Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 Biology 🔗 Palaeontology 🔗 Geology

The Boring Billion, otherwise known as the Mid Proterozoic and Earth's Middle Ages, is the time period between 1.8 and 0.8 billion years ago (Ga) spanning the middle Proterozoic eon, characterized by more or less tectonic stability, climatic stasis, and slow biological evolution. It is bordered by two different oxygenation and glacial events, but the Boring Billion itself had very low oxygen levels and no evidence of glaciation.

The oceans may have been oxygen- and nutrient-poor and sulfidic (euxinia), populated by mainly anoxygenic purple bacteria, a type of chlorophyll-based photosynthetic bacteria which uses hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) instead of water and produces sulfur instead of oxygen. This is known as a Canfield ocean. Such composition may have caused the oceans to be black- and milky-turquoise instead of blue. (By contrast, during the much earlier Purple Earth phase the photosynthesis was retinal-based.)

Despite such adverse conditions, eukaryotes may have evolved around the beginning of the Boring Billion, and adopted several novel adaptations, such as various organelles, multicellularity, and possibly sexual reproduction, and diversified into plants, animals, and fungi at the end of this time interval. Such advances may have been important precursors to the evolution of large, complex life later in the Ediacaran and Phanerozoic. Nonetheless, prokaryotic cyanobacteria were the dominant lifeforms during this time, and likely supported an energy-poor food-web with a small number of protists at the apex level. The land was likely inhabited by prokaryotic cyanobacteria and eukaryotic proto-lichens, the latter more successful here probably due to the greater availability of nutrients than in offshore ocean waters.

🔗 Psychology 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Media

Parasocial interaction (PSI) refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television and on online platforms. Viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities as friends, despite having no or limited interactions with them. PSI is described as an illusionary experience, such that media audiences interact with personas (e.g., talk show hosts, celebrities, fictional characters, social media influencers) as if they are engaged in a reciprocal relationship with them. The term was coined by Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956.

A parasocial interaction, an exposure that garners interest in a persona, becomes a parasocial relationship after repeated exposure to the media persona causes the media user to develop illusions of intimacy, friendship, and identification. Positive information learned about the media persona results in increased attraction, and the relationship progresses. Parasocial relationships are enhanced due to trust and self-disclosure provided by the media persona. Media users are loyal and feel directly connected to the persona, much as they are connected to their close friends, by observing and interpreting their appearance, gestures, voice, conversation, and conduct. Media personas have a significant amount of influence over media users, positive or negative, informing the way that they perceive certain topics or even their purchasing habits. Studies involving longitudinal effects of parasocial interactions on children are still relatively new, according to developmental psychologist Sandra L. Calvert.

Social media introduces additional opportunities for parasocial relationships to intensify because it provides more opportunities for intimate, reciprocal, and frequent interactions between the user and persona. These virtual interactions may involve commenting, following, liking, or direct messaging. The consistency in which the persona appears could also lead to a more intimate perception in the eyes of the user.

🔗 Aviation 🔗 Soviet Union 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Aviation/Aviation accident 🔗 Military history/Cold War 🔗 Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history 🔗 Belgium

On 4 July 1989, a pilotless MiG-23 jet fighter of the Soviet Air Forces crashed into a house in Kortrijk, Belgium, killing one person. The pilot had ejected over an hour earlier near Kołobrzeg, Poland, after experiencing technical problems, but the aircraft continued flying for around 900 km (600 mi) before running out of fuel and descending into the ground.

🔗 Chess 🔗 Boxing

Chess boxing, or chessboxing, is a hybrid that combines two traditional pastimes: chess, a cerebral board game, and boxing, a physical sport. The competitors fight in alternating rounds of chess and boxing. Chessboxing was invented by French comic book artist Enki Bilal and adapted by Dutch performance artist Iepe Rubingh as an art performance and has subsequently grown into a competitive sport. Chessboxing is particularly popular in Germany, the United Kingdom, India, and Russia.

🔗 Economics

The men's underwear index (MUI) is an economic index that can supposedly detect the beginnings of a recovery during an economic slump. The premise is that men's underwear are a necessity in normal economic times and sales remain stable. During a severe downturn, demand for these goods changes as new purchases are deferred. Hence, men's purchasing habits for underwear (and that of their spouses on their behalf) is thought to be a good indicator of discretionary spending for consumption at large especially during turnaround periods.

