Author: Josh

What I Learned: 2025

Published by Josh on December 6, 2025

Sure, let’s do one of these again.

1) The future’s finally here: China is launching a 10 megawatt test bed thorium reactor in the Gobi desert this year with a 5 year launch horizon. Thorium has long been one of my lesser hyperfixations (You should see the collection of various bookmarks), as it has the potential to provide massive amounts of power without the same safety concerns and waste disposal issues that standard nuclear reactors pose. I hope this is the kick in the ass America needs to get in the thorium game. via https://spectrum.ieee.org/chinas-thorium-molten-salt-reactor

2) If one staid scold in recruiting at Ford is less of an asshole to Morris Chang, the Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC might never exist. “(T)he Sylvania offer is $1 dollar a month higher than the Ford offer. Chang calls Ford and asks if they’ll match the offer. But the person he speaks to is rude and dismissive, refusing to negotiate at all, and Chang gets so angry that he decides to take the Sylvania offer instead.” Recruiting really is the most bizarre weak link in tech. It seems like the most solvable problem imaginable, but literally everyone is terrible at it. via https://www.construction-physics.com/p/morris-chang-and-the-origins-of-tsmc

3) In reading about poisons and their use in fiction from Charlie Stross’s blog, I learned the difference between absorption (when a thing is taken into the interior of another thing) and adsorption (when a thing is stuck to the surface of another thing, bundling them together but not one within another). I did not know there was a word for that! via https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2025/01/a-novelists-guide-to-poisoning.html

4) The large picture boards with cut out holes for faces (known to Wikipedia as a photo stand-in) were first patented by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge in 1874, who is also the originator of the Dogs Playing Poker paintings.¹ via https://interconnected.org/home/2025/01/22/synchronicity

5) Humans breathe in a tidal pattern, in and out, in and out. Birds, however, “have a non-tidal respiratory system, with air flowing more like a running stream.” Just one long, continuous breath. Thanks to Robin Sloan’s Trespassers (https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/winter-reading/) newsletter for introducing me to that mind-melting fact. via https://birdfact.com/anatomy-and-physiology/respiratory-system

6) There are remarkable phonetic patterns in how animal sounds are made (cats’ meow, pigs’ oink, etc) are spoken across languages. On the other hand, you get the Arabic phonetic “xnziːr” which sounds like no pig’s vocalization I can picture. https://pudding.cool/2025/03/language/

7) While reading about his previous exploits manipulating the stock market to keep Piggly Wiggly afloat², I learned about Clarence Saunders’ invention, the Keedoozle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keedoozle), which is a sort of grocery store crossed with an automat. They actually opened three of them in Memphis, Tennessee, which failed in essence because they were too successful (and their mechanisms broke down).

8) I was already aware of knocker-uppers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker-up), people who acted as human alarm clocks by knocking on windows to wake those inside in the morning, but I was not aware of the development of time as a subscription service.³ In the mid-19th century, it was difficult to know exactly what time it was because clock quality varied. As a result, there was a call for someone with a very accurate watch to walk around and synchronize time with people’s personal clocks. The Belville family was in this business in London right up until 1940! https://eehe.org.uk/72742/ruth-belville-she-sold-time/

9) In Dan Davies’ Lying for Money (https://www.amazon.com/Lying-Money-Legendary-Frauds-Workings/dp/1781259666/), which was recommended to me via Patrick McKenzie’s repeated references and which I recommend to anyone looking to learn more about the ins and outs and evolutions of fraud, aside from the fact that people are infinitely creative when desperate and morally bankrupt, I learned about the pyramid scheme ‘Women Empowering Women’, which was one of the few frauds where the original perpetrator got away with it. I remember living through high times for pyramid schemes in the 90s and 00s and in the current environment of desperation, wildly available reach, and flexible morality, I highly suspect we’re going to see a rise in pyramid schemes in the next several years.

