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🔗 Computing/Free and open-source software

🔗 Ancient Near East 🔗 Bible 🔗 Iraq 🔗 Archaeology 🔗 Cities

Ur was an important Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia, located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar (Arabic: تل ٱلْمُقَيَّر) in south Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate. Although Ur was once a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, the coastline has shifted and the city is now well inland, on the south bank of the Euphrates, 16 kilometres (9.9 miles) from Nasiriyah in modern-day Iraq. The city dates from the Ubaid period circa 3800 BC, and is recorded in written history as a city-state from the 26th century BC, its first recorded king being Mesannepada.

The city's patron deity was Nanna (in Akkadian, Sin), the Sumerian and Akkadian moon god, and the name of the city is in origin derived from the god's name, UNUG^KI, literally "the abode (UNUG) of Nanna". The site is marked by the partially restored ruins of the Ziggurat of Ur, which contained the shrine of Nanna, excavated in the 1930s. The temple was built in the 21st century BC (short chronology), during the reign of Ur-Nammu and was reconstructed in the 6th century BC by Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon. The ruins cover an area of 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) northwest to southeast by 800 metres (2,600 ft) northeast to southwest and rise up to about 20 metres (66 ft) above the present plain level.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Russia/mass media in Russia 🔗 Radio Stations

The Pip is the nickname given by radio listeners to a shortwave radio station that broadcasts on the frequency 5448 kHz by day, and 3756 kHz during the night. It broadcasts short, repeated beeps at a rate of around 50 per minute, for 24 hours per day. The beep signal is occasionally interrupted by voice messages in Russian. The Pip has been active since around 1985, when its distinctive beeping sound was first recorded by listeners.

The station is commonly referred to as "The Pip" among English-speaking radio listeners. In Russia, it is known as Капля (Kaplya) "the drop". While its official name or callsign is not known, some of the voice transmissions begin with the code 8S1Shch (Cyrillic: 8С1Щ), which is generally considered to be the name of the station. However, this code may not be a callsign, but instead serve some other purpose. Radioscanner.ru identifies the owner of this station as a North-Caucasian military district communication center with callsign "Akacia" (ex-72nd communication center, Russian "72 узел связи штаба СКВО").

🔗 Mathematics

In number theory, a weird number is a natural number that is abundant but not semiperfect.

In other words, the sum of the proper divisors (divisors including 1 but not itself) of the number is greater than the number, but no subset of those divisors sums to the number itself.

🔗 Psychology

Transactional analysis (TA) is a psychoanalytic theory and method of therapy wherein social transactions are analyzed to determine the ego state of the patient (whether parent-like, childlike, or adult-like) as a basis for understanding behavior. In transactional analysis, the patient is taught to alter the ego state as a way to solve emotional problems. The method deviates from Freudian psychoanalysis which focuses on increasing awareness of the contents of unconsciously held ideas. Eric Berne developed the concept and paradigm of transactional analysis in the late 1950s.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Politics 🔗 Socialism 🔗 Philosophy/Social and political philosophy 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Philosophy/Modern philosophy

Marx's theory of alienation describes the estrangement of people from aspects of their essential human nature as a consequence of living in a society structured by private property and wage labour. Developed by the German philosopher Karl Marx and first articulated in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the theory is a foundational concept of Marxism. At its core, it posits that under the capitalist mode of production, workers are inevitably separated from the products they create, the activity of production, their fellow human beings, and their own creative potential.

The theory has roots in a long intellectual tradition, particularly in the work of the German idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. For Hegel, alienation was a necessary stage in the development of Spirit (Geist), in which it externalises itself in the material world to achieve self-awareness. Marx adapted Hegel's dialectical framework but rejected its idealism, grounding the concept in material reality. Influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach's critique of religious alienation, Marx argued that alienation was not an abstract philosophical condition but a concrete, historical consequence of the capitalist system that could be overcome.

In his analysis, Marx identified four key aspects of alienated labour. First, the worker is alienated from the product of their labour, which is appropriated by the capitalist and confronts the worker as a hostile power. Second, they are alienated from the activity of production itself, which is experienced not as a fulfilling expression of creativity but as coerced, meaningless toil. Third, this leads to alienation from their own human nature, or species-being (Gattungswesen), as free, conscious activity is reduced to a mere means of survival. Finally, the worker is alienated from other people, as social relationships become reified and mediated by market exchange, fostering competition and indifference rather than community.

A long-standing scholarly debate exists over the theory's place in Marx's work, with some arguing he abandoned the humanistic concept in his later, more "scientific" writings. However, many analysts contend that the theory remained a central, unifying concept throughout his intellectual development. They argue that concepts in his mature work, such as the fetishism of commodities in Das Kapital, represent a deeper elaboration of the alienation theme. For Marx, the overcoming of alienation could only be achieved through communism, a revolutionary transformation of society that would abolish private property and allow for the free, collective development of human potential.

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

Coherent is a clone of the Unix operating system for IBM PC compatibles and other microcomputers, developed and sold by the now-defunct Mark Williams Company (MWC). Historically, the operating system was a proprietary product, but it became open source in 2015, released under a 3-clause BSD License.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Disambiguation

William Adams may refer to:

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Smithsonian Institution

During the 1940s–1960s, nude photographs were routinely taken of incoming freshmen at elite colleges in the United States, such as the Ivy Leagues and Seven Sisters schools. Purportedly taken to assess the posture and health of the students, the bulk of the photographs were produced by W. H. Sheldon, a psychologist and eugenicist who believed non-white races were intellectually stunted. Sheldon developed a theory that measuring a human body could predict the subject's intelligence, temperament, and moral worth. The inspiration to take mass photos for his research came from the founder of eugenics, Francis Galton, who proposed such a photo archive for the British population.

The institutions that had "posture photo" programs included Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Vassar, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Swarthmore, University of Pennsylvania, Hotchkiss, Syracuse, University of California, University of Wisconsin, Purdue, Brooklyn College, the Oregon Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and others. The years that each institution participated vary. Some schools, such as Harvard and Wellesley, had their own practice of taking posture photos well before Sheldon's involvement, as early as the 1880s.

Most of the photo archives were destroyed voluntarily by the schools in the 1960s and '70s, after ending their posture photo practices. After Sheldon's death in 1977, his personal archive of over 20,000 photos and negatives was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution's National Anthropological Archives. These were never displayed, and could only be viewed by researchers who petitioned the chief archivist. After a write-up in the New York Times Magazine in 1995, the Smithsonian sealed the documents completely, and destroyed the Yale archives upon request.

Some celebrities have mentioned their experiences getting their posture photo taken, including Sylvia Plath, Nora Ephron, Dick Cavett and Judith Martin (the etiquette expert known as Miss Manners). In the 2020s posture photos of the actors James Franciscus and Bill Hinnant resurfaced and were sold on eBay.

🔗 Chess 🔗 Books 🔗 Board and table games

The Libro de los Juegos (Spanish: "Book of games"), or Libro de axedrez, dados e tablas ("Book of chess, dice and tables", in Old Spanish), was a Spanish translation of Arabic texts on chess, dice and tables (backgammon forebears) games, commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile, Galicia and León and completed in his scriptorium in Toledo in 1283. It contains the earliest European treatise on chess as well as being the oldest document on European tables games, and is an exemplary piece of the literary legacy of the Toledo School of Translators.