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Why gender imbalance in top-level chess?(Queen's Gambit) + Zodiac Killer code cracked

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Zodiac Killer's Cipher Cracked by Amateur Codebreakers More Than 50 Years Later (cipher hobbies)
https://gizmodo.com/zodiac-killers-ciphe...1845867780

EXCERPT: A team of amateur codebreakers has reportedly cracked the Zodiac Killer’s most infamous cipher, solving a mystery that’s had law enforcement stumped for more than 50 years. The Zodiac Killer is the moniker of the as-yet-unknown American serial killer ... in the late ‘60s [...] The alleged killer claims to have murdered 37 victims in a series of cryptic letters sent to Bay Area media outlets at the time. This week, a three-person team based out of Australia, Belgium, and the U.S. reportedly deciphered one such coded message that had remained unsolved for decades known as the “340 Cipher” (so named for containing 340 characters), which was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle in 1969.

David Oranchak, one of the codebreakers who helped unravel the hidden message, told the Chronicle on Friday that the text reads:

I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH

[...] Scores of sleuths have come forward claiming to have solved the cipher in the past, but this is the first solution with the FBI’s seal of approval... (MORE - details)


What's behind the gender imbalance in top-level chess? (games)
https://theconversation.com/whats-behind...ess-150637

EXCERPTS: Unlike the wildly popular Netflix chess-themed series The Queen’s Gambit, female players have struggled to climb to the top of the real-life chess world. Just 37 of the more than 1,600 international chess grandmasters are women. The current top-rated female, Hou Yifan, is ranked 89th in the world, while the reigning women’s world champion Ju Wenjun is 404th.

Why? [...] The argument about chess’s gender gap often follows the classic nature-versus-nurture debate. On one side are those who believe men are “hardwired” to play chess, such as former World Championship challenger Nigel Short. His comments caused a media storm in the United Kingdom. It’s true women have been shown to exhibit higher risk aversion and lower competitiveness across many domains, including chess, possibly driven by differences in testosterone. However, evidence is mixed on whether or how these traits affect performance over the chess board.

On the other side are those who argue the gender gap in chess is mainly due to societal and cultural pressures that put women off the game. A commonly cited example is Hungary’s Judit Polgár [...] the only woman ever to be ranked in the world’s top ten. Her psychologist father believed geniuses are created, not born. His three daughters, home-schooled in chess from the age of three, each achieved groundbreaking success in the game.

[...] Garry Kasparov, said in a 1989 issue of Playboy Magazine that “there is real chess and women’s chess”. These sorts of beliefs may induce a “stereotype threat” that can explain part of the performance gap.

Stereotype threat is where minorities underperform solely because they’re aware of a stereotype that people of their group do worse. Confidence flags, interest wanes and a vicious cycle of self-fulfilling prophesy follows. The stereotype threat effect has been observed in experiments involving women and mathematics performance and in studies on lower representation of women in leadership positions.

In one study, researchers pitted male and female chess players against each other online. The sexes performed equally when identities were anonymous, but when the sex of the opponents was known, female players performed worse against male players and better against other female players. [...] The performance drop is roughly equivalent to a woman giving her male opponent the advantage of the first move in every single game... (MORE - details)

RELATED: https://www.scivillage.com/thread-9263-p...l#pid38547
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