gnostek1 / 26th-century mosaic of Justinian I in the Basilique San Vitale in Ravenna , Italy . Damascius was head of the last Neoplatonic school in Athens when the laws of Justinian I forced its closure.
01Damascius led the final seven Neoplatonists out of Athens to the Persian court of Khosrow I in 529 AD.
02He wrote a treatise on first principles so dense it was considered unreadable even by fellow Neoplatonists.
03The Persian king negotiated their safe return into the treaty of 532 AD with the Byzantine Empire.
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01The Treasury Department ruled that U.S. lawyers required a special license to legally represent al-Awlaki in court.
02A federal judge dismissed his father's lawsuit to remove him from the kill list, citing lack of standing.
03The Justice Department's legal memo authorizing the killing was classified for three years after his death.
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01The fundraiser cost $50,000 per plate; the bartender, Scott Prouty, filmed it on a Sony camera.
02Romney said the 47% who pay no income tax will 'vote for the president no matter what' — meaning Obama.
03Prouty came forward publicly on MSNBC three months after the election, explaining he acted on conscience.
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01The dik-dik's preorbital gland sits so close to the eye that marking a twig looks like self-blinding.
02Mated pairs are monogamous for life; the male shadow-follows the female within two body-lengths at all times.
03When alarmed, dik-diks produce a sharp 'dik-dik' nasal whistle that named the entire species.
gnostek1 / 13Takifugu in a tank
01Tetrodotoxin is 1,200 times more lethal than cyanide by weight; the fugu liver holds the highest concentration.
02Between 1996 and 2015, 23 people died in Japan from fugu poisoning — almost all amateur fishermen cooking their own catch.
03Chefs must present a valid fugu license; unlicensed preparation carries up to two years in Japanese prison.
gnostek
01Receiver was built in seven days for the 7DFPS game jam in 2012 by Wolfire Games.
02The game models hammer, safety, cylinder, and magazine as independent mechanical states that interact realistically.
03Its procedurally generated levels mean no two runs share the same room layout or enemy placement.
gnostek1 / 2Messenia , homeland of Sparta's helot population, from Mount Ithome .
01Krypteia initiates were given a knife and sent into the countryside to kill helots without witnesses.
02The ritual was supervised by the ephors — Sparta's top magistrates — making murder an official curriculum.
03Helots outnumbered Spartans roughly 7-to-1; the Krypteia was demographic terror dressed as a rite of passage.
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01Weeks before the murders, Andreas Gruber reported hearing footsteps in the attic and finding an unknown newspaper on his farm.
02All six bodies — including a 2-year-old — were found in the barn, stacked under hay.
03The case was never solved; suspects were interviewed, but the last known person to examine the crime scene skulls died in WWII bombing.
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01Cooper jumped from 10,000 feet in a business suit and loafers into a pitch-black storm over Washington State.
02In 1980, a boy named Brian Ingram found $5,800 of the marked bills rotting in the sand of the Columbia River.
03The FBI closed its active investigation in 2016 — the only unsolved commercial aircraft hijacking in U.S. history.