Ever wondered why it’s so hard to walk with a cup of coffee without spilling? It just so happens that the human stride has almost exactly the right frequency to drive the natural oscillations of coffee, when the fluid is in a typically sized coffee mug.
New research shows that the properties of mugs, legs and liquid conspire to cause spills, most often at some point between your seventh and tenth step.
Solutions: (1) walk more slowly; (2) watch the cup instead of your feet; (3) accelerate more slowly; and (4) maybe get a differently-shaped cup.
The deadliest animal is the mighty mosquito, which kills more than 1 million people a year. Almost 700 million people contract a mosquito-borne illness each year. Mosquitoes carry serious diseases like malaria, dengue fever, West Nile virus, Zika virus and chikungunya that not only kill, but also result in pain, disability and prolonged illness.
Among mosquito-borne diseases, malaria is the most deadly. Scientists believe it has killed more people than any other disease spread by the insects in history. And it remains stubbornly present in the modern world: there were 619,000 deaths and 247m cases of malaria in 2021.
A new vaccine is 67%-75% effective, and half the cost ($2-$4) of the previous vaccine (from 2021). Cost is very important in poor countries. And, although the US managed to eradicate malaria here in 1951, global warming and international travel make the US vulnerable again. Florida has had locally-spread malaria this year. (And you do not want to hear about the risks from dengue…)
This thing has taken off and is (so far gently) shaking the world. Everyone who writes text for a living is affected, and magazines are already using AI-written articles. Google, Microsoft, Meta (Facebook) are working on competitors, and ChatGPT 4 is continuously being improved.
Imagine a computer that can talk to you. Nothing new, right? Those have been around since the 1960s. But ChatGPT, the application that first bought large language models (LLMs) to a wide audience, felt different. It could compose poetry, seemingly understand the context of your questions and your conversation, and help you solve problems. Within a few months, it became the fastest-growing consumer application of all time. And it created a frenzy in the tech world.
Pancreatic cancer is usually fatal. Eric Idle, of Monty Python fame, was very lucky — his was discovered by accident, very early, during a preventive medicine MRI. On the day of the surgery:
I drive myself to Cedars-Sinai before dawn to check in. It has been decided I will use a pseudonym. To keep away the tabloids. I wonder if the tabloids are at all interested in me, but still, it will be safer, they insist. However, what name to choose? I can’t think. I finally settle on Mr. Cheeky. Of course the name of the character in The Life of Brian who sings, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”
It’s fine until I hear someone calling this name at check-in.
From the experts: divorce lawyers. (The headline is The 1 Thing Divorce Lawyers (Almost) Never Do In Their Marriages, but that’s misleading: it’s one thing from each of several lawyers.)
They don’t check their partner’s phone. “If you want a lasting marriage, you need to have trust.”
They don’t make jokes or empty threats about divorce. Yeesh.
They don’t blame their partner. In a healthy dynamic, both partners can recognize their mistakes and each take accountability for their part, rather than wasting time pointing fingers at each other.
They don’t hide their finances. If someone is being cagey or withholding when it comes to money, it doesn’t bode well for the future of the relationship.
They don’t argue over text or email. Digital communication “can easily be misconstrued, especially in tone.”
They don’t say things they can’t take back. “Arguments should come from a solution-oriented place.”
They don’t stop their partner from pursuing their own hobbies and friendships. “Independence enhances a marriage.”
Paper checks and cash are being replaced by credit and debit cards and bank/online payments. (The headline is excessive: checks are not dead… yet.)
Back then (2000), 6 out of every 10 noncash purchases, gifts and paid bills were handled with checks. A mere two decades later, just 1 in 20 are. ((My bolding))
Who still uses checks and cash? Older people. Contractors and charities receive more than a third of their receipts as checks. More whites than non-whites (who are less likely to have checking accounts, or to be refused credit). Rural dwellers; people with bachelor’s or advanced degrees.
You’ve probably heard of the international language Esperanto. About two million people speak it! And you can learn Esperanto around four times faster than other languages! To demonstrate this, here’s how nouns work in Esperanto. Other grammar rules will be similarly simple.
Let’s start with a quick grammar review. Nouns are words for people, places, ideas, and things. For example, dog, ocean, tree, country, goose, sheep are nouns.
In Esperanto, every noun ends with the letter o: dog, ocean, tree, country, goose, sheep become hundo, oceano, arbo, lando, ansero, ŝafo (pronounced “shah-foh”). Period.
In English, we make a noun plural by adding an s to the word: dogs, oceans, trees. Except words ending in y have the y changed to ies (country/countries). Except if the letter before the y is a vowel (boy/boys). Except for goose: the plural is geese. And one sheep two sheep. And there are more exceptions, like words borrowed from other languages.
To make Esperanto nouns plural, you just add a j (pronounced like an English “y”): hundoj, oceanoj, arboj, landoj, anseroj, ŝafoj (pronounced “shah-foy”). Always. No exceptions. End of rules for plurals.
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Also, in an English sentence, you know who is doing the action (the subject) and who it is getting done to (the object) from the order of the words:
The dog chases the cat.
The dog is chasing, the cat is getting chased. You know that because the dog is before the verb and the cat is after the verb. (Obviously it gets complicated quickly, but that’s the basic rule.)
