(Invidious link: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=BHdbsHFs2P0 )

Unexpected applications and a beautiful proof. [...] Home page: https://www.3blue1brown.com/

Credits:
Senia Sheydvasser: Co-writing and sphere deformation animations, made in Blender
Paul Dancstep: Those lovely fluffy sphere animations, made in Cinema4D
Vince Rubinetti: Music

Timestamps:
0:00 - To comb a hairy ball
1:24 - Applications
8:46 - The puzzle of one null point
12:12 - The proof outline
16:41 - Defining orientation
21:44 - Why inside-out is impossible
25:59 - 3b1b Talent
27:44 - Final food for thought

Video. American rock climber Alex Honnold took on Taiwan's tallest building on Sunday, without ropes or safety gear.

Sometimes science can be painfully slow.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/53727583

Came across this article a while back, and its a really interesting read. Since today is MLK day it seems like an appropriate day to share this. It's an especially important moment in history to remember and honor an American patriot who refused to be silent even when he became the target of a man who abused his powerful position in the federal government while hiding behind lies about protecting liberty and justice.

Acknowledging the ugly reality behind the myth of a man like J. Edgar Hoover also shouldn't be used to erase the truth about the good that was accomplished because a federal government used its powers to right injustices for all Americans, following the civil rights act. It should simply remind us that downplaying the difficult truths of our history only leaves us at risk of repeating our worst mistakes again in the future.

The legend is crumbling: the squat, bulldog features, set fiercely in tenacious pursuit of the TEN MOST WANTED CRIMINALS. The gangbuster nemesis of “Baby Face” Nelson, John Dillinger, Ma Barker. The scourge of would-be spies and saboteurs. The alert sentinel and fearless fighter holding back the tide of the Red Menace. The stubbornly independent guardian of evenhanded law enforcement, highmindedly fending off Congressmen and Presidents who sought to use his agency for political purposes.

J. Edgar Hoover deserved some of that billing, although it was overblown from the start. Now, just three years after his death, a sharply different portrait is emerging of the man who built the Federal Bureau of Investigation into the world’s most reputable police organization through 48 years as its famed Director. To be sure, there had always been a few blemishes—some from scattered revelations through the decades, some from his own reckless conduct as he grew older and fought to retain the power he felt slipping away. But now, under congressional and journalistic scrutiny, as well as in the writings of his once fearful agents, a darker picture is coming into view.

In these new shades Hoover is seen as a shrewd bureaucratic genius who cared less about crime than about perpetuating his crime-busting image. With his acute public relations sense, he managed to obscure his bureau’s failings while magnifying its sometime successes. Even his fervent anti-Communism has been cast into doubt; some former aides insist that he knew the party was never a genuine internal threat to the nation but a useful, popular target to ensure financial and public support for the FBI.

Even more serious flaws in the Hoover character and official performance have come to light:

Instead of insulating his bureau from politically sensitive Presidents, Hoover eagerly complied with improper requests from the men in the White House for information on potential opponents. If a President failed to ask for such information, the Director often volunteered it. He tapped the telephones of Government officials on request, perused files of politicians unasked, volunteered tidbits of gossip.

He was a petty man of towering personal hates. There was more than a tinge of racism in his vicious vendetta against Martin Luther King Jr. He had to be pushed into hiring black agents for the bureau.

His informers, infiltrators and wiretappers delved into the activities of even the most innocuous and nonviolent civil rights and antiwar groups, trampling on the rights of citizens to express grievances against their Government. His spies within potentially dangerous extremist groups sometimes provoked more violence than they prevented.

As an administrator, he was an erratic, unchallengeable czar, banishing agents to Siberian posts on whimsy, terrorizing them with torrents of implausible rules, insisting on conformity of thought as well as dress.

The fact that such a man could acquire and keep that kind of power raises disturbing questions not merely about the role of a national police in a democracy, but also about the political system that tolerated him for so long. The revelations show too that those political dissidents in years past who complained they were being harassed and spied upon were not so paranoid after all.