10) Hidalgos, members of Spanish (or Portuguese) nobility akin to unlanded knights, were created for a number of reasons, including the “Hidalgo de bragueta” or “fly-of-the-trousers hidalgo” who “obtained tax exemption for having seven sons in lawful wedlock.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidalgo_(nobility)

11) From Dan Lewis via Hank and John Green’s newsletter, We’re Here (https://werehere.beehiiv.com/p/baby-giraffes-and-medieval-mattresses), I learned that firepoles were first invented and used because of curiously hungry horses. Which led horses to walk upstairs and not be able to get back downstairs again. Which led firehouses to install circular staircases. Which are hard to get down quickly in the event of a fire. Which led to experimenting with sliding down wooden hay baling poles from the upper stories, which led to faster fire response times. The causal chains of reality are myriad and amazing. ⁴

12) In the First World War, female telephone operators placed in the Signal Corps were some of the first women to serve in forward operating positions in the US Army, including at times in the trenches themselves. The initial thirty-three women of the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit, led by Grace Barker, were so effective that General Pershing brought on hundreds more, receiving thousands of applicants. And yet, because of Army regulations and legal rulings, while they were issued uniforms and took commands, they were never recognized during the wartime period as members of the US Army. “They were discharged as civilians—or rather, they were not discharged at all. Because of the Army’s legal determination, the women received no Army papers and were deemed ineligible for veteran’s benefits or even to receive the Victory Medal which the Signal Corps had promised them.” https://computer.rip/2024-12-04-operators-on-the-front.html

13) Joseph Neubauer was a German apothecary from a notable lineage of apothecaries. His father, in order to speedily send pharmaceuticals over long distances to needy patients, utilized carrier pigeons, who, wearing tiny backpacks, delivered prescriptions from doctors and returned with medications in the nearby towns around his shop. Joseph’s innovation was to, instead of backpacks, strap tiny cameras of his own design to the pigeons, thus inventing aerial photography. https://artsandculture.google.com/story/julius-neubronner-and-his-flying-photographers/uQXBawGRQxy5LQ

14) Via a fun list in itself of 28 bits about writing ( https://www.experimental-history.com/p/28-slightly-rude-notes-on-writing ), “Apparently Sir Arthur Conan Doyle considered his Sherlock Holmes stories “a lower stratum of literary achievement” and thought his novels were far better.”

15) The Green Boys, in their newsletter We’re Here, pointed me to a newer tradition: the Giant Pencil Sharpening (https://www.instagram.com/p/DIerWZ2sqGo/). Apparently a guy in Minneapolis had a chainsaw sculptor turn an old beat up tree in his front yard into a giant #2 pencil, which dulls throughout the year from weathering. And so, once a year, he throws a party and sharpens it with a giant pencil sharpener. Let it not be known that people can’t find joy anywhere.

16) Russia utilized Brazil to establish cover identities for spies, taking advantage of lax rules around rural birth registrations, before sending them to western democracies including the US. It might have continued to go unrecognized, except Russia invaded Ukraine and got everyone’s hackles raised to root out Russian infiltration. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/world/americas/russia-brazil-spies-deep-cover.html?unlocked_article_code=1.I08.iFR6.LmtatbWc3R2b

17) Oscar the Grouch is orange. Yes, I know he looks green, however as shared by Alex Schmidt (https://www.tiktok.com/@alexschmidty/video/7505112381719186730), he is actually just covered in swamp muck over his orange fur, which he has not cleaned off in decades.

18) Not so much a thing I learned but a thing I relearn continually through exposure. (https://warrenellis.ltd/work/decide-you-dont-know-its-impossible/) Here’s a quote from Orson Welles when talking about doing things no one else was in filmmaking: “I didn’t know that there were things you couldn’t do.” Later the interviewer asks “Q: You got away with enormous technical advances, didn’t you?” to which he responds “A: Simply by not knowing that they were impossible.” There’s a koan from Shunryu Suzuki I keep on a Post-It on my work monitors that reminds me of a similar notion: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” It’s important to learn and to find better ways to do things, but don’t lose that useful naivety of the beginner, for whom nothing is yet impossible.

