Tootfinder

"Legend has it that the first program written in the BASIC programming language was executed in the early hours of May 1st, 1964 in the DTSS of Dartmouth College. The minds behind this language are Mr. Kurtz, and John G. Kemeny. The latter is a member of The Martians, the famous group of Hungarian scientists that migrated to the USA before World War II, including luminaires such as John von Neumann, Theodore von Kšrmšn, and Paul Erdős."
Happy 60th birthday, BASIC!

Programming The Liberal Arts
In 1863, it was discovered on the walls of the Villa Lemmi, near Florence, a previously unknown fresco by Sandro Botticelli covered in whitewash, called "Giovane introdotto tra le Arti Liberali" ("A Young Man Being Introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts.") This work of art was then removed and sold to the Louvre, where it has been exposed since 1882. In it, the young Lorenzo Tornabuoni, son of the head of the Roman branch of the Medici bank during the Quattrocento, is depicted holding the hand of…

"The hatred against Microsoft, starting with the letter to hobbyists in 1976, fueled by Dijkstra, Wulf, Papert, and so many others, naturally spread to BASIC. If you read carefully, the “13 ways to loathe VB” penned by Verity Stob are directed more to Microsoft than to the language itself:
> 13. Bill is making even more money out of this. And I am powerless to stop him. In fact, I am helping him.
Of course, abominations such as On Error Resume Next did not help."

Programming The Liberal Arts
In 1863, it was discovered on the walls of the Villa Lemmi, near Florence, a previously unknown fresco by Sandro Botticelli covered in whitewash, called "Giovane introdotto tra le Arti Liberali" ("A Young Man Being Introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts.") This work of art was then removed and sold to the Louvre, where it has been exposed since 1882. In it, the young Lorenzo Tornabuoni, son of the head of the Roman branch of the Medici bank during the Quattrocento, is depicted holding the hand of…

Escape into the Third Dimension in Cholesteric Liquid Crystals
Joseph Pollard, Gareth P. Alexander
https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.13152 https://

Escape into the Third Dimension in Cholesteric Liquid Crystals
Integer winding disclinations are unstable in a nematic and are removed by an `escape into the third dimension', resulting in a non-singular texture. This process is frustrated in a cholesteric material due to the requirement of maintaining a uniform handedness and instead results in the formation of strings of point defects, as well as complex three-dimensional solitons such as heliknotons that consist of linked dislocations. We give a complete description of this frustration using methods of …