Discussions

A new study involving teens in Chinese high schools found a positive relationship between midday napping and nighttime sleep. In China, naps are built into the post-lunch schedule at schools. Habitual nappers (who napped more often) tended to have a better nighttime sleep and neurocognitive scores.

TIL that a German man drove the same car, nicknamed Otto, 549,000 miles in 177 countries on a 26-year road trip. His wife joined him for most of the journey, where they traveled to nearly every country on the planet.

Wallpaper made from notes of my first year teaching high school precal.

Artificial intelligence may be more humane than people

TIL that playing 'pink noise' - the sound of uniform static - while sleeping has been found to improve sleep quality and also help memory.

TIL giving regular blood donations can burn 650 calories each time leading to weight loss and reduce your risk of both heart disease and cancer

TIL that trees talk to each other, except cedar trees, they're antisocial.

'Hey, writer!', Nabetse Zitro, Digital, 2017

Remove slight imperfections in wood varnish by polishing with chocolate. This was isopropyl alcohol damage was removed with a Hershey's almond bar :)

Ducks are cool and useful

TIL three border collies have been trained to run around a Chilean forest devastated by wildfire while wearing special backpacks that release native plant seeds.

Contour drawing - drawing without lifting the pen from paper

From the math community on Reddit

Scientists reveal the genetic roadmap to building an entire organism from a single cell

Collaboration with Tanya Shatseva, Blackhole in the Mikly Way, 2017

A look at the available evidence for civilization on Earth before humans - The Silurian Hypothesis

TIL 3,700 year old instructions on how to build an ark were found in Nineveh, Iraq

Thompson, Digital 1400x1200px

TIL there is a theory that the chronic vocal injuries suffered by today's vocalists are directly caused by the 'sing from your diaphragm' methods introduced in the 1800s

Aiming to fill skill gaps in AI, Microsoft makes training courses available to the public

Children not only have fatigue-resistant muscles, but recover very quickly from high-intensity exercise -- even faster than well-trained adult endurance athletes, according to a new study.

TIL of irukandji syndrome. Caused by irukandji jellyfish venom, it has an unusual symptom where the victim has a feeling of 'impending doom.' The victim is so sure they are going to die, that they ask the doctors to kill them.

Can the Placebo Effect Enhance Athletic Performance? - 'The placebo effect may be an integral part of what we call the Champion’s Mindset

The Bottom of the Curve: the Hi-Phi Nation podcast tackles the philosophy of the midlife crisis

MIT neuroscientists have developed a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sensor that allows them to monitor neural activity deep within the brain by tracking calcium ions. This could allow researchers to link specific brain functions to their pattern of neuron activity

TIL that crows are one of the smartest non-primate animals on earth, with the intelligence of a 7-year-old human. They use and manipulate tools, they have long-term memory including facial recognition, and they understand analogy.

TIL - Personality has a larger effect on success than IQ.

There’s a reason that programmers always want to throw away old code and start over: they think the old code is a mess. They are probably wrong. The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming: It’s harder to read code than to write it.

TIL that the biblical books of Psalms and Proverbs are likely to be copied from an older Egyptian text called 'Instruction of Amenemope

TIL in 1343, while laying siege to a Genoese outpost, a Mongolian army fell ill With plague. During withdrawal, they catapulted the diseased bodies into the city. The inhabitants then also fell ill, and the merchants in the city went on to spread the plague to Constantinople and ultimately Europe.