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π Republic of Molossia β A Micronation in the US
The Republic of Molossia, also known as Molossia, is a micronation claiming sovereignty over 1.28 acres of land near Dayton, Nevada. The micronation has not received recognition from any of the member states of the United Nations. It was founded by Kevin Baugh. On April 16, 2016, Baugh hosted a tour of Molossia, sponsored by the website Atlas Obscura. He continues to pay property taxes on the land to Storey County (the recognized local government), although he calls it "foreign aid". He has stated "We all want to think we have our own country, but you know the U.S. is a lot bigger".
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- "Republic of Molossia β A Micronation in the US" | 2022-08-31 | 16 Upvotes 7 Comments
π List of Creepypastas
Creepypastas are horror-related legends or images that have been copied and pasted around the Internet. These Internet entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal stories intended to scare, frighten, or discomfort readers. The term "Creepypasta" originates from Copypasta, made from the words "copy" and "paste".
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- "List of Creepypastas" | 2022-08-29 | 190 Upvotes 124 Comments
π Project Highwater
Project Highwater was an experiment carried out as part of two of the test flights of NASA's Saturn I launch vehicle (using battleship upper stages), successfully launched into a sub-orbital trajectory from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Highwater experiment sought to determine the effect of a large volume of water suddenly released into the ionosphere. The project answered questions about the effect of the diffusion of propellants in the event that a rocket was destroyed at high altitude.
The first flight, SA-2, took place on April 25, 1962. After the flight test of the rocket was complete and first stage shutdown occurred, explosive charges on the dummy upper stages destroyed the rocket and released 23,000 US gallons (87,000Β L) of ballast water weighing 95 short tons (86,000Β kg) into the upper atmosphere at an altitude of 65 miles (105Β km), eventually reaching an apex of 90 miles (145Β km).
The second flight, SA-3, launched on November 16, 1962, and involved the same payload. The ballast water was explosively released at the flight's peak altitude of 104 miles (167Β km). For both of these experiments, the resulting ice clouds expanded to several miles in diameter and lightning-like radio disturbances were recorded.
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- "Project Highwater" | 2022-08-29 | 66 Upvotes 9 Comments
π Valeriepieris Circle
The Valeriepieris circle is a South China Sea-centered circular region on the world map that is about 4,000 kilometers (2,500Β mi) in radius and contains more than half the worldβs population. It was named after the Reddit username of Ken Myers, a Texas ESL teacher who first drew attention to the phenomenon in 2013. The map became a meme and was featured in numerous forms of media.
In 2015, the circle was tested by Danny Quah, who verified the claim but moved the circle slightly to exclude most of Japan, and used a globe model rather than a map projection as well as more specific calculations. He calculated that, as of 2015, half of the world's population lived within a 3,300-kilometer (2,050Β mi) radius of the city of Mong Khet in Myanmar.
The most common visual of the circle, originally used by Myers and also featured by io9 and Tech in Asia, used the Winkel tripel projection.
π Wikipedia tests a new UI design
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes that are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Different characteristics tend to exist within any given population as a result of mutation, genetic recombination and other sources of genetic variation. Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection (including sexual selection) and genetic drift act on this variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or rare within a population. The evolutionary pressures that determine whether a characteristic would be common or rare within a population constantly change, resulting in a change in heritable characteristics arising over successive generations. It is this process of evolution that has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms and molecules.
The theory of evolution by natural selection was conceived independently by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the mid-19th century and was set out in detail in Darwin's book On the Origin of Species. Evolution by natural selection was first demonstrated by the observation that more offspring are often produced than can possibly survive. This is followed by three observable facts about living organisms: (1) traits vary among individuals with respect to their morphology, physiology and behaviour (phenotypic variation), (2) different traits confer different rates of survival and reproduction (differential fitness) and (3) traits can be passed from generation to generation (heritability of fitness). Thus, in successive generations members of a population are more likely to be replaced by the progenies of parents with favourable characteristics that have enabled them to survive and reproduce in their respective environments. In the early 20th century, other competing ideas of evolution such as mutationism and orthogenesis were refuted as the modern synthesis reconciled Darwinian evolution with classical genetics, which established adaptive evolution as being caused by natural selection acting on Mendelian genetic variation.
All life on Earth shares a last universal common ancestor (LUCA) that lived approximately 3.5β3.8Β billion years ago. The fossil record includes a progression from early biogenic graphite, to microbial mat fossils, to fossilised multicellular organisms. Existing patterns of biodiversity have been shaped by repeated formations of new species (speciation), changes within species (anagenesis) and loss of species (extinction) throughout the evolutionary history of life on Earth. Morphological and biochemical traits are more similar among species that share a more recent common ancestor, and can be used to reconstruct phylogenetic trees.
Evolutionary biologists have continued to study various aspects of evolution by forming and testing hypotheses as well as constructing theories based on evidence from the field or laboratory and on data generated by the methods of mathematical and theoretical biology. Their discoveries have influenced not just the development of biology but numerous other scientific and industrial fields, including agriculture, medicine, and computer science.
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- "Wikipedia tests a new UI design" | 2022-08-26 | 11 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Halligan Bar
A Halligan bar (also known as a Halligan tool or Hooligan tool) is a forcible entry tool used by firefighters.
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- "Halligan Bar" | 2022-08-22 | 80 Upvotes 34 Comments
π Kevinism
In German, Kevinismus ("Kevinism") is the negative preconception German people have of Germans with trendy, exotic-sounding first names considered to be an indicator of a low social class. The protypical example is Kevin, which like most such names came to Germany from Anglo-American culture. Sometimes Chantalismus ("Chantalism") is used as a female equivalent, from the French name Chantal.
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- "Kevinism" | 2022-08-23 | 37 Upvotes 1 Comments
π R vs. Adams
R v Adams [1996] EWCA Crim 10 and 222, are rulings in the United Kingdom that banned the expression in court of headline (soundbite), standalone Bayesian statistics from the reasoning admissible before a jury in DNA evidence cases, in favour of the calculated average (and maximal) number of matching incidences among the nation's population. The facts involved strong but inconclusive evidence conflicting with the DNA evidence, leading to a retrial.
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- "R vs. Adams" | 2022-08-22 | 13 Upvotes 6 Comments
π Amusing Ourselves to Death
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman. The book's origins lay in a talk Postman gave to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1984. He was participating in a panel on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and the contemporary world. In the introduction to his book, Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, rather than by Orwell's work, where they were oppressed by state control.
Postman's book has been translated into eight languages and sold some 200,000 copies worldwide. In 2005, Postman's son Andrew reissued the book in a 20th anniversary edition.
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- "Amusing Ourselves to Death" | 2022-11-18 | 17 Upvotes 3 Comments