Calcite Updated 2025-07-16
Aragonite Updated 2025-07-16
Vaterite Updated 2025-07-16
Khômiss Updated 2025-07-16
They intentionally projected the idea of a semi scary and cool secret society/cult/Fascist/Gestapo/non-racist Ku Klux Klan-like organization
Khômiss members would wear a face cover whenever they would go out "on duty", notably to break a student's door with a fire axe when some student had fucked up particularly bad.
The Khômiss had an ambivalent character: while on one hand they would punish students that they felt had fucked up, they were actually semi approved by the school's head.
And conversely, they could also play pranks on the school head, e.g. vandalizing their office with funny objects if they had made some decision that was particularly unpopular to the students. This also likely with tacit approval, and as a way to be a "cool independent organization that also represents the students".
As such, the Khômiss aimed to be a sort of a "conscience" of the cohort, punishing the evil deeds of either side.
They were apparently unfortunately disbanded by the school in 2013 it seems, just after Ciro Santilli left. They took some poor student out by car and left him more than 1km outsie of the school for some reason. But he had a cell phone and walked came back, so doesn't feel that serious. Likely the political correctness of the times just caught up with them.
Bibliography:
- fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditions_de_l%27École_polytechnique#La_Khômiss
- 2013 www.leparisien.fr/archives/la-mauvaise-blague-de-trop-a-polytechnique-02-07-2013-2945871.php news about the dissolution of the Khômiss.
- 2012 www.lajauneetlarouge.com/la-khomiss-deux-cents-ans-et-resolument-moderne/ A profile of the Khômiss by the student magazine "La Jeune et la Rouge"
Quote by Bill Gates Updated 2025-07-16
Assign the hard task to the lazy person Updated 2025-11-05
Baryon vs meson vs lepton Updated 2025-07-16
"Barys" means "heavy" in Greek, because protons and neutrons was what made most of the mass of known ordinary matter, as opposed notably to electrons.
Baryons can be contrasted with:
- mesons, which have an even number of elementary particles. The name meson comes from "medium" since their most common examples have two quarks rather than three as the most common baryons such as protons. So they have less mass than a proton, but more than an electron, this medium mass.
- leptons, which are much lighter particles such as the electron. "Leptos" means "fine, small, thin".
Periplasm Updated 2025-07-16
Caesium standard Updated 2025-07-16
Uses the frequency of the hyperfine structure of caesium-133 ground state, i.e spin up vs spin down of its valence electron , to define the second.
International System of Units definition of the second since 1967, because this is what atomic clocks use.
TODO why does this have more energy than the hyperfine split of the hydrogen line given that it is further from the nucleus?
Binary search tree Updated 2025-07-16
Hash table Updated 2025-07-16
Fungibility Updated 2025-07-16
Liquidity Updated 2025-07-16
Tangible and intangible assets Updated 2025-07-16
Arm Artisan Updated 2025-07-16
ARM CPU Updated 2025-07-16
Arthropod Updated 2025-07-16
Chordate Updated 2026-08-07
You read the name and think: hmm, neural cords!
But then you see that his is one of its members:
Yup. That's your cousin. And it's a much closer cousin than something like arthropods, which at least have heads eyes and legs like you.
Convergent evolution is crazy!
Chordate subclade Updated 2025-07-16
Nematode Updated 2025-07-16
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