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🔗 Biography 🔗 Systems 🔗 Biography/arts and entertainment

John Gall (September 18, 1925 – December 15, 2014) was an American author and retired pediatrician. Gall is known for his 1975 book General systemantics: an essay on how systems work, and especially how they fail..., a critique of systems theory. One of the statements from this book has become known as Gall's law.

🔗 Biology 🔗 Neuroscience 🔗 Physiology 🔗 Science

A microtome (from the Greek mikros, meaning "small", and temnein, meaning "to cut") is a cutting tool used to produce extremely thin slices of material known as sections, with the process being termed microsectioning. Important in science, microtomes are used in microscopy for the preparation of samples for observation under transmitted light or electron radiation.

Microtomes use steel, glass or diamond blades depending upon the specimen being sliced and the desired thickness of the sections being cut. Steel blades are used to prepare histological sections of animal or plant tissues for light microscopy. Glass knives are used to slice sections for light microscopy and to slice very thin sections for electron microscopy. Industrial grade diamond knives are used to slice hard materials such as bone, teeth and tough plant matter for both light microscopy and for electron microscopy. Gem-quality diamond knives are also used for slicing thin sections for electron microscopy.

Microtomy is a method for the preparation of thin sections for materials such as bones, minerals and teeth, and an alternative to electropolishing and ion milling. Microtome sections can be made thin enough to section a human hair across its breadth, with section thickness between 50 nm and 100 μm.

🔗 Germany

A hunger stone (German: Hungerstein) is a type of hydrological landmark common in Central Europe. Hunger stones serve as famine memorials and warnings and were erected in Germany and in ethnic German settlements throughout Europe in the 15th through 19th centuries.

These stones were embedded into a river during droughts to mark the water level as a warning to future generations that they will have to endure famine-related hardships if the water sinks to this level again. One famous example in the Elbe river in Děčín, Czech Republic, has "Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine" (lit. "If you see me, weep") carved into it as a warning.

Many of these stones, featuring carvings or other artwork, were erected following the hunger crisis of 1816–1817 caused by the eruptions of the Tambora volcano.

In 1918, a hunger stone on the bed of the Elbe River, near Tetschen, became exposed during a period of low water coincident to the wartime famines of World War I. Similar hunger stones in the river were uncovered again during a drought in 2018.

🔗 Economics 🔗 London 🔗 Energy

The oil futures drunk-trading incident was an incident in which Stephen Perkins, an employee of London-based PVM Oil Futures, traded 7 million barrels (1.1 million cubic metres) of oil, worth approximately US$520 million (£340 million) in a two-and-half-hour period in the early morning of 30 June 2009 while drunk. These unauthorised trades caused the price of Brent Crude oil to rise by over $1.50 a barrel (equivalent to $1.79 in 2019) within a short period of time, a trend generally associated with major geopolitical events, before dropping rapidly. As a result of the trading, PVM Oil Futures suffered losses of almost $10 million and Perkins was dismissed, later being banned from trading by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Economics 🔗 Books 🔗 Politics 🔗 Women writers 🔗 Medicine/Psychiatry

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is a 2007 book by the Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein. In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries because of a deliberate strategy of "shock therapy". This centers on the exploitation of national crises (disasters or upheavals) to establish controversial and questionable policies, while citizens are excessively distracted (emotionally and physically) to engage and develop an adequate response, and resist effectively. The book suggests that some man-made events, such as the Iraq War, were undertaken with the intention of pushing through such unpopular policies in their wake.

Some reviewers criticized the book for making what they viewed as simplifications of political phenomena, while others lauded it as a compelling and important work. The book served as the main source of a 2009 documentary feature film with the same title directed by Michael Winterbottom.

Sensorvault is an internal Google database that contains records of users' historical geo-location data.^: 1

It has been used by law enforcement to obtain a geo-fence warrant and to search for all devices within the vicinity of a crime, (within a geo-fenced area)^{: 1 : 1} and after looking at those devices' movements and narrowing those devices down to potential suspects or witnesses, then asking Google for the information about the owners of those devices.^{: 1 : 1}

🔗 United States 🔗 Comedy 🔗 Journalism

The Order of the Occult Hand is a secret society of American journalists who slip the meaningless and telltale phrase "It was as if an occult hand had…" in print as an inside joke.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Death 🔗 Skepticism

Gloria Ramirez (January 11, 1963 – February 19, 1994) was a woman from Riverside, California who was dubbed "the Toxic Lady" or "the Toxic Woman" by the media when several hospital workers became ill after exposure to her body and blood. She had been admitted to the emergency department while suffering from late-stage cervical cancer. While treating Ramirez, several hospital workers fainted and others experienced symptoms such as shortness of breath and muscle spasms. Five workers required hospitalization, one of whom remained in an intensive care unit for two weeks.

Shortly after arriving at the hospital, Ramirez died from complications related to cancer. The incident was initially considered to be a case of mass hysteria. An investigation by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory proposed that Ramirez had been self-administering dimethyl sulfoxide as a treatment for pain, which converted into dimethyl sulfate, an extremely poisonous and highly carcinogenic alkylating agent, via a series of chemical reactions in the emergency department. Although this theory has been endorsed by the Riverside Coroner's Office and published in the journal Forensic Science International, it is still a matter of debate in the scientific community.

🔗 Graphic design

Corporate Memphis is a term used (often disparagingly) to describe a flat, geometric art style, widely used in Big Tech illustrations in the late 2010s and early 2020s. It is often criticized as seeming uninspired and dystopian.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Weaponry 🔗 Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history 🔗 Military history/Post-Cold War

The Poseidon (Russian: Посейдон, "Poseidon", NATO reporting name Kanyon), previously known by Russian codename Status-6 (Russian: Статус-6), is an autonomous, nuclear-powered, and nuclear-armed unmanned underwater vehicle under development by Rubin Design Bureau, capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear payloads.

The Poseidon is one of the six new Russian strategic weapons announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 1 March 2018.