title: QBZ-95

text: On April 28, 2013, Norinco's new EMEI T97NSR was classified as a "non-restricted" firearm by the RCMP with FRT Number 142760, and became legal for dealers to import for those with non-restricted possession and acquisition licenses. It is legal in Canada for hunting, varmint control, target practice and competitive shooting. It went into retail stores on September 17, 2013, and costs about $1,000 CAD.


title: QBZ-95

text: Enhanced variants with a Picatinny rail replacing the top carrying handle (so called "flat-top") have been built in both Canada and China.


title: QBZ-95

text: The rifles were made without any licensing agreement with Norinco, despite claims that Myanmar made it in the country, while using phenolic plastic materials in its construction. Instead of the bayonet used by the QBZ-95, the MA-1 Mk III uses the bayonet based on the Type 81 assault rifle's own bayonet as standard equipment.


title: Agartha

text: Agartha (sometimes Agartta, Agharti, Agarath, Agarta, Agharta, or Agarttha) is a legendary kingdom that is said to be located deep underground. It is sometimes related to the belief in a hollow Earth and is a popular subject in esotericism.


title: Agartha

text: The legend of Agartha remained mostly obscure in Europe until Gérard Encausse edited and re-published a detailed 1886 account by the nineteenth-century French occultist Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842-1909), "Mission de l'Inde en Europe",


title: Agartha

text: In his 1922 book "Beasts, Men and Gods", the Polish explorer Ferdynand Ossendowski relates a story which was imparted to him concerning a subterranean kingdom existing inside the Earth. This kingdom was known to a fictional Buddhist society as "Agharti".


title: Agartha

text: Agartha is frequently associated or confused with Shambhala which figures prominently in Vajrayana Buddhism and Tibetan Kalachakra teachings and revived in the West by Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society. Theosophists in particular regard "Agarthi" as a vast complex of caves underneath Tibet inhabited by demi-gods, called asuras. Helena and Nicholas Roerich, whose teachings closely parallel theosophy, see Shambhala's existence as both spiritual and physical.


title: Elsagate

text: Elsagate is a neologism referring to the controversy surrounding videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids that are categorized as "child-friendly", but which contain themes that are inappropriate for children. Most videos under this classification are notable for presenting inappropriate content; those include graphic violence, sexual situations, fetishes, obscene language, drugs, alcohol, injections, disease, explicit toilet humor and dangerous or upsetting situations and activities.


title: Elsagate

text: These videos often feature popular characters from family-oriented media, sometimes via crossovers, used without legal permission. The term itself is composed of "Elsa", a character from Disney's "Frozen", known for frequently appearing in such videos, and (a suffix for scandals). However, the Elsagate controversy has also included channels such as Toy Freaks that feature real children instead of child/family-friendly characters, raising concern about possible child abuse.


title: Elsagate

text: Most videos in this category are either live action or crude animation—although a few channels have been using more elaborate techniques such as clay animation or computer-generated imagery. Despite YouTube's age restriction policies, these videos are sometimes tagged in such a way as to circumvent the inbuilt child safety algorithms, even making their way into YouTube Kids, and are thus difficult to moderate due to the large scale of the platform. In order to capture search results and attract attention from users, their titles and descriptions feature names of famous characters, as well as keywords like "education", "learn colors", "nursery rhymes", etc. They also include automatically placed ads, making them lucrative to their owners and YouTube. Despite the objectionable and often confusing nature of these videos, many attract millions of views.


title: Elsagate

text: Public awareness of the phenomenon grew in late 2017, as mainstream media started to report about child safety on YouTube. That year—after reports by several media outlets—YouTube adopted stricter guidelines regarding children's content. In late November, the company started to mass-delete channels and videos falling into the Elsagate category, as well as large amounts of other inappropriate videos or user's comments relating to children.


title: Elsagate

text: In June 2016, "The Guardian" published an article about the channel Webs and Tiaras, which had been created in March of the same year. The channel showed people dressed as characters like Spider-Man, Elsa, and the Joker engaging in bizarre or nonsensical actions. The videos themselves had background music but no dialogue. Having no script, there was no language barrier on the videos which would normally hinder worldwide distribution. The article also reported that several nearly identical channels named Toy Monster, The Superheroes Life, and The Kids Club had appeared on YouTube.


title: Elsagate

text: In January 2017, one channel under the control of a YouTube partner in Vietnam, Spiderman Frozen Marvel Superhero Real Life, blocked their Vietnamese subscribers after complaints from parents regarding the content of their videos. The channel's owner was later fined by Vietnamese authorities.


title: Elsagate

text: The high number of views have led some to voice concerns that such channels are gaming the system by using bots or click farms to inflate viewing figures to higher proportions; however, there is no evidence for this.


title: Elsagate

text: In February 2017, "The Verge" commented that "adults dressing up in costume and acting out weird, wordless skits has become a booming industry on the world's biggest video platform" and that while many videos were "puerile but benign", others featured more questionable content such as scatological humor and violent or sexual situations. The article noted that most videos were made with a very limited budget and "a few Halloween costumes", which made them easy to produce and contributed to their multiplication. It also attributed their success to the frequent use of "Freudian concerns", which young children may find fascinating, amusing, or frightening, such as "peeing, pooping, kissing, pregnancy, and the terrifying notion of going to the doctor and getting a shot".


title: Elsagate

text: Also in February, The Awl published an article on Webs and Tiaras and similar channels, describing their content as "nonsensically nightmarish" with titles like "Frozen Elsa gets CHICKEN FEET!", "Frozen Elsa gets BRAIN BELLY!", "Frozen Elsa & Anna TEAR SPIDERMAN APART!", "EVIL SANTA KIDNAPS Frozen Elsa & Spiderman!", or "Frozen Elsa FLUSHES Spiderman in Toilet!". The website commented that the videos were "pretty twisted for children's content: some videos involve Elsa giving birth, and in some others, Spider-Man injects Elsa with a brightly colored liquid. You half expect the scenarios to be porn setups." In most videos, the like and dislike options were disabled, making it impossible to know how many users were actually engaging with them. Many videos featured hundreds of comments in gibberish, some being written by similar channels in an apparent attempt to attract more clicks.


title: Elsagate

text: In March, the BBC ran a piece titled "The disturbing YouTube videos that are tricking children". The article focused on a "Peppa Pig" imitation where the titular character's teeth are painfully pulled out by a dentist, and a video featuring said character burning down an occupied house. The article also mentioned the existence of "hundreds" of similar videos, ranging from unauthorized but otherwise harmless copies of authentic cartoons to frightening and gory content.


title: Elsagate

text: CTV News also reported in March about YouTube's "fake toons problem", with adult-themed imitations of popular children's shows frequently appearing on YouTube Kids: "In some cases, the video will feature a kid-friendly thumbnail, while the video itself might be entirely different" and be very unsuitable for small children. The network commented that such videos were "often nightmares to behold, with lots of frightening scenes involving monsters and blood. Many of these videos venture into dark territory, with the characters often being chased, attacked, or injured in a bloody manner."


title: Elsagate

text: The term "Elsagate" was coined on the Internet in 2017. During the summer of that year, it became a popular hashtag on Twitter as users called attention to the presence of such material on YouTube and YouTube Kids. On Reddit, an Elsagate subreddit (r/ElsaGate) was created on June 23 to discuss the phenomenon, soon attracting tens of thousands of users.


title: Elsagate

text: In November 2017, several newspapers published articles about the YouTube channel Toy Freaks, which had been created two years earlier by a single father named Greg Chism. Toy Freaks had a total of 8.54 million subscribers and were among the top 100 most viewed before it was shut down that month. The channel often featured Chism's daughters and in most cases showed them scared or crying.


title: Elsagate

text: These videos could also be found in local video platforms in China, where YouTube is blocked, including Tencent, Youku, and iQiyi. Tencent have set up a specific team to monitor its video platform and permanently shut down 121 accounts and blocked more than 4,000 search keywords by January 2018. The Ministry of Public Security of China suggested that netizens should report these videos once found.


title: Elsagate

text: Several celebrities, including rapper B.o.B and comedians Joe Rogan and Philip DeFranco discussed Elsagate on social media during this time.


title: Elsagate

text: On November 4, "The New York Times" published an article about the "startling" videos slipping past YouTube's filters and disturbing children, "either by mistake or because bad actors have found ways to fool the YouTube Kids algorithms". On November 6, author James Bridle published a piece titled "Something is wrong on the internet" on Medium, in which he commented about the "thousands and thousands of these videos": "Someone or something or some combination of people and things is using YouTube to systematically frighten, traumatize, and abuse children, automatically and at scale". Bridle also observed that the confusing content of many videos seemed to result from the constant "overlaying and intermixing" of various popular tropes, characters, or keywords. As a result, even videos with actual humans started resembling automated content, while "obvious parodies and even the shadier knock-offs" interacted with "the legions of algorithmic content producers" until it became "completely impossible to know what is going on". On November 17, Internet commentator Philip DeFranco posted a video addressing "the insane YouTube Kids problem".


title: Elsagate

text: "The New York Times" found that one of the channels featuring counterfeit cartoons, "Super Zeus TV", was linked to a website called SuperKidsShop.com, registered in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. A man working for SuperKidsShop.com confirmed that his partners were responsible for the videos, on which "a team of about 100 people" were producing. Subsequent requests for an interview went unanswered.


title: Elsagate

text: On November 9, members of the satirical sound collage group Negativland presented an episode of their weekly radio show "Over the Edge" dedicated to Elsagate. "Modern Animal Kids" "threads Elsagate through a remix of three 90's episodes of "Over the Edge" which focused on media for children, all broadcast in the final years before "Teletubbies" pioneered marketing to the 6- to 18-month-old demographic".


title: Elsagate

text: On November 22, BuzzFeed News published an article about unsettling videos that depict children in disturbing and abusive situations. The information on the article came with the assistance of journalist and human rights activist Matan Uziel, whose investigation and report to the FBI on that matter were sent on September 22, informing its leadership about "tens of thousands of videos available on YouTube that we know are crafted to serve as eye candy for perverted, creepy adults, online predators to indulge in their child fantasies".


