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π Ship's cat
The ship's cat has been a common feature on many trading, exploration, and naval ships dating to ancient times. Cats have been carried on ships for many reasons, most importantly to control rodents. Vermin aboard a ship can cause damage to ropes, woodwork, and more recently, electrical wiring. Also, rodents threaten ships' stores, devour crews' foodstuff, and could cause economic damage to ships' cargo such as grain. They are also a source of disease, which is dangerous for ships that are at sea for long periods of time. Rat fleas are carriers of plague, and rats on ships were believed to be a primary vector of the Black Death.
Cats naturally attack and kill rodents, and their natural ability to adapt to new surroundings made them suitable for service on a ship. In addition, they offer companionship and a sense of home, security and camaraderie to sailors away from home.
Discussed on
- "Ship's cat" | 2014-03-03 | 277 Upvotes 72 Comments
π Curry's paradox: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists."
Curry's paradox is a paradox in which an arbitrary claim F is proved from the mere existence of a sentence C that says of itself "If C, then F", requiring only a few apparently innocuous logical deduction rules. Since F is arbitrary, any logic having these rules proves everything. The paradox may be expressed in natural language and in various logics, including certain forms of set theory, lambda calculus, and combinatory logic.
The paradox is named after the logician Haskell Curry. It has also been called LΓΆb's paradox after Martin Hugo LΓΆb, due to its relationship to LΓΆb's theorem.
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- "Curry's paradox: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists."" | 2008-05-01 | 23 Upvotes 12 Comments
π Cpuid: EAX=8FFFFFFFh: AMD Easter Egg
In the x86 architecture, the CPUID instruction (identified by a CPUID
opcode) is a processor supplementary instruction (its name derived from CPU IDentification) allowing software to discover details of the processor. It was introduced by Intel in 1993 with the launch of the Pentium and SL-enhanced 486 processors.
A program can use the CPUID
to determine processor type and whether features such as MMX/SSE are implemented.
Discussed on
- "Cpuid: EAX=8FFFFFFFh: AMD Easter Egg" | 2021-11-26 | 24 Upvotes 7 Comments
π "Some German bombers landed at UK bases, believing they were back in Germany."
The Battle of the Beams was a period early in the Second World War when bombers of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) used a number of increasingly accurate systems of radio navigation for night bombing in the United Kingdom. British scientific intelligence at the Air Ministry fought back with a variety of their own increasingly effective means, involving jamming and distortion of the radio waves. The period ended when the Wehrmacht moved their forces to the East in May 1941, in preparation for the attack on the Soviet Union.
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- ""Some German bombers landed at UK bases, believing they were back in Germany."" | 2010-08-16 | 99 Upvotes 17 Comments
π Stolperstein
A Stolperstein (pronounced [ΛΚtΙlpΙΛΚtaΙͺn] (listen); plural Stolpersteine; literally "stumbling stone", metaphorically a "stumbling block") is a sett-size, ten-centimetre (3.9Β in) concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution.
The Stolpersteine project, initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, aims to commemorate individuals at exactly the last place of residencyβor, sometimes, workβwhich was freely chosen by the person before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror, euthanasia, eugenics, deportation to a concentration or extermination camp, or escaped persecution by emigration or suicide. As of December 2019, 75,000 Stolpersteine have been laid, making the Stolpersteine project the world's largest decentralized memorial.
The majority of Stolpersteine commemorate Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Others have been placed for Sinti and Romani people (then also called "gypsies"), homosexuals, the physically or mentally disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses, black people, members of the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the anti-Nazi Resistance, the Christian opposition (both Protestants and Catholics), and Freemasons, along with International Brigade soldiers in the Spanish Civil War, military deserters, conscientious objectors, escape helpers, capitulators, "habitual criminals", looters, and others charged with treason, military disobedience, or undermining the Nazi military, as well as Allied soldiers.
Discussed on
- "Stolperstein" | 2022-06-18 | 445 Upvotes 170 Comments
π Culinary Diplomacy
Culinary diplomacy, gastrodiplomacy or food diplomacy is a type of cultural diplomacy, which itself is a subset of public diplomacy. Its basic premise is that "the easiest way to win hearts and minds is through the stomach". Official government-sponsored culinary diplomacy programs have been established in Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Peru, the United States, Cambodia, Japan, Scandinavia, Australia and Uzbekistan.
Discussed on
- "Culinary Diplomacy" | 2021-12-10 | 54 Upvotes 10 Comments
π Redesigning Wikipedia: The Athena Project
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- "Redesigning Wikipedia: The Athena Project" | 2012-08-13 | 119 Upvotes 26 Comments
π Mauryan Polish
Mauryan polish describes one of the frequent characteristics of architecture and sculptures of the Maurya Empire in India (325 to 185 BCE), which gives a very smooth and shiny surface to the stone material, generally of sandstone or granite. Mauryan polish is found especially in the Ashoka Pillars as well as in some constructions like the Barabar Caves. The technique did not end with the empire, but continued to be "used on occasion up to the first or second century A.D.", although the presence of the polish sometimes complicates dating, as with the Didarganj Yakshi. According to the archaeologist John Marshall: the "extraordinary precision and accuracy which characterizes all Mauryan works, and which has never, we venture to say, been surpassed even by the finest workmanship on Athenian buildings".
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- "Mauryan Polish" | 2021-05-22 | 67 Upvotes 26 Comments
π The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet
"The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" (also known as "Like the Wind", "Blind the Wind", "Check It In, Check It Out" or "Take It In, Take It Out" after lines in fan-interpreted lyrics; acronymed as TMMSOTI or TMS) is the nickname given to an unidentified song recording, most likely composed in the 1980s.
The song was reportedly recorded from a Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) broadcast sometime in the mid-1980s, likely during or after 1984. Since 2019, this song has been the subject of a viral Internet phenomenon, with many users of sites such as Reddit and Discord involved in a collaborative effort to search for the origins of the song. Through the search, other unknown songs were discovered. Users have coined the term "Lostwave" to describe songs of this nature.
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- "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" | 2023-06-23 | 129 Upvotes 42 Comments
π Wikimedia community ratifies Movement Charter; Wikimedia Foundation vetoes it
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- "Wikimedia community ratifies Movement Charter; Wikimedia Foundation vetoes it" | 2024-07-23 | 38 Upvotes 10 Comments