Random Articles (Page 9)
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π 1K ZX Chess
1K ZX Chess is a 1982 chess program for the unexpanded Sinclair ZX81.
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- "1K ZX Chess" | 2021-04-26 | 14 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "1K ZX Chess" | 2018-09-04 | 43 Upvotes 22 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 Andrew Johnson's drunk vice-presidential inaugural address
Andrew Johnson was drunk when he made his inaugural address as Vice President of the United States on March 4, 1865. Multiple sources suggest Johnson had been drunk for at least a week prior, he drank heavily the night before the inauguration, and he consumed either three glasses of whisky or one glass of French brandy the morning of the ceremony. Witnesses variously described Johnson's speech as incoherent, inane, self-aggrandizing, repetitive, hostile, sloppy, and overly long. He kissed the Bible when he took the oath of office, and he was too drunk to administer the oath of office to incoming senators. The incident presaged some of Johnson's difficulties as chief executive when he succeeded to the presidency 42 days later, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
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- "Andrew Johnson's drunk vice-presidential inaugural address" | 2024-03-06 | 57 Upvotes 10 Comments
π Guthrie's One Trial Theory
Edwin Ray Guthrie (; January 9, 1886 in Lincoln, Nebraska β April 23, 1959 in Seattle, Washington) was a behavioral psychologist. He first worked as a mathematics teacher, and philosopher, but switched to psychology when he was 33. He spent most of his career at the University of Washington, where he became full professor and then emeritus professor in psychology.
Guthrie is best known for his theory that all learning was based on a stimulusβresponse association. This was variously described as one trial theory, non-reinforcement, and contiguity learning. The theory was:
- "A combination of stimuli which has accompanied a movement will on its recurrence tend to be followed by that movement".
One word that his coworkers and students used to describe Guthrie and his theories was "simple", and perhaps he did prefer to use simple terms to illustrate complex ideas. However, "It is undoubtedly true that many reviews of Guthrie in the literature have mistaken incompleteness for simplicity".
His simple nature carried into his teachings where he took great pride in working with and teaching students.
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- "Guthrie's One Trial Theory" | 2020-05-02 | 11 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine
Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine is a 1961 LP featuring the actor Ronald Reagan. In this more than ten-minute recording, Reagan "criticized Social Security for supplanting private savings and warned that subsidized medicine would curtail Americans' freedom" and that "pretty soon your son won't decide when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him." Roger Lowenstein called the LP part of a "stealth program" conducted by the American Medical Association (see Operation Coffee Cup).
Discussed on
- "Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine" | 2019-10-20 | 14 Upvotes 24 Comments
π TSLAQ
TSLAQ is a loose, international collective of largely anonymous short-sellers, skeptics, and researchers who openly criticize Tesla, Inc. and its CEO, Elon Musk. The group primarily organizes on Twitter, often using the $TSLAQ cashtag, and Reddit to coordinate efforts and share news, opinions, and analysis about the company and its stock. Edward Niedermeyer, in his book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors (2019), establishes the doxxing of Lawrence Fossi, a Seeking Alpha writer and Tesla short seller who uses the pseudonym Montana Skeptic, in July 2018 as the catalyst for the formation of TSLAQ. The group was the subject of a Real Vision video which included interviews with prominent members @TESLACharts and @Paul91701736.
TSLAQ highlights what they claim to be a variety of dangerous, deceptive, unlawful and fraudulent business practices by Tesla. Regular criticisms include knowingly selling Model S cars with a design flaw that could cause fires, reselling defective "lemon" cars, performing stealth recalls and requiring customers to sign non-disclosure agreements for "goodwill" repairs, issuing over-the-air updates to cover-up a fire risk in their batteries, publishing misleading safety statistics, delivering cars with lower-performance hardware than promised, taking months to issue customers refunds, and selling a Full Self-Driving package with the promise 1 million "robotaxis" by the end of 2020 despite the technology not yet being available. TSLAQ has also criticized Tesla and Musk for their attempts to intimidate and silence whistleblowers who have spoken out against the company. In addition, the group has highlighted Tesla's history of environmental violations, disregard for workers' safety, and Musk's excessive compensation package. As financial media producer Demetri Kofinas put it, TSLAQ believes Musk "to be a carnival barker running the biggest fraud in corporate America."
On occasion, TSLAQ has exchanged online verbal hostilities with Tesla fans and Elon Musk, who once tweeted with a prominent member and also tweeted personal information of another. While explicitly an online group, off-line activities performed by subgroups include aerial reconnaissance and on-the-ground observations of parking lots used by Tesla for storage.
π Eleanor Cross
The Eleanor crosses were a series of twelve tall and lavishly decorated stone monuments topped with crosses erected in a line down part of the east of England. King Edward I had them built between 1291 and about 1295 in memory of his beloved wife Eleanor of Castile. The King and Queen had been married for 36 years and she stayed by the Kingβs side through his many travels. While on a royal progress, she died in the East Midlands in November 1290, perhaps due to fever. The crosses, erected in her memory, marked the nightly resting-places along the route taken when her body was transported to Westminster Abbey near London.
The crosses stood at Lincoln, Grantham and Stamford, all in Lincolnshire; Geddington and Hardingstone in Northamptonshire; Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire; Woburn and Dunstable in Bedfordshire; St Albans and Waltham (now Waltham Cross) in Hertfordshire; Cheapside in London; and Charing (now Charing Cross) in Westminster.
Three of the medieval monuments β those at Geddington, Hardingstone and Waltham Cross β survive more or less intact; but the other nine, other than a few fragments, are lost. The largest and most ornate of the twelve was the Charing Cross. Several memorials and elaborated reproductions of the crosses have been erected, including the Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross at Charing Cross Station (built 1865).
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- "Eleanor Cross" | 2023-12-11 | 47 Upvotes 21 Comments
π The Toynbee Convector
"The Toynbee Convector" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury. First published in Playboy magazine in 1984, the story was subsequently featured in a 1988 short story collection also titled The Toynbee Convector.
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- "The Toynbee Convector" | 2021-10-16 | 76 Upvotes 40 Comments
π List of photographs considered the most important
This is a list of photographs considered the most important in surveys where authoritative sources review the history of the medium not limited by time period, region, genre, topic, or other specific criteria. These images may be referred to as the most important, most iconic, or most influentialβbut they are all considered key images in the history of photography.
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- "List of photographs considered the most important" | 2023-09-12 | 11 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Parable of the Broken Window
The parable of the broken window was introduced by French economist FrΓ©dΓ©ric Bastiat in his 1850 essay "That Which We See and That Which We Do Not See" ("Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas") to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is not actually a net benefit to society.
The parable seeks to show how opportunity costs, as well as the law of unintended consequences, affect economic activity in ways that are unseen or ignored. The belief that destruction is good for the economy is consequently known as the broken window fallacy or glazier's fallacy.
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- "Parable of the Broken Window" | 2023-08-20 | 21 Upvotes 15 Comments