Newest Questions

7 votes

1 answer

450 views

I just came across an article on Peter Putnam, allegedly a 20th century physicist who invented something like reinforcement learning (though the details are unclear) and was forgotten until a recent ...

7 votes

1 answer

9k views

A clip on Instagram going run has Trump saying "smart people don't like me." It has 50,000 likes. It was also picked up by Hindustan Times., which was unable to verify it. Did Trump state ...

3 votes

0 answers

593 views

I'd like to fact-check this claim: While it’s hard to quantify who or what is writing the bulk of code these days, the consensus is that there's essentially zero chance that 90 percent of it is being ...

0 votes

1 answer

282 views

The quote "history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme" is attributed to Mark Twain, but I've never seen it attributed to one of his published works. Did he ever use it in an article, ...

3 votes

1 answer

929 views

The honey swirl test1, 2, 3 claims real honey remembers the shape of the honeycomb. You can bring this out by swirling water over the honey. After 30 seconds you'll see a honeycomb pattern. Is this ...

11 votes

1 answer

588 views

Wikipedia's article on Zaleucus as well as the one on Locri cite a rule about proposing a new law: Anyone who proposed a new law, or the alteration of one already existing, had to appear before the ...

8 votes

1 answer

453 views

According to the SEP page on David Hume (see my emphasis in bold): "Kant reported that Hume’s work woke him from his "dogmatic slumbers" (Prolegomena, Introduction) and Jeremy Bentham remarked ...

1 vote

0 answers

251 views

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Twitter . @kwelkernbc pushed back last week when I warned that the BLS jobs data would show a massive downward revision. Now it’s official: 2024 job ...

3 votes

1 answer

333 views

I'm not sure if slashdot still counts as notable, but that post links to the original article in The Guardian claiming that: It has been estimated that during the height of the coronavirus pandemic ...

7 votes

1 answer

838 views

A 2008 opinion piece in the Daily Mail, written by conservative political commentator, Peter Schweizer claims: Studies also indicate that those on the Left are less likely to give to charity or to ...

2 votes

0 answers

575 views

I was surprised by a Redditor comment (nearly 5k score) today: They made beats headphones with weights so they were heavier to make people think they were higher quality. And when I googled it I ...

19 votes

1 answer

7k views

Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has said that Trump was an undercover FBI informant investigating Epstein (Yahoo News): Mr Johnson added: "When he first heard the rumour, he kicked him out of Mar-...

4 votes

1 answer

621 views

I casually came across the following quote attributed to Booker T. Washington: A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good, just because it's accepted by a ...

12 votes

1 answer

3k views

This answer in Buddhism.SE quotes from the book, The Art of Disappearing: Buddha's Path to Lasting Joy by Ajahn Brahm (Wisdom Publications, 2011): I’ve known a lot of monks whose health problems ...

14 votes

1 answer

5k views

On September 3, 2025, a tragic accident has happened on Lisbon's historical funicular. What I am confused about is whether any similar accidents have happened in the past. For one, plenty of news ...