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๐ Phone Cloning
Phone cloning is the copying of identity from one cellular device to another.
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- "Phone Cloning" | 2020-04-18 | 35 Upvotes 18 Comments
๐ Cafe Mediterraneum
Caffรจ Mediterraneum, often referred to as Caffรจ Med or simply the Med, was a cafรฉ located on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California, US, near the University of California, Berkeley. The Med was a landmark of Telegraph Avenue history, "listed for years in European guidebooks as 'the gathering place for 1960s radicals who created People's Park'" and as of 2009 described in Fodor's guidebook as "a relic of 1960s-era cafรฉ culture". It was located at 2475 Telegraph Avenue, between Dwight Way and Haste Street.
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- "Cafe Mediterraneum" | 2020-05-04 | 21 Upvotes 8 Comments
๐ Massacre in Korea by Pablo Picasso
Massacre in Korea (French: Massacre en Corรฉe) is an expressionistic painting completed on 18 January 1951 by Pablo Picasso. It is Picasso's third anti-war painting and depicts a scene of a massacre of a group of naked women and children by a firing squad. It has been considered to be a condemnation of American intervention in the Korean War. The painting is exhibited in the Musรฉe Picasso in Paris.
๐ Stanisลaw Lem
Stanisลaw Herman Lem (Polish:ย [staหษฒiswaf หlษm] (listen); 12 or 13 September 1921 โ 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy, and satire. Lem's books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 45ย million copies. From the 1950s to 2000s, he published many books, both science fiction and philosophical/futurological. Worldwide, he is best known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris, which has been made into a feature film three times. In 1976, Theodore Sturgeon wrote that Lem was the most widely read science fiction writer in the world. The total print of Lem's books is over 30 million copies.
Lem's works explore philosophical themes through speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of communication with and understanding of alien intelligence, despair about human limitations, and humanity's place in the universe. They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books.
Translating his works is difficult due to passages with elaborate word formation, idiomatic wordplay, alien or robotic poetry, and puns.
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- "Stanisลaw Lem" | 2019-11-04 | 82 Upvotes 27 Comments
๐ Crinkle Crankle Wall
A crinkle crankle wall, also known as a crinkum crankum, serpentine, ribbon or wavy wall, is an unusual type of garden wall built in a serpentine pattern with alternating curves.
The crinkle crankle wall economizes on bricks, despite its sinuous configuration, because it can be made just one brick thin. If a wall this thin were to be made in a straight line, without buttresses, it would easily topple over. The alternate convex and concave curves in the wall provide stability and help it to resist lateral forces.
"Crinkle crankle" is an ablaut reduplication, defined as something with bends and turns, first attested in 1598 (though "crinkle" and "crankle" have somewhat longer histories). However, it was not until the 18th century that the term began to be applied to wavy walls. At that time these garden walls were usually aligned east-west, so that one side faced south to catch the warming sun and were historically used for growing fruit.
Many crinkle crankle walls are found in the East Anglia region of England where the marshes of The Fens were drained by Dutch engineers starting in the mid-1600s. The walls' construction is attributed to these engineers who called them slangenmuur, meaning snake wall.ย The county of Suffolk claims at least 50 examples, twice as many as in the whole of the rest of the country, and where crinkle crankle is said to derive from a local dialect. In the estate village of Easton the noted crinkle crankle wall running from the former manor house to All Saints' Church is supposed to be the longest existing example. In Lymington, Hampshire, there are at least two examples of crinkle crankle walls. The oldest is thought to have been constructed at the time of the Napoleonic Wars (1803โ1815) by exiled Hanoverian soldiers living in the adjacent house.
As a minor part of a larger system of fortification, such a wall may have been used to force oncoming troops to break ranks from closed to open ranks, and further expose them to defensive assault.
Thomas Jefferson (1743โ1826) incorporated so-called serpentine walls into the architecture of the University of Virginia, which he founded. Flanking both sides of its landmark rotunda and extending down the length of the lawn are ten pavilions, each with its own walled garden separated by crinkle crankle walls. Although some authorities claim Jefferson invented this design, he was merely adapting a well-established English style of construction. A university document in his own hand shows how he calculated the savings and combined aesthetics with utility.