19) Via OpenCulture (https://www.openculture.com/2025/05/a-young-jim-henson-teaches-you-how-to-make-puppets-with-socks.html) I learned how to make a Muppet! This video from Iowa PBS of a young Jim Henson, just before Sesame Street took off, showing how to make puppets out of household items. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC440k6iByA) (One of my personal skills is the ability to do a fairly good Kermit impression. I wish it had more use than it has to date.)

20) Rodger Sherman’s excellent Substack filled in the details on a remarkable story from college baseball: the first team in history to have an undefeated season. The LSU-Shreveport Pilots went 59-0, with a team .493 on-base percentage. My favorite fact is that their best player was named Josh Gibson, who hit .439 and stole 53 bases in 59 games. (https://rodgersherman.substack.com/p/a-college-baseball-team-won-every)

21) In 1846, the town of Ixonia, WI (between Milwaukee and Madison along I-94) was named by having a child pull letters at random until they had a long enough word that would serve as the name of a town. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixonia,_Wisconsin

22) Via Interconnected (https://interconnected.org/home/2025/07/04/filtered), I learned that Pilates was devloped by a German man named Joe Pilates after observing the movements of cats while interned on the Isle of Man during the First World War. (https://www.transceltic.com/manx/surprising-link-between-pilates-physical-fitness-method-and-manx-cats)

23) As the forever war in Ukraine continues, life goes on as well, with some adjustments. Like holding the opera underground. (https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/resistance-in-ukraine-the-show-must-go-on-underground-in-the-kharkiv-opera-house-a-046d8e01-c14e-49fd-9bca-f6d531b4681a) via a neat and relatable newsletter I found this year, “The Curious About Everything Newsletter” (https://jodiettenberg.substack.com/p/fifty-one)

24) As an outside amateur interested in agrovoltaics (the commingling of agriculture and solar on the same land) I’d been aware of the benefits of the provided shade on certain plants’ growth cycles. What I was less aware of is that the plants benefit the solar panels as well, reducing temperatures and increasing panel performance in very hot climates. (https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/07/in-the-southwest-solar-panels-in-can-help-both-photovoltaics-and-crops/)

25) The record for the longest continual crewed flight is 64 days, 22 hours, and 19 minutes, by a two-person crew in a Cessna 172, from December to February of 1959, as a publicity stunt for a Las Vegas casino, the Hacienda. The plane was refueled twice a day by pumping fuel through a trailing hose up from a truck driving below it, which also supplied food from the hotel’s kitchen to the crew to eat, cut into pieces small enough to fit in Thermos jugs. You can even see the plane itself, hanging above the baggage claim at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. (https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2008/march/pilot/endurance-test-circa-1958)

26) The boycott comes from an actual Boycott, an English landlord whose detestable behavior against 11 Irish tenants led his employees and an entire town to go on strike against him, denying him service and shunning him. (https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/irish-invented-boycott)

27) The US does have universal healthcare, but specific to kidneys. From https://www.experimental-history.com/p/revenge-of-the-blockheads I learned that in 1972 anyone with end-stage renal disease was put onto Medicare, providing dialysis treatments to over 550,000 Americans this year.

28) From the same article (Experimental History was probably my favorite new find this year) is that someone actually went and made a tech tree ala Civilization: https://www.historicaltechtree.com. It literally starts at rocks in 3300000 BCE and moves to the modern age.

