Random Articles (Page 6)
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π Sex drive-in
A sex drive-in or sex box is a car garage (or similarly shielded location) that is designed to allow prostitution to take place using cars, and can be found in a few countries in Europe. Generally the facilities are created by local authorities to put some control on where prostitution occurs and to provide increased safety.
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- "Sex drive-in" | 2020-02-26 | 35 Upvotes 18 Comments
π Chester Carlson β Inventor of Xerography
Chester Floyd Carlson (February 8, 1906 β September 19, 1968) was an American physicist, inventor, and patent attorney born in Seattle, Washington.
He is best known for inventing electrophotography, the process performed today by millions of photocopiers worldwide. Carlson's process produced a dry copy, as contrasted with the wet copies then produced by the mimeograph process. Carlson's process was renamed xerography, a term that means "dry writing."
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- "Chester Carlson β Inventor of Xerography" | 2017-07-02 | 23 Upvotes 3 Comments
π CityEl Electric Car from 1992
The CityEl is a 3-wheel lightweight electric car originally designed and manufactured in Denmark, but currently made in Germany by Citycom GmbH.
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- "CityEl Electric Car from 1992" | 2021-10-16 | 42 Upvotes 20 Comments
π IBM Common User Access
Common User Access (CUA) is a standard for user interfaces to operating systems and computer programs. It was developed by IBM and first published in 1987 as part of their Systems Application Architecture. Used originally in the MVS/ESA, VM/CMS, OS/400, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows operating systems, parts of the CUA standard are now implemented in programs for other operating systems, including variants of Unix. It is also used by Java AWT and Swing.
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- "IBM Common User Access" | 2021-05-20 | 32 Upvotes 21 Comments
π Wikipedia: Thagomizer
A thagomizer () is the distinctive arrangement of four spikes on the tails of stegosaurine dinosaurs. These spikes are believed to have been a defensive measure against predators.
The arrangement of spikes originally had no distinct name; cartoonist Gary Larson invented the name "thagomizer" in 1982 as a joke in his comic strip The Far Side, and it was gradually adopted as an informal term used within scientific circles, research, and education.
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- "Thagomizer" | 2023-08-03 | 31 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Wikipedia: Thagomizer" | 2021-08-02 | 15 Upvotes 1 Comments
π The Baumol Effect
In economics, the Baumol effect, also known as Baumol's cost disease, is the rise of wages in jobs that have experienced little or no increase in labor productivity, in response to rising salaries in other jobs that have experienced higher productivity growth. The phenomenon was described by William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen in the 1960s and is an example of cross elasticity of demand.
The rise of wages in jobs without productivity gains derives from the requirement to compete for workers with jobs that have experienced productivity gains and so can naturally pay higher salaries, just as classical economics predicts. For instance, if the retail sector pays its managers low wages, they may decide to quit and get jobs in the automobile sector, where wages are higher because of higher labor productivity. Thus, retail managers' salaries increase not due to labor productivity increases in the retail sector, but due to productivity and corresponding wage increases in other industries.
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- "Baumol's Cost Disease" | 2025-12-14 | 138 Upvotes 135 Comments
- "The Baumol Effect" | 2023-03-19 | 127 Upvotes 77 Comments
π Street dogs in Moscow learn to ride the subway
The city of Moscow, Russia hosts a large population of free-ranging dogs. Many operate in packs and have become accustomed to seeking food from passersby. Some of them who frequent or inhabit the subway have attracted international attention for learning how to use the trains to commute between various locations.
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- "Street dogs in Moscow learn to ride the subway" | 2018-07-23 | 63 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Last universal ancestor
The last universal common ancestor (LUCA), also called the last universal ancestor (LUA),Β or concestor, is the most recent population of organisms from which all organisms now living on Earth have a common descent, the most recent common ancestor of all current life on Earth. (A related concept is that of progenote.) LUCA is not thought to be the first life on Earth but only one of many early organisms, all the others becoming extinct.
While there is no specific fossil evidence of LUCA, it can be studied by comparing the genomes of all modern organisms, its descendants. By this means, a 2016 study identified a set of 355 genes most likely to have been present in LUCA. (However, some of those genes could have developed later, then spread universally by horizontal gene transfer between archaea and bacteria.) The genes describe a complex life form with many co-adapted features, including transcription and translation mechanisms to convert information from DNA to RNA to proteins. The study concluded that the LUCA probably lived in the high-temperature water of deep sea vents near ocean-floor magma flows.
Studies from 2000 to 2018 have suggested an increasingly ancient time for LUCA. In 2000, estimations suggested LUCA existed 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago in the Paleoarchean era, a few hundred million years after the earliest fossil evidence of life, for which there are several candidates ranging in age from 3.48 to 4.28 billion years ago. A 2018 study from the University of Bristol, applying a molecular clock model, places the LUCA shortly after 4.5 billion years ago, within the Hadean.
Charles Darwin first proposed the theory of universal common descent through an evolutionary process in his book On the Origin of Species in 1859: "Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed." Later biologists have separated the problem of the origin of life from that of the LUCA.
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- "Last universal ancestor" | 2015-04-05 | 63 Upvotes 24 Comments
π Mozart: Leck mich im Arsch
Leck mich im Arsch ('Kiss my arse!', or literally 'Lick me in the arse') is a canon in B-flat major composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K.Β 231 (K.Β 382c), with lyrics in German. It was one of a set of at least six canons probably written in Vienna in 1782. Sung by six voices as a three-part round, it is thought to be a party piece for his friends. The main theme is derived from the final movement of Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 3 in G-Major.
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- "Mozart: Leck mich im Arsch" | 2020-12-04 | 107 Upvotes 39 Comments
π JosΓ© Mujica
JosΓ© Alberto "Pepe" Mujica Cordano (Spanish:Β [xoΛse muΛxika]; born 20 May 1935) is a Uruguayan politician and farmer who served as the 40th President of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. A former guerrilla with the Tupamaros, he was tortured and imprisoned for 14 years during the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. A member of the Broad Front coalition of left-wing parties, Mujica was Minister of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries from 2005 to 2008 and a Senator afterwards. As the candidate of the Broad Front, he won the 2009 presidential election and took office as President on 1 March 2010.
He has been described as "the world's humblest head of state" due to his austere lifestyle and his donation of around 90 percent of his $12,000 monthly salary to charities that benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs. An outspoken critic of capitalismβs focus on stockpiling material possessions which do not contribute to human happiness, Pepe is often seen riding his 60-year-old bicycle. The Times Higher Education called him the "philosopher president" in 2015, a play on words of Plato's conception of the philosopher king.
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- "JosΓ© Mujica" | 2022-02-24 | 17 Upvotes 2 Comments