Meri-Tuuli Auer told her counsellor things about her life she didn't want her closest family to know.

The premier destination for Resume-Driven Development, Over-Engineering, and Resume-Padding. Why build simple solutions when you can build a distributed monolith?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41241375

A treatment that blocks an age-related protein restored cartilage in aging and injured joints by reprogramming existing cells rather than using stem cells.

"The world needs better ways to understand what's actually happening on the ground."

This is a screen recording of a 60 Minutes segment about the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison in El Salvador, which was intended to be aired December 22, 2025 but was pulled last minute for unclear reasons. Despite being pulled, it aired on Global-TV in Canada anyway.

Civilisation was built on alcohol. Technology may sober us up

Archived version: https://archive.is/20251220210436/https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2025/12/18/how-humankinds-10m-year-love-affair-with-booze-might-end

Spectacular Dubai night sky Red Bull Tetris World Final was won by a Turkish player.

Unidentified lights appeared above Kyushu's Genkai Nuclear Power Station. A possible drone intrusion was suspected, but no visual record was captured by the plant's security system. Experts say the incident reveals a weakness in aerial security. Globally, drone intrusions into key facilities are occurring with increasing frequency. For instance, at the Kori Nuclear Power Plant in South Korea, about 60 percent of incidents remain untraced. As drone technology continues to advance, how should Japan and the international community respond?

About 56,000 people control three times as much wealth as half of humanity. Here’s one way to illustrate that

The human body naturally creates small amounts of hydrogen sulfide to help regulate functions throughout the body, from cell metabolism to blood vessel dilation. The rapidly burgeoning field of gasotransmission shows that gases are major cellular messenger molecules, with particular importance in the brain. However, unlike conventional neurotransmitters, gases can’t be stored in vesicles. Thus, gases act through very different mechanisms to rapidly facilitate cellular messaging. In the case of hydrogen sulfide, this entails the modification of target proteins by a process called chemical sulfhydration, which modulates their activity, says Solomon Snyder, D.Phil., D.Sc., M.D., professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-corresponding author on the study.

Ambedkar Jayanti: Here is a look at the differences Dr Ambedkar had with Mahatma Gandhi over caste and untouchability.

Some terms from this article:

SC - Scheduled Castes, groups that have historically faced social discrimination, “untouchability,” and exclusion based on the caste system. They are often referred to as “Dalits.”

ST - Scheduled Tribes, communities that are recognized as indigenous or tribal populations. They are typically characterized by their distinct culture, language, and social practices.

OBC - Other Backwards Classes (yes, this is the official government term) - communities that are socially and educationally “backward” but do not fall under the SC or ST categories.

Brahmin and Shudra - Two of the four main social classes (Varna) in the Hindu caste system. Brahmin were historically superior, intellectuals and priests. Shudra were servants and laborers.

Would hate to have to clean up that mess.

You've probably never heard of the overclass, which is just how its members like it; they have a lot to answer for. They are the people who put Jim Carrey on magazine covers, who renamed blue-green "teal" and keep loaning money to Donald Trump--not out of any sinister conspiracy to ruin the country but because, well, it's their job. As "professionals" and "managers" they lay claim to an increasing share of the national income, but they wind up spending most of it at mirror-walled restaurants where they have to eat $10 arugula salads. They're famous for having opinions, but it's hard to know what these are, since they never call talk-radio shows. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent them, because otherwise we'd have no answer to the question, whatever happened to all those Yuppies we used to see running around, anyway?

We are witnessing an epochal moment in American sociology, the birth of a new class. There is, obviously, nothing new in the fact that some people in America have more money, influence and prestige than others. But designating them "the overclass" is not just another way for journalists to package the squeal of the skewered bourgeoisie. When "the poor" became "the underclass" it meant no longer thinking of them as just "a lot of people without money," but as the inheritors of a "culture of poverty." Similarly, the overclass refers to a group with a common culture and interests, with the obvious difference from the underclass that nobody is trying to get out of the overclass.