Hey once again lovely email friends. There’s been a respectable amount of snow here this week. Not by Scaninavian standards, but enough to cause me to snap a broom. It has also been enough to throw my perception of days off by one, so thi list of small delights was very nearly late. Not that it would really matter, but as the time of sending was chosen deliberately it’s better to stick to routine. Hope you’re alright.
💡 Is Light Fundamentally A Wave Or A Particle? Well, look, it’s neither, exclusively, as far as it’s possible for us to say. This probably means our categories are deficient. This history of the double-slit experiment, a foundation of quantum mechanics, finds it to be infinitely tweakable but never conclusive.
🔢 The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is Probably Not Real: First described in a seminal 1999 paper and thereafter the darling of those who wish to explain why incompetent people don’t know they’re unskilled, the Dunning-Kruger effect may actually just be a data artefact. Boo.
🦠 2020 wasn’t unprecedented. If anything, it set the precedent: The things that happened are happening for observable reasons, often in culmination, and will continue to do so. See also: Global ice loss accelerating at record rate, study finds.
🎸 The problem with deliberate practice: The 10,000-hour rule, popularised by Malcolm Gladwell, is terrific for honing a specific skill that can be performed the same way over and over again. That’s how you hit the right notes on your guitar. But deliberate practice isn’t enough to play the game of life: a game of incomplete information. See also: Learning 3D Modelling in 14 Weeks.
🤹♀️ What do we know about the lives of Neanderthal women? Archaeology is no exception to biases against women’s interests across science and the humanities.
🌊 Tides and Tempests by lawyer turned coastal photographer Rachael Talibart is a beautiful study of seas around the English coastline. The work ranges from dramatic to quiet. Talibart writes that this broad focus taught her patience and to find as much interest and delight in the slow sunsets as the frenzied storms.
🧠 How to choose a therapist: The choice can be baffling, but asking the right questions will make it clearer.
😃 The hills look alive, with a giant smiley face: Every autumn, the forest near Willamina, Oregon, reveals a face 300 feet in diameter. It was formed by by planting larch amongst Douglas fir, the needles of the former turn yellow while the latter remains green.
