What I learned last week (#91)

Drawing of a room

Quote I was thinking about:

If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.

Margaret Atwood

Two different videos on how to sample:

First, the basic principle.

Then, the art of it all through the lens of 9th Wonder.

We talkin’ about practice. Are you doing 1000 jumpers a day or no?


Apples from most tart to most sweet:

It’s getting into peak apple season now. I don’t know that I’ve had some of these on the list. Pacific Rose?

apple tartness


Book excerpt I was thinking about:

“…a few hours of meditation were enough to show me that I hardly had any control of myself. I was not the CEO—I was barely the gatekeeper. I was asked to stand at the gateway of my body—the nostrils—and just observe whatever comes in or goes out. Yet after a few moments I lost my focus and abandoned my post. It was a humbling and eye-opening experience.” (Timothy Ferriss, Tribe of Mentors)

From Yuval Noah Harari’s section. I feel like “barely the gatekeeper” often. That’s ok though, noticing that is what counts.


A time-lapse of every nuclear explosion since 1945:

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear). Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing”the fear and folly of nuclear weapons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

That is pretty wild. Scroll around a bit to see the year and the months past as suggested. US had tested 1000+ nukes by 1998!?


The WinAmp skins museum:

This one brought me back! I can’t remember which I used to use most, but this one is close: https://skins.webamp.org/skin/9a5b4f03e7eb6e5ac6604f47f763cc72/Winamp_5.wsz/. Hint: the players actually play music!

https://skins.webamp.org

HT to Austin Kleon’s newsletter


How (and why) hurricane’s get their names:

[N]ames are presumed to be far easier to remember than numbers and technical terms,” the WMO website says. “Many agree that appending names to storms makes it easier for the media to report on tropical cyclones, heightens interest in warnings and increases community preparedness.” Basically, people in the path of the storms will remember and pay attention to media reports about Hurricane Bertha than they would Hurricane Two.

And so the names come, in alphabetical order, off a set of six lists maintained by the WMO. The six lists rotate. So the names used in 2019 (Andrea, Barry, Chantal, Dorian, Erin, etc.) for example, will come around again in 2025. (This is true for hurricanes in the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Atlantic. The lists differ in other parts of the world.)

For the record, only 21 names are on each list in the Atlantic/Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean region. Don’t look for names beginning with Q, U, X, Y or Z (sorry, Zelda). And if the storms start really piling on, and forecasters need more than the 21 names in the same season, they turn to the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and hello Zeta). Before 1979, the storms were named after only women, but then men were introduced to the mix and now the two alternate.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/storms/hurricanes-names.htm


Lastly, check out what I’m up to now.

Comments welcome!

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