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🔗 Germany 🔗 Brands 🔗 Automobiles 🔗 Germany/GDR

Trabant (German: [tʁaˈbant] ) is a series of small cars produced from 1957 until 1991 by former East German car manufacturer VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau. Four models were made: the Trabant 500, Trabant 600, Trabant 601, and the Trabant 1.1. The first model, the 500, was a relatively modern car when it was introduced.

It featured a duroplast body on a steel chassis, front-wheel drive, a transverse two-stroke engine, and independent suspension. Because this 1950s design remained largely unchanged until the introduction of the last model, the Trabant 1.1 in 1990, the Trabant became symbolic of the former East Germany's stagnant economy and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in general. Called "a spark plug with a roof", 3,096,999 Trabants were produced. Older models have been sought by collectors in the United States due to their low cost and fewer restrictions on the importation of antique cars. The Trabant also gained a following among car tuning and rallying enthusiasts.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Politics 🔗 Media 🔗 Journalism

Atrocity propaganda is the spreading of information about the crimes committed by an enemy, which can be factual, but often includes or features deliberate fabrications or exaggerations. This can involve photographs, videos, illustrations, interviews, and other forms of information presentation or reporting.

The inherently violent nature of war means that exaggeration and invention of atrocities often becomes the main staple of propaganda. Patriotism is often not enough to make people hate the enemy, and propaganda is also necessary. "So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations", wrote Harold Lasswell, "that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about who the public is to hate." Human testimony may be unreliable even in ordinary circumstances, but in wartime, it can be further muddled by bias, sentiment, and misguided patriotism.

According to Paul Linebarger, atrocity propaganda leads to real atrocities, as it incites the enemy into committing more atrocities, and, by heating up passions, it increases the chances of one's own side committing atrocities, in revenge for the ones reported in propaganda. Atrocity propaganda might also lead the public to mistrust reports of actual atrocities. In January 1944, Arthur Koestler wrote of his frustration at trying to communicate what he had witnessed in Nazi-occupied Europe: the legacy of anti-German stories during World War I, many of which were debunked in the postwar years, meant that these reports were received with considerable amounts of skepticism.

Like propaganda, atrocity rumors detailing exaggerated or invented crimes perpetrated by enemies are also circulated to vilify the opposing side. The application of atrocity propaganda is not limited to times of conflict but can be implemented to sway public opinion and create a Casus belli to declare war.

🔗 Biography 🔗 New York (state) 🔗 New York (state)/Columbia University

Randolph Silliman Bourne (; May 30, 1886 – December 22, 1918) was a progressive writer and intellectual born in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and a graduate of Columbia University. He is considered to be a spokesman for the young radicals living during World War I. His articles appeared in journals including The Seven Arts and The New Republic. Bourne is best known for his essays, especially his unfinished work "The State," discovered after he died. From this essay (which was published posthumously and included in Untimely Papers) comes the phrase "war is the health of the state" which laments the success of governments in arrogating authority and resources during conflicts.

🔗 Anthropology 🔗 Archaeology 🔗 Yorkshire

The Heslington Brain is a 2,600-year-old human brain found inside a skull buried in a pit in Heslington, Yorkshire, in England, by York Archaeological Trust in 2008. It is the oldest preserved brain ever found in Eurasia, and is believed to be the best-preserved ancient brain in the world. The skull was discovered during an archaeological dig commissioned by the University of York on the site of its new campus on the outskirts of the city of York. The area was found to have been the site of well-developed permanent habitation between 2,000–3,000 years before the present day.

A number of possibly ritualistic objects were found to have been deposited in several pits, including the skull, which had belonged to a man probably in his 30s. He had been hanged before being decapitated with a knife and his skull appears to have been buried immediately. The rest of the body was missing. Although it is not known why he was killed, it is possible that it may have been a human sacrifice or ritual murder.

The brain was found while the skull was being cleaned. It had survived despite the rest of the tissue on the skull having disappeared long ago. After being extracted at York Hospital, the brain was subjected to a range of medical and forensic examinations by York Archaeological Trust which found that it was remarkably intact, though it had shrunk to only about 20% of its original size. It showed few signs of decay, though most of its original material had been replaced by an as yet unidentified organic compound, due to chemical changes during burial.

According to the archaeologists and scientists who have examined it, the brain has a "resilient, tofu-like texture". It is not clear why the Heslington brain survived, although the presence of a wet, anoxic environment underground seems to have been an essential factor, and research is still ongoing to shed light on how the local soil conditions may have contributed to its preservation.

🔗 Geology 🔗 Geology/Meteorites

Thokcha (Tibetan: ཐོག་ལྕགས, Wylie: thog lcags; also alternatively Tibetan: གནམ་ལྕགས, Wylie: gnam lcags) are tektites and meteorites which serve as amulets. Typically high in iron content, these are traditionally believed to contain a magical, protective power comparable to Tibetan dzi beads. Most thokcha are made of a copper alloy.