29) The football huddle was invented in 1894 at Gallaudet University (a prestigious university serving the deaf community) when they were concerned their hand signals were giving away their strategy to their opponents. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/deaf-quarterback-changed-sports-forever-inventing-huddle-180987178/)

30) In 1672, the Dutch not only killed their Prime Minister and his brother, but strung them up, desecrated their corpses, and ate portions of their livers. There’s political violence and then there’s political cannibalism. (https://www.historydefined.net/when-the-dutch-murdered-and-ate-their-own-prime-minister/)

31) Walter White would likely not have cooked meth if the show were made in 2025. He cancer became affordably survivable. (https://www.alexkesin.com/p/would-walter-white-still-cook-meth)

32) During an incredible week in Tokyo, I toured an exhibit of the Hokusai Manga, which are essentially drawing manuals first printed in 1814 containing the artistic stylings and direction of the titular artist. (https://hokusai2025.jp/en/)

33) In the same exhibit, I learned just how directly Hokusai’s art and ukiyo-e printing, influenced the Impressionist artistic movement. Hokusai’s work was referenced or directly copied by, among others, Bracquemond, Gallé, Manet, and Degas.

34) In the first episode of the new The American Revolution from Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt on PBS, came the quote “A map is a statement. An argument.” Which bent my brain a little.

35) A year in which I get a new job on the other side of the country, as well as everything else happening, is not incredibly conducive to a long-running personal project like remembering to document 50 things I learned. Here’s to doing better next year!

Notes:

1
Also as noted in the Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_stand-in , they may have been inspired by sarcophagi in Cairo with a face whole cut out, shown here (https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en-US/egyptian-photographer/archduke-franz-ferdinand-of-austria-posing-as-a-mummy-while-in-cairo-1894-photo/photograph/asset/6425719) being used by Archduke Franz Ferdinand!
2
In Lying for Money, https://www.amazon.com/Lying-Money-Legendary-Frauds-Workings/dp/1781259666/
3
TaaS?
4
This is also why I love Connections from James Burke.

What I Learned: 2024

Published by Josh on December 30, 2024

Image of a library — Photo by Alex Block on Unsplash

At the start of the year I resolved to keep a sort of diary of things I learned this year.¹ I read a lot online and I thought it’d be worthwhile to record the things that surprised, challenged, taught, and awed me throughout the year. So, here’s that list, of articles, videos, essays, comics, and more that I learned a little something from throughout the year:

Week of 1/1: Up until the micropipette was invented, scientists were forced to move liquids around with a device called the mouth pipette, which involved using suction from their own mouths to draw liquids into the tube. This was, as one could imagine, potentially dangerous depending on the liquid being moved and, regardless, not entirely hygienic. Frustrated with this device, Heinrich Schnitger took two days away from work and developed the micropipette, which included “a spring-loaded piston, second spring to shoot out residual liquid, and plastic tip.” via https://press.asimov.com/resources/making-the-micropipette

Week of 1/8: “loanword” is a calque (from German, Lehnwort). (calque: an expression adopted by one language from another in a more or less literally translated form.)
“calque” is a loanword (from French, meaning copy). via Timothy Burke on Bluesky

Week of 1/15: For much of history, writing about history was not a thing. The writing and collection of history among ancient civilizations was (according to our current knowledge and understanding) so uncommon outside Herodotus and Chinese historian Sima Qian that “[O]ur knowledge of ancient India relies more on ancient Greek historians than ancient Indian historians. Traditional Indic civilization simply did not have any.” Many extant works of Sanskrit make their way to modern times but none are histories. via https://scholars-stage.org/history-is-written-by-the-losers/

Week of 1/22: When China was looking to learn about America after emerging from Mao’s rule under the reign of Deng Xioaping, it sent a young student to study the country and report back. Where did they send him to learn about the beating heart of America? Where did they seek the soul, the essence of an entire nation? Iowa City, Iowa.