title: Elsagate

text: On November 23, French-Canadian outlet "Tabloïd" released a video investigation about "Toy Monster", a channel linked to "Webs and Tiaras". They confronted the videos' creators – based out of the south shore of Quebec City – who refused to be interviewed. One of the actors featured in the videos anonymously stated that he was contractually obligated to refrain from commenting. The investigation revealed that identical content was being posted on numerous channels apparently operated by the same people.


title: Elsagate

text: On November 28, "Forbes" presented Elsagate as an example of the "dark underbelly of the digital age". The article's author commented that the "gargantuan scale" of the problem seemed to indicate that children's content on YouTube had become "a monster beyond our control" and that "it's terrifying to imagine how many toddlers have been affected" by Elsagate, "in ways beyond our comprehension".


title: Elsagate

text: Several parents, teenagers, and peers posting on the /r/ElsaGate subreddit expressed fears that the videos were traumatizing to children, and may desensitize or normalize inappropriate content.


title: Elsagate

text: "The New York Times" quoted pediatrics professor Michael Rich, who stated that these videos were potentially harmful to children who could find them even more upsetting, as "characters they thought they knew and trusted" were shown behaving in an improper or violent manner.


title: Elsagate

text: In August 2017, YouTube announced its new guidelines on content and monetization. In an ongoing series of efforts to demonetize controversial and offensive videos, it was announced that creators would no longer be able to monetize videos that "made inappropriate use of family-friendly characters". In November of the same year, it announced that it would implement "a new policy that age restricts this content in the YouTube main app when flagged".


title: Elsagate

text: The controversy extended to channels that featured not necessarily children's characters but actual children, who sometimes performed inappropriate or dangerous activities under the guidance of adults. As part of a broader action, YouTube terminated the channel Toy Freaks, which featured a father (Greg Chism) and his two daughters in potentially abusive situations. Chism was subsequently investigated by child-protection officials in Illinois and Missouri for alleged child abuse. In December 2017, authorities announced that Chism would not face criminal charges. Before its removal, the channel had over 8.5 million subscribers.


title: Elsagate

text: It was also revealed in the media that many videos featuring minors – frequently uploaded by the children themselves and showing innocent content – had attracted comments from pedophiles and other groups. Some of these videos were monetized. As a result of the controversy, several major advertisers froze spending on YouTube, forcing YouTube to ban children from their site, citing legal obligations.


title: Elsagate

text: On November 22, 2017, YouTube announced that it had deleted over 50 channels and thousands of videos that did not fit the new guidelines. On November 27, the company said in a statement to BuzzFeed News that it had "terminated more than 270 accounts and removed over 150,000 videos", "turned off comments on more than 625,000 videos targeted by child predators" and "removed ads from nearly 2 million videos and over 50,000 channels masquerading as family-friendly content". "Forbes" contributor Dani Di Placido wrote that many problematic videos could still be seen on the platform, and that "the sheer volume of videos hastily deleted from the site prove that YouTube's algorithms were utterly ineffective at protecting young children".


title: Old Believers

text: Old Believers or Old Ritualists are Eastern Orthodox Christians who maintain the liturgical and ritual practices of the Russian Orthodox Church as they were before the reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow between 1652 and 1666. Resisting the accommodation of Russian piety to the contemporary forms of Greek Orthodox worship, these Christians were anathematized, together with their ritual, in a Synod of 1666–67, producing a division in Eastern Europe between the Old Believers and those who followed the state church in its condemnation of the Old Rite. Russian speakers refer to the schism itself as "raskol" (), etymologically indicating a "cleaving-apart".


title: Old Believers

text: In 1652, Patriarch Nikon (1605–1681; patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church from 1652 to 1658) introduced a number of ritual and textual revisions with the aim of achieving uniformity between the practices of the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches. Nikon, having noticed discrepancies between Russian and Greek rites and texts, ordered an adjustment of the Russian rites to align with the Greek ones of his time. In doing so, according to the Old Believers, Nikon acted without adequate consultation with the clergy and without gathering a council. After the implementation of these revisions, the Church anathematized and suppressed—with the support of Muscovite state power—the prior liturgical rite itself, as well as those who were reluctant to pass to the revised rite.


title: Old Believers

text: Those who maintained fidelity to the existing rite endured severe persecutions from the end of the 17th century until the beginning of the 20th century as "Schismatics" (, "raskol'niki"). They became known as "Old Ritualists", a name introduced under the empress Catherine the Great who reigned from 1762 to 1796. They continued to call themselves simply "Orthodox Christians".


title: Old Believers

text: The installation of a Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia, but resident in Moscow, by a council of Russian bishops in 1448 without consent from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople initiated the effective independence of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Grand Duchy of Moscow. By then, apart from Muslim and Jewish minorities and pagan subject peoples, the Russian people were Christianised, observing church festivals and marking births, marriages, and deaths with Orthodox rituals. However, many popular religious practices were of pagan origin or marked by superstition, disorder, or drunkenness.


title: Old Believers

text: The main objectives of reformers in the 16th century, many from the secular clergy, were to outlaw pagan rituals and beliefs and to standardise the liturgy throughout the Muscovite realm. This resulted in the holding of the Stoglavy Synod, a Russian church council in 1551, whose decrees formed the basis of Orthodox ritual and liturgy in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. This synod condemned many popular religious practices, such as forbidding the practice of polyphony. In addition, while stressing the need for accurate copying of sacred documents, it also approved of traditional Russian liturgical practices that differed from contemporary Greek ones.


title: Old Believers

text: During the reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich (r. 1645–1676), the young tsar and his confessor, Stefan Vonifatiev, sponsored a group, mainly composed of non-monastic clergy and known as the Zealots of Piety. These included the archpriest Avvakum as a founder-member, as well as the future patriarch Nikon, who joined in 1649. Their original aim was to revitalise the parishes through effective preaching, the orderly celebration of the liturgy, and enforcement of the church's moral teachings. To ensure that the liturgy was celebrated correctly, its original and authentic form had to be established, but the way that Nikon did this caused disputes between he and other reformers.


title: Old Believers

text: In 1646, Nikon first met Tsar Aleksei who immediately appointed him archimandrite of the Novospassky monastery in Moscow. In 1649, Nikon was consecrated as the Metropolitan of Novgorod and, in 1652, he became Patriarch of Moscow. During his time in Novgorod, Nikon began to develop his view that the responsibility for the spiritual health of Russia lay with senior church leaders, not the tsar. When he became patriarch, he started to reorganise the church's administration so it was wholly under his own control.


title: Old Believers

text: In 1649, a Greek delegation, headed by Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem, arrived in Moscow and tried to convince the tsar and Nikon that current Greek liturgical practices were authentically Orthodox and that Russian usages that differed from them were local innovations. This led to a heated debate between the visiting Greeks and many Russian clerics who believed that, by accepting the decrees of the Council of Florence, the Greek patriarchate had compromised its authority and forfeited any right to dictate to Russia on liturgical matters.


title: Old Believers

text: Tsar Aleksei, Nikon and some of the Zealots of Piety decided that best way to revitalise the Russian church was to conform with the usages of the Greek church and accept the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople.


title: Old Believers

text: By the middle of the 17th century, Greek and Russian Church officials, including Patriarch Nikon of Moscow, had noticed discrepancies between contemporary Russian and Greek usages. They reached the conclusion that the Russian Orthodox Church had, as a result of errors of incompetent copyists, developed rites and liturgical books of its own that had significantly deviated from the Greek originals. Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church had become dissonant with the other Orthodox churches.


title: Old Believers

text: The unrevised Muscovite service-books derived from a different, and older, Greek recension than that which was used in the current Greek books, which had been revised over the centuries, and contained innovations. Nikon wanted to have the same rite in the Russian tsardom as those ethnically Slavic lands, then the territories of Ukraine and Belarus, that were then part of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, to attract local Orthodox rebels. Their rite was closer to the Greek than that in the Muscovite realm. Nikon did not accept the existence of two different rites in the same church.


title: Old Believers

text: Supported by Tsar Aleksei, Nikon carried out some preliminary liturgical reforms. In 1652, he convened a synod and exhorted the clergy on the need to compare Russian "Typikon," "Euchologion," and other liturgical books with their Greek counterparts. Monasteries from all over Russia received requests to send examples to Moscow to have them subjected to a comparative analysis. Such a task would have taken many years of conscientious research and could hardly have given an unambiguous result, given the complex development of the Russian liturgical texts over the previous centuries and the lack of textual historiographic techniques at the time.


title: Old Believers

text: Without waiting for the completion of any comparative analysis, Nikon overrode the decrees of the Stoglavy Synod and ordered the printing of new editions of the Russian psalter, missal, and a pamphlet justifying his liturgical changes. The new psalter and missal altered the most frequently used words and visible gestures in the liturgy, including the pronunciation of Christ's name and making the sign of the cross. In addition, the overbearing manner in which he forced the changes through turned Avvakum and others of the Zealots of Piety against him. Their protests led to their excommunication and exile and, in some cases, imprisonment or execution.


title: Old Believers

text: It was not disputed by the reformers that the Russian texts should be corrected by reference to the most ancient Greek, but also Slavonic, manuscripts, although they also considered that many traditional Russian ceremonial practices were acceptable. In addition, the hastily published new editions of the service books contained internal inconsistencies, and had to be reprinted several times in quick succession. Rather than being revised according to ancient Slavonic and Greek manuscripts, the new liturgical editions had actually been translated from modern Greek editions printed in Catholic Venice.


title: Old Believers

text: The locum tenens for Patriarch Pitirim of Moscow convened the 1666 Great Moscow Synod, which brought Patriarch Macarius III Ibn al-Za'im of Antioch, Patriarch Paisios of Alexandria, and many bishops to Moscow. Some scholars allege that the visiting patriarchs each received both 20,000 rubles in gold and furs for their participation. This council officially established the reforms and anathematized not only all those opposing the innovations but the old Russian books and rites themselves as well. As a side-effect of condemning the past of the Russian Orthodox Church and her traditions, the innovations appeared to weaken the messianic theory depicting Moscow as the Third Rome. Instead of the guardian of Orthodox faith, Moscow seemed an accumulation of serious liturgical mistakes.


