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🔗 California 🔗 Plants

Hyperion is a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) in California that is the world's tallest known living tree, measured at 116.07 metres (380.8 ft) tall in 2019.

Hyperion was discovered on August 25, 2006, by naturalists Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor. The tree height of 115.55 m (379.1 ft) was verified by Stephen Sillett in 2006 using both a laser range finder and a fiberglass tape to measure the tree from the base to the crown. The tree has grown since then to reach 116.07 metres (380.8 ft) recorded in 2019. Hyperion was found in a remote area of Redwood National Park, inside of the originally designated park boundaries of 1968. The park also houses the second-, fourth- and fifth-tallest known trees, coast redwoods named Helios, Icarus, and Daedalus, which respectively measured 377, 371 and 363 feet in 2022.

The tree was named after the titan Hyperion from Greek mythology.

Hyperion is estimated to be between 600 and 800 years old and contain 530 m³ (18,600 cu ft) of wood.

The exact location of Hyperion is nominally secret but is available via internet search. However, in July 2022, the Redwood Park superintendent closed the entire area around the tree, citing "devastation of the habitat surrounding Hyperion" caused by visitors. Its base was trampled by the overuse and as a result ferns no longer grow around the tree. Anyone who gets too close could face up to six months in jail and a $5,000 maximum fine.

🔗 Theatre 🔗 Elizabethan theatre

The Parnassus plays are three satiric comedies, or full-length academic dramas, each divided into five acts. They date from between 1598 and 1602. They were performed in London by students for an audience of students as part of the Christmas festivities of St John's College at Cambridge University. It is not known who wrote them.

The titles of the three plays are

• The Pilgrimage to Parnassus
• The Return from Parnassus
• The Return from Parnassus: Or the Scourge of Simony

The second and third plays are sometimes referred to as Part One and Part Two of The Return from Parnassus.

The trilogy raises an Elizabethan question: After college – what comes next? Francis Bacon in his essay "Of Seditions and Troubles" pointed to a 16th-century problem – universities were producing more scholars than there were opportunities for them. The University Wits – Lily, Marlowe, Green, Peele, Nashe and Lodge – were scholars who found employment in theatre, not perhaps their first choice, but there was little else for them. Their great education tended to discourage them from taking up the humble trades of their fathers. The Parnassus plays may not provide a solution, but they at least illustrated the fears of such ambitious young scholastic dreamers.

For the most part, the plays follow the experiences of two students, Philomusus and Studioso. The first play tells the story of two pilgrims on a journey to Parnassus. The plot is an allegory understood to represent the story of two students progressing through the traditional course of education known as the trivium. The accomplishment of their education is represented by Mount Parnassus. The second play drops the allegory and describes the two graduates' unsuccessful attempts to make a living, as does the third play, which is the only one that was contemporaneously published. New in the third play is the serious treatment of issues regarding censorship.

It has been said that this trilogy of plays "in originality and breadth of execution, and in complex relationship to the academic, literary, theatrical and social life of the period, ranks supreme among the extant memorials of the university stage", and that they are "among the most inexplicably neglected key documents of Shakespeare's age".

🔗 Computing 🔗 Linux

The ASUS Eee PC is a netbook computer line from Asus, and a part of the ASUS Eee product family. At the time of its introduction in late 2007, it was noted for its combination of a lightweight, Linux-based operating system, solid-state drive (SSD), and relatively low cost. Newer models added the options of Microsoft Windows operating system and rotating media hard disk drives (HDD), and initially retailed for up to 500 euros.

The first Eee PC was a milestone in the personal computer business, launching the netbook category of small, low-cost laptops in the West (in Japan, subnotebooks had long been a staple in computing). According to Asus, the name Eee derives from "the three Es", an abbreviation of its advertising slogan for the device: "Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play".

In January 2013, ASUS officially ended production of their Eee PC series, citing declining sales due to consumers favoring tablets and Ultrabooks over netbooks. However, they subsequently restarted the line with the release of the EeeBook series in 2015.

