One of the advantages of having a poor memory is that I can read my favorite books every couple of years and they feel mostly new. But I’d rather remember them, and this video by Ali Abdaal has seven good tips for helping you remember what you learn. Two of the best tips:
Teach Others — Explain what you've learned to others to reinforce what you learned.
Active Recall — Test yourself and actively try to recall information rather than passively reviewing by rereading.
— MF
The online Merriam-Webster.com dictionary regularly adds new words based on usage and last month 690 words were added. Here is just a sample list of them, including new slang and words made popular by online culture, like edgelord noun, slang : someone who makes wildly dark and exaggerated statements (as on an internet forum) with the intent of shocking others. Also the word “hallucination” has an new definition meaning “a plausible but false or misleading response generated by an artificial intelligence algorithm.” Worth checking out to stay in the know. — CD
Author and bookstore owner Ryan Holiday is a voracious reader. He’s compiled a list of 38 rules to make book-reading more rewarding. Excerpts:
In every book you read, try to find your next one in its footnotes or bibliography. This is how you build a knowledge base in a subject — it’s how you trace a subject back to its core.
Don’t just read books, re-read books. There’s a great line the Stoics loved — that we never step in the same river twice. The books don’t change, but you do.
Ruin the ending. I almost always go straight to Wikipedia and figure out the plot — especially if I am reading something tough like Shakespeare or Aeschylus. Who cares about spoilers? Your aim as a reader is to understand WHY something happened, the what is secondary.
— MF
The concept of a “bioregion” is a powerful tool. A bioregion will share animal and plant types and a similar climate. It is the most natural way to divide up the planet since it follows nature. For instance parts of California, Italy, Chile, Australia and South African share a similar bioregion. Maps of bioregions can aid gardening, home design, urban planning, climate adjustment, and understanding of culture. The best bioregion maps are no longer printed on paper but can be downloaded online from One Earth at Bioregions 2020. — KK
When I want to understand dense subjects, I just visit Simple Wikipedia. All the entries are written in shorter sentences with easier words. The site is designed for children, adults with learning difficulties or for those trying to learn English, but for me it’s a great way to grasp complex topics, like how nuclear weapons are built and work. It doesn’t work with all pages, but sometimes replacing the “en” with “simple” in the URL will redirect to you the Simple English Wikipedia. — CD
The Public Domain Review is a free website that features fascinating material discovered in the public domain. A lot of it is curious illustrations, vintage images, oddball visuals, but also forgotten literature, weird poems, and excellent essays. It’s a fountainhead of exoticness and hard-to-find otherness. And of course, it is free to reuse.— KK
I'm fascinated by optical illusions and how they challenge my perceptions. I'm currently working my way through this collection of 151 Visual Phenomena & Optical Illusions with explanations on how they work. My mind always feels bendy and agile after just a few minutes spent on the website. — CD
I've been trying to create a new habit of asking myself "what is my intention?" before I speak. Sometimes I communicate to empathize, or to think out loud, but a lot of the time my intention is to connect and to be understood. This article on Alan Alda's 3 rules for expressing your thoughts is useful for all types of communication. They are: 1. Make no more than three points 2. Explain difficult ideas in three different ways and 3. Make important points three times. This is helpful for me because I speak in emotions and imagery, and if I want to be understood by someone who is more logical-minded I have to remind myself to use analogies rather than metaphors. — CD
Youtube history is my latest obsession. There’s now a ton of very good history YT channels that tackle history in oblique and idiosyncratic ways. One of my favorite streams is ToldInStone. They tackle the kind of questions I’ve always had, but couldn’t find in books or other programs. Like: how fast was Rome mail? How did the ancients prove their identity? What were their kitchens and bathrooms like? Much further in the past, North02 tackles prehistory. What were humans like 1 million years ago, what kind of life in the Sahara when it was tropically green? And so many more! — KK
Technology Connections is a fantastic YouTube channel for learning about the inner workings of everyday items. With a bit of lighthearted humor thrown in, the videos break down complex concepts into easy-to-understand explanations, and give me a greater appreciation for the technology I use all the time, like smoke alarms, water heaters, and microwave ovens. — MF
It’s taking me a long time to overcome decades of muscle memory associated with hunt-and-peck typing and become a touch typist. After trying out several online typing trainers, I've settled on Monkeytype. Its easy-to-use interface, helpful feedback, and diverse range of exercises have made it my go-to resource. By spending just five minutes a day on the site, I'm slowly but surely improving my typing skills. — MF
My friend Jean told me about The Cabinet of Wikipedian Curiosities, a web page of interesting bits, lists, and links culled from the open source encyclopedia.
Samples:
In 1897, Indiana nearly legally declared pi to be equal to 3.2. It would have passed were it not for the intervention of a mathematician passing by.
On 19th January 2038, all 32-bit computer systems will crash, and no one is prepared for it.
Michael Lotito: the man who literally ate an entire plane.
— MF
HistoryMaps uses interactive maps as a timeline so that as you read (and scroll) you can visualize where events in time took place. There’s also a Timelines Game that you can play, and according to the creator of the website there are hidden features and puzzles for added fun. — CD
My favorite food science guru, Adam Ragusea, explains what science currently knows about lactose tolerance and lactose intolerance. It’s way more complicated than it appears, but given how prevalent lactose food is, you’ll want to watch/listen to this video/podcast on “Why some people can eat dairy and others can’t.” — KK
Wikenigma is the wikipedia of unanswered questions and gaps in human knowledge for the curious-minded. For example, words of unknown origin, the dilemma of free will, or the purpose of the human chin. It's a jumping-off point for the imagination. — CD
“Principle Of Humanity: Every single person is exactly what you would be if you were them. This includes your political opponents. So instead of dismissing them as evil or stupid, maybe seek to understand the circumstances that led them to their conclusions.” Read 39 other useful concepts in this issue of The Prism. — MF
Here are a few of my favorite end-of-year lists, with two samples from each:
“Keep your identity small. ‘I’m not the kind of person who does things like that’ is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing.“
“Cultivate compassion for those less intelligent than you. Many people, through no fault of their own, can’t handle forms, scammers, or complex situations. Be kind to them because the world is not.”
40 Ways to Let Go and Feel Less Pain
“Channel your discontent into an immediate positive action—make some calls about new job opportunities, or walk to the community center to volunteer.”
“Remind yourself these are your only three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it. These acts create happiness; holding onto bitterness never does.”
37 per cent of the world’s population, 2.9 billion people, have never used the Internet. [International Telecommunication Union]
A deep learning model trained on 85,000 eyes can tell male from female eyeballs with 87% accuracy but no one knows why. [Edward Korot & co]
— MF
The Museum of Failure is a collection of failed products and services from all over the world. It’s kind of weird, kind of sad, kind of funny. You can check out the collection here. — CD
The Manga Guide to Cryptography is a 190-page comic book that clearly explains the fundamentals of cryptography. You’ll learn about the foundations of encryption, symmetric-key algorithms, public-key encryption, practical applications of encryption, told in the form of a fun and engaging story. — MF
Wikipedia is so valuable to me that I have a mini version of it on my phone so I have access to it anywhere in the world anytime. I use Kiwix, a free app for iOS and Android, that parks a 13GB file with 6.6 million Wikipedia articles – without images. (The version with images is ). With Kiwix I can get Wikipedia on a boat, in the wilderness, or anywhere beyond cell service. You’ll want to download via wifi it cause it takes a long while. – KK