title: Old Believers

text: It is argued that changing the wording of the eighth article of the Nicaean Creed was one of the very few alterations that could be seen as a genuine correction, rather than aligning the texts of Russian liturgical books and practices, customs and even vestments with the Greek versions that Nikon considered were universally applicable norms. Nikon also attacked Russian Church rituals as erroneous, and even in some cases heretical, in comparison with their contemporary Greek equivalents. This went beyond the recommendation of Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem, who suggested that differences in ritual did not of themselves indicate error, accepting the possibility that differences have developed over time. He urged Nikon to use discretion in attempting to enforce complete uniformity with Greek practice.


title: Old Believers

text: Nevertheless, both patriarch and tsar wished to carry out their reforms, although their endeavors may have had as much or more political motivation as religious; several authors on this subject point out that Tsar Aleksei, encouraged by his military success in the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667) to conquer West Russian provinces and Ukraine, developed ambitions of becoming the liberator of the Orthodox areas which at that time formed part of the Ottoman Empire. They also mention the role of the Near-East patriarchs, who actively supported the idea of the Russian Tsar becoming the liberator of all Orthodox Christians and who suggested that Patriarch Nikon might become the new Patriarch of Constantinople.


title: Old Believers

text: The numerous changes in both texts and rites occupied approximately 400 pages. Old Believers present the following as the most crucial changes:


title: Old Believers

text: Today's readers might perceive these alterations as trivial, but the faithful of that time saw rituals and dogmas as strongly interconnected: church rituals had from the beginning represented and symbolized doctrinal truth. The authorities imposed the reforms in an autocratic fashion, with no consultation of the subject people. Those who reacted against the Nikonite reforms would have objected as much to the manner of imposition as to the alterations. Changes were also often made arbitrarily in the texts. For example, wherever the books read 'Христосъ' ["Christ"], Nikon's assistants substituted 'Сынъ' [meaning "the Son"], and wherever they read 'Сынъ' they substituted 'Христосъ'. Another example is that wherever the books read 'Церковь' [meaning "Church"], Nikon substituted 'Храмъ' [meaning "Temple"] and vice versa.


title: Old Believers

text: Opponents of the ecclesiastical reforms of Nikon emerged among all strata of the people and in relatively large numbers (see Raskol). However, after the deposition of Patriarch Nikon (1658), who presented too strong a challenge to the tsar's authority, a series of church councils officially endorsed Nikon's liturgical reforms. The Old Believers fiercely rejected all innovations, and the most radical among them maintained that the official Church had fallen into the hands of the Antichrist. The Old Believers, under the leadership of Archpriest Avvakum Petrov (1620 or 1621 to 1682), publicly denounced and rejected all ecclesiastical reforms. The State church anathematized both the old rites and books and those who wished to stay loyal to them at the synod of 1666. From that moment, the Old Believers officially lacked all civil rights. The State had the most active Old Believers arrested, and executed several of them (including Archpriest Avvakum) some years later in 1682.


title: Old Believers

text: After 1685, a period of persecutions began, including both torture and executions. Many Old Believers fled Russia altogether, particularly for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where the community exists to this day. Old Believers became the dominant denomination in many regions, including the Pomors of the Russian Far North, in the Kursk region, in the Ural Mountains, in Siberia, and the Russian Far East. The 40,000-strong community of Lipovans still lives in Kiliya Raion (Vylkove) of Ukraine and Tulcea County of Romania in the Danube Delta. In the Imperial Russian census of 1897, 2,204,596 people, about 1.75% of the population of the Russian Empire self-declared as Old Believers or other denominations split from the Russian Orthodox Church. By the 1910s, in the last Imperial Russian census just before the October Revolution, approximately ten percent of the population of the Russian Empire said that they belonged to one of the Old Believer branches (census data).


title: Old Believers

text: Government oppression could vary from relatively moderate, as under Peter the Great (reigned 1682–1725) (Old Believers had to pay double taxation and a separate tax for wearing a beard)—to intense, as under Tsar Nicholas I (reigned 1825–1855). The Russian synodal state church and the state authorities often saw Old Believers as dangerous elements and as a threat to the Russian state.


title: Old Believers

text: In 1762, Catherine the Great passed an act that allowed Old Believers to practise their faith openly without interference. In 1905, Tsar Nicholas II signed an act of religious freedom that ended the persecution of all religious minorities in Russia. The Old Believers gained the right to build churches, to ring church bells, to hold processions and to organize themselves. It became prohibited (as under Catherine the Great—reigned 1762–1796) to refer to Old Believers as "raskolniki" (schismatics), a name they consider insulting. People often refer to the period from 1905 until 1917 as "the Golden Age of the Old Faith". One can regard the Act of 1905 as emancipating the Old Believers, who had until then occupied an almost illegal position in Russian society. Nevertheless, some restrictions for Old Believers continued: for example, they were forbidden from joining the civil service.


title: Old Believers

text: Although all Old Believers groups emerged as a result of opposition to the Nikonite reform, they do not constitute a single monolithic body. Despite the emphasis on invariable adherence to the pre-Nikonite traditions, the Old Believers feature a great diversity of groups that profess different interpretations of the church tradition and often are not in communion with each other (some groups even practice re-baptism before admitting a member of another group into their midst).


title: Old Believers

text: Since none of the bishops joined the Old Believers (except Bishop Pavel of Kolomna, who was put to death for this), apostolically ordained priests of the old rite would have soon become extinct. Two responses appeared to this dilemma: the "Popovtsy" (поповцы, "with priests") and the "Bezpopovtsy" ("priestless").


title: Old Believers

text: The Popovtsy represented the more moderate conservative opposition, those who strove to continue religious and church life as it had existed before the reforms of Nikon. They recognized ordained priests from the new-style Russian Orthodox church who joined the Old Believers and who had denounced the Nikonite reforms. In 1846, they convinced Ambrose of Belaya Krinitsa (1791–1863), a Greek Orthodox bishop whom Turkish pressure had removed from his see at Sarajevo, to become an Old Believer and to consecrate three Russian Old Believer priests as bishops. In 1859, the number of Old Believer bishops in Russia reached ten and they established their own episcopate, the Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy.


title: Old Believers

text: Not all popovtsy Old Believers recognized this hierarchy. Dissenters known as "beglopopovtsy" obtained their own hierarchy in the 1920s. The priestist Old Believers thus manifest as two churches which share the same beliefs, but which treat each other's hierarchy as illegitimate. Popovtsy have priests, bishops and all sacraments, including the Eucharist.


title: Old Believers

text: The Bezpopovtsy rejected "the World" where they believed the Antichrist reigned; they preached the imminent end of the world, asceticism, adherence to the old rituals and the old faith. More radical movements which already existed prior to the reforms of Nikon and where eschatological and anti-clerical sentiments were predominant, would join the bezpopovtsy Old Believers. The Bezpopovtsy claimed that any priest or ordinary who has ever used the Nikonite Rites have forfeited apostolic succession. Therefore, the true church of Christ had ceased to exist on Earth, and they therefore renounced priests and all sacraments except baptism.


title: Old Believers

text: The Bezpopovtsy movement has many sub-groups. Bezpopovtsy have no priests and no Eucharist. Priestless churches, however, may elect a mentor () or church leader () to lead the community and its services.


title: Old Believers

text: Apart from these major groups, many smaller groups have emerged and became extinct at various times since the end of the 17th century:


title: Old Believers

text: Edinovertsy (, i.e. "people of the same faith"; collective, единоверчество; often referred to as Orthodox Old Ritualists, православные старообрядцы): Agreed to become a part of the official Russian Orthodox Church while saving the old rites. First appearing in 1800, the Edinovertsy come under the omophorion of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate – Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, abbreviated as ROCOR – have come into communion under different circumstances and retain being old believers in the traditional context and retain the use of the pre-Nikonite rituals. Alexander Dugin, sociologist and a former strategic adviser to Vladimir Putin, is a proponent of edinoverie, since it combines Apostolic succession of the ROC, while preserving pre-Nikonite liturgical tradition.


title: Old Believers

text: Vladimir officially converted the Eastern Slavs to Christianity in 988, and the people had adopted Greek Orthodox liturgical practices. At the end of the 11th century, the efforts of St. Theodosius of the Caves in Kiev ("Феодосий Киево-Печерский", d. 1074) introduced the so-called "Studite Typicon" to Russia. This "typicon" (essentially, a guide-book for liturgical and monastic life) reflected the traditions of the urban Monastery of Stoudios in Constantinople. The "Studite typicon" predominated throughout the western part of the Byzantine Empire and was accepted throughout the Russian lands. At the end of the 14th century, through the work of Cyprian, metropolitan of Moscow and Kiev, the Studite liturgical practices were gradually replaced in Russia with the so-called "Jerusalem Typicon" or the "Typicon of St. Sabbas"—originally, an adaptation of the Studite liturgy to the customs of Palestinian monasteries. The process of gradual change of "typica" would continue throughout the 15th century and, because of its slow implementation, met with little resistance—unlike Nikon's reforms, conducted with abruptness and violence. However, in the course of the 15th—17th centuries, Russian scribes continued to insert some Studite material into the general shape of "Jerusalem Typicon". This explains the differences between the modern version of the "Typicon", used by the Russian Orthodox Church, and the pre-Nikonite Russian recension of "Jerusalem Typicon", called "Oko Tserkovnoe" (Rus. "eye of the church"). This pre-Nikonite version, based on the Moscow printed editions of 1610, 1633 and 1641, continues to be used by modern Old Believers.


title: Old Believers

text: However, in the course of the polemics against Old Believers, the official Russian Orthodox Church often claimed the discrepancies (which emerged in the texts between the Russian and the Greek churches) as Russian innovations, errors, or arbitrary translations. This charge of "Russian innovation" re-appeared repeatedly in the textbooks and anti-"raskol" treatises and catecheses, including, for example, those by Dimitry of Rostov.


