February 2018: Things Worthy of Attention
(Adult Flashcards, Jonathan Franzen, Cognitive Biases, Puzzles, Enlightenment NOW!, Intermittent Fasting Humor, Texas Trap, Patagonia, Shakespeare’s Newly Discovered Influence)
Here are links to things I discovered in February 2018. I am not promising these things were created the year I discovered them. I will promise each of these things are worthy of your time.
Adult Flashcards
Anki is a flashcard program you can use on iOS or desktop. Anki is most commonly used by students to study for exams but it can be used by adults for pleasure and self-improvement. I recently read some good tips on best practices:
Rule of thumb: if memorizing something will likely save me five minutes in the future, into the spaced repetition system it goes. The expected lifetime review time is less than five minutes, i.e., it takes < 5 minutes to learn something… forever.
— michael_nielsen (@michael_nielsen) January 28, 2018
I review cards on the mobile app, while going for walks, in line at the coffeeshop, in transit, and so on. I find it meditative. It takes about 20 mins each day.
— michael_nielsen (@michael_nielsen) January 28, 2018
I mostly enter cards on the desktop app.
— michael_nielsen (@michael_nielsen) January 28, 2018
It’s best to make cards as atomic as possible.
— michael_nielsen (@michael_nielsen) January 28, 2018
Reading papers and books and watching videos. This is especially helpful for building mastery outside your area of expertise. You can (say) read a paper multiple times through, each time just grabbing what is easy, gradually building up an understanding.
— michael_nielsen (@michael_nielsen) January 29, 2018
Learning places and all kinds of facts about my city, from the best things to order at a particular restaurant to demographic statistics (really) to favourite places in parts of the city I don’t visit often.
— michael_nielsen (@michael_nielsen) January 29, 2018
Verb form: I talk and think of “Ankifying” a paper or book etc.
— michael_nielsen (@michael_nielsen) January 29, 2018
The best applications of Anki will likely be the ones you find most personal and unique to the things you want to remember forever.
Quote: Puzzles
Ponder:
Keenan: Everything is a puzzle. You’ve got to put the pieces together and they all form a map or story. You have to be cohesive and you have to make a literary map — start putting those Latin pieces together to form a map and it all makes sense.
Book: Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment NOW!
Enlightenment NOW! by Steven Pinker was released.
“ Rationality has a permanent advantage: it continues to be valid regardless of whether people believe in it.”
Articles: Fasting Humor, Patagonia, Franzen, Biases Codex, and Shakespeare’s Newly Discovered Influence
I’m Not on a Diet, I’m Fasting by KRITHIKA VARAGUR on McSweeney’s.
NYTimes: With 10 Million Acres in Patagonia, a National Park System Is Born
You have to read everything by Franzen. He wrote a New Yorker piece about some New York experiences, coincidentally.
Wiki has a beautiful page on cognitive biases. I came across it recently while researching an article and found the Cognitive Bias Codex mesmerizing.
NYTimes: Plagiarism Software Unveils a New Source for 11 of Shakespeare’s Plays
The authors are not suggesting that Shakespeare plagiarized but rather that he read and was inspired by a manuscript titled “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels,” written in the late 1500s by George North, a minor figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth, who served as an ambassador to Sweden.
Music: Texas Trap
Travis Scott received the keys to Missouri City, Texas.
Please let me know if you also discovered these things or maybe even if you discovered these things through my post. Your feedback creates a community of ideas that is important.
You can see what I found in January here.