🔗 Technology 🔗 Computing 🔗 Robotics 🔗 Artificial Intelligence

Vibe coding, sometimes spelled as vibecoding, is an AI-powered programming practice where you surrender to the "vibes" and power of the AI, while ignoring the details of the generated code. After describing a problem in a few sentences, you watch as the AI codes a custom solution such as an app or website. Vibe coding may feel like sorcery. Amateur programmers can now produce software, with limited features and sometimes imperfectly, that previously would have needed a software team. The practice defies the belief in the software industry that software engineering demands great skill.

🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 United States/Military history - U.S. military history 🔗 Military history/Military biography 🔗 Biography/military biography 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 United States/Vermont

Ronald James Read (October 23, 1921 – June 2, 2014) was an American philanthropist, investor, janitor, and gas station attendant. Read grew up in Dummerston, Vermont, in an impoverished farming household. He walked or hitchhiked 4 mi (6.4 km) daily to his high school and was the first high school graduate in his family. He enlisted in the United States Army during World War II, serving in Italy as a military policeman. Upon an honorable discharge from the military in 1945, Read returned to Brattleboro, Vermont, where he worked as a gas station attendant and mechanic for about 25 years. Read retired for one year and then took a part-time janitor job at J. C. Penney where he worked for 17 years until 1997.

Read died in 2014. He received media coverage in numerous newspapers and magazines after bequeathing US$1.2 million to Brooks Memorial Library and $4.8 million to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. Read amassed a fortune of almost $8 million by investing in dividend-producing stocks, avoiding the stocks of companies he did not understand such as technology companies, living frugally, and being a buy and hold investor in a diversified portfolio of stocks with a heavy concentration in blue chip companies.

🔗 United States 🔗 Politics 🔗 Cold War 🔗 Vietnam

The madman theory is a political theory commonly associated with the foreign policy of U.S. president Richard Nixon and his administration, who tried to make the leaders of hostile communist bloc countries think Nixon was irrational and volatile so that they would avoid provoking the U.S. in fear of an unpredictable response.

The premise of madman theory is that it makes seemingly incredible threats seem credible. For instance, in an era of mutually assured destruction, threats by a rational leader to escalate a dispute may seem suicidal and thus easily dismissible by adversaries. However, a leader's suicidal threats may seem credible if the leader is believed to be irrational.

International relations scholars have been skeptical of madman theory as a strategy for success in coercive bargaining. Prominent "madmen", such as Nixon, Nikita Khrushchev, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi failed to win coercive disputes. One difficulty is making others believe you are genuinely a madman. Another difficulty is the inability of a madman to assure others that they will not be punished even if they yield to a particular demand. One study found that madman theory is frequently counterproductive, but that it can be effective under certain conditions. Another study found that there are both bargaining advantages and disadvantages to perceived madness.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States

18F was a digital services agency within the Technology Transformation Services department of the General Services Administration (GSA) of the United States Government. 18F helped other government agencies build, buy, and share technology products. The team consisted of designers, software engineers, strategists, and product managers who collaborated with other agencies to fix technical problems, build products, and improve public service through technology. As part of wide-sweeping federal layoffs at the beginning of the second Trump administration that were carried out in connection with the Department of Government Efficiency, the agency was eliminated in March, 2025.

🔗 Books

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers is a 1998 book by Tom Standage. The book was first published in September 1998 through Walker & Company and discusses the development and uses of the electric telegraph during the second half of the 19th century and some of the similarities the telegraph shared with the Internet of the late 20th century.

The central thesis of the book argues that of these two technologies, it was the telegraph that was the more significant, since the ability to communicate globally at all in real-time was a qualitative shift, while according to Standage the change brought on by the modern Internet was merely a quantitative shift.

🔗 Catholicism 🔗 Gambling 🔗 European Microstates 🔗 European Microstates/Vatican City

Gambling on papal elections has at least a 500-year history. Betting on 16th-century papal conclaves are among the first documented examples of gambling on election outcomes. During the same period, gambling was also common on the outcomes of secular Italian elections, such as that of the Doge of Venice. Leighton Vaughan Williams and David Paton employ a unique dataset to investigate betting on the 2013 papal election, set within the context of the history of betting on papal conclaves.

🔗 Computing

In computer programming, indentation style is a convention, a.k.a. style, governing the indentation of blocks of source code. An indentation style generally involves consistent width of whitespace (indentation size) before each line of a block, so that the lines of code appear to be related, and dictates whether to use space or tab characters for the indentation whitespace.