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🔗 Religion 🔗 Islam 🔗 Anthropology 🔗 Syria 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Ethnic groups 🔗 Arab world 🔗 Israel 🔗 Palestine 🔗 Islam/Shi'a Islam 🔗 Lebanon

The Druze (; Arabic: دَرْزِيٌّ, darzī or Arabic: دُرْزِيٌّ durzī, pl. دُرُوزٌ, durūz), known to adherents as al-Muwaḥḥidūn (Monotheists) or Muwaḥḥidūn (unitarians), are an Arab and Arabic-speaking esoteric ethnoreligious group from Western Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, syncretic, and ethnic religion whose main tenets are the unity of God and the belief in reincarnation and the eternity of the soul. Adherents of the Druze religion call themselves simply "the Monotheists" (al-Muwaḥḥidūn). Most Druze religious practices are kept secret. The Druze do not permit outsiders to convert to their religion. Marriage outside the Druze faith is rare and strongly discouraged.

The Epistles of Wisdom is the foundational and central text of the Druze faith. The Druze faith incorporates elements of Isma'ilism, Christianity, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Pythagoreanism, and other philosophies and beliefs, creating a distinct and secretive theology based on an esoteric interpretation of scripture, which emphasizes the role of the mind and truthfulness. Druze believe in theophany and reincarnation. Druze believe that at the end of the cycle of rebirth, which is achieved through successive reincarnations, the soul is united with the Cosmic Mind (al-ʻaql al-kullī).

The Druze have a special reverence for Shuaib, who they believe is the same person as the biblical Jethro. The Druze believe that Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Isma'il ibn Ja'far were prophets. Druze tradition also honors and reveres Salman the Persian, al-Khidr (who they identify as Elijah, reborn as John the Baptist and Saint George), Job, Luke the Evangelist, and others as "mentors" and "prophets".

Even though the faith originally developed out of Isma'ilism, the Druze are not Muslims. The Druze faith is one of the major religious groups in the Levant, with between 800,000 and a million adherents. They are found primarily in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, with small communities in Jordan. They make up 5.5% of the population of Lebanon, 3% of Syria and 1.6% of Israel. The oldest and most densely-populated Druze communities exist in Mount Lebanon and in the south of Syria around Jabal al-Druze (literally the "Mountain of the Druze").

The Druze community played a critically important role in shaping the history of the Levant, where it continues to play a significant political role. As a religious minority in every country in which they are found, they have frequently experienced persecution by different Muslim regimes, including contemporary Islamic extremism.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Weaponry 🔗 Military history/Cold War

The W54 (also known as the Mark 54 or B54) was a tactical nuclear warhead developed by the United States in the late 1950s. The weapon is notable for being the smallest nuclear weapon in both weight and yield to have entered US service. It was a compact implosion device containing plutonium-239 as its fissile material, and in its various versions and mods it had a yield of 10 to 1,000 tons of TNT (42 to 4,184 gigajoules).

The weapon had two distinct versions: a warhead used in the AIM-26 Falcon air-to-air missile and in the Davy Crockett recoilless gun, and another used in the Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) system, along with several mods for each version. The two types are distinct in that much of the design between them was different, to the point that during the development of the SADM it was proposed that it be given its own unique mark designation.

A later development was the W72, which was a rebuilt W54 used with the AGM-62 Walleye guided bomb. The W72 was in service until 1979.

🔗 Economics 🔗 Game theory

A Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) auction is a type of sealed-bid auction of multiple items. Bidders submit bids that report their valuations for the items, without knowing the bids of the other bidders. The auction system assigns the items in a socially optimal manner: it charges each individual the harm they cause to other bidders. It gives bidders an incentive to bid their true valuations, by ensuring that the optimal strategy for each bidder is to bid their true valuations of the items. It is a generalization of a Vickrey auction for multiple items.

The auction is named after William Vickrey, Edward H. Clarke, and Theodore Groves for their papers that successively generalized the idea.

The VCG auction is a specific use of the more general VCG Mechanism. While the VCG auction tries to make a socially optimal allocation of items, VCG mechanisms allow for the selection of a socially optimal outcome out of a set of possible outcomes. If collusion is likely to occur among bidders, the VCG outperforms the generalized second-price auction for both revenues produced for the seller and allocative efficiency.

🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/Culture

Chindōgu (珍道具) is the practice of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that seem to be ideal solutions to particular problems, but which may cause more problems than they solve. The term is of Japanese origin.

🔗 Astronomy 🔗 Astronomy/Astronomical objects

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 0855−0714 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 2,800 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.

🔗 United States 🔗 Trains 🔗 United States/Ohio 🔗 Trains/Rapid transit 🔗 United States/Cincinnati

The Cincinnati Subway is a set of incomplete, derelict tunnels and stations for a rapid transit system beneath the streets of Cincinnati, Ohio. Although it is only a little over 2 miles in length, it is the largest abandoned subway tunnel system in the United States. Construction began in the early 1900s as an upgrade to the Cincinnati streetcar system, but was abandoned due to escalating costs, the collapse of funding amidst political bickering, and the Great Depression during the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1928, the construction of the subway system in Cincinnati was indefinitely canceled. There are no plans to revive the project.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophical literature 🔗 Books

Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics is a book written by American urban activist Jane Jacobs in 1992.

It describes two fundamental and distinct ethical systems, or syndromes as she calls them: that of the Guardian and that of Commerce. She argues that these supply direction for the conduct of human life within societies, and understanding the tension between them can help us with public policy and personal choices.

🔗 Economics

The iron law of wages is a proposed law of economics that asserts that real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker. The theory was first named by Ferdinand Lassalle in the mid-nineteenth century. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels attribute the doctrine to Lassalle (notably in Marx's 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program), the idea to Thomas Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population, and the terminology to Goethe's "great, eternal iron laws" in Das Göttliche.

It was coined in reference to the views of classical economists such as David Ricardo's Law of rent, and the competing population theory of Thomas Malthus. It held that the market price of labour would always, or almost always, tend toward the minimum required for the subsistence of the labourers, reducing as the working population increased and vice versa. Ricardo believed that happened only under particular conditions.

🔗 Classical Greece and Rome 🔗 Greece 🔗 Theatre

In the theatre of ancient Greece, the eirôn (Ancient Greek: εἴρων) was one of three stock characters in comedy. The eirôn usually succeeded in bringing down his braggart opponent (the alazôn) by understating his own abilities.

🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Antarctica 🔗 Languages 🔗 English Language

Antarctic English is a variety of the English language spoken by people living on the continent of Antarctica and within the subantarctic islands.^: vii Spoken primarily by scientists and workers in the Antarctic tourism industry, it consists of various unique words and is spoken with a unique accent. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Antarctic English was influenced by Spanish-speaking South Americans and Northern European explorers who introduced new words that continue to be used today.