An Esperanto sentence shows who the action is getting done to (the object) with an extra ending, the letter n. So these sentences mean exactly the same thing: The dog chases the cat:
La hundo ĉasas la katon. The dog chases the cat. La katon ĉasas la hundo. The dog chases the cat. Ĉasas la hundo la katon. The dog chases the cat. La katon la hundo ĉasas. (Ktp.) The dog chases the cat. (Etc.)
(Note: hundo is similar to the English word “hound.” ĉ is like English ch, so “chah-sahss.”)
In all of those sentences, we know that the cat is getting chased, because katon ends with the n object ending.
This is useful for people from languages where the word order is different from English, or which also mark the nouns: they can use their usual word order and all Esperantists will understand them. In practice, many Esperantists use the English word order (with the correct endings!) anyway.
But… what happens if your word is both plural and an object? Easy! You just add both the jand the n so the noun ends with –ojn (rhymes with JOIN). The dogs chase the cats:
La hundoj ĉasas la katojn. The dogs chase the cats. La katojn ĉasas la hundoj. The dogs chase the cats. Ĉasas la hundoj la katojn. The dogs chase the cats. La katojn la hundoj ĉasas. (Ktp.) The dogs chase the cats. (Etc.)
So:
Singular
Plural
Subject
-O (“oh”)
-OJ (“oy”)
Object
-ON (“own”)
-OJN (“oyn”)
(Note that, in English, the verb has to change from “chases” to “chase” when we have plural dogs. It’s almost like we’re moving the “s” from the verb to the subject! In Esperanto, the verb stays exactly the same.)
And, unlike French, Spanish, German, or Italian (but like English), nouns don’t have a gender. One less thing to memorize for every noun.
That’s nouns in Esperanto. That’s everything. Enjoy!
Hmmm… maybe we can sneak adjectives in here too: words that modify nouns (big, hungry, gray). In English, these do not change for number or use, they’re always the same (one big hungry gray dog or six big hungry gray dogs). In Esperanto, adjectives work just like nouns except using a instead of o for the endings (‑a, ‑an, ‑aj, ‑ajn, pronounced “‑ah”, “‑ahn”, “-eye”, “‑ine”). And they have to match their nouns: La grandaj hundoj ĉasas la grizajn katojn. And you can put them after their nouns, but like English, they’re usually before. La fino (the end)!
As a font fan (or fanatic), I was pleased to see this article on a major news site.
You make font choices every day. You pick type designs each time you use a word processor, read an e-book, send an email, prepare a presentation, craft a wedding invite and make an Instagram story.
It might seem like just a question of style, but research reveals fonts can dramatically shape what you communicate and how you read.
Fonts are “the clothes that words wear,” said early 20th-century editor Beatrice Warde. They also embody style, emotion and authority. Like a villain’s costume in a movie, they quietly tell part of the story.
And you can display the whole article in any of these fonts:
The article also discusses how readability is affected by serif versus sans-serif, contrast and proportion, x-height etc.
Six million car crashes a year in the United States, leading to 30-40,000 dead Americans every year. Here are six main causes. Read the full article on how to avoid them:
The Rolling Right Turn on Red
You approach a red light, and you’re about to turn right. You slow down but don’t come to a full stop. As you continue to roll, you look to your left to see if there are any cars coming at you from that direction. You turn your head back to the right and suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s a pedestrian or a bicyclist…
The rolling right on red now accounts for 6 percent of all pedestrian fatalities, and the number is on the rise. Worse still, 21 percent of the deaths happen to kids.
Falling Asleep
…about 7 percent of all car crashes, and 21 percent of fatal crashes, happen to drowsy drivers.
Loss of Control
…accounts for 11 percent of all crashes. It’s comforting to think that these unfortunate drivers occupy the bottom 11 percent of the driving skill scale, but science has some humbling news for us. It turns out that most of us think about driving skill far too simply… Aggressive maneuvering and taking a sharp curve too fast account for about 5 percent of all crashes. Another 2 percent happen when we don’t slow down for water on the road.
The remainder of these crashes happen when another driver or even a sudden turn in the road puts us in a surprise situation that demands an instant response. We imagine ourselves coolly responding when something unexpected pops up, but most people overreact and overcompensate and sometimes kick their car afterward.
Into the Blind
Ever make a left turn at an intersection when there’s a huge bus blocking your view of what’s coming from the other direction? Or cruise through a red light thinking that there won’t be another car coming across your path? Or even race down a road not realizing that it just might end at some point? The data tell us that 12 percent of all crashes happen when drivers do these things…
The Rear-Ender
Your first job when driving: Don’t hit the car in front of you. As simple as it sounds, hitting the car in front of us accounts for between 23 percent and 30 percent of all crashes.
We drive close to the car in front of us because we think it’ll get us there faster. It’s true, technically, but just barely: Science says we save 26 seconds per day as a result of our hurrying.
Distracted Lane or Road Departure
Your second job when driving is to stay in your lane. Thirty-three percent of all crashes happen when we don’t stay in our lane, or even on the road… the distraction of phones, our attention gets pulled by roadside crashes, billboards, activities inside the car, and mind wandering. Humans are not natural performers when it comes to keeping an eye on much of anything and even less so when asked to attend to several things at once.
Laugh / learn links log 