To imagine what could have been if they had picked any number of other places to spend the first three months of this journey. A China that learned about America predominantly from Miami would have made for an interesting time in which to live. via https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/assistant-dictator-book-club-america

Week of 1/29: PDF standards cap the maximum size of a document at 381 square kilometers (or more accurately, an area of 15,000,000 inches). However, through careful manipulation, you can exceed that. Up to and past, oh, say, the size of the known universe. via https://alexwlchan.net/2024/big-pdf/

Week of 2/5: Zoning laws and architectural inertia led to the US manufacturing apartment buildings that generally stem off of a central hallway, meaning only one wall (excepting more expensive corner units) gets natural light and which doesn’t maximize floor space, driving up costs.² Meanwhile in Europe, point access design, where multiple units flower off from a central stairwell or elevator (or both!) allow apartments to reclaim that length and build around 2-3 sides of the access point. via https://www.centerforbuilding.org/blog/we-we-cant-build-family-sized-apartments-in-north-america

Week of 2/12: The British Major General Fuller invented the “blitzkrieg” tactic of armored assault before the Germans did, but didn’t possess the capacity for change because the existing institution was built around the existing status quo and it had became too well constructed and refined around achieve its existing goal to be able to achieve a new one. Which is an institutional concern around the capacity for evolution that seems to strike business and organizations throughout the world and throughout time. via https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/id1484511465?i=1000459474905

The other thing to note, however, is that Fuller, so frustrated by the British inability to adopt his innovation, turned to fascism and National Socialism, later becoming involved in a plot to foment a fascist coup. There’s a lesson there as well in the moral lengths people are willing to stretch to see their visions through. ³

Week of 2/19: At current rates of inflation, both in general and specific to their pricing trends, a banana may cost $10 some time between the early 2100s to the mid-2200s. via https://xkcd.com/2892/

Week of 2/26: Mark Twain was not the only nom de plume Samuel Clemons adopted. Others include W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab (Sam Clemons’ first pen name as a printer’s apprentice), Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, Sieur Louis de Conte, John Snook and even “Josh”. via https://www.connellguides.com/blogs/news/113163780-the-origin-of-mark-twain-s-name

Week of 3/4: Bit of an odd one, but that’s Randall Munroe’s entire remit, so… The largest issue with running a nuclear submarine in space would likely be dissipating heat, rather than any issues with handling pressure or air or etc. Without a medium to dissipate its generated waste heat into, the ship would cook very quickly. via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsUBRd1O2dU

Week of 3/11: Just gonna quote this one directly rather than even try to find some more impactful way to phrase it: “The modern economy rests on a single road in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The road runs to the two mines that is the sole supplier of the quartz required to make the crucibles needed to refine silicon wafers.” via Ethan Mollick on Twitter – https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1766504587781878196⁴

Week of 3/18: Turning swords to plowshares always seemed a weird way to make a plow to me until I learned about the need, in the hard soils of northern Europe, to literally cut through the top soil before turning it with the plow. The instrument that accomplishes this is essentially a giant riving knife that a quality steel sword would have been a pretty reasonable substitute for. (Which I learned via James Burke’s still excellent Connections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_TV_series)#Series_1_(1978) )

Week of 3/25: Knowledge throughout Europe in the 1600s flowed through a vital nexus, Father Marin Mersenne. He was known as the Postbox of Europe and transmitted information between people all over the continent at a time when Catholicism was very interested in quelling differences of thought. via https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Mersenne/ (initially learned via Connections ep 3 (ibid))

Week of 4/1: I hate April Fool’s Day, mostly because too many people fail Scalzi’s Maxim. Something I learned that’s not nonsense: every year the Oakland Museum of California holds a massive rummage sale from late January through early March in a 96,000 sq ft warehouse, called the White Elephant Sale at which thousands of items are recycled to new owners and millions of dollars are raised for charity.