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- "Crinkle Crankle Wall" | 2019-11-16 | 214 Upvotes 56 Comments
๐ Speed Tape
Speed tape is an aluminium pressure-sensitive tape used to perform minor repairs on aircraft and racing cars. It is used as a temporary repair material until a more permanent repair can be carried out. It has an appearance similar to duct tape, for which it is sometimes mistaken, but its adhesive is capable of sticking on an airplane fuselage or wing at high speeds, hence the name.
๐ Spaceship Earth
Spaceship Earth (or Spacecraft Earth or Spaceship Planet Earth) is a worldview encouraging everyone on Earth to act as a harmonious crew working toward the greater good.
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- "Spaceship Earth" | 2021-03-14 | 127 Upvotes 95 Comments
- "Spaceship Earth" | 2020-08-23 | 11 Upvotes 3 Comments
๐ DRAKON โ An algorithmic visual programming language
DRAKON is an algorithmic visual programming and modeling language developed within the Buran space project following ergonomic design principles. The language provides a uniform way to represent flowcharts of any complexity that are easy to read and understand.
The DRAKON Editor, which was released in September 2011, is an implementation of the language available in the public domain. It can be used for creating documentation, or for creating visual programs that can be converted to source code in other languages.
Unlike UML's philosophy, DRAKON's language philosophy is based on being augmented if needed, by using a hybrid language, which can be illustrated as "incrustating code snippets from text language used into shape DRAKON requires". This way, DRAKON always remains a simple visual language that can be used as an augmentation for a programmer who is interested in making their own project code easier to support or other long-term needs for example improving the ergonomics of the coding process or to making code easier to review and understand.
The name DRAKON is the Russian acronym for "ะััะถะตะปัะฑะฝัะน ะ ัััะบะธะน ะะปะณะพัะธัะผะธัะตัะบะธะน [ัะทัะบ], ะะพัะพััะน ะะฑะตัะฟะตัะธะฒะฐะตั ะะฐะณะปัะดะฝะพััั", which translates to "Friendly Russian algorithmic [language] that illustrates (or provides clarity)". The word "ะฝะฐะณะปัะดะฝะพััั" (pronounced approximately as "naa-glya-dno-st-th") refers to a concept or idea being easy to imagine and understand, and may be translated as "clarity".
The DRAKON language can be used both as a modelling/"markup" language (which is considered a standalone "pure DRAKON" program) and as a programming language (as part of a hybrid language).
Integration of a stricter, "academic", variant of a markup language into programming, such as provided by DRAKON, adds syntactic sugar allowing users of different programming languages to comprehend each other's contributions to the overall project and even provide commentary if needed.
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- "DRAKON" | 2024-08-19 | 213 Upvotes 59 Comments
- "DRAKON โ An algorithmic visual programming language" | 2015-08-21 | 86 Upvotes 48 Comments
๐ Ballistic Recovery Systems
Ballistic Recovery Systems, Inc. (commonly referred to as BRS Aerospace, or simply BRS) is a manufacturer of aircraft ballistic parachutes.
The company was formed in 1980 by Boris Popov of Saint Paul, Minnesota, after he survived a 400-foot (120ย m) fall in a partially collapsed hang glider in 1975. As a result, Popov invented a parachute system that could lower an entire light aircraft to the ground in the event of loss of control, failure of the aircraft structure, or other in-flight emergencies.
Popov was granted a U.S. patent on 26 August 1986 for the so-called Ballistic Recovery System (BRS) - patent US 4607814 A.
The company has two divisions: BRS Aviation and BRS Defense.
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- "Ballistic Recovery Systems" | 2014-03-21 | 43 Upvotes 30 Comments
๐ Delphic Hymns
The Delphic Hymns are two musical compositions from Ancient Greece, which survive in substantial fragments. They were long regarded as being dated c.โ138ย BC and 128ย BC, respectively, but recent scholarship has shown it likely they were both written for performance at the Athenian Pythaides in 128ย BC. If indeed it dates from ten years before the second, the First Delphic Hymn is the earliest unambiguous surviving example of notated music from anywhere in the western world whose composer is known by name. Inscriptions indicate that the First Delphic Hymn was written by Athenaeus, son of Athenaeus, while Limenius is credited the Second Delphic Hymn's composer.
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- "Delphic Hymns" | 2023-10-19 | 56 Upvotes 5 Comments