Research

The Invisible Color: Non-Photo Blue

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Exams or the signing of certain documents may require the use of black ink, prohibiting blue ink. The reason may be related to early scanning devices. Due to performance issues or configuration errors, blue ink could not be fully scanned, and the effect on the screen would be faint or even invisible.

Modern devices basically don’t misidentify it, but in the past, on old devices, could using a lighter blue achieve an invisible effect? In the past, a color called Non-photo blue was popular, which was a color that could be invisible.

The principle is that orthochromatic film is too sensitive to blue, and will treat blue as white (which is why the sky on old film is almost always white). Therefore, this light blue npb can be invisible in orthochromatic film. Later scanners (old-fashioned) may have also coincidentally continued to use npb for drawing drafts and making annotations, rather than other light colors.

In the 1970s, part of the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) module anti-piracy method was to use blue to make maps, so that people would not be afraid of easily pirating them through copiers. Blue maps, this can be considered a kind of blueprint. Speaking of blueprints, there are also invisible colors.

Previously, the principle of blueprints was introduced. The ink will block ultraviolet rays, so that the photosensitive material will leave sun marks, forming a very accurate copy. Therefore, as long as the ink cannot block ultraviolet rays, it is invisible to blueprints. Pentel calls this color of refill Diazo Non-Copy, which is a very light pink refill. Diazotype is a technique for making blueprints, and heliographic copiers were also popular.

P.S.: The inspiration comes from the Pentel Multi8 PH802 colored mechanical pencil, which contains 8 2.0 mm colored pencil refills and can switch colors at any time. And there are two special colors, Diazo Non-Copy and PPC Non-Copy, which is a bit concerning.

P.S. 2: The history of this pen is a bit long. It won the Good Design Award in 1989, but the release date is unknown. Now that diazo copiers have been eliminated, the new version of PH802 has replaced Diazo Non-Copy with ordinary pink. Furthermore, in 2024, Pentel Art Multi8 PH804 was launched, with no Non-Copy refills, and the appearance is a more fashionable transparent color, rather than the previous industrial-style gray.

Three Gorges Dam Relocation Costs

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In 1994, construction began on the Three Gorges Dam water conservancy project. By 2007, a total of 129.64 million people had been relocated from areas that were to be flooded or were considered dangerous. However, only a budget of 52.9 billion yuan was allocated for resettlement. A rough calculation shows that this only averages out to 40,805 yuan per person.

In 2007, the average per capita net income of farmers was 4,140 yuan. Relocation costs almost ten times their annual income might not have been so bad.

Specifically, relocation costs were divided into land compensation, housing compensation, resettlement compensation, and other compensations. Land compensation was six to ten times the average annual output of the three years prior to expropriation (from the “Land Administration Law of the People’s Republic of China”). However, no information could be found from those involved or public documents regarding the exact amount of this money.

Housing compensation was around 200 yuan/m², with differences between rural and urban housing. Considering that the average per capita residential area in cities was 15 square meters, compensation could exceed 3,000 yuan.

According to the Guangdong resettlement plan for Three Gorges immigrants, the price of immigrant housing was 480 yuan/m², but immigrants only paid 250 yuan/m². A personal housing construction payment of 5,000 yuan per person was also provided (essentially free housing). Then there was a production resettlement fee of 10,449 yuan/person, an infrastructure fee of 5,020 yuan/person, land acquisition of 10,000 yuan/person, a housing construction subsidy of 4,600 yuan/person, and other subsidies of 1,148 yuan/person.

In total, this amounted to housing and 31,217 yuan in subsidies. This was provided by the relocation destination. The relocation origin area (the area affected by the Three Gorges Dam) also had to pay some compensation for housing and ancillary facilities.

However, these subsidies were only available to those relocating to a different location. Subsidies for those relocating within the same region were possibly roughly halved. The differences in language and climate were smaller. However, some immigrants returned to their hometowns due to environmental differences and other reasons.

There were also likely cases of embezzlement, resulting in some relocated individuals receiving only 5,000 yuan in subsidies and no housing… and land compensation of only 2,701 yuan per mu, 3.5 times the average annual output, far below the regulations of the “Land Administration Law”.

Postscript: After seeing news reports about how some residents did not receive compensation for their villages being flooded by the reservoir, I wanted to research the resettlement costs of the Three Gorges Dam.

Problems Caused by Frame of Reference Differences

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Is my blue your blue? (Is My Blue Your Blue?), this is a test website created by neuroscience and AI researcher Patrick Mineault. The website displays hues from 150 to 210 for visitors to identify as green or blue.

Due to differences in the proportions of cone cells in different people, differences in language descriptions of colors (Differences in Language Descriptions of Color), and other reasons, there are significant differences in the identification of color boundaries by different people.

The same is true for seasons. In regions with distinct seasons, people living in the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere have opposite descriptions of the seasons. So the Australian summer is from November to February of the following year. Most international events do not localize for Australia, so Australians have become accustomed to this “Northern Hemisphere-centric” reality.