title: Old Believers

text: The critical evaluation of the sources and of the essence of the church reforms began only in the 1850s, with the groundbreaking work of several church historians, Byzantinists, and theologians, including S. A. Belokurov, A. P. Shchapov, A. K. Borozdin, N. Gibbenet and, later, E. E. Golubinsky, A. V. Kartashev, A. A. Dmitriyevsky, and Nikolai F. Kapterev (the last four were members of the Imperial Academy of Sciences). Research was continued later mainly by Serge A. Zenkovsky, a specialist on Russian ecclesiastical culture. Golubinsky, Dmitriyevsky, Kartashov and Kapterev, amongst others, demonstrated that the rites, rejected and condemned by the church reforms, were genuine traditions of Orthodox Christianity, altered in Greek usage during the 15th–16th centuries but remaining unchanged in Russia. The pre-Nikonite liturgical practices, including some elements of the Russian typicon "Oko Tserkovnoe", were demonstrated to have preserved earlier Byzantine practices, being closer to the earlier Byzantine texts than some later Greek customs.


title: Old Believers

text: Remarkably, the scholars who opened the new avenues for re-evaluation of the reform by the Russian Church themselves held membership in the official church (A. V. Kapterev, for instance, was a professor at the Slavic Greek Latin Academy) but nevertheless took up serious study of the causes and background of the reforms and of the resulting schism. Their research revealed that the official explanation regarding the old Russian books and rites was unsustainable.


title: Old Believers

text: As Serge A. Zenkovsky points out in his standard work "Russia's Old Believers", the Old Believer schism did not occur simply as a result of a few individuals with power and influence. The schism had complex causes, revealing historical processes and circumstances in 17th-century Russian society. Those who broke from the hierarchy of the official State Church had quite divergent views on church, faith, society, state power and social issues. Thus the collective term "Old Believers" groups together various movements within Russian society which actually had existed long before 1666–67. They shared a distrust of state power and of the episcopate, insisting upon the right of the people to arrange their own spiritual life, and expressing the ambition to aim for such control.


title: Old Believers

text: Both the popovtsy and bespopovtsy, although theologically and psychologically two different teachings, manifested spiritual, eschatological and mystical tendencies throughout Russian religious thought and church life. One can also emphasize the schism's position in the political and cultural background of its time: increasing Western influence, secularization, and attempts to subordinate the Church to the state. Nevertheless, the Old Believers sought above all to defend and preserve the purity of the Orthodox faith, embodied in the old rituals, which inspired many to strive against Patriarch Nikon's church reforms even unto death.


title: Old Believers

text: In the past the Old Believers' movement was often perceived as an obscure faith in rituals that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of ignorant people. Old Believers were accused of not being able to distinguish the important from the unimportant. To many people of that time, however, rituals expressed the very essence of their faith. Old Believers hold that the preservation of a certain "microclimate" that enables the salvation of one's soul requires not only living by the commandments of Christ, but also carefully preserving Church tradition, which contains the spiritual power and knowledge of past centuries, embodied in external forms.


title: Old Believers

text: The Old Believers reject the idea of contents "a priori" prevailing over form. To illustrate this issue, the renowned Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky (1841–1911) referred to poetry. He argued, that if one converts a poem into prose, the contents of the poem may remain intact, but the poem will lose its charm and emotional impact; moreover, the poem will essentially no longer exist. In the case of religious rituals, form and contents do not just form two separable, autonomous entities, but connect with each other through complex relationships, including theological, psychological, phenomenal, aesthetic and historic dimensions.


title: Old Believers

text: These aspects, in their turn, play a role in the perception of these rituals by the faithful and in their spiritual lives. Considering the fact that Church rituals from their very beginning were intertwined with doctrinal truth, changing these rituals may have a tremendous effect on religious conscience and a severe impact on the faithful.


title: Old Believers

text: Nevertheless, centuries of persecution and the nature of their origin have made some Old Believers culturally conservative. Some Old Believers consider any pre-Nikonite Orthodox Russian practice or artifact as exclusively theirs, denying that the Russian Orthodox Church has any claims upon a history before Patriarch Nikon.


title: Old Believers

text: However, Russian economic history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries reveals the Old-Believer merchant families as more flexible and more open to innovations while creating factories and starting the first Russian industries.


title: Old Believers

text: In 1971, the Moscow Patriarchate revoked the anathemas imposed on the Old Believers in the 17th century. In 1974, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia issued an "ukase" revoking the anathemas, asking forgiveness from the Old Believers. Under their auspices, the first efforts to make the prayer and service books of the Old Believers available in English were made. Nevertheless, most Old Believer communities have not returned to full communion with the majority of Orthodox Christianity worldwide.


title: Old Believers

text: Old Believer churches in Russia have started restoration of their property, although Old Believers face many difficulties in claiming their restitution rights for their churches. Moscow has churches for all the most important Old Believer branches: Rogozhskaya Zastava (Popovtsy of the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy official center), a cathedral for the Novozybkovskaya hierarchy in Zamoskvorech'ye and Preobrazhenskaya Zastava where Pomortsy and Fedoseevtsy coexist.


title: Old Believers

text: Within the Old Believer world, only Pomortsy and Fedoseevtsy treat each other relatively well; none of the other denominations acknowledge each other. Ordinary Old Believers display some tendencies of inter-branch ecumenism, but these trends find sparse support among the official leaders of the congregations.


title: Old Believers

text: Modern-day Old Believers live all over the world, having fled Russia under tsarist persecution and after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Some Old Believers are still transient throughout various parts of the world today. Significant established Old Believer communities exist in the United States and Canada in Plamondon, Alberta; Hines Creek, Alberta; Woodburn, Oregon; Erie, Pennsylvania; Erskine, Minnesota and in various parts of Alaska including near Homer in the Fox River area villages of Voznesenka, Razdolna, and Kachemak Selo, Nikolaevsk, Beryozovka, Delta Junction, and Kodiak, Alaska (Larsen Bay area, and on Raspberry Island). Two communities also exist in Sydney, Australia and in the South Island of New Zealand. A large community existed in Yarwun, Australia, for many years until many families left the area in the early 2000s. Communities also have been established in many parts of South America, including Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia and Argentina, where they moved after having found refuge in China between the 1920s and the 1950s.


title: Old Believers

text: Small hidden communities have been found in the Russian Far North (specifically remote areas of Arkhangelsk Oblast and the Komi Republic) and various regions of Siberia, especially concentrated in the areas between the Altai Mountains and Tuva Republic. Perhaps the highest concentration of older established Old Believer communities, with foundations dating back hundreds of years, can be found concentrated in Eastern Siberia, specifically the Transbaikal region in desolate areas of Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai. Others, like the Lykov family, fled later into the wild to avoid Communist persecution.


title: Old Believers

text: The Lipovans, who live in Romania's Danube Delta, are descendants of the Old Believers who left Russia in around 1740 to avoid religious persecutions.


title: Old Believers

text: A conservative estimate for the Old Believer population in Bolivia stands at some 3,000, while that in Alaska is estimated at 2,500. Old Believers arrived in Alaska, US, in the second half of the 20th century, helping to revive a shrinking Orthodox population.


title: Old Believers

text: Old Believers from Russia fled to Swedish Estonia and Livonia in the end of the 17th century. Currently, there are 2,605 Old Believers in Estonia according to the 2011 Census. They live mostly in villages from Mustvee to Omedu and from Nina to Varnja on the western coast of Lake Peipus, and on Piirissaar Island. Their proximity to Lake Peipus gives them their name "peipsivenelased" ("Peipus Russians") in Estonian.


title: Old Believers

text: N.B.: All these works come from scholars and scientists, none of them Old Believers, except for Melnikov (an Old-Believer apologist) and Urushev (a religious historian).


title: The Try Guys

text: The Try Guys is an American online entertainment group and media production company which produces content for their YouTube channel. The group was founded by Keith Habersberger, Ned Fulmer, Zach Kornfeld, and Eugene Lee Yang. The Try Guys are known for testing a wide range of activities, such as testing their sperm count, raising toddlers, shaving their legs, and wearing women's underwear. The four men created The Try Guys while working for BuzzFeed, before forming their own company, 2nd Try LLC, in 2018. They have since expanded their company to include more than twenty employees, starred in a show on the Food Network, and released a book titled "The Hidden Power of F*cking Up".


title: The Try Guys

text: Fulmer was removed from the company in September 2022 following an internal review of his conduct within the company. , the channel hosts eleven spinoff series.


title: The Try Guys

text: The group was formed at the company BuzzFeed in 2014 by then-employees Ned Fulmer, Eugene Lee Yang, Keith Habersberger, and Zach Kornfeld, with the creation of their first video "Guys Try Ladies' Underwear for the First Time". Elizabeth de Luna, for "MTV News", highlighted that "in 2014, BuzzFeed had not yet developed a show around a recurring cast. [...] The Try Guys was the first series to consistently feature the same group of talent. It was also the first to turn BuzzFeed producers into on-camera personalities, a motif that now anchors BuzzFeed's original programming".


title: The Try Guys

text: Their show "Squad Wars" premiered on YouTube Red in early 2017. Their most-watched video, "The Try Guys Try Labor Pain Simulation," has garnered over 35 million views as of March 2021. The group has accumulated over 100 million views among their videos on BuzzFeed's YouTube channel. In 2017, the Try Guys were nominated for the Streamy Awards audience choice: Show of the Year award. In 2018, the Try Guys hosted the 8th annual Streamy Awards and won the audience choice: Show of the Year award, the same one for which they had been nominated in 2017.


title: The Try Guys

text: On June 16, 2018, The Try Guys announced that they had left BuzzFeed and started their own independent production company, 2nd Try LLC. 2nd Try LLC gained all rights to The Try Guys brand; BuzzFeed remained as the branded content and advertising sales representative for several months. On December 2, 2019, the Try Guys explained that they decided to leave Buzzfeed as their contracts' expiring, with Kornfeld and Fulmer contributing to the idea of developing their own independent production company.


title: The Try Guys

text: On their own YouTube channel, the Try Guys have received over 1.6 billion views and over 7.5 million subscribers. "Slate" highlighted that nearly 80% of their subscribers are women and that their audience "skews young, particularly women in their late teens and early 20s".