Week of 4/8: Bill Murray’s son is an assistant coach for the two-time NCAA Champion UConn Huskies? Just the latest example of feeling old as hell. via https://sports.yahoo.com/bill-murray-embraces-son-uconn-154229433.html

Week of 4/15: A three pack of NFL draft things I’ve suspected that were confirmed by actual academic researchers:
• The treasured No. 1 pick in the draft is actually the least valuable in the first round, according to the surplus value a team can create with each pick.
• Across all rounds, the probability that a player starts more games than the next player chosen at his position is just 53 percent.
• Teams generated a 174% return on trades by forgoing a pick this year for picks next year.
via https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5416007/2024/04/16/nfl-drafting-methods-insight-massey-thaler/

Week of 4/22: Marc Andreessen, with further proof of Gibson’s assertion that the exceedingly rich are no longer even remotely human, says about the underprivileged people of his Wisconsin home town: “I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.” It amazes me how those who benefited from public goods (as he did working at the land grant University of Illinois) so quickly decry the need to give back to the public good once they get theirs. I hope he gets his giant bullet-shaped head stuck in a stair railing and starves to death. via https://prospect.org/power/2024-04-24-my-dinner-with-andreessen/

Week of 4/29: I mean, I think this is the week we ALL learned that Kendrick is not to be stepped to: https://youtu.be/T6eK-2OQtew

Week of 5/6: Via the internet’s preeminent storyteller, Jon Bois, I learned about the Reform Party, which is wild as shit. Here’s his appearance on Pablo Torre Finds Out describing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWEbRO1mRKY

Week of 5/13: Dan Orlovsky (whose work on NFL Live doesn’t get nearly enough credit given the heavy hitters he’s up there with) went over a great breakdown of NFL cadences and how and why each are used, as they’re taught to quarterbacks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqcAST75HF0

Week of 5/20: Via Scope of Work, a favorite physical world investigatory newsletter, a deep dive on latex, which I learned is not produced only by rubber trees⁵, but occurs in 10% of plants on Earth, and that the milky-white substance from dandelions is natural latex which could (were one incredibly dedicated) be harvested to create rubber. via https://www.scopeofwork.net/on-latex/

Week of 5/27: If all humans disappeared, the last light would continue to glow for hundreds of years (presuming you count manmade Cesium-137 as a light source) via Randall Munroe’s excellent What If video series. ⁶

Week of 6/3: In order to find the best spots to invade Europe, Allied command put out a covert request via the BBC for photographs and postcards of beaches from Norway to Spain. via https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48215675

Week of 6/10: Less something I learned and more something Terrence Howard learned⁷: the grace and force of a thorough dose of peer review, from Neil deGrasse Tyson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uLi1I3G2N4

Week of 6/17: AI as currently publicly celebrated is a machine for generating bullshit. What’s worse, it’s actively lying about how it gathers the data it uses to create its bullshit. And then, when called on it, pirated Wired’s story about how it was pirating Wired and other sources. via https://www.wired.com/story/perplexity-plagiarized-our-story-about-how-perplexity-is-a-bullshit-machine/

Week of 6/24: Supreme Court decisions are required by Rule 33(1)(B) to be written in some member of the Century typeface family, and are typically written in Century Schoolbook. via https://www.poynerspruill.com/thought-leadership/typography-for-appellate-lawyers-improving-appellate-briefs-through-better-fonts/

Week of 7/1: The word “delves” shows up 25 times more often in papers submitted to PubMed since 2024, a strong indication of AI being used to generate the text of scientific papers submitted there. via https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/07/the-telltale-words-that-could-identify-generative-ai-text/

Week of 7/8: This week I learned about Esteban, a slave brought to North America who was one of the first men to explore the continent.

“In 1527, an enslaved African man named Esteban reached North America as part of a Spanish expedition led by the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez. After stopping on the islands of Hispaniola and Cuba, Narváez and his men landed in present-day Florida to search for gold. They soon became enfeebled by disease, and many perished. Native Americans drove those who survived, including Esteban, to the coast, where they set sail for the Gulf of Mexico.

