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The examples used here are from the weekly challenge problem statement and demonstrate the working solution. Part 1: Third Maximum You are given an array of integers, @ints. Write a script to find the third distinct maximum in the given array. If a third maximum doesn’t exist then return the maximum number. The majority of the work can be done in a couple of lines. We need only sort the …

I’m a longtime fan of Travis and Sigrid, a man and a cat who cycle together. So I was delighted to read Sigrid Rides, a memoir about their story. Travis shares his personal history and how his travels with Sigrid have changed his life. The story is sweet, moving, and reminds us all that hope lies around the next turn.Books I Read in 2024: Victory Parade, I Hate Men, My …

I’m composing this sat under an electric blanket on a relatively low setting, watching Brighton & Hove Albion come from 2-0 to score three goals after half-time. They’re currently winning 3-2. Waking up after half-time is something my daughter’s team is good at doing. They won 9-1 on Saturday, with her scoring a hat-trick, and lost 7-2 on Sunday. We spent the afternoon at Six BALTIC, the restaurant on the …

We had our all-staff away day on Tuesday in a somewhat dark, stuffy and dated venue beside the Thames at London Blackfriars. It was nice to see a few folks in-person from further afield and chat. The dominance of strategies about more mobile apps and AI technology innovation for more GOVUK services didn't entirely please the interests of myself or many of my colleagues. On Wednesday I had the opportunity …

Yaowarat (Chinatown)

This is the concluding part of the previous post on the subject of refugees and émigrés during the French Revolution in Goethe's works. As with Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten, discussed in the earlier post, I am not dealing with the poetic character or literary values of Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea. (Another time perhaps!) As preparation for my participation on a panel at an 18th-century conference (see previous post), I am simply …

Now if you thought the 2022 EP of this Montreal group was kinda weird and bananas, Pressure Pin be like: "Hold my beer" 'cos you've seen nothing yet! For their second EP, they considerably raise the bar both in terms of sophistication and of unpredictable chaos and mayhem in their totally nuts compositions whose rough characteristics hover somewhere around the spheres of garage-, synth-, art- and eggpunk with a pronounced …

. . . Plaster Paint Your Own Kit! Shelfied in The Range the other day, this chalkware/plaster Witch comes with a half reasonable paint brush, which is excuse enough to part with a quid? From two angles, just because of the flash, and the store's own lighting, there's not a lot else to add, it's a figural, it's seasonally relevant, and it's out there now . . . fun for …

Like most humans ever, I love my culture. Its food, clothes, festivals, songs, stories, news, monuments, inspirational speeches, all of it. Deeply. They bring tears to my eyes, and comfort to my soul. I want to assume, as have most humans ever, that the mere fact that my culture exists suggests that it will probably do well by me. And the fact that it seems especially envied and celebrated raises …

Plans for a new chippy on a North Wales holiday park have met with opposition from the local health board: Plans for a new chippy have come up against a health board's demands for fruit and veg on the menu. Betsi Cadwaladr health board wants the proposed takeaway in Morfa Bychan, Gwynedd, to sell a "good selection" of fruit and veg. It wants the menu to have less fat, salt …

Below are two "knightly orders" in Krevborna that are nothing like knightly orders in practice.The Knights of the Helsing VowThe Knights of the Helsing Vow are a group of templars, witchfinders, inquisitors, and monster hunters associated with the Church of Holy Blood.• Though the Helsing Knights hunt all manner of supernatural horrors, they hold a special enmity for the undead and view vampires as the ultimate expression of evil.• The …

What do temperature, sand and sex have in common?Well, for the Green Sea Turtle—everything. When these cuties are still in their shells incubating, the temperature of the sand surrounding them determines their sex. Boy or girl? Warm sand produces females and cooler sand hatches out male Green Sea Turtles.The Green Sea Turtle, Chelonia mydas, also known as the Green Turtle, Black Sea

Richard Serra, F*** Helms, 1990, 14×15 in. sheet, via NGA/Gemini Election season, when a man’s heart turns to thoughts of Gemini G.E.L. fundraising print portfolios. Or at least it used to. Fortunately, longtime greg.org hero/reader Terry Wilfong emailed a keen observation about Richard Serra’s Afangar Viðey series prints that momentarily distracts from the genocidal, climate, and fascistic calamities afoot. Like me, Terry missed out on getting any little Viðey etchings, …

Nestled in the foothills of the Picos de Europa National Park is the village of Cangas de Onís. While the village is quite touristy, it is worth a stop when planning a visit to Spain’s most beloved National Park, the Picos de Europa. Cangas de Onís is an extremely popular base to explore the Picos...

The word that kept coming to mind when I thought about this was “Dickensian”. And I realize that’s a weird way to describe a 1970s revisionist Western but it still fits. Dustin Hoffman stars as “Jack Crabb”, a white man who was adopted into the Cheyenne tribe when he was orphaned at age ten, and spends the next few decades getting pulled back and forth between Cheyenne and Causasian society. …