This indicator is noted for being followed by former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Chicago 🔗 Biography/Actors and Filmmakers 🔗 College Basketball

John Michael Crichton (; October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) was an American author, screenwriter, film director, and film producer. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction genres, and heavily feature technology. His novels often explore technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and scientific background. He wrote, among other works, The Andromeda Strain (1969), The Great Train Robbery (1975), Congo (1980), Sphere (1987), Jurassic Park (1990), Rising Sun (1992), Disclosure (1994), The Lost World (1995), Airframe (1996), Timeline (1999), Prey (2002), State of Fear (2004), and Next (2006). Films he wrote and directed included Westworld (1973), Coma (1978), The Great Train Robbery (1979), Looker (1981), and Runaway (1984).

🔗 Japan

The Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel (Japanese: 首都圏外郭放水路, Hepburn: shutoken gaikaku hōsuiro), is an underground water infrastructure project in Kasukabe, Saitama, Japan. It is the world's largest underground flood water diversion facility, built to mitigate overflowing of the city's major waterways and rivers during rain and typhoon seasons. It is located between Showa in Tokyo and Kasukabe in Saitama prefecture, on the outskirts of the city of Tokyo in the Greater Tokyo Area, Japan.

Work on the project started in 1992 and was completed by early 2006. It consists of five concrete containment silos with heights of 65 m and diameters of 32 m, connected by 6.4 km of tunnels, 50 m beneath the surface, as well as a large water tank with a height of 25.4 m, with a length of 177m, with a width of 78m, and with 59 massive pillars connected to 78 10 MW (13,000 hp) pumps that can pump up to 200 tons of water into the Edo River per second.

"Ryukyukan" for Underground Exploration Museum of The Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel is also a tourist attraction and can be visited for 3.000 Yen; however, as the tours are conducted in Japanese, a Japanese speaker must be present in the group to act as a translator for non-Japanese speakers.

🔗 Technology 🔗 Environment 🔗 Automobiles 🔗 Environment/Green vehicle

A compressed-air car is a compressed-air vehicle powered by pressure vessels filled with compressed air. It is propelled by the release and expansion of the air within a motor adapted to compressed air. The car might be powered solely by air, or combined (as in a hybrid electric vehicle) with other fuels such as gasoline, diesel, or an electric plant with regenerative braking.

Compressed-air cars use a thermodynamic process. Air cools when expanding and heats when compressed. Thermal energy losses in the compressor and tankage reduce the capacity factor of compressed air systems.

This technology might develop into an inexpensive, clean transportation technology. The energy, vehicles and compressors might be produced easily by decentralized methods, even circular industry. Using plastic might permit open source fabrication using numerical control, including additive manufacturing. The compressed air for such vehicles might be produced easily by common types of renewable energy. For example, multistage air compressors and intercoolers or hydraulic pumps might be attached directly to trompes, hydropower, VAWT wind turbines or stirling engines using a solar concentrator. Direct mechanical compression avoids the Carnot inefficiencies of heat engines. Insulated storage of compressed air avoids energy conversion and battery storage. Heat-based systems might use tankage of solar-heated molten salts driving a heat exchanger rather than an onboard heat recovery system. Electric energy, electric grids and their issues might be avoided.

🔗 Fashion

The Great Male Renunciation (French: Grande Renonciation masculine) is the historical phenomenon at the end of the 18th century in which Western men stopped using bright colours, elaborate shapes and variety in their dress, which were left to women's clothing. Instead men concentrated on minute differences of cut, and the quality of the plain cloth.

Coined by the Anglo-German psychologist John Flügel in 1930, it is considered a major turning point in the history of clothing in which the men relinquished their claim to adornment and beauty. Flugel asserted that men "abandoned their claim to be considered beautiful" and "henceforth aimed at being only useful". The Great Renunciation encouraged the establishment of the suit's monopoly on male dress codes at the beginning of the 19th century.

🔗 Business

A proxy firm (also a proxy advisor, proxy adviser, proxy voting agency, vote service provider or shareholder voting research provider) provides services to shareholders (in most cases an institutional investor of some type) to vote their shares at shareholder meetings of, usually, quoted companies.

The typical services provided include agenda translation, provision of vote management software, voting policy development, company research, and vote administration including vote execution. According to their websites, not all firms provide voting recommendations and those that do may simply execute client voting instructions.

The votes executed are called "Proxy Votes" because the shareholder usually does not attend the meeting and instead sends instructions - a proxy appointment - for a third party, usually the chairman of the meeting to vote shares in accordance with the instructions given on the voting card.