Galleries
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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 The FSI is probably most well known for its foreign language courses, which, while sometimes a bit outdated, is still great quality and in the public domain.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…
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Two Palms to a Shaftment: English, Imperial, and Customary US Units
English units were the measurement standards used across the British Empire until 1826; it’s the system that immediately preceded and (independently) developed into today’s imperial units and US customary units. I never really thought about why the UK and US diverged slightly, but (obviously, in retrospect) the simple reason that imperial and US customary units…
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Studying and Learning: What Works, What Doesn’t
Self-testing and spaced repetition are the “two clear winners” in how to study and learn better. That’s from an informal meta study conducted by six professors (from fields such as psychology, educational psychology, and neuroscience) when they reviewed over 700 scientific articles to identify the ten most common learning techniques and which are the most…
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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…
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Subway Maps of Roman Roads
Sasha Trubetskoy is a “geography and data nerd” who makes data visualisations and maps. His Roman Roads project styles the Ancient Roman road network as modern transit maps. That’s the full Empire, as of ca. 125 AD. Trubetskoy also made similar maps for Britain, Italy, Gaul and Iberia. I recommend clicking through and reading about…