Letters Remain

Month: April 2024

  • The Nerd Urban Dictionary, or: The Overcomplication Compilation

    Seemingly frustrated at how ‘nerds’ throw around technical terms in order to sound smart, Chris Anderson (writer of The Long Tail, etc.) put together The Nerd Urban Dictionary to compile the most common and worst offenders. With terms coming from disciplines ranging from statistics to chemistry, finance to the military, here’s a small sample (mostly…

  • China, Cement, and the Great Wall’s Sticky Rice Mortar

    I’m fascinated by the scale of concrete usage in modern China, and some of the facts can be difficult to fathom on face value. For instance: Now I’ve just read about sticky rice mortar. As Liam said: “The Great Wall of China is held together with sticky rice” sounds like the kind of lie a…

  • Create a Learning Guide for Any Topic

    Want to learn a new topic but unsure where to start (or even whether the topic is what you expect)? The Curricula is an AI-driven learning tool, that will develop a detailed learning guide for any topic you feed it. Developed by Mike Dyer, the Curricula will generate a list of pre-requisites/related learning topics, a…

  • Prediction Markets for the Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmys, and More

    Each year I get caught up in the big film and television awards, trying to watch as many as possible and speculating on the various winners. I just discovered Gold Derby, a fun site for following and predicting the Hollywood ‘races’ yourself. Gold Derby takes predictions on everything from the Oscars to RuPaul’s Drag Race,…