Month: August 2023
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Paper Aeroplanes for Young and Old
Being a father to two six-year-olds means that I spend a not-insignificant amount of time folding and colouring paper. Paper aeroplanes are an infrequent but not unusual sight in the house. For those times, Fold ‘N Fly is my go-to website, offering “a database of paper airplanes with easy to follow folding instructions, video tutorials…
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Perceptions of Probability and Numbers
Back in 2011 I wrote about “words of estimative probability“; the quantitative ranges we apply to ambiguous words and phrases, based on Sherman Kent’s research for the CIA in the 1960s. In 2015, Reddit user zonination duplicated the study using /r/samplesize. His resulting post in /r/dataisbeautiful made the longlist for the 2015 Kantar Information is…
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The (Edited) Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto
On March 20, 2022, the New York Times published a 14,000-word puff piece on cryptocurrencies, both online and as an entire section of the Sunday print edition. Though its author, Kevin Roose, wrote that it aimed to be a “sober, dispassionate explanation of what crypto actually is“, it was a thinly-veiled advertisement for cryptocurrency that…