title: The Try Guys

text: On January 30, 2019, the Try Guys announced that they'd co-written a book, "The Hidden Power of F*cking Up". It was released by HarperCollins on June 18, 2019. The book follows each of the four Try Guys as they challenge themselves to improve their lives, discussing how their failures have impacted them and helped them grow. "The Hidden Power of F*cking Up" reached the number one position on the "New York Times" Best Seller list in the self help, advice, and miscellaneous category soon after its release. One review described it as "completely approachable in the way it's written… an honest, open discussion about failure." The group also went on tour, titled "Legends of the Internet", and launched "The TryPod" podcast in 2019.


title: The Try Guys

text: By 2021, the company had grown to almost 24 employees. The Try Guys host the Food Network show "No Recipe Road Trip with the Try Guys", inspired by their YouTube series "Without A Recipe". The show, initially a one-off special, was due to premiere on Discovery+ and Food Network in 2021, but was postponed when it was ordered for a six-episode season, which premiered on August 31, 2022.


title: The Try Guys

text: On September 27, 2022, the Try Guys announced that Fulmer would no longer be working with the group following an internal review regarding Fulmer having an extramarital affair with an employee. On October 3, 2022, the Try Guys announced that Fulmer would be removed from upcoming videos except in several sponsored videos, "ostensibly due to contractual obligations". Zoë Aiko Sonnenberg, writing for "Slate", analyzed that beyond the Try Guys' comedy "shtick", their brand promises the "performance of authenticity" with personas as "good guys". Sonnenberg wrote, "to this end, all four of the Try Guys are very publicly partnered, and those partners have become famous themselves. [...] The Try Guys had to act quickly when Ned's character as a devoted husband and father fell apart and breached an essential contract with the audience."


title: The Try Guys

text: Keith Douglas Habersberger (born June 18, 1987; ) was born to Donald and Patricia Habersberger in Carthage, Tennessee. He is the youngest of three brothers. He is a graduate of Illinois State University with a Bachelor in acting and French horn. Habersberger is married to Rebecca "Becky" Habersberger (née Miller). Habersberger is reportedly , making him the tallest of the Try Guys.


title: The Try Guys

text: Habersberger is part of the comedy music group Lewberger with Hughie Stone Fish and Alex Lewis. The group has appeared on several television talent shows, including "Bring the Funny" in 2018 and "America's Got Talent" in 2021.


title: The Try Guys

text: He is known for his love of fried chicken and has focused on food-related content over the years, the most prominent shows being "Eat the Menu", "Chicken Watch", "Gourmet Garbage". He is also one of the creators of the Try Guys' series "Without A Recipe". On November 30, 2019, Habersberger announced the release of his signature hot sauce, Keith's Chicken Sauce, which sold out within two days and was well received by consumers. Keith now has a line of Burger and Taco sauces also available through Heatonist.


title: The Try Guys

text: Zachary Andrew Kornfeld (born July 26, 1990). He was born to Jewish parents, Adam and Margo Kornfeld in Scarsdale, New York. He became involved in filmmaking and editing after receiving a LEGO Steven Spielberg Movie Maker Kit as a child. He is Jewish but does not keep kosher and did not have a bar mitzvah, though he did choose the Hebrew name Rakdan (Hebrew: רַקְדָן), meaning "dancer". Kornfeld was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis in his late 20s. He graduated from Emerson College with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. As a child, he appeared on "Saturday Night Live" in an episode hosted by Elijah Wood that aired on December 13, 2003. In December 2018, he announced he'd been in a relationship with Margaret Angela "Maggie" Bustamante, a pediatric nurse. In 2019, he decided to undergo hair restoration, a combination of surgery and microblading, to combat pattern hair loss. On May 13, 2020, Kornfeld announced his intention to start a six-part series on the Try Guys YouTube Channel challenge of starting his own business, Zadiko Tea Co., for less than $500. Kornfeld and Bustamante announced their engagement in August 2020.


title: The Try Guys

text: Eugene Lee Yang (born January 18, 1986; Hangul: 양유진) was born to Korean immigrants, Jae Yang and Min-young Lee in Pflugerville, Texas. Yang graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.A. in Cinema Production. He regularly participates in LGBT pride events and has worked with The Trevor Project. Yang came out on June 15, 2019, in a YouTube video, "I'm Gay". In 2019, he announced that he has been in a long-term relationship with Matthew McLean.


title: The Try Guys

text: Edward Gallo "Ned" Fulmer (born June 11, 1987) was born in Jacksonville, Florida. He is a graduate of Yale University, where he majored in chemistry. He had a career working in a chemistry lab before he had a career change and started working at Buzzfeed, where Fulmer developed the video fellowship program. He previously lived in Chicago, working at a renewable energy lab by day and performing improv and sketch for Second City and iO Chicago house teams by night, where he was named a "Critic's Pick" by Time Out Chicago.


title: The Try Guys

text: He is married to Ariel Fulmer (née VandeVoorde), an interior designer, and they have two children. "The Verge" highlighted that much of Fulmer's "public persona revolves around being a husband" and that he "successfully built a fanbase and brand around this relationship specifically", calling him a "wife guy". On September 27, 2022, it was announced that Fulmer would no longer be working with the group following an internal review regarding an extramarital affair with an employee.


title: The Try Guys

text: Over the series of "The Try Guys" episodes, particular episodes have branched off as part of series of a specific topic or mini-series.


title: The Try Guys

text: On May 4, 2019, The Try Guys announced via YouTube that they would be embarking on a 20 city, nationwide tour (called “Legends of the Internet”) as a part of their “Summer of Try”. Then on July 30, 2019, The Try Guys announced they would be bringing Legends of The Internet to Australia and, later Singapore. Finally, on September 3, 2019, the group announced the final leg of the Legends of the Internet tour, this time in the Pacific Northwest (which was missed on the original run of the tour). In total, The Try Guys performed 26 shows of "Legends of the Internet" worldwide.


title: Windfall (2022 film)

text: Windfall is a 2022 American crime thriller film directed by Charlie McDowell from a screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker and Justin Lader. The film stars Jason Segel, Lily Collins, and Jesse Plemons.


title: Windfall (2022 film)

text: A wealthy CEO and his wife come to their vacation home only to discover someone in the middle of robbing it. The CEO agrees to give the robber money and forget about the ordeal without calling the police, but the robber locks them in a sauna. Returning to his car, the robber spots a camera recording him. He returns to the house and confronts the couple. The robber also asks for $500,000 in cash. The CEO calls his assistant, who tells him that the money will arrive the following day.


title: Windfall (2022 film)

text: Several conversations between the trio make it clear that the CEO and his wife are in a strained relationship, although the CEO looks forward to having children. At night, the wife tells the robber that she is not happy with her life; the robber tells her to stop calling herself a victim for marrying a man for his wealth. The next day, the CEO accuses the robber of being an employee made redundant by the algorithm he has invented, which aids companies undergoing downsizing. A gardener arrives to work on the house. The gardener takes the trio outside and talks to the CEO about planting an oak tree. The CEO writes the gardener a note using his sketch of the garden. The robber takes notice and orders the gardener to enter the house. His wife and the robber criticize the CEO for jeopardizing another person's life.


title: Windfall (2022 film)

text: After a few hours, the CEO finally breaks. He belittles the robber and claims he will not do anything to them because his life is meaningless. After the robber shoots a warning shot, the gardener tries to escape. The gardener trips and falls through a glass door, and a shard of glass pierces his neck, killing him.


title: Windfall (2022 film)

text: The money is left in front of the house. The wife retrieves it. She sees a passing car but does not signal it before returning inside. The robber ties up the CEO and his wife in different rooms. The robber admits to the CEO that he wanted to know what it was like to live like a rich person. He reveals to the CEO that his wife is taking birth control pills. The wife cuts herself free and kills the robber with a small statue. She then shoots her husband dead, plants the gun in the robber's hand, and leaves the property.


title: Windfall (2022 film)

text: Filming took place in March 2021 in Ojai, California, with production fully wrapping in July. Later that month, Netflix acquired the film for a "major eight-figures" sum.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Kyriakos Mitsotakis (, ; born 4 March 1968) is a Greek politician serving as the prime minister of Greece since 8 July 2019. A member of the center-right party New Democracy, he has been its president since 2016. He previously was Leader of the Opposition from 2016 to 2019, and Minister of Administrative Reform from 2013 to 2015.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: He was first elected to the Hellenic Parliament for the Athens B constituency in 2004. After New Democracy suffered two election defeats in 2015, he was elected the party's leader in January 2016. Three years later, he led his party to a majority in the 2019 election.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: During Mitsotakis' term as PM, Greece has experienced a democratic backsliding and heightened corruption, with a drastic deterioration of freedom of the press, human rights violations, and was marred by the Novartis corruption scandal and the 2022 wiretapping scandal.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Kyriakos Mitsotakis was born in Athens on 4 March 1968, the son of Marika (née Giannoukou) and former Greek prime minister and New Democracy president Konstantinos Mitsotakis. At the time of his birth, his family had been placed under house arrest by the Greek military junta that had declared his father persona non grata and imprisoned him on the night of the coup. In 1968, when he was six months old, the family escaped to Turkey with the help of Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs İhsan Sabri Çağlayangil. After a while, they moved from Turkey to Paris and waited until 1974 to return to Greece after democracy had been restored. Later, Mitsotakis described the first six months of his life as political imprisonment.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: In 1986, Mitsotakis graduated from Athens College. From 1986 to 1990, he attended Harvard University and earned a bachelor's degree in social studies, receiving the Hoopes Prize. Later, his senior thesis was published as a book titled «The Pitfalls of Foreign Policy» receiving mixed reviews. From 1992 to 1993, he attended Stanford University, earning a Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy. From 1993 to 1995, he attended Harvard Business School, where he earned an MBA.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: From 1990 to 1991 Kyriakos Mitsotakis worked as a financial analyst at the corporate finance division of Chase Bank in London. From 1991 to 1992, Mitsotakis returned to Greece and joined the Hellenic Army to fulfil his mandatory national service obligations. From 1995 to 1997, and following the completion of his post-graduate studies, he was employed by the consultancy McKinsey & Company in London, focusing primarily on the telecommunications and financial services industries. From 1997 to 1999 he worked for Alpha Ventures, a private equity subsidiary of Alpha Bank, as a senior investment officer, executing venture capital and private equity transactions. In 1999 he founded NBG Venture Capital, the private equity and venture capital subsidiary of the National Bank of Greece, and acted as its CEO, managing its portfolio and executing transactions in Greece and the Balkans, until April 2003, when he resigned to pursue a career in politics.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: During the 2000 legislative election, Mitsotakis worked for New Democracy's national campaign. In the 2004 legislative election, Mitsotakis ran in the Athens B constituency, receiving more votes than any other New Democracy candidate in the country and was elected to the Hellenic Parliament.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Mitsotakis is honorary president of Konstantinos K. Mitsotakis Foundation, aiming at promoting the life and works of Konstantinos Mitsotakis and at reporting the modern political history of Greece.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: On 24 June 2013, Mitsotakis was appointed as the Minister of Administrative Reform and e-Governance in Antonis Samaras' cabinet, succeeding Antonis Manitakis. He served in this position until January 2015. During this time, he pursued comprehensive national reforms by implementing a functional reorganization of institutions, structures and processes. He steadfastly supported the drastic downsizing of the Public Sector and the structural reform of the tax administration.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: In 2015, Mitsotakis served as a parliamentary representative for New Democracy, representing the President of the party in Parliament, as well as the body of the party's Representatives. He was charged with expressing the positions of his party during Parliamentary procedures and discourse, as well as ensuring the proper function of Parliament through a process of checks and balances. In March 2015, he claimed that then-Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis was undermining the Greek negotiations over the third bailout programme, saying: "Every time he opens his mouth, he creates a problem for the country's negotiating position."