During the years that followed, Esteban explored present-day Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and northwestern Mexico. He learned several Indigenous languages and even served as an interpreter. Esteban was, in the words of biographer Dennis Herrick, ‘the first person from the Old World of Europe, Africa and Asia to travel across the North American continent and also explore the American Southwest in the 1500s.’ Although the circumstances of his death remain mysterious, he most likely perished in the Zuni village of Hawikku in New Mexico in 1539.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-forgotten-black-explorers-who-transformed-americans-understanding-of-the-wilderness-180984607/

Week of 7/15: I mean, I suppose we all learned that the Secret Service is nowhere near as competent as their reputation would lead one to believe. We also learned that disturbed young men with access to high powered rifles continue to be a scourge on the peace of our nation. And yet we continue to refuse to learn the resolve to do a damned thing about it.

Week of 7/22: Mongolian attendees of Nadaam (a traditional sporting event consisting of wrestling, archery, and horse racing events) scrape the sweat off winning horses for luck. Also, Spencer Hall continues to be a master of his craft. via https://channel-6.ghost.io/skies-like-a-god/

Week of 7/29: Venus, due to the presence of phosphine and ammonia (which could neutralize the acidity of its massively dense sulfuric acid atmosphere), could actually potentially harbor some form of life. via https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/29/science/venus-gases-phosphine-ammonia/index.html

Week of 8/5: The probability of accidentally typing the 10⁵ characters of Hamlet in order on a standard keyboard is somewhere around 1 in 10^164,345. There are approximately 10⁸⁰ atoms in the universe. There are many infinities, and the infinity in which a monkey accidentally types any work of Shakespeare is among the largest. via https://defector.com/point-counterpoint-monkeys-typing-shakespeare?giftLink=bb60e7e61184ead5f82f90a50fcf3486

Week of 8/12: Contrition originally meant the act of grinding, pounding, or bruising things against each other. The concept of “acts of contrition” has a different feel given that origin. via https://www.feliciadavin.com/word-suitcase/ground-down

Week of 8/19: Via the screenwriter Zack Stentz on Twitter:

“Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family took a wagon to illegally settle in Indian territory when she was a child. Late in her life she flew on a jet to visit her daughter in Florida. The people who lived from the 1860s to 1950s saw a hell of a lot of change.”
https://x.com/MuseZack/status/1823951569567519024

Week of 8/26: The carat weight for precious stones is based off of the weight of a carob seed, which were thought to all weigh the same (though truthfully have as much weight variance as all other seed weight distributions). It was originally 1/1728 of a pound, but is now defined as 200mg. via https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNnH83ku/

Week of 9/2: My vision of blue is greener than 57% of the population, dividing at Hue 173. To my eye, turquoise is a blue color (which, yeah). But it’s also at 68%. And 72%. Each time I retested, my dividing line moved. Which I suppose indicates that there’s some subjective truth to the results and that they might also be affected by whether I’d previously ranked something one way or the other. Still, an interesting effort, even if I have some notes about how they might better run a visual experiment. via https://ismy.blue

Week of 9/9: This week I learned that red wine is made by mashing and fermenting whole red grapes, while white wine is made by skinning and fermenting only the innards of either white or red grapes. The same process as red wine done to white grapes (mashing and fermenting the entire grape) is known as orange wine. via https://www.scopeofwork.net/2024-09-06/

Week of 9/16: Wounded Knee was an end result of an effort to hold control of the Senate in 1890 via the seat in South Dakota.

“In those days, state legislatures chose their state’s senators, and shortly after it became clear that control of the Senate was going to depend on that South Dakota seat, U.S. Army troops went to South Dakota to rally voters by putting down an “Indian uprising” in which no people had died and no property had been damaged. Fueled on false stories of “savages” who were attacking white settlers, the inexperienced soldiers were the ones who pulled the triggers to kill more than 250 Lakota on December 29, but the Wounded Knee Massacre started in Washington, D.C.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-13-2024

Week of 9/23: The concept of blue raspberry was confusing to me before learning this: “The flavor profile of raspberry was actually developed using ‘mostly esters of the banana, cherry, and pineapple variety.’” Additionally, the color plays heavily into what people taste. Artificial grape only tastes like grape to people if it is colored purple. via https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/pop-culture/article/what-is-blue-raspberry-flavor

Week of 9/30: Someone hacked together an Android device with 24/7 Shazam running on it to develop BopSpotter, which identifies the sounds that make up the musical diaspora of the neighborhood around the pole it lives on in the Mission in San Francisco.

