Month: July 2022

The Rationale Behind the Iconic Mask of Anonymous

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In 2008, the Anonymous hacktivism group staged mass protests across multiple cities worldwide. Because participating members were in need of adopting a physical disguise as they would be shifting from the online world into the physical world, early members of Anonymous spent the proceeding 48 hours calling comic book retailers, costume retailers, toy retailers etc. looking for identical disguises which could be purchased en masse for a reasonable price point. As it turned out, each one of these retailers had overstock of Guy Fawkes masks, most of them sitting in external storage and heavily discounted as no one wanted them after the release of the V for Vendetta film released in 2006, a rare miscalculation by manufacturers and retailers. Strangely, the iconography of the Anonymous organization was birthed out of an accidental fluke of overstock

The Argument Against Stem Cell Research and Why This Will No Longer be a Problem in the Future

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The reason stem cell research is controversial for some is because it is viewed as damaging and harvesting from one life to help another. This argument may be obsolete in the future as scientists are now discovering ways to create stem cells from cells within the body (e.g. skin cells etc.). The traditional method to create a stem cell was to take a skin cell, remove the deoxyribonucleic acid from its nucleus, placing it into an egg which does not have deoxyribonucleic acid but is capable of changing deoxyribonucleic acid, turning it into a stem cell which has the patients genome ascribed unto it. The new method involves placing 4 genes into the nucleus of the skin cell and allowing time to pass, as the genes reorganize the deoxyribonucleic acid so that it begins to appear as stem cell deoxyribonucleic acid, which changes the skin cell and causes it to shrink, losing its outside, converting it into an embryonic stem cell with the only difference between this method and traditional embryonic stem cell creation method being that this technique contains the deoxyribonucleic acid of the patient it is being inserted into. The 4 genes inserted into the cell create 4 proteins which exist naturally within an egg. These proteins trigger the skin cell deoxyribonucleic acid to arrange itself identically to how it would within an embryonic stem cell. Scientists refer to this type of cell as “induced pluripotent stem cells”, commonly abbreviated as “IPS cells”. Ideally, scientists want induced pluripotent stem cells to function identically to natural embryonic stem cells, avoiding the creation of unwanted cells which can lead to cancer. Researchers have discovered that some laboratory created stem cells fail to carry out the task provided and worse yet, some cause cancer to develop. Scientists are currently pursuing 2 paths to alleviate this problem, the first being the attempt to develop induced pluripotent stem cells which function identically to natural embryonic stem cells and the second being to create a system to recognize which induced pluripotent stem cells will fail in an effort to exclude these cells from being inserted into the human body

The Reason Financial Investment Platform Robinhood Halted the Ability to Trade GameStop Stock in 2021

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On January 28, 2021, soon after the opening bell, Robinhood and several other major trading platforms announced the suspension of the ability to purchase GameStop stock, delivering a devastating blow to the WallStreetBets subreddit community which had been helping to elevate the stocks price point by locking out new investors and causing the stock price to tumble dramatically. The rationale for this decision was that extreme volatility could create unforeseen economic problems in the future (e.g. unsustainable economic bubble etc.) but many retail investors viewed this outcome as professional investors leveraging their authority with the U.S. government and the financial industry to stop the public from continuing to financially annihilate large, established trading firms. In addition to the official reason provided, retail trading platforms are not designed to handle the torrent of transactions related to events like the ascendancy of GameStop which played a factor in why Robinhood and other platforms succame to the pressure to halt all future trading of GameStop stock. Robinhood claimed that the company did not have the liquidity on hand to cover the trades and gains being made. Unsurprisingly, the price of GameStop stock rapidly declined, devastating retail investors and highlighting the fact that the investment market is rigged toward the wealthy and powerful perhaps having a distinct advantage over their counterparts. Experts argue that this intervention unnaturally drove the price point of GameStop stock down, acting to reverse the effects of community based organization and investment. It was the clearing houses however that truly forced Robinhood and other trading platforms into capitulating. When a stock is purchased or sold, the transaction does not settle and finalize until 2 business days after the transaction time stamp, something which is unbeknownst to many investors. During this 2 business day period, due to regulation, brokerages and clearing firms are not permitted to use customer capital to fund the collateral use of those 2 business days, therefore being legally required to leverage the firms own capital. Robinhood argued that it did not possess the corporate capital required to facilitate the enormous volume of GameStop stock trades. It should be noted, Robinhood has repeatedly denied that it was under pressure from hedge fund executives, financial organizations, and the professional financial industry as a whole to stop the short squeeze occurring for those who chose to short sell GameStop stock

The Reason the Summer Solstice and Winter Equinox Were Important Within the Ancient World

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The sun rises and sets at different points of the horizon throughout the year, which is what causes days to become longer or shorter. This process slows down during mid-summer and mid-winter, and for a few short days, the sun appears to rise and set at the same points of the horizon, causing most people during antiquity to believe that the laws of nature had been suspended for a short period of time. It was commonly believed that during this short window, human beings and the supernatural could interact with one another