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Mitsotakis was the first of four New Democracy members to announce their candidacy in the leadership election, declared following the resignation of Antonis Samaras as party leader and the failure of New Democracy in the September 2015 snap election. Amongst the other contestants was then-interim leader and former Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament Vangelis Meimarakis. According to the "Financial Times", Mitsotakis was "billed as an outsider in the leadership race" due to the party establishment's support of Meimarakis' candidacy. Following the first round of voting with no clear winner, Mitsotakis came second, 11% behind Meimarakis.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: On 10 January 2016, Mitsotakis was elected president of the New Democracy political party succeeding Ioannis Plakiotakis (transitional president) with almost 4% difference from opponent Vangelis Meimarakis. A week following Mitsotakis' election as leader, two opinion polls were published that put New Democracy ahead of Syriza for the first time in a year.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: His party won 33% of the votes in the European elections in 2019. He managed to win back votes from the Golden Dawn Party. Following the election results, the Hellenic Parliament was dissolved and a snap election was called.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: New Democracy was victorious in the 2019 legislative election, scoring 39.85% of votes and securing 158 seats in the Hellenic Parliament.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: On 8 July 2019, Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos accepted Tsipras' resignation and tasked Mitsotakis with forming a new government. Mitsotakis was sworn in as prime minister the same day as well. On 9 July, the ministers in his government were sworn in. Among his cabinet was Makis Voridis, a former member of the far-right Popular Orthodox Rally, who was met with a cold reception abroad and by the Jewish community in Greece. Israel announced that it would not cooperate with Voridis.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: From 2019 onwards, it is launching a wave of privatizations, including tourism infrastructure, coastal land, and state-owned shares in the gas and electricity companies and Athens airport. On the other hand, a tax reform aimed at making the country "a haven for billionaires and the wealthiest citizens", the "Financial Times" notes, is being implemented. The aim is to attract investment by offering low tax rates. A clause will protect the beneficiaries of this tax policy from possible policy changes by future governments.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: The "big growth bill", adopted in the summer of 2020, provides for the restriction of the right to strike and the abolition of collective agreements, which had already been suspended in 2012 at the request of the Troika and then reinstated by the Tsipras government. Migration policy has been tightened: the coverage of hospital care for destitute foreigners has been abolished and the period during which refugees who have been granted asylum can reside in public housing has been reduced from six months to one month. On environmental issues, the government reformed legislation to facilitate oil exploration.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Mitsotakis' government has been praised for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as for its plans for spending a €31bn share of the EU's Recovery Plan and for its orderly vaccination roll-out. Additionally, the common Covid-19 certificate was credited to Mitsotakis, and his idea has been taken up at a European level. Mitsotakis had criticized the initially slow pace of the EU's COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and he had called for its acceleration.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Measures were implemented from March to May 2020 and from November 2020 until May 2021, when their gradual lifting started. The controls included the introduction of various movement restrictions, the suspension of operation of retail, catering and entertainment businesses, as well as schools and churches.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: In August 2020, a reform of the labour law was adopted. It provides for the possibility of an employer to dismiss employees without having to give reasons for the decision or give prior notice to the persons concerned. The tax authorities' anti-fraud unit was abolished and its employees integrated into the Ministry of Finance.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: There is a long-standing dispute between Turkey and Greece over natural resources in the eastern Mediterranean. Mitsotakis said that Turkey "remains stuck in the logic of using force and threats." He told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that Greece is "contributing to NATO, we are an ally and have the expectation that when another NATO ally is behaving in a way that jeopardises our interests, NATO should not adopt this stance of equal distances and non-intervention in internal differences. It is deeply unfair to Greece."


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: In July 2020, Mitsotakis awarded honorary Greek citizenship to American actor Tom Hanks and his wife, American actress Rita Wilson, the latter of whom is half Greek.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: On May 16, 2022, Mitsotakis met with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House. On the next day, Mitsotakis became the first Prime Minister of Greece to address a Joint session of the United States Congress at the invitation of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: In 2007, it was reported that Mitsotakis was involved in the Siemens Greek bribery scandal. However, Mitsotakis has repeatedly denied any involvement and no indication of guilt has so far been proven.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Electronic office equipment, call centers, air conditioners etc. worth were received in the period preceding the 2007 elections (June to September 2007) by Mitsotakis from Siemens and two of its subsidiaries. The invoices indicate payment period of up to 60 days, however no part of the amount was paid until February 2008, when part of it was paid, just when the Siemens case was reopened by the courts, and an amount of €43,850 was paid by check from Mr. Mitsotakis on Monday 2 June. Earlier (on 29 May) testimonies had been made about "donations and grants by Siemens to politicians" and on 30 May 2008 the prosecutor's investigation took place at the company's offices.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Although coming from a centrist political family, Kyriakos Mitsotakis has promoted important political figures of the Greek far right. The vice-president of New Democracy and the Minister of Development and Investment is Adonis Georgiadis, a far-right politician and publisher of anti-Semitic books by the "father" of the Greek far right, Konstantinos Plevris. Athanasios Plevris, the son of Konstantinos Plevris, is the Minister of Health of the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Plevris was a former member of the far-right party and criminal organization Golden Dawn. The third far-right minister of the Mitsotakis government is Makis Voridis, Voridis holds the position of Minister of Interior, he was a former member of the youth of the EPEN party founded by the dictator Georgios Papadopoulos, who was sentenced to life imprisonment. Voridis appears in a photo, younger in age, as a member of a neo-Nazi raid battalion waving an axe.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: In December 2020, Mitsotakis was criticized after a photo of him surfaced on social media, in which he posed with five other people while not wearing a mask, during a time when Greece had a nationwide lockdown and mask wearing was mandatory both indoors and outdoors. On 6 February 2021 Mitsotakis visited the island of Icaria to inspect the progress of COVID-19 vaccinations in the area. During this visit, he attended a lunch organized by MP Christodoulos I. Stefanadis along with his entourage numbering up to 40 people. The incident was covered by both Greek and international media and Mitsotakis was heavily criticized for violating the existing COVID-19 containment measures. Mitsotakis publicly apologized for the Icaria incident, saying this will never happen again and that "the image hurt the citizens".


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: In May 2021, when the Mitsotakis government announced the country's opening for tourism on 14 May, it was criticised initially, because movement control measures, such as the obligation to send an SMS at particular sites, were retained temporarily. Other measures still in place after the re-opening of tourism were the daily curfew, from 00:30, the obligatory use of face masks indoors and outdoors, the ban on music in cafes and restaurants, and the ban on the operation of indoor restaurants throughout May. Casinos were allowed to operate, with a specific sanitary protocol. In an interview on 27 May 2021, Mitsotakis did not give a clear answer as to when and if the above measures would be lifted in the summer. He referred to a roadmap for lifting the controls, but did not elaborate. He also estimated that tourism in 2021 in Greece would be around 50% of levels experienced in 2019. Despite criticism, Greece was awarded the "Global Champion Award for COVID-19 Crisis Management" by the World Travel and Tourism Council, which "commends" the Greek Government as "a global example for the safe opening of the tourism sector during the pandemic."


