October 3

Better Than News

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  Barbie Darko: Commitment to Sparkle Motion is a science fiction psychological comedy film directed by Greta Gerwig and Richard Kelly.

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  Hamlet is a 1979 science fiction horror film written and directed by Ridley Scott and based on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare.

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  Please Allow Me to Excavate Myself is a 1999 British-American archaeology film about an adventurer (Brendan Frasier) who travels to Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead, with a librarian and her older brother, where they accidentally awaken Imhotep (Mick Jagger), a rock star high priest with supernatural powers.

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  Magnum, E.T. is an American science fiction crime drama television series starring Tom Selleck as E.T. Magnum, an extraterrestrial private investigator (P.I.) living on Oahu, Hawaii.

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  Suddenly Satellite is an advanced orbital satellite control system which also functions as a salad spinner.

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  Z2 is a 2013 political thriller horror film based on events surrounding the release of [REDACTED] under the Greek Junta and the subsequent spread of a worldwide fascism plague.

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  The Undersea World of Spock Cousteau is a 2021 drama film about a scientist (Leonard Nimoy) who suffers a time-travel brain injury which causes others to believe that he is Jacques Cousteau. Co-starring marine biologist Steven Zissou as "Cuddle Squid".

Beyond Plausible

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  "Wordache Tonight" is a song recorded by American rock band the Eagles about Wordle.

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  Drāno is a psychological horror janitorial industry training film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

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  Superluminal is a science fiction psychological thriller film about a writer (Karl Jones) who becomes obsessed with the speed of light.

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  Escape from Discovery One is an American neon-noir science fiction action film directed by John Carpenter and Stanley Kubrick, starring Keir Dullea, Douglas Rain, and Kurt Russell.

In Other Words

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  Boogie Down is a Marxist nightclub franchise.

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  Kick the War Habit.

Are You Sure

A Caley graph encodes the abstract structure of a group using a specified, usually finite, set of generators for the group.

This Cayley graph shows the free group on two generators a and b.

• ... that mathematician Arthur Cayley (16 August 1821 – 26 January 1895) was the first to define the concept of a group in the modern way (as a set with a binary operation satisfying certain laws); and that formerly, when mathematicians spoke of "groups", they had meant permutation groups?

• ... that mathematician Reginald Robin Farquharson (3 October 1930 – 1 April 1973) worked on game theory because he was interested in both mathematics and politics; and that Farquharson's doctoral thesis, which analyzed voting systems, was influential when later published as Theory of Voting (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970)?

• ... that 2001: A Species Odyssey is a short documentary film about the ethical dilemma faced by two astronauts (Frank Bowman and David Poole) when they discover an alien-human hybrid child stowed away on their spaceship?

• ... that physicist and astrophysicist Robert F. Christy was distraught at the outcome of the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing; and that when Christy encountered Edward Teller, who had testified against Oppenheimer, Christy publicly refused to shake Teller's hand?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1842: Mathematician Arthur Cayley admitted to fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, at age 21, younger than any other fellow at the College.

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  1881: Mathematician and religious leader Orson Pratt dies. As part of his system of Mormon theology, Pratt embraced the philosophical doctrine of hylozoism.

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  1882: Canterbury scrying engine reprogrammed to detect and expose crimes against mathematical constants.

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  1891: Mathematician Édouard Lucas dies. He studied the Fibonacci sequence; the related Lucas sequences and Lucas numbers are named after him.

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  1930: Mathematician Robin Farquharson born. He will write an influential analysis of voting systems in his doctoral thesis, later published as Theory of Voting.

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  2006: Mathematician and physicist John Crank dies. He worked on the numerical solution of partial differential equations; his work with Phyllis Nicolson on the heat equation resulted in the Crank–Nicolson method.

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  2012: Physicist and astrophysicist Robert F. Christy dies. He is generally credited with the insight that a solid sub-critical mass of plutonium could be explosively compressed into supercriticality, a great simplification of earlier concepts of implosion requiring hollow shells.

Topic of the Day

Non-Fungible Tokens

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  The Lord of the NFTs is an epic fantasy NFT film about a software developer (Sauron) who creates the One NFT to maximize return on investment from Men, Dwarves, and Elves.

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  N for NFT is a 1973 docudrama film by Orson Welles. about Elmyr de Hory, a professional NFT forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a meandering investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, as well as the basis of the value of art.

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  The NFTers is a 1990 American neo-noir NFT crime thriller film about three grifters desperate to sell their non-fungible tokens at a profit.

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  ScarNFTs is 1983 crime NFT film about Cuban refugee Tony Montana (Al Pacino), who arrives penniless in 1980s Miami and goes on to sell non-fungible tokens to a powerful drug lord.