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π Unsafe at Any Speed
Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile is a non-fiction book by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, first published in 1965. Its central theme is that car manufacturers resisted the introduction of safety features (such as seat belts), and that they were generally reluctant to spend money on improving safety. This work contains substantial references and material from industry insiders. It was a best seller in non-fiction in 1966.
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- "Unsafe at Any Speed" | 2021-11-11 | 83 Upvotes 78 Comments
π The Centipedeβs Dilemma
"The Centipede's Dilemma" is a short poem that has lent its name to a psychological effect called the centipede effect or centipede syndrome. The centipede effect occurs when a normally automatic or unconscious activity is disrupted by consciousness of it or reflection on it. For example, a golfer thinking too closely about their swing or someone thinking too much about how they knot their tie may find their performance of the task impaired. The effect is also known as hyperreflection or Humphrey's law after English psychologist George Humphrey (1889β1966), who propounded it in 1923. As he wrote of the poem, "This is a most psychological rhyme. It contains a profound truth which is illustrated daily in the lives of all of us". The effect is the reverse of a solvitur ambulando.
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- "The Centipedeβs Dilemma" | 2022-11-18 | 114 Upvotes 59 Comments
π Ichiki ShirΕ
Ichiki ShirΕ (εΈζ₯ ει, January 29, 1828 β February 12, 1903) was a pioneering Japanese photographer.
Ichiki was born in Satsuma Province (now Kagoshima Prefecture) in KyΕ«shΕ« on 24 December 1828. He excelled in the study of topics related to gunpowder production in the Takashima-ryΕ« school of gunnery. This talent was recognized by Shimazu Nariakira, the daimyΕ of Satsuma, who selected Ichiki to be one of his personal retainers. In 1848, Shimazu obtained the first daguerreotype camera ever imported into Japan. Ever fascinated by Western technology, he ordered his retainers (including Ichiki) to study it and produce working photographs. Due to the limitations of the lens used and the lack of formal training, it took many years for a quality photograph to be created, but on 17 September 1857, Ichiki created a portrait of Shimazu in formal attire. All this was recorded in detail in Ichiki's memoirs, which were compiled in 1884.
This photograph became an object of worship in Terukuni jinja after Shimazu's death, but it later went missing. Lost for a century, the daguerreotype was discovered in a warehouse in 1975 and was later determined to be the oldest daguerreotype in existence that was created by a Japanese photographer. For this reason, it was designated an Important Cultural Property by the government of Japan in 1999, the first photograph so designated.
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- "Ichiki ShirΕ" | 2023-12-22 | 87 Upvotes 8 Comments
π List of Botched Executions
A botched execution is defined by political science professor Austin Sarat as:
Botched executions occur when there is a breakdown in, or departure from, the 'protocol' for a particular method of execution. The protocol can be established by the norms, expectations, and advertised virtues of each method or by the governmentβs officially adopted execution guidelines. Botched executions are 'those involving unanticipated problems or delays that caused, at least arguably, unnecessary agony for the prisoner or that reflect gross incompetence of the executioner.' Examples of such problems include, among other things, inmates catching fire while being electrocuted, being strangled during hangings (instead of having their necks broken), and being administered the wrong dosages of specific drugs for lethal injections.
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- "List of Botched Executions" | 2024-01-26 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Wikipedia Is Down?
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- "Wikipedia Is Down?" | 2022-03-08 | 12 Upvotes 8 Comments
π Sloyd
Sloyd (SlΓΆjd), also known as Educational sloyd, is a system of handicraft-based education started by Uno Cygnaeus in Finland in 1865. The system was further refined and promoted worldwide, and was taught in the United States until the early 20th Century. It is still taught as a compulsory subject in Finnish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian schools.
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- "Sloyd" | 2017-10-22 | 131 Upvotes 38 Comments
π Pando (tree)
Pando (Latin for "I spread out"), also known as the trembling giant, is a clonal colony of an individual male quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) determined to be a single living organism by identical genetic markers and assumed to have one massive underground root system. The plant is located in the Fremont River Ranger District of the Fishlake National Forest at the western edge of the Colorado Plateau in south-central Utah, United States, around 1 mile (1.6Β km) southwest of Fish Lake. Pando occupies 43 hectares (106 acres) and is estimated to weigh collectively 6,000,000 kilograms (6,600 short tons), making it the heaviest known organism. The root system of Pando, at an estimated 80,000 years old, is among the oldest known living organisms.
Pando is currently thought to be dying. Though the exact reasons are not known, it is thought to be a combination of factors including drought, grazing, human development, and fire suppression. The Western Aspen Alliance, a research group at Utah State Universityβs S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources, has been studying the tree in an effort to save it, and the United States Forest Service is currently experimenting with several 5-acre (2Β ha) sections of it in an effort to find a means to save it. Grazing animals have threatened Pando's ability to produce young offsprings to replace trees that are dying. Human development in the area is another threat, these two threats have caused pando trees to shrink in size and decrease over the past 50 years.
A study published in October 2018 concludes that Pando has not been growing for the past 30β40 years. Human interference was named as the primary cause, with the study specifically citing people allowing cattle and deer populations to thrive, their grazing resulting in fewer saplings and dying individual trees.
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- "Pando (tree)" | 2015-06-29 | 92 Upvotes 20 Comments
π Superformula
The superformula is a generalization of the superellipse and was proposed by Johan Gielis around 2000. Gielis suggested that the formula can be used to describe many complex shapes and curves that are found in nature. Gielis has filed a patent application related to the synthesis of patterns generated by the superformula.
In polar coordinates, with the radius and the angle, the superformula is:
By choosing different values for the parameters and different shapes can be generated.
The formula was obtained by generalizing the superellipse, named and popularized by Piet Hein, a Danish mathematician.
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- "Superformula" | 2024-03-07 | 27 Upvotes 3 Comments
- "Superformula" | 2016-07-21 | 176 Upvotes 65 Comments
π Xsnow
Xsnow is a software application that was originally created as a virtual greeting card for Macintosh systems in 1984. In 1993, the concept was ported to the X Window System as Xsnow, and was included on a number of Linux distributions in the late 1990s.
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- "Xsnow" | 2021-12-08 | 155 Upvotes 97 Comments
π Lockheed Bribery Scandals
The Lockheed bribery scandals encompassed a series of bribes and contributions made by officials of U.S. aerospace company Lockheed from the late 1950s to the 1970s in the process of negotiating the sale of aircraft.
The scandal caused considerable political controversy in West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan. In the U.S., the scandal nearly led to Lockheed's downfall, as it was already struggling due to the commercial failure of the L-1011 TriStar airliner.
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- "Lockheed Bribery Scandals" | 2020-02-01 | 43 Upvotes 7 Comments