At the start of 2024, I set a goal to document one interesting thing I learned each week. Many of these came from books, videos, conversations, and everyday moments in my life.
- Eustress, as opposed to distress that is harmful, is good stress and a kind that can motivate and help enhance focus.
- Our right ear processes language more effectively, while the left ear specializes in non-verbal sounds like music and emotional tones. (NLM)
- Collective effervescence is a sociological concept that describes the shared excitement and connection felt when people participate in group activities.
- Humans tend to return to a baseline level of happiness after major life changes, whether positive or negative, like winning the lottery or facing adversity. Understanding this phenomenon, called hedonic adaptation, can help us manage expectations and focus on sustainable sources of happiness and fulfillment rather than fleeting pleasures.
- The limbic system, our brain’s emotional center, processes emotions and triggers involuntary responses like changes in heart rate, facial expressions, gestures, posture, and vocal tone. Paying attention to our intuition and gut feelings can provide valuable insights into our true intentions and emotions.
- Mimetic theory explains that we often imitate the desires of others rather than forming our own independently.
- The principle of reflexivity explores how distorted views can shape people’s reality, and reality influences their views, which is the framework for understanding feedback loops in society and markets.
- In Vietnam and some other countries, banks offer secure storage for your gold and other physical possessions.
- Efficient market hypothesis suggests that stock prices reflect all available information, making it impossible for investors to outperform the market through stock picking or market timing.
- Lacrimator is a chemical substance that causes tears to flow, i.e. why we cry when we chop onions.
- To prevent accidental data loss, macOS is deliberately designed not to have a “cut” option for files but rather a “copy and move” option by pressing Command + C to copy a file, then Command + Option + V to move it to a new location.
- This video about game theory offers insights into strategically navigating competitive and cooperative situations.
- A 5-minute video of Taiwan’s complex history.
- A fascinating video showing the evolution of the Taipei Metro from 1996 to 2030.
- Dunbar’s number is the limit on the number of people a person can maintain stable social relationships with, which is 150.
- The Leidenfrost effect occurs when drops of water skate on a hot surface due to vapor insulation, aka how to know when my saucepan is hot enough for me to start stir frying.
- The blobs or spots floating in our eyes are called muscae volitantes or “flying flies.”
- The Peter Principle suggests people are promoted until they reach a role where they are no longer effective. This means companies promote people based on previous performance rather than their potential and skills required for the new roles.
- An island is a piece of land surrounded by water, smaller than a continent, and stays above water even at high tide.
- Sweden is the country with the most islands in the world, with an estimated total of 267,570 islands. (WorldAtlas)
- The term “dogfooding” came from a 1970s dog food commercial where the actor claimed he fed the dog food to his own dogs. This idea of using your own product to prove its quality spread to the tech world in the 1980s.
- Unlike other countries, the US prefers text-based instructions for road signs due to historical decisions, high literacy rates, and a focus on explicit communication. In the early 20th century, as road signs were being standardized, text was chosen as a clear and direct way to communicate with English-speaking drivers. This decision was influenced by the lack of widely accepted international symbols at the time and the lower necessity for symbols compared to multilingual Europe. (YouTube)
- Bushwalking is Australian for hiking in nature.
- The terms “far-left” and “far-right” originated from the actual seating arrangements in the French National Assembly during the French Revolution in 1789. (Wikipedia)
- Taking sand, pebbles, rocks, and other materials from beaches is illegal in the UK and can result in fines, according to the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009.
- Abbreviations are shortened words like “Dr.” for “Doctor”, while initialisms use the first letters of a phrase pronounced separately like “HTML” for “Hypertext Markup Language.”
- The invention of Velcro was inspired by nature. In the 1940s, Swiss engineer George de Mestral noticed burrs clinging to his dog’s fur during a walk. He examined them under a microscope and saw they had tiny hooks that latched onto loops in the fur.
- LEGO started as a wooden toy company before transitioning to plastic toys.
- Cilantro and coriander come from the same plant. Cilantro refers to the fresh leaves and stems, and coriander generally refers to the entire plant.
- While plastic containers that have microwave-safe labels might not warp or melt when heated, the chemicals can still leach into your food. (“Is it safe to microwave plastic containers?”)
- 7-Eleven started as an American company in 1927, today it is owned by a Japanese company.
- Tinnitus is when you hear ringing, buzzing, or other noises in your ears that aren’t really there. About 15–20% of people experience tinnitus at some point.
- Carrots were originally purple, not orange as we know them today. Prior to the 16th century, carrots were likely to be white, purple, red, and yellow.
- The iPhone 4 was leaked when an engineer left a prototype was left at a bar.
- The Panopticon is a prison design that makes prisoners feel like they are being watched at all times.
- An eponym is a word named after a person’s name or a place. For example, the sandwich is named after John Montague, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, which is a small town in Kent, Southeast England.
- Carmine, a red dye found in candies and other foods we eat every day, is made from cochineal insects.
- Vorfreude is the German word for the joy of anticipating joy.
- The Proust Questionnaire, popularized by writer Marcel Proust, offers a playful way to understand people’s deep motivation and reflect on personal values.
- Simpson’s paradox describes how trends can reverse when data is grouped differently. (YouTube)
- Cockroach milk was going to be the next hip superfood.
- The Bajau people have genetically evolved to adapt to life at sea. Their spleens are 50 larger, they can hold their breath for 13 minutes and can dive deep to 60 meters without gear.
- France has the most time zones of any country, spanning 12 time zones due to its overseas territories.
- Russia, despite being the largest country by land area, only has 11 time zones.
- There’s an actual disease called lime disease, a skin condition caused by a reaction between citrus juice and sunlight. Not to be confused with Lyme disease.
- Humans are incredibly sensitive to petrichor, the smell of rain, which is caused by compounds like geosmin, produced by dead bacteria. (“Geosmin: Why We Like The Smell Of Air After A Storm”)
- Both “flammable” and “inflammable” mean the same thing.
- The Lindy effect suggests that the longer something has existed, the more likely it’s going to stick around.
- Erewhon, the upscale supermarket, was founded in 1966 by two Japanese and takes its name from a satirical novel by Samuel Butler where it’s an anagram of “nowhere.”
- The end-of-life bias is the tendency for people to disproportionately value experiences, relationships, or events that occur near the end of an individual’s life.
A big thanks to Kent Hendricks and Tom Whitwell for inspiring me to put this together in 2024 — and hopefully in more years to come.