi was first implemented in Civilization V (2010) as a joke.

🔗 Sanitation

A shit flow diagram (also called excreta flow diagram or SFD) is a high level technical drawing used to display how excreta moves through a location, and functions as a tool to identify where improvements are needed. The diagram has a particular focus on treatment of the waste, and its final disposal or use. SFDs are most often used in developing countries.

Add A Fact is a temporary experimental tool created by the Wikimedia Foundation's Future Audience team to learn how and if we can support making it possible to contribute productively to Wikipedia from outside of Wikipedia, and if guidance to the contributor from a large language model (LLM) could be useful in this process. The idea was developed and workshopped with Wikipedians at WikiConference North America 2023, demoed and tested with Wikipedia community members as part of our team’s regular monthly community calls.

Add A Fact is available for the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers and can be used by any logged in, autoconfirmed English Wikipedia user. We welcome your feedback on the talk page of this page, or via the Feedback tool in the browser extension.

🔗 Mexico 🔗 Archaeology 🔗 Mesoamerica

The Great Pyramid of Cholula, also known as Tlachihualtepetl (Nahuatl for "made-by-hand mountain"), is a complex located in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico. It is the largest archaeological site of a pyramid (temple) in the New World, as well as the largest pyramid by volume known to exist in the world today. The adobe brick pyramid stands 25 metres (82 ft) above the surrounding plain, which is significantly shorter than the Great Pyramid of Giza's height of 146.6 metres (481 ft), but much wider, measuring 300 by 315 metres (984 by 1,033 ft) in its final form, compared to the Great Pyramid's base dimensions of 230.3 by 230.3 metres (756 by 756 ft). The pyramid is a temple that traditionally has been viewed as having been dedicated to the god Quetzalcoatl. The architectural style of the building was linked closely to that of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico, although influence from the Gulf Coast is evident as well, especially from El Tajín.

🔗 Viruses 🔗 Biology 🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Contemporary philosophy 🔗 History of Science 🔗 Molecular and Cell Biology 🔗 Philosophy/Ethics 🔗 Genetics 🔗 Evolutionary biology 🔗 Science Policy 🔗 Molecular Biology/Molecular and Cell Biology

HeLa (; also Hela or hela) is an immortal cell line used in scientific research. It is the oldest and most commonly used human cell line. The line was derived from cervical cancer cells taken on February 8, 1951 from Henrietta Lacks, a patient who died of cancer on October 4, 1951. The cell line was found to be remarkably durable and prolific, which gives rise to its extensive use in scientific research.

The cells from Lacks's cancerous cervical tumor were taken without her knowledge or consent, which was common practice at the time. Cell biologist George Otto Gey found that they could be kept alive, and developed a cell line. Previously, cells cultured from other human cells would only survive for a few days. Scientists would spend more time trying to keep the cells alive than performing actual research on them. Cells from Lacks' tumor behaved differently. As was custom for Gey's lab assistant, she labeled the culture 'HeLa', the first two letters of the patient's first and last name; this became the name of the cell line.

These were the first human cells grown in a lab that were naturally "immortal", meaning that they do not die after a set number of cell divisions (i.e. cellular senescence). These cells could be used for conducting a multitude of medical experiments—if the cells died, they could simply be discarded and the experiment attempted again on fresh cells from the culture. This represented an enormous boon to medical and biological research, as previously stocks of living cells were limited and took significant effort to culture.

The stable growth of HeLa enabled a researcher at the University of Minnesota hospital to successfully grow polio virus, enabling the development of a vaccine, and by 1952, Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio using these cells. To test Salk's new vaccine, the cells were put into mass production in the first-ever cell production factory.

In 1953, HeLa cells were the first human cells successfully cloned and demand for the HeLa cells quickly grew in the nascent biomedical industry. Since the cells' first mass replications, they have been used by scientists in various types of investigations including disease research, gene mapping, effects of toxic substances on organisms, and radiation on humans. Additionally, HeLa cells have been used to test human sensitivity to tape, glue, cosmetics, and many other products.

Scientists have grown an estimated 50 million metric tons of HeLa cells, and there are almost 11,000 patents involving these cells.

The HeLa cell lines are also notorious for invading other cell cultures in laboratory settings. Some have estimated that HeLa cells have contaminated 10–20% of all cell lines currently in use.

🔗 Industrial design

The Xerox 914 was the first successful commercial plain paper copier which in 1959 revolutionized the document-copying industry. The culmination of inventor Chester Carlson's work on the xerographic process, the 914 was fast and economical. The copier was introduced to the public on September 16, 1959, in a demonstration at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in New York, shown on live television.

🔗 Aviation 🔗 New Zealand

On 22 December 1978, a small Cessna 188 aircraft, piloted by Jay Prochnow, became lost over the Pacific Ocean. The only other aircraft in the area that was able to assist was a commercial Air New Zealand flight. After several hours of searching, the crew of the Air New Zealand flight located the lost Cessna and led it to Norfolk Island, where the plane landed safely.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computer science 🔗 Software 🔗 Software/Computing 🔗 Project-independent assessment

A cross compiler is a compiler capable of creating executable code for a platform other than the one on which the compiler is running. For example, a compiler that runs on a PC but generates code that runs on Android devices is a cross compiler.

A cross compiler is useful to compile code for multiple platforms from one development host. Direct compilation on the target platform might be infeasible, for example on embedded systems with limited computing resources.

Cross compilers are distinct from source-to-source compilers. A cross compiler is for cross-platform software generation of machine code, while a source-to-source compiler translates from one coding language to another in text code. Both are programming tools.

Deletion review (DRV) is a forum designed primarily to appeal disputed speedy deletions and disputed decisions made as a result of deletion discussions; this includes appeals to delete pages kept after a prior discussion.

If you are considering a request for a deletion review, please read the "Purpose" section below to make sure that is what you wish to do. Then, follow the instructions below.

🔗 Architecture 🔗 Urban studies and planning 🔗 Effective Altruism

The YIMBY movement (short for "yes in my back yard") is a pro-infrastructure development movement mostly focusing on public housing policy, real estate development, public transportation, and pedestrian safety in transportation planning, in contrast and in opposition to the NIMBY ("not in my back yard") movement that generally opposes most forms of urban development in order to maintain the status quo. As a popular organized movement in the United States, it began in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 2010s amid a major housing affordability crisis and has subsequently become a potent political force in state and local politics across the United States.

The YIMBY position supports increasing the supply of housing within cities where housing costs have escalated to unaffordable levels. They have also supported infrastructure development projects like improving housing development (especially for affordable housing or trailer parks), high-speed rail lines, homeless shelters, day cares, schools, universities and colleges, bike lanes, and transportation planning that promotes pedestrian safety infrastructure. YIMBYs often seek rezoning that would allow denser housing to be produced or the repurposing of obsolete buildings, such as shopping malls, into housing. Some YIMBYs have also supported public-interest projects like clean energy or alternative transport.

The YIMBY movement has supporters across the political spectrum, including left-leaning adherents who believe housing production is a social justice issue, free-market libertarian proponents who think the supply of housing should not be regulated by the government, and environmentalists who believe land use reform will slow down exurban development into natural areas. YIMBYs argue cities can be made increasingly affordable and accessible by building more infill housing,^: 1 and that greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by denser cities.