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π Dancing Plague of 1518
The Dancing Plague of 1518, or Dance Epidemic of 1518, was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (modern-day France), in the Holy Roman Empire from July 1518 to September 1518. Somewhere between 50 and 400 people took to dancing for weeks.
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- "Dancing Plague of 1518" | 2023-04-10 | 192 Upvotes 84 Comments
π GitHub was blocked in Turkey
GitHub has been the target of censorship from governments using methods ranging from local Internet service provider blocks, intermediary blocking using methods such as DNS hijacking and man-in-the-middle attacks, and denial-of-service attacks on GitHub's servers from countries including China, India, Russia, and Turkey. In all of these cases, GitHub has been eventually unblocked after backlash from users and technology businesses or compliance from GitHub.
π Lazy Dog (Bomb)
The Lazy Dog (sometimes called a Red Dot Bomb or Yellow Dog Bomb) is a type of small, unguided kinetic projectile used by the U.S. Air Force. It measured about 1.75 inches (44Β mm) in length, 0.5 inches (13Β mm) in diameter, and weighed about 0.7 ounces (20Β g).
The weapons were designed to be dropped from an aircraft. They contained no explosive charge but as they fell they would develop significant kinetic energy making them lethal and able to easily penetrate soft cover such as jungle canopy, several inches of sand, or light armor. Lazy Dog munitions were simple and relatively cheap; they could be dropped in huge numbers in a single pass. Though their effects were often no less deadly than other projectiles, they did not leave unexploded ordnance (UXO) that could be active years after a conflict ended.
Lazy Dog projectiles were used primarily during the Korean and the Vietnam Wars.
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- "Lazy Dog (Bomb)" | 2024-05-31 | 17 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Wolf 359
Wolf 359 is a red dwarf star located in the constellation Leo, near the ecliptic. At a distance of approximately 7.9 light years from Earth, it has an apparent magnitude of 13.54 and can only be seen with a large telescope. Wolf 359 is one of the nearest stars to the Sun; only the Alpha Centauri system (including Proxima Centauri), Barnard's Star and the brown dwarfs Luhman 16 and WISE 0855β0714 are known to be closer. Its proximity to Earth has led to its mention in several works of fiction.
Wolf 359 is one of the faintest and lowest-mass stars known. At the light-emitting layer called the photosphere, it has a temperature of about 2,800Β K, which is low enough for chemical compounds to form and survive. The absorption lines of compounds such as water and titanium(II) oxide have been observed in the spectrum. The surface has a magnetic field that is stronger than the average magnetic field on the Sun. As a result of magnetic activity caused by convection, Wolf 359 is a flare star that can undergo sudden increases in luminosity for several minutes. These flares emit strong bursts of X-ray and gamma ray radiation that have been observed by space telescopes. Wolf 359 is a relatively young star with an age of less than a billion years. Two planetary companions are suspected but as yet no debris disks have been unmasked.
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- "Wolf 359" | 2019-12-23 | 84 Upvotes 49 Comments
π Curse of knowledge
The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand. This bias is also called by some authors the curse of expertise, although that term is also used to refer to various other phenomena.
For example, in a classroom setting, teachers have difficulty teaching novices because they cannot put themselves in the position of the student. A brilliant professor might no longer remember the difficulties that a young student encounters when learning a new subject. This curse of knowledge also explains the danger behind thinking about student learning based on what appears best to faculty members, as opposed to what has been verified with students.
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- "Curse of knowledge" | 2017-04-23 | 92 Upvotes 30 Comments
- "Curse of knowledge" | 2012-03-26 | 74 Upvotes 8 Comments
π Lace Card
A lace card is a punched card with all holes punched (also called a whoopee card, ventilator card, flyswatter card, or IBM doily). They were mainly used as practical jokes to cause disruption in card readers. Card readers tended to jam when a lace card was inserted, as the resulting card had too little structural strength to avoid buckling inside the mechanism. Card punches could also jam trying to produce cards with all holes punched, owing to power-supply problems. When a lace card was fed through the reader, a card knife or card saw (a flat tool used with punched card readers and card punches) was needed to clear the jam.
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- "Lace Card" | 2023-06-23 | 23 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Regular Heptadecagon Inscribed in a Circle
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- "Regular Heptadecagon Inscribed in a Circle" | 2010-04-15 | 44 Upvotes 13 Comments
π Alternative Periodic Tables
Alternative periodic tables are tabulations of chemical elements differing in their organization from the traditional depiction of the periodic system.
Over a thousand have been devised, often for didactic reasons, as not all correlations between the chemical elements are effectively captured by the standard periodic table.
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- "Alternative Periodic Tables" | 2019-04-02 | 77 Upvotes 14 Comments
π CD-i
The Compact Disc-Interactive (CD-I, later CD-i) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was mostly developed and marketed by Dutch company Philips. It was created as an extension of CDDA and CD-ROM and specified in the Green Book, co-developed by Philips and Sony, to combine audio, text and graphics. The two companies initially expected to impact the education/training, point of sale, and home entertainment industries, but CD-i eventually became best known for its video games.
CD-i media physically have the same dimensions as CD, but with up to 744Β MiB of digital data storage, including up to 72 minutes of full motion video. CD-i players were usually standalone boxes that connect to a standard television; some less common setups included integrated CD-i television sets and expansion modules for personal computers. Most players were created by Philips; the format was licensed by Philips and Microware for use by other manufacturers, notably Sony who released professional CD-i players under the "Intelligent Discman" brand. Unlike CD-ROM drives, CD-i players are complete computer systems centered around dedicated Motorola 68000-based microprocessors and its own operating system called CD-RTOS, which is an acronym for "Compact Disc β Real Time Operating System".
Media released on the format included video games and "edutainment" and multimedia reference titles, such as interactive encyclopedias and museum tours β which were popular before public Internet access was widespread β as well as business software. Philips's CD-i system also implemented Internet features, including subscriptions, web browsing, downloading, e-mail, and online play. Philips's aim with its players was to introduce interactive multimedia content for the general public by combining features of a CD player and game console, but at a lower price than a personal computer with a CD-ROM drive.
Authoring kits for the format were released first in 1988, and the first player aimed for home consumers, Philips's CDI 910/205, at the end of 1991, initially priced around US$1,000 (equivalent to $1,877 in 2019), and capable of playing interactive CD-i discs, Audio CDs, CD+G (CD+Graphics), Photo CDs and Video CDs (VCDs), though the latter required an optional "Digital Video Card" to provide MPEG-1 decoding. Initially marketed to consumers as "home entertainment systems", and in later years as a "gaming platform", CD-i did not manage to find enough success in the market, and was mostly abandoned by Philips in 1996. The format continued to be supported for licensees for a few more years after.
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- "CD-i" | 2021-01-01 | 13 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Hessdalen Lights
The Hessdalen lights are unidentified lights which have been observed in a 12-kilometre-long (7.5Β mi) stretch of the Hessdalen valley in rural central Norway periodically since at least the 1930s.
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- "Hessdalen Lights" | 2024-10-30 | 23 Upvotes 6 Comments