Hi friends,

Happy festive season! Here’s some links to keep you warm and cosy this December.

Wikipedia is the best website

• Harvey Epstein is a New York politician who was notably featured in an SNL sketch, in which he “repeatedly affirms that he is not convicted sex offenders Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, or some amalgamation thereof”.
• You’ve probably noticed that some phrases in English legalese seem to be pairs of synonyms: "for all intents and purposes”, “cease and desist”, “rules and regulations”, “terms and conditions”, “will and testament”, “wear and tear”, etc.
  These combinations are called legal doublets. Although the two words may have a slight semantic difference, their origin is interesting: they came after the Norman Conquest, a time of transition where English was used by the common people while French was used by the elites and courts. To avoid misunderstandings, medieval lawyers decided to use one word from each; so these doublets typically combine one word of Germanic origin (eg “will”) with its French equivalent (eg ”testament”).
  • They must also always be in the same order: you may remember them as irreversible binomials from a previous newsletter. Try saying “desist and cease” or “conditions and terms” and you will sound like a lunatic!
• Grūtas Park is a private “Soviet theme park” in Lithuania that displays many recovered sculptures from Lithuania’s Soviet occupation, various elements of a gulag and “playgrounds, a mini-zoo and cafes, all containing relics of the Soviet era”.
• In geometry, “lemon” is a shape. Which looks more like an American football than a lemon. In two dimensions, that shape is called a fish bladder.
  • Found via this list of lists of shapes.
• If you’re afraid of trains, you have “siderodromophobia”. According to Sigmund Freud, “the link between railway travel and sexuality derives from the pleasurable sensation of shaking during the travel. Therefore, in the event of repression of sexuality the person will experience anxiety when confronted with railway travel.” Right.

Zoop

Mildly interesting

• In the 1990s, a children’s hospital in London dramatically decreased mistakes made in the surgery-to-ICU process by observing how Ferrari’s F1 team organised pit stops.
• Surveys show that class is no longer the main dividing line in UK politics, showing age and education levels being more influential factors.
• To teach their kids about communication without risking the looming addiction of smartphones, some parents are going back to giving them a landline. [paywall bypass]
• Twenty-one tips for throwing good parties. As an avid party thrower, I approve and I learned some things!
  • The Grauniad also dropped a new party theme: the water sommeliers who believe H₂O can rival wine.
• Scientists are learning more about what causes apathy and ‘laziness’ in the brain, and finding solutions to help people become more motivated. (I’m choosing to believe the less dystopian interpretation of this — fighting depression).

Everything is depressing

• A great conversation with Adam Curtis, where he argues self-expression has eclipsed some of the power of collective action.
• In the US, experiments to give people money directly seem to help less than previously thought to solve poverty. The nuances are somewhat evident: it obviously benefits people and gives them some security, but does not meaningfully affect their chances in life (including on many metrics like health or happiness) without other policy changes.
• A large European study found that AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time.
• The US is racing to match other countries in using AI decisionmaking for war decisions. “If you don’t know if an incoming missile has a conventional or nuclear warhead, AI can make a wrong decision — but faster.” Great, excellent.

Good to look at

• 🕰️ The Library of Time showcases the current date and time in dozens of different calendars simultaneously, from the common to the more esoteric (along with explanations!), and I’m very here for it.
• Only a crazy person could be a surgeon, actor, or wedding photographer. But face it, you’re crazy too: your personal, unique quirks are the key to finding the right career!
• A paper from anthropologists on how they revealed 5,000-year-old tattoos on pre-Columbian mummies. Sick.
• From the always-excellent Low Tech Magazine: how to dress and undress your home with textiles for insulation.
• I didn’t know that so far, 7 people in the world have been fully cured of HIV, thanks to HIV-resistant stem cell transplants. But the last of them became cured by accident, after receiving another transplant for cancer.
• A primer on Via Negativa, a philosophy for making good decisions by eliminating bad ones. It argues people are better at knowing what is wrong or harmful than what is right and what would work, and that a single negative observation can disprove a positive claim.
• For your new year's resolutions: a quick guide on how to start researching as a hobby.
  • If it’s of interest, see also: how to fix a low attention span. And this reminder that giving sustained attention is pleasurable and interesting.
  • Some good tips on the pleasures of reading.

Work! Design! Tech!

• UX: why you should treat user effort as a currency (and be a bargain).
• Always important to hear especially in the AI coding hellscape: there are still dozens of benefits to hiring junior engineers to build high-performance teams.
• Your professional decline will come earlier than you think — but you can make the most of it by shifting focus from career achievements to spiritual, ethical, and relational values. [paywall bypass]
• Don't Click Here, a tiny website to send to someone next time a coworker writes “click here”.

Stay cool, stay cultured, see you in 2026,

Victor