The use of meteoric iron has been common throughout the history of ferrous metallurgy. Historically, thokcha were prized for the metallurgical fabrication of weapons, musical instruments, and sacred tools, such as the phurba. Thokcha are an auspicious addition in the metallurgical fabrication of sacred objects cast from panchaloha.

Writer Robert Beer regards meteoric iron as "the supreme substance for forging the physical representation of the vajra or other iron weapons." It was believed that these amulets had been tempered by the celestial gods before falling to Earth. Beer describes the metal falling from space as a metaphor for "the indivisibility of form and emptiness." Many meteorite fragments can be found in Tibet due to its high altitude and open landscape.

🔗 Oregon

The Neskowin Ghost Forest is the remnants of a Sitka spruce forest on the Oregon Coast of the United States. The stumps were likely created when an earthquake of the Cascadia subduction zone abruptly lowered the trees, that were then covered by mud from landslides or debris from a tsunami. Many of the stumps are over 2,000 years old.

The stumps were unearthed when turbulent storms swept away sand during the winter of 1997–1998. It is one of over thirty ghost forests along the Oregon and Washington Coast, though many appear as flat roots and not stumps. Most notably, Washington's ghost forest of red cedars was integral to the discovery of the Cascadia fault line. These ghost forests are evidence of significant, rapid changes in coastline – often due to seismic events such as the 1700 Cascadia earthquake.

The stumps at Neskowin are 2,000 years old, according to carbon dating. While living, the trees that make up the Neskowin Ghost Forest were similar to present-day coastal rain forest. They stood 150–200 feet (46–61 m) high and were at least 200 years old when buried. However, it's difficult to determine when or how the trees died, because it occurred before written history in the region. It was originally believed that these trees died slowly, as the roots were gradually submerged in saltwater due to changes in the sea levels. Yet research by geologists revealed that the soil, still present at the roots of the stumps, was buried abruptly – indicating a more sudden and dramatic event, like an earthquake, as the cause.

The ghost forest is near Proposal Rock. It is part of the Neskowin Beach State Recreation Site. The best time to see the stumps is low tide, during winter (due to January, February and March bringing the lowest tides of the year.)

🔗 Mathematics

In the mathematical fields of set theory and extremal combinatorics, a sunflower or ${\displaystyle \Delta }$-system is a collection of sets whose pairwise intersection is constant. This constant intersection is called the kernel of the sunflower.

The main research question arising in relation to sunflowers is: under what conditions does there exist a large sunflower (a sunflower with many sets) in a given collection of sets? The ${\displaystyle \Delta }$-lemma, sunflower lemma, and the Erdős-Rado sunflower conjecture give successively weaker conditions which would imply the existence of a large sunflower in a given collection, with the latter being one of the most famous open problems of extremal combinatorics.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Cold War 🔗 Computing/Early computers

Whirlwind I was a Cold War-era vacuum tube computer developed by the MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory for the U.S. Navy. Operational in 1951, it was among the first digital electronic computers that operated in real-time for output, and the first that was not simply an electronic replacement of older mechanical systems.

It was one of the first computers to calculate in bit-parallel (rather than bit-serial), and was the first to use magnetic-core memory.

Its development led directly to the Whirlwind II design used as the basis for the United States Air Force SAGE air defense system, and indirectly to almost all business computers and minicomputers in the 1960s, particularly because of the mantra "short word length, speed, people."

🔗 Environment 🔗 Death 🔗 Agriculture 🔗 Mammals 🔗 Agriculture/Livestock

A Judas goat is a trained goat used in general animal herding. The Judas goat is trained to associate with sheep or cattle, leading them to a specific destination. In stockyards, a Judas goat will lead sheep to slaughter, while its own life is spared. Judas goats are also used to lead other animals to specific pens and onto trucks. They have fallen out of use in recent times, but can still be found in various smaller slaughterhouses in some parts of the world, as well as conservation projects.

Cattle herders may use a Judas steer to serve the same purpose as a Judas goat. The technique, and the term, originated from cattle drives in the United States in the 1800s.

The term is a reference to Judas Iscariot, an apostle of Jesus Christ who betrayed Jesus in the Bible.

🔗 Internet culture

Zalgo text, also known as cursed text due to the nature of its use, is digital text that has been modified with numerous combining characters, Unicode symbols used to add diacritics above or below letters, to appear frightening or glitchy.

Named for a 2004 Internet creepypasta story that ascribes it to the influence of an eldritch deity, Zalgo text has become a significant component of many Internet memes, particularly in the "surreal meme" culture. The formatting of Zalgo text also allows it to be used to halt or impair certain computer functions, whether intentionally or not.