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🔗 United States 🔗 Architecture 🔗 Urban studies and planning 🔗 United States/Arizona

Arcosanti is a projected experimental town with a molten bronze bell casting business in Yavapai County, central Arizona, 70 mi (110 km) north of Phoenix, at an elevation of 3,732 feet (1,130 meters). Its arcology concept was posited by the Italian-American architect, Paolo Soleri (1919–2013). He began construction in 1970, to demonstrate how urban conditions could be improved while minimizing the destructive impact on the earth. He taught and influenced generations of architects and urban designers who studied and worked with him there to build the proposed "town".

🔗 Star Trek

Star Trek Continues is an American fan-made web series set in the Star Trek universe. Produced by the nonprofit charity Trek Continues, Inc. and Dracogen, and initially co-produced by Far from Home LLC and Farragut Films, the series consists of 11 episodes released between 2013 and 2017. The series is an unofficial direct continuation of Star Trek: The Original Series, and emulates its visual and storytelling features to achieve the same look and feel. Those who made the show have said in interviews that the intent was to finish the original five-year mission of the show, and this is borne out in the plot lines of the final two episodes.

The series was fan-created and all episodes were released to watch on YouTube. As with all such Star Trek fan productions, use of copyrighted and trademarked properties from the original series was allowed so long as the production was not commercial. A portion of the funds necessary to produce the episodes was raised through successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, to which thousands of backers contributed.

Star Trek Continues won a Webby Award for "People's Choice – Long Form Drama" in 2016, a Geekie Award for "Best Web Series" in 2014, and numerous Telly and Accolade awards. The series was very positively received by critics, who praised the quality of the production and stated that the show set a new standard for Star Trek fan films.

After the 11th episode was released in late 2017, the Star Trek Continues series ended.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Reference works 🔗 Belgium

The Mundaneum was an institution which aimed to gather together all the world's knowledge and classify it according to a system developed called the Universal Decimal Classification. It was developed at the turn of the 20th century by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. The Mundaneum has been identified as a milestone in the history of data collection and management, and (somewhat more tenuously) as a precursor to the Internet.

In the 21st century, the Mundaneum is a non-profit organisation based in Mons, Belgium that runs an exhibition space, website and archive which celebrate the legacy of the original Mundaneum.

🔗 California 🔗 Companies 🔗 Technology 🔗 Private Equity 🔗 California/San Francisco Bay Area

Y Combinator is an American seed accelerator launched in March 2005 and has been used to launch over 2,000 companies including Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise Automation, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, and Dropbox. The combined valuation of the top YC companies was over $155 billion as of October, 2019.

🔗 Olympics 🔗 Athletics

The men's marathon at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, United States, took place on August 30 of that year, over a distance of 24.85 miles (40 km).

The race was run during the hottest part of the day on dusty country roads with minimal water supply; while thirty-two athletes representing four nations competed, only 14 managed to complete the race, which was a bizarre affair due to poor organization and officiating. While Fred Lorz was greeted as the apparent winner, he was later disqualified as he had hitched a ride in a car for part of the race. The actual winner, Thomas Hicks, was near collapse and hallucinating by the end of the race, a side effect of being administered brandy, raw eggs, and strychnine by his trainers. The fourth-place finisher, Andarín Carvajal, took a nap during the race after eating spoiled apples.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Literature 🔗 Philosophy/Epistemology

Sturgeon's revelation (as expounded by Theodore Sturgeon), referred to as Sturgeon's law, is an adage cited as "ninety percent of everything is crap." The sentence derives from quotations by Sturgeon, an American science fiction author and critic; although Sturgeon coined another adage he termed "Sturgeon's law", the "ninety percent crap" remark became Sturgeon's law.

The phrase was derived from Sturgeon's observation while science fiction was often derided for its low quality by critics, the majority of examples of works in other fields could equally be seen to be of low quality, and science fiction was thus no different in that regard from other art forms.

The Berlin key (also known as, German, Schließzwangschlüssel, or, in English, forced-locking key) is a key for a type of door lock. It was designed to force people to close and lock their doors, usually a main entrance door or gate leading into a common yard or tenement block. The key was a solution to the problem of access via communal doors of such blocks (Mietskaserne) as early as the 19th century.

🔗 Korea 🔗 Buddhism

Wang ocheonchukguk jeon (Korean pronunciation: [waːŋotɕʰʌntɕʰukk͈uktɕ͈ʌn]; pinyin: wǎng wǔ tiānzhú guó zhuàn; "An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms") is a travelogue by Buddhist monk Hyecho, who traveled from Korea to India, in the years 723 - 727/728 CE.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware

The iSmell Personal Scent Synthesizer developed by DigiScents Inc. is a small device that can be connected to a computer through a Universal serial bus (USB) port and powered using any ordinary electrical outlet. The appearance of the device is similar to that of a shark’s fin, with many holes lining the “fin” to release the various scents. Using a cartridge similar to a printer’s, it can synthesize and even create new smells by combining certain combinations of other scents. These newly created odors can be used to closely replicate common natural and manmade odors. The cartridges used also need to be swapped every so often once the scents inside are used up. Once partnered with websites and interactive media, the scents can be activated either automatically once a website is opened or manually. However, the product is no longer on the market and never generated substantial sales. Digiscent had plans for the iSmell to have several versions but did not progress past the prototype stage. The company did not last long and filed for bankruptcy a short time after.

In 2006, the iSmell was named one of the "25 Worst Tech Products of All Time" by PC World Magazine, which commented that "[f]ew products literally stink, but this one did--or at least it would have, had it progressed beyond the prototype stage."