Paper [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2515245920919667]by Hoogeven et. al., on how people were able to predict which social-science studies would replicate, in other words, which social-science studies are likely to have true results. Sample size is quite small, 233

What things will and won't get better in the next 50 years? Will get better: * Most kinds of technology. * Upsides of innovation outweigh downsides of introducing vulnerabilities for most technology. * E.g., phones, tablets continue to improve. * Some kinds of forecasting where

O'Neill Cylinder's are how we might do space colonies in the future. From Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder]: > An O'Neill cylinder would consist of two counter-rotating cylinders. The cylinders would rotate in opposite

Driven And Listen [https://driveandlisten.herokuapp.com/] is a web app that uses video feeds from cars and couples that with local radio stations to give a virtual driving experience in a city from around the world. Videos seem to be pre-recorded rather than

A series [https://www.codingvc.com/behind-the-scenes-at-a-vc-fund-part-1-deals-deals-deals/] of posts on what VCs actually do on a day-to-day basis.

Today I stumbled across this [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/21/uk-water-firms-admit-using-divining-rods-to-find-leaks-and-pipes] incredible 2017 story from The Guardian. Water companies in the UK were using dowsing rods to find leaks in water pipes: > Ten of the 12 water companies in the

The authors of this article [https://fermatslibrary.com/s/optical-insights-into-renaissance-art] discovered that Renaissance artists used mirror lenses (essentially concave mirrors) to get a reasonably sized image of the subject to be painted. This image was then traced and could be used to produce a

A collection of recipes [http://medievalcookery.com/recipes/]from medieval times. Here's [http://medievalcookery.com/recipes/riquemanger.html]an interesting one from 14th century France: Rique Manger, or fried eggs and apples.

Vox tells the story [https://www.vox.com/2015/8/25/9200801/wingdings-font-history]behind the famous Wingdings font: > Today it's easy to cut and paste images from the internet, but it used to be a lot harder. There were few ways

Interesting article [https://www.nature.com/news/ancient-civilization-cracking-the-indus-script-1.18587] by Nature on the challenges of deciphering the script used by the Indus valley civilisation.

A good structure can increase your freedom. Just consider the following: * Poetry is written in a tight structure or rhyme scheme. E.g., The Iliad was written in dactylic hexameter [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dactylic_hexameter]. * Poker is a deep and interesting game,

The photographer Rogelio Bernal Andreo has found ways to get incredible photographs of the deep sky. It's hard to believe that these weren't shot from a space telescope but from Earth: "Colors of Creation" by Rogelio Bernal Andreo

This [https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates] is an incredible story demonstrating the power of Microsoft Excel: Scientists have renamed several genes so Excel doesn't auto-format them into dates. Quote: > From now on, they say, human genes and

Ghost kitchens are a recent trend in the food industry – restaurants that only do delivery, that are sometimes located in industrial facilities. Two good articles on ghost kitchens, from the Superfood newsletter: * What's Next For Restaurants [https://superfood.substack.com/p/whats-next-for-restaurants]

Interesting piece of digital art from a team of designers called Universal Everything [https://universaleverything.com/projects/transfiguration-2020].

TIL Google have their own [https://artsandculture.google.com/explore]online museum, Google Arts & Culture. Here's [https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/leonardo-da-vinci/m04lg6?categoryId=artist] their collection of Leonardo's works.

While reading The Odyssey, you sometimes feel like there is a deep wisdom in it. Two examples: * The sirens * The sirens draw everyone who listens to their music towards them, and doom the listeners to death as their ships are dashed on the rocks.

Following yesterday's post [https://apoorvupreti.com/gilgamesh-performed/]on the performance of The Epic of Gilgamesh, I've been listening to some millennia-old music recently. Specifically I've been listening to Hurrian [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrian_songs]Hymn no.