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Mitsotakis adopted a hardline stance on the European Migrant Crisis by resorting to human rights violations, including pushbacks of thousands of migrants in an attempt to prevent their entry into Greece.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Under Mitsotakis, Greece has rapidly declined in press freedom. It has been reported that his government has attempted to control and censor the media. Violence against journalists has also increased, resulting to a drastic deterioration of the Greek freedom of the press.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: In July 2022, the leader of political party PASOK, Nikos Androulakis, revealed that there was an attempt of bugging his phone with spyware program "Predator". In a closed-door parliamentary hearing that was called by Androulakis, the chief of Greek Intelligence Service, P. Kontoleon, admitted that his service had spied Greek journalist Thanassis Koukakis, who has also complained about being targeted by "Predator". After the publication of an investigation by Efsyn and Reporters United that Grigoris Dimitriadis, Mitsotakis's nephew and general secretary, had connections with Felix Bitsios, the owner of the company that markets the "Predator", Dimitriadis submitted his resignation. Shortly after, the chief of Greek Intelligence Service, Panagiotis Kontoleon, also stepped down over an allegation that his service had tapped Androulakis's phone.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Mitsotakis is the younger brother of former Minister for Foreign Affairs and Mayor of Athens Dora Bakoyannis, making him the brother-in-law of the late Pavlos Bakoyannis, who was assassinated by the terrorist group 17 November in 1989 and the uncle of Kostas Bakoyannis, former Regional Governor of Central Greece and current Mayor of Athens.


title: Kyriakos Mitsotakis

text: Mitsotakis is married to Mareva Grabowska, an investment banker with British, Greek, Polish and Egyptian roots. They have three children, Sophia, Konstantinos and Daphne.


title: Pauli matrices

text: In mathematical physics and mathematics, the Pauli matrices are a set of three complex matrices which are Hermitian, involutory and unitary. Usually indicated by the Greek letter sigma (), they are occasionally denoted by tau () when used in connection with isospin symmetries.


title: Pauli matrices

text: These matrices are named after the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. In quantum mechanics, they occur in the Pauli equation which takes into account the interaction of the spin of a particle with an external electromagnetic field. They also represent the interaction states of two polarization filters for horizontal/vertical polarization, 45 degree polarization (right/left), and circular polarization (right/left).


title: Pauli matrices

text: Each Pauli matrix is Hermitian, and together with the identity matrix (sometimes considered as the zeroth Pauli matrix ), the Pauli matrices form a basis for the real vector space of Hermitian matrices.


title: Pauli matrices

text: This means that any Hermitian matrix can be written in a unique way as a linear combination of Pauli matrices, with all coefficients being real numbers.


title: Pauli matrices

text: Hermitian operators represent observables in quantum mechanics, so the Pauli matrices span the space of observables of the complex -dimensional Hilbert space. In the context of Pauli's work, represents the observable corresponding to spin along the th coordinate axis in three-dimensional Euclidean space formula_2


title: Pauli matrices

text: The Pauli matrices (after multiplication by to make them anti-Hermitian) also generate transformations in the sense of Lie algebras: the matrices form a basis for the real Lie algebra formula_3, which exponentiates to the special unitary group SU(2). The algebra generated by the three matrices is isomorphic to the Clifford algebra of , and the (unital associative) algebra generated by is effectively identical (isomorphic) to that of quaternions (formula_4).


title: Pauli matrices

text: where the solution to is the "imaginary unit", and is the Kronecker delta, which equals +1 if and 0 otherwise. This expression is useful for "selecting" any one of the matrices numerically by substituting values of , in turn useful when any of the matrices (but no particular one) is to be used in algebraic manipulations.


title: Pauli matrices

text: With the inclusion of the identity matrix, (sometimes denoted ), the Pauli matrices form an orthogonal basis (in the sense of Hilbert–Schmidt) of the Hilbert space of Hermitian matrices, formula_8 over formula_9, and the Hilbert space of all complex matrices, formula_10.


title: Pauli matrices

text: Each of the (Hermitian) Pauli matrices has two eigenvalues, and . The corresponding normalized eigenvectors are:


title: Pauli matrices

text: where formula_13, formula_14, and formula_15 are an equivalent notation for the more familiar formula_16, formula_17, and formula_18; the subscripted notation formula_19 is more compact than the old formula_20 form.


title: Pauli matrices

text: The Pauli vector provides a mapping mechanism from a vector basis to a Pauli matrix basis as follows,


title: Pauli matrices

text: More formally, this defines a map from formula_22 to the vector space of traceless Hermitian formula_23 matrices. This map encodes structures of formula_22 as a normed vector space and as a Lie algebra (with the cross-product as its Lie bracket) via functions of matrices, making the map an isomorphism of Lie algebras. This makes the Pauli matrices intertwiners from the point of view of representation theory.


title: Pauli matrices

text: Another way to view the Pauli vector is as a formula_23 Hermitian traceless matrix-valued dual vector, that is, an element of formula_26 which maps formula_27.


title: Pauli matrices

text: Then considering the conjugation action of an formula_32 matrix formula_33 on this space of matrices,


title: Pauli matrices

text: we find formula_35, and that formula_36 is Hermitian and traceless. It then makes sense to define formula_37 where formula_38 has the same norm as formula_28, and therefore interpret formula_33 as a rotation of 3-dimensional space. In fact, it turns out that the "special" restriction on formula_33 implies that the rotation is orientation preserving. This allows the definition of a map formula_42 given by


title: Pauli matrices

text: where formula_44. This map is the concrete realization of the double cover of formula_45 by formula_32, and therefore shows that formula_47. The components of formula_48 can be recovered using the tracing process above:


title: Pauli matrices

text: In fact, the existence of a norm follows from the fact that formula_22 is a Lie algebra: see Killing form.


title: Pauli matrices

text: The eigenvalues of formula_53 are formula_54. This follows immediately from tracelessness and explicitly computing the determinant.


title: Pauli matrices

text: More abstractly, without computing the determinant which requires explicit properties of the Pauli matrices, this follows from formula_55, since this can be factorised into formula_56. A standard result in linear algebra (a linear map which satisfies a polynomial equation written in distinct linear factors is diagonal) means this implies formula_53 is diagonal with possible eigenvalues formula_58. The tracelessness of formula_53 means it has exactly one of each eigenvalue.


title: Pauli matrices

text: Similarly to the Pauli 3-vector case, we can find a matrix group which acts as isometries on formula_63; in this case the matrix group is formula_69, and this shows formula_70 Similarly to above, this can be explicitly realized for formula_71 with components


title: Pauli matrices

text: In fact, the determinant property follows abstractly from trace properties of the formula_61. For formula_23 matrices, the following identity holds:


title: Pauli matrices

text: That is, the 'cross-terms' can be written as traces. When formula_76 are chosen to be different formula_61, the cross-terms vanish. It then follows, now showing summation explicitly,


title: Pauli matrices

text: These commutation relations make the Pauli matrices the generators of a representation of the Lie algebra formula_82


title: Pauli matrices

text: These anti-commutation relations make the Pauli matrices the generators of a representation of the Clifford algebra for formula_22, denoted formula_85


title: Pauli matrices

text: The usual construction of generators formula_86 of formula_87 using the Clifford algebra recovers the commutation relations above, up to unimportant numerical factors.


title: Pauli matrices

text: Pauli vectors elegantly map these commutation and anticommutation relations to corresponding vector products. Adding the commutator to the anticommutator gives


title: Pauli matrices

text: Contracting each side of the equation with components of two -vectors and (which commute with the Pauli matrices, i.e., for each matrix and vector component (and likewise with ) yields


title: Pauli matrices

text: If is identified with the pseudoscalar then the right hand side becomes formula_90 which is also the definition for the product of two vectors in geometric algebra.


title: Pauli matrices

text: If we define the spin operator as , then satisfies the commutation relation:formula_91Or equivalently, the Pauli vector satisfies:formula_92


title: Pauli matrices

text: where Greek indices and assume values from and the notation formula_95 is used to denote the sum over the cyclic permutation of the included indices.


title: Pauli matrices

text: which can be shown first for the case using the anticommutation relations. For convenience, the case is taken to be by convention.


title: Pauli matrices

text: while the determinant of the exponential itself is just , which makes it the generic group element of SU(2).


title: Pauli matrices

text: A more abstract version of formula for a general matrix can be found in the article on matrix exponentials. A general version of for an analytic (at "a" and −"a") function is provided by application of Sylvester's formula,


title: Pauli matrices

text: A straightforward application of formula provides a parameterization of the composition law of the group . One may directly solve for in


title: Pauli matrices

text: Consequently, the composite rotation parameters in this group element (a closed form of the respective BCH expansion in this case) simply amount to


title: Pauli matrices

text: It is also straightforward to likewise work out the adjoint action on the Pauli vector, namely rotation of any angle formula_108 along any axis formula_109:


title: Pauli matrices

text: Taking the dot product of any unit vector with the above formula generates the expression of any single qubit operator under any rotation. For example, it can be shown that formula_111.


title: Pauli matrices

text: An alternative notation that is commonly used for the Pauli matrices is to write the vector index in the superscript, and the matrix indices as subscripts, so that the element in row and column of the -th Pauli matrix is


title: Pauli matrices

text: As noted above, it is common to denote the 2 × 2 unit matrix by so The completeness relation can alternatively be expressed as


title: Pauli matrices

text: The fact that any Hermitian complex 2 × 2 matrices can be expressed in terms of the identity matrix and the Pauli matrices also leads to the Bloch sphere representation of 2 × 2 mixed states’ density matrix, (positive semidefinite 2 × 2 matrices with unit trace. This can be seen by first expressing an arbitrary Hermitian matrix as a real linear combination of as above, and then imposing the positive-semidefinite and trace conditions.


title: Pauli matrices

text: acts on the state eigenvector formula_116 with eigenvalue +1, hence it acts like a projection operator.


title: Pauli matrices

text: Let be the transposition (also known as a permutation) between two spins and living in the tensor product space


title: Pauli matrices

text: Its eigenvalues are therefore 1 or −1. It may thus be utilized as an interaction term in a Hamiltonian, splitting the energy eigenvalues of its symmetric versus antisymmetric eigenstates.


title: Pauli matrices

text: The group SU(2) is the Lie group of unitary matrices with unit determinant; its Lie algebra is the set of all anti-Hermitian matrices with trace 0. Direct calculation, as above, shows that the Lie algebra formula_119 is the 3-dimensional real algebra spanned by the set . In compact notation,


title: Pauli matrices

text: As a result, each can be seen as an infinitesimal generator of SU(2). The elements of SU(2) are exponentials of linear combinations of these three generators, and multiply as indicated above in discussing the Pauli vector. Although this suffices to generate SU(2), it is not a proper representation of, as the Pauli eigenvalues are scaled unconventionally. The conventional normalization is so that


title: Pauli matrices

text: The Lie algebra formula_122 is isomorphic to the Lie algebra formula_123, which corresponds to the Lie group SO(3), the group of rotations in three-dimensional space. In other words, one can say that the are a realization (and, in fact, the lowest-dimensional realization) of "infinitesimal" rotations in three-dimensional space. However, even though formula_122 and formula_123 are isomorphic as Lie algebras, and are not isomorphic as Lie groups. is actually a double cover of , meaning that there is a two-to-one group homomorphism from to , see relationship between SO(3) and SU(2).