There are also offset problems with the political spectrum. If the current right wing is placed on the spectrum of more than 100 years ago, it may seem to be left-leaning. Because society as a whole is moving to the left, although it is still called left and right, the specific values differ greatly. When the political spectrum has influential extreme values, such as the extreme left, the midpoint of the spectrum will also change. Some who were originally on the left may become right…

The Almost Unused Mega

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How big is Mega? In ancient Chinese books, the Chinese large number system has three types: 10⁶ (million) for the “lower number system”, and 10¹⁶ (hundred million * hundred million) for the “middle number system” and “upper number system”. Mega appears here in two different sizes.

Then, the Qing Dynasty’s “Imperial Collection of Mathematical Sciences” proposed a new large number system, “Wan Jin (myriad system)”, which defined Mega as 10¹² (ten thousand * hundred million). Thus, Mega has three different sizes.

However, there is another large number system that is widely used, namely the English large number system. For example, the International System of Units uses M, G, and T as unit prefixes, which are defined as “Mega”, “Giga”, and “Tera” by the “Statutory Metrological Units of the People’s Republic of China“.

As a result, some native or quasi-native Android systems display “Gigabyte” in the storage space display, which complies with the statutory requirements but does not conform to general habits.

The large-scale use of Mega is mainly in the field of the thousand-based system, which is difficult to involve in the ten-thousand-based system, such as the International System of Units. The capacity unit MB may be abbreviated as Mega (full name is Megabyte), the pressure unit MPa is called Megapascal, the power unit MW is called Megawatt, and the frequency unit MHz is called Megahertz.

P.S.: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and other places generally use “Wan Jin (myriad system)” which defines Mega as 10¹² (ten thousand * hundred million) as the size of Mega.

Text of Various Colors

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White Paper, Green Paper, blue paper, red paper, Grey Literature and so on, texts come in various colors. The history of these terms probably originates with Churchill in the UK. In 1922, Churchill drafted a memorandum to declare policy. It is possible that the title of this memorandum was too long, so officials and the media began to use the 《Churchill White Paper》 to refer to it.

Later, similar policy presentations released by the UK were also called white papers, which were somewhat similar in nature to drafts for soliciting opinions. In the 1990s, companies, in order to promote their profitability, technology, products, ideas, etc., appropriated the white paper originally used in government affairs as a marketing tool.

Green papers were also originally defined by the UK government, and their nature is drafts such as proposals and drafts for soliciting opinions. It is also used by other institutions to indicate an imprecise or non-final version of a white paper. Other colors can usually only be determined based on the usage scenario, because there is currently a lack of consensus.

Grey literature is usually text outside of commercial and academic publications, such as meeting minutes, newsletters, technical standards, technical documentation, briefings, etc., and can usually also include white papers and similar content. (Private notes and letters are called Ephemera)

Unlike publications with ISBNs, which have more detailed birth information and are publicly disseminated. Therefore, grey literature is often invisible literature, and even searching for and obtaining it is very difficult. Unofficial publications, such as pre-print papers published on arXiv, are also considered grey literature. (In addition, the ChinaXiv Archiving Project is in progress)

(The meanings of yellow novels and red literature are probably very clear, so I won’t go into details.)

From the Release Date of “The Vigil: The Longest Night” to the “Xinhua News Agency’s List of Prohibited Words in News Reports”

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《The Vigil: The Longest Night》 was recently removed from the shelves by its publisher, Neon Doctrine. Earlier, the developer wrote a long article explaining the dispute with ND. The fuse was ND’s accusation of problems with the game’s Asomrof chapter update. The term Asomrof is derived from Formosa, which may cause trouble for ND. Therefore, ND asked the developer to harmonize the content related to Asomrof.

The developer believes that the game does not violate laws and regulations, so they wanted to know what exactly it violated. Then ND gave 《Xinhua News Agency’s List of Prohibited Words in News Reports》, which mentioned: “‘Formosa’ is not allowed to be used because it has colonial overtones. If it is necessary to use it, it must be in quotation marks.”

The 《Xinhua News Agency’s List of Prohibited Words in News Reports》 on the Internet basically claims to be derived from the 315th issue of 《News Review Dynamics》. 《News Review Dynamics》 is an internal publication issued irregularly by the News Review Group under the Propaganda Department, so this is another leak.

Although it is not clear when the first issue of 《News Review Dynamics》 was published, the publication interval, etc., it is impossible to know when the 315th issue of 《News Review Dynamics》 was published, but some traces can still be found.

According to the 11th issue of 《News Practice》 in 2005, which mentioned “the 406th issue of 《News Review Dynamics》”, the 315th issue of 《News Review Dynamics》 should have been published before 2006. The 《Metropolis Express》 in 2007 also mentioned “the 278th issue of 《News Review Dynamics》 of that year”. That year often refers to the time mentioned in the previous text. Although the previous text did not mention the specific time, it mentioned the activity of “Maintaining the Advanced Nature of Communist Party Members”. In this way, we can find that this activity was held in 2005, so we can know that the publication time of the 278th issue of 《News Review Dynamics》 was 2005.

The Institute of Publishing Science of Beijing Normal University also studied the source of 《Xinhua News Agency’s List of Prohibited Words in News Reports》 and gave the data of 2005 for the publication time of the 315th issue of 《News Review Dynamics》. There is no source of information, but there are many other details.

For data sources, please go to ggame’s The Vigil: The Longest Night, Xinhua News Agency’s List of Prohibited Words in News Reports entries to view.