Category: interesting
-
Googlewhacking and Hapax Legomena
One benefit of following and occasionally being a contributor to the crossword creator community is that its full of linguistics nerds (in the nicest possible sense of the word). Thanks to them, I often find myself diving into obscure Wikipedia holes and learning fascinating new topics. One such dive introduced me to hapax legomena: words…
-
Cats’ Social Intelligence and Rapid Image-Word Learning
A recent study reveals that cats can learn image-word pairs faster than 14-month-old toddlers. However, it was the study’s introduction that caught my eye. It summarises a number of cat behaviour research findings, showing that cats have a complex social intelligence. For instance, they can differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar human voices, match voices to…
-
The Capital City Effect and Britain’s “Mississippi Question”
Ranking Britain’s per capita GDP to that of the various US states seems to be of recurring interest to some in the British economic media—likely because the UK ranks surprisingly low. This has given rise to “the Mississippi question”: which is more economically productive per capita, Britain or the most impoverished US state, with the…
-
FAST not SMART for Goals
The conventional SMART approach for setting goals undermines higher-level (team and/or organisational) objectives by promoting an individualistic and isolated approach to work. The best approach for creating effective goals, according to researchers at MIT Sloan, is to go FAST: Frequently discussed; Ambitious; Specific; and Transparent. According to their meta-analysis and additional field research across companies…
-
Some Favourite Daily Mini Games
I feel like the concept of daily mini games really came to prominence in those pandemic-hazed days of 2021, thanks to Wordle. Since then, my daily game habits have changed as I hunt for fresh, challenging puzzles. I enjoy finding games that are quick to play but mentally engaging enough to add a little spark…
-
Video Clip Search Tool
As both a movie lover and a Xennial, I still (unashamedly) send a lot of video clips and gifs when texting with friends. If nothing apt comes up immediately, there’s a couple of sites I use where I can enter any phrase and immediately get a clip of it being said in various films and…
-
Language Learning Difficulty Maps
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the primary training institute for employees of the “US foreign affairs community” (diplomats, military personnel, etc.). The FSI is probably most well known for its foreign language courses, which, while sometimes a bit outdated, is still great quality and in the public domain. The FSI has has compiled “approximate…
-
The Two Words for Tea: “Tea if by sea, cha if by land”
The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) chapter on Tea tells us that the word you use for ‘tea’ is highly influenced by ancient trade routes. Specifically, whether your country first got tea via the Silk Road (by land, originating from inland China) or from sea imports (by sea, originating from Dutch ports in the…
-
Intentional Delays in Apple Chess (so you don’t feel so bad)
The source code for Apple Chess reveals the intentional inclusion of a time delay in the computer making its moves. As a comment in the source explains: Taking a rudimentary look at the code, it looks like kInteractiveDelay is for computer-human game modes (so an intentional delay to make us feel better), while kAutomaticDelay is…