title: Pauli matrices

text: The real linear span of is isomorphic to the real algebra of quaternions, formula_4, represented by the span of the basis vectors formula_127 The isomorphism from formula_4 to this set is given by the following map (notice the reversed signs for the Pauli matrices):


title: Pauli matrices

text: As the set of versors forms a group isomorphic to , gives yet another way of describing . The two-to-one homomorphism from to may be given in terms of the Pauli matrices in this formulation.


title: Pauli matrices

text: In classical mechanics, Pauli matrices are useful in the context of the Cayley-Klein parameters. The matrix corresponding to the position formula_131 of a point in space is defined in terms of the above Pauli vector matrix,


title: Pauli matrices

text: Consequently, the transformation matrix for rotations about the -axis through an angle may be written in terms of Pauli matrices and the unit matrix as


title: Pauli matrices

text: In quantum mechanics, each Pauli matrix is related to an angular momentum operator that corresponds to an observable describing the spin of a spin particle, in each of the three spatial directions. As an immediate consequence of the Cartan decomposition mentioned above, are the generators of a projective representation (spin representation) of the rotation group SO(3) acting on non-relativistic particles with spin . The states of the particles are represented as two-component spinors. In the same way, the Pauli matrices are related to the isospin operator.


title: Pauli matrices

text: An interesting property of spin particles is that they must be rotated by an angle of 4 in order to return to their original configuration. This is due to the two-to-one correspondence between SU(2) and SO(3) mentioned above, and the fact that, although one visualizes spin up/down as the north/south pole on the 2-sphere they are actually represented by orthogonal vectors in the two dimensional complex Hilbert space.


title: Pauli matrices

text: For a spin particle, the spin operator is given by , the fundamental representation of SU(2). By taking Kronecker products of this representation with itself repeatedly, one may construct all higher irreducible representations. That is, the resulting spin operators for higher spin systems in three spatial dimensions, for arbitrarily large "j", can be calculated using this spin operator and ladder operators. They can be found in . The analog formula to the above generalization of Euler's formula for Pauli matrices, the group element in terms of spin matrices, is tractable, but less simple.


title: Pauli matrices

text: Also useful in the quantum mechanics of multiparticle systems, the general Pauli group is defined to consist of all -fold tensor products of Pauli matrices.


title: Pauli matrices

text: In relativistic quantum mechanics, the spinors in four dimensions are 4 × 1 (or 1 × 4) matrices. Hence the Pauli matrices or the Sigma matrices operating on these spinors have to be 4 × 4 matrices. They are defined in terms of 2 × 2 Pauli matrices as


title: Pauli matrices

text: It follows from this definition that the formula_135 matrices have the same algebraic properties as the matrices.


title: Pauli matrices

text: However, relativistic angular momentum is not a three-vector, but a second order four-tensor. Hence formula_136 needs to be replaced by the generator of Lorentz transformations on spinors. By the antisymmetry of angular momentum, the are also antisymmetric. Hence there are only six independent matrices.


title: Pauli matrices

text: The first three are the formula_137 The remaining three, formula_138 where the Dirac matrices are defined as


title: Pauli matrices

text: The relativistic spin matrices are written in compact form in terms of commutator of gamma matrices as


title: Pauli matrices

text: In quantum information, single-qubit quantum gates are 2 × 2 unitary matrices. The Pauli matrices are some of the most important single-qubit operations. In that context, the Cartan decomposition given above is called the "Z–Y decomposition of a single-qubit gate". Choosing a different Cartan pair gives a similar "X–Y "decomposition of a single-qubit gate".


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (; born Vishvambhar Mishra) was a 15th-century Indian saint who is considered to be the combined avatar of Radha and Krishna by his disciples and various scriptures. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mode of worshipping Krishna with ecstatic song and dance had a profound effect on Vaishnavism in Bengal. He was also the chief proponent of the Vedantic philosophy of Achintya Bheda Abheda Tattva. Mahaprabhu founded Gaudiya Vaishnavism ( the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya Sampradaya). He expounded Bhakti yoga and popularized the chanting of the Hare Krishna Maha-mantra. He composed the "Shikshashtakam" (eight devotional prayers).


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: Chaitanya is sometimes called Gauranga or Gaura due to his molten gold–like complexion. His birthday is celebrated as Gaura-purnima. He is also called Nimai due to him being born underneath a Neem tree.


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: "Chaitanya" means "one who is conscious" (derived from Chetana, which means "Consciousness"); "Maha" means "Great" and "Prabhu" means "Lord" or "Master". Chaitanya was born as Vishvambhar Mishra, the second son of Jagannath Mishra. Jagannath and his wife, Sachi Devi, the daughter of Nilambara Chakravarti, were both Brahmins of Sylhet. Jagannath Mishra's family were from the village of Dhakadakshin in Srihatta (Sylhet), and later migrated to Nabadwip. The ruins of their ancestral home still survive in present-day Bangladesh.


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: According to "Chaitanya Charitamrita", Chaitanya was born in Nabadwip (in present-day "West Bengal") on the full moon night of 18 February 1486, at the time of a lunar eclipse.


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: A number of stories also exist telling of Chaitanya's apparent attraction to the chanting and singing of Krishna's names from a very young age, but largely this was perceived as being secondary to his interest in acquiring knowledge and studying Sanskrit. When travelling to Gaya to perform the Śrāddha ceremony for his departed father, Chaitanya met his guru, the ascetic Ishvara Puri, from whom he received initiation with the Gopala Krishna mantra. This meeting was to mark a significant change in Chaitanya's outlook and upon his return to Bengal the local Vaishnavas, headed by Advaita Acharya, were stunned at his external sudden 'change of heart' (from 'scholar' to 'devotee') and soon Chaitanya became the eminent leader of their Vaishnava group within Nadia.


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: After leaving Bengal and receiving entrance into the sannyasa order by Swami Kesava Bharati, Chaitanya journeyed throughout the length and breadth of India for several years, chanting the divine names of Krishna constantly. At that time He travelled on foot covering a lot of places like Baranagar, Mahinagar, Atisara and, at last, Chhatrabhog. Chhatrabhog is the place where Goddess Ganga and Shiva met, then one hundred mouths of Ganga were visible from here. From the source of Vrindavana Dasa's "Chaitanya Bhagavata", he bathed at Ambulinga Ghat of Chhatrabhog with intimate companions with great chorus-chanting (kirtan). After staying one night he set for Puri by boat with the help of Local Administrator Ram Chandra Khan. He spent the last 24 years of his life in Puri, Odisha, the great temple city of Jagannath in the Radhakanta Math. The Gajapati king, Prataprudra Dev, regarded Chaitanya as Krishna's avatar and was an enthusiastic patron and devotee of Chaitanya's recitation (sankeertan) gatherings. It was during these years that Chaitanya is believed by his followers to have sunk deep into various Divine-Love trances (samādhi) and performed pastimes of divine ecstasy (bhakti).


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: Vrindavan, the land of Radha Rani, the “City of Temples” has more than 5000 temples to showcase the pastimes of Radha and Krishna. The essence of Vrindavan was lost over time until the 16th century, when it was rediscovered by Chaitanya. In the year 1515, Chaitanya visited Vrindavan, with the purpose of locating the lost holy places associated with Krishna's transcendent pastimes. He wandered through the different sacred forests of Vrindavan in a spiritual trance of divine love. It was believed that by His divine spiritual power, he was able to locate all the important places of Krishna's pastimes in and around Vrindavan including the seven main temples or "sapta devalay", which are worshiped by Vaishnavas in the Chaitanya tradition to this day.


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: There are numerous biographies available from the time giving details of Chaitanya's life, the most prominent ones being the "Chaitanya Charitamrita" of Krishnadasa Kaviraja, the earlier "Chaitanya Bhagavata" of Vrindavana Dasa (both originally written in Bengali but now widely available in English and other languages), and the "Chaitanya Mangala", written by "Lochana Dasa". These works are in Bengali with some Sanskrit verses interspersed. In addition to these, there are other Sanskrit biographies composed by his contemporaries. There is also "Caitanya Caritāmṛta Mahākavya" by Kavi Karnapura and "Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya Carita Maha-Kavya" by Murari Gupta.


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: According to the hagiographies of 16th-century authors, he exhibited his Universal Form same as had Lord Krishna on number of occasions, notably to Advaita Ācārya and Nityānanda Prabhu.


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: When Rupa Goswami first met the Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he saw the divinity in him and composed the following verse:


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: "O most munificent incarnation! You are Krishna Himself appearing as Sri Krishna Caitanya Mahaprabhu. You have assumed the golden colour of Srimati Radharani, and You are widely distributing pure love of Krishna. We offer our respectful obeisances unto You."


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: The evidence for the belief that the Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is an incarnation of Lord Krishna is found in the Srimad Bhagavatam:


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: Also in some other Scriptures like Vishnu Sahasranāma, Bhavishya Purana, Padma Purana, Garuda Purana there are references of Chaitanaya Mahaprabhu being incarnation of Krishna. Evidences such as the Krishna-varnam verse SB 11.5.32 have many interpretations by scholars, including Sridhara Svami who is accepted as authority by Mahaprabhu himself.


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: Gaudiya Vaishnavas consider Chaitanya to be Lord Krishna himself but appearing in the covered form (channa avatar) who appeared in the Kali Yuga as his own devotee to show the easiest way to achieve Krishna Consciousness. The Gaudiya Vaishnava acharya Bhaktivinoda Thakura had also found out the rare manuscript of Chaitanya Upanisad of the Atharvaveda section, which reveals the identity of Chaitanya. There are various evidences in the Hindu scriptures to show that, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was non-different from Krishna. Unlike the other avatars of Krishna he did not kill any demon. Mahaprabhu brought light to the chanting of Hare Krishna Mahamantra. According to Chaitanya Bhagavat, which gives a detailed description of Mahaprabhu's life, Mahaprabhu made a prediction that the holy name of Krishna will be sung in every town and village of the world and this is evident in the history. International Society of Krishna Consciousness was started by Srila Prabhupada in the USA, proved the prediction to be correct.


title: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

text: Lord Chaitanya's direct teachings are recorded in Sanskrit verses called Siksastakam (though, in Vaishnava Padavali it is said: "Chaitanya himself wrote many songs on the Radha-Krishna theme").