Dailies - Observations (Page 13)

Exotic Food

If like me you're exhausted by the COVID-19 news, lighten your mood by watching [https://www.youtube.com/user/migrationology]YouTuber Mark Wiens travel the world in search of delicious food.

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Pandemics In Context

A history of pandemics [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/history-of-pandemics-deadliest/], with the Coronavirus pandemic put in context.

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Coronavirus Outbreak Overview

These slides [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DqfSnlaW6N3GBc5YKyBOCGPfdqOsqk1G/view] are a great overview of the Coronavirus outbreak.

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Glide

I've never been able to find a workout journal app that I liked. A few days ago I came across Glide [https://www.glideapps.com/], a product that can create apps from Google Spreadsheets without any code. In 45 minutes I had

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COVID-19 in the UK

The UK recently announced their strategy to handle the Coronavirus pandemic and it seems to have shocked a lot of people. Their basic message seems to be that they have given up on trying to contain the spread of the virus. The Government instead

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Exponential Growth and COVID-19

The Mathematics YouTube channel 3Blue1Brown has a video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg] on how exponential growth works, particularly in the context of COVID-19. Worth watching.

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Soap and COVID-19

Really interesting Tweetstorm [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236549305189597189.html] on how washing your hands protects you from the Coronavirus. I wasn't aware that soap doesn't just wash the virus particles off; it actually breaks them down.

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Census

A fascinating look [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppjv0H-Yt5Q] at how the US Census is done.

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Zipf's Law

Zipf's law is the observation that the frequency of words in almost all known texts in any language follow a power law. This video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCn8zs912OE] starts by exploring Zipf's law but quickly expands its

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Life Before CSS

I've never enjoyed working with CSS, but this blog post [https://eev.ee/blog/2020/02/01/old-css-new-css/] about life before and after the invention of CSS makes a good case for it.

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Repetitive Songs

I wrote about Zip compression yesterday [https://apoorvupreti.com/zip-files/]. This interactive essay [https://pudding.cool/2017/05/song-repetition/] uses the compressablity (using Lempel-Ziv compression [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ77_and_LZ78], which is also used in Zip compression) of a song'

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Zip Files

Zip files used to be ubiquitous when I started playing with computers in the early 2000's. These days the .zip file format is still around, but Zip compression is more commonly found in other places – Android's .apk, and Microsoft Word&

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Kind and Wicked Environments

I was introduced to the idea of breaking up learning environments into 'kind' and 'wicked' by David Epstein's book Range [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized-World/dp/1509843493] . I think this is a powerful idea with broad implications.

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Stopping Problems

This article [https://www.americanscientist.org/article/knowing-when-to-stop] from the American Scientist gives a good overview of optimal stopping problems – a field of mathematics that has surprisingly practical applications in daily life.

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Coronavirus

This [https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/02/coronavirus-links-speculation-open-thread/] blog post is a good summary of the current state of the recent Coronavirus outbreak – how far it has spread, who is most likely to the affected, how to reduce the risk of getting it.

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Against Advice

On [https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/against-advice-agnes-callard/] why most advice is empty and useless. Notable quote: > The myth of advice is the possibility that we can transform one another with the most glancing contact.

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Bloom Filters

A nuanced look [https://blog.cloudflare.com/when-bloom-filters-dont-bloom/] at bloom filters – they are not always as effective as you would think.

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Crispiness

The most interesting thing I read today was this article [https://www.bonappetit.com/story/crispy] on how much we love crispy foods, and the insane amount of science and engineering that goes into finding the optimal amount of crisp.

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What's Improved Since The 1990s

Gwern writes [https://www.gwern.net/Improvements] about things in his life that have improved in the last thirty years. It's surprising how many annoying problems have been solved in the last few decades. Here are some annoyances that disappeared during my

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Demands For Rigor

Scott Alexander writes [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/] about how demands for rigor are often opportunistic.

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Working In ClimateTech

Evan Meagher shares his experiences [https://evanm.website/2020/02/five-years-in-energy/] from working in climate tech for five years. I found this quote interesting: > As far as bending the warming curve towards 1.5° C is concerned, I think policy and regulatory reform

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De-carbonating The Atmosphere

'Negative emissions' is the term used to describe the idea of removing CO2 from the atmosphere to reduce the rising global temperature. This article [https://www.orbuch.com/carbon-removal/] covers the various options we have at the moment to take carbon out

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Ancient Roman Valves

An incredibly niche but interesting article [https://www.valvemagazine.com/web-only/categories/manufacturing/4947-ancient-roman-valves.html] on ancient roman valves.

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The World's Oldest Companies

This infographic [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/oldest-companies/] shows the oldest companies in each country that are still in business.

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Giant Viruses

An interesting scientific discovery was made recently [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/02/oh-look-ton-giant-viruses-inside-your-mouth/606763/] : giant bacteriophages (viruses that attack bacteria) were found in a number of animals, including humans. These viruses are about 10 times bigger than previously known bacteriophages, and

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