[Personal] List of Links July 2024
Articles, papers and videos that piqued my interest this past month
I am a fan of rabbit holes. Recently my friends and I hosted a “rabbit hole” evening which involved sitting on picnic blankets with our laptops and googling the topics we have long been interested in but didn’t have the time to due to *pressing commitments* such as ahem, work or personal responsibilities. Topics ranged from nuclear submarines to the history of foot binding to housing prices in Hong Kong.
Keeping with this theme I am going to share a few rabbit holes that I’ve gone down in the last month.
Articles & Blogs
Are chemists tasting weird things? A delightful read about how artificial sweeteners were discovered.
Admiral Cloudberg writes about the reasons behind specific plane crashes. If you want to read something super in-depth about technical failures it could be fun.
Do numbers exist? A blog by David R. MacIver
A thread on X of interesting facts from Our World in Data. Boyan Slat read most of the pages from OWID and wrote out 30 facts that they were surprised by.
How coronavirus cases exploded in South Korean churches and hospitals\
Another unbiased news website, not sure if it’s good yet or not.
A twice-a-year injection of the drug lenacapavir was 100% effective in preventing HIV infection in women during clinical trials (n ~ 2,000). Gilead press release.
Map of Death rate from HIV/AIDS.
Papers
A meta-review of 12 million people’s diets. Try to predict which diets did well before opening it and then see the results.
Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s OwnSmartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
Country differences in nocturnal sleep variability: Observations from a large-scale, long-term sleep wearable study - if you are an Oura ring-wearer this one is for you!
Videos
A Super Quick History of Djibouti - a video by Mr History
A Super Quick History of Eswatini (Swaziland) - another video by Mr History
I am not a huge fan of the style or the language used in these, but they are a good starting point to do more googling yourself
This Disease is Deadlier Than The Plague
I adore Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell and their latest video is about the “white death”
Did you find any of these interesting? Have a better source for any of the things? Let me know! Also I couldn’t decide on a rabbit so I kept both.