Week of 10/7: It’s the return of Every Frame a Painting! Got to learn all about Billy Wilder and the parts that writing and direction each play in constructing the resulting product in filmmaking, including developing tension, stakes, and consequential actions that don’t just make a film move forward but propel an audience through a story.

Week of 10/14: While blue jeans were introduced to the world by Levi Strauss, “jeans” date back to 1567 and pants worn by Genoese sailors⁸, while “denim” is from the 1600s and describes a weave pattern that originated in Nîmes, France (being a contraction of serge de Nîmes) via https://cottonworks.com/en/topics/sourcing-manufacturing/denim/denim-history/

Week of 10/21: I stared at this on the screen for several minutes while it broke my brain: “Black holes, it turns out, are the densest possible containers of information. But how much information can they carry? Strangely, according to calculations in the 1970s by Jacob Bekenstein and Stephen Hawking, the amount depends on their surface area — not their volume.” On their surface area, not their volume. HOW. via https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-thought-experiments-that-fray-the-fabric-of-space-time-20240925/

Week of 10/28: In an effort to ward off evil spirits (and the evil eye in particular), “Pliny the Elder also notes (HN 28.4.7) that a fascinus (a phallus-shaped charm) was hung beneath the general’s chariot as an apotropaic⁹ device.” Meaning that the Romans, among their other contributions to our modern world, invented truck nuts. via https://acoup.blog/2024/11/01/referenda-ad-senatum-november-1-2024-ancient-weapons-lost-works-and-roman-spooky-stuff/

Week of 11/4: I mean fuck, what did I learn besides the fact that a majority of voting age Americans are either so lazy or so cruel as to throw in behind four more years of a now unchecked narcissist being puppeteers by a band of seething sociopaths? I suppose I also learned that the effect of that outcome was apparently felt psychically, because I woke up the moment it was being called by the AP, and later learned that many other people had the same experience. I don’t like acknowledging that there is something beyond what we can observe, but in the root of me, I know that there is. I suppose that’s a sort of faith.

Plus, I learned Liz has a plan: https://time.com/collection/time100-voices/7173801/elizabeth-warren-democrats-plan-after-2024-election/

Week of 11/11: Beyond the 6 suspects we’re classically familiar with, Clue has had a number of additional characters added including Mr. Slate-Grey, Lady Lavender, and the one that threw me for a loop in trying to solve a NYTimes puzzle, Dr. Orchid. via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cluedo_characters

Week of 11/18: The reason films have a disclaimer regarding similarity to real persons or events being entirely coincidental is down to a portrayal of the assassination of Rasputin leading his assassin (and his wife) to come off in a bad light. via https://slate.com/culture/2016/08/the-bizarre-true-story-behind-the-this-is-a-work-of-fiction-disclaimer.html

Week of 11/25: The Green Bean Casserole was originally created at a meal to honor the arrival of the Shah of Iran. via https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTYry8rJg/

Week of 12/2: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, they make Captain Crunch. That is not the interesting fact. Some forms of Captain Crunch cereal contain a different sort of crunchy bit called a crunchberry. This is also not the interesting fact. The interesting fact is that crunchberries are only made on certain days of the year, during which the town of Cedar Rapids has a sweet scent hanging in the air from their production.¹⁰ This period is also marked by a 5k race called The Crunch Berry Run Initially discovered via Neal Stephenson’s newsletter: https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/capn-crunch-comes-from-cedar-rapids

Week of 12/9: Facebook, in the middle of a period of growth in 2012, published an internal primer on their company to help onboard new employees and foster culture among existing employees. It was a little red book. I’m not sure if the irony was intentional or not, but it’s at a minimum an amusing choice in color schemes. via https://www.map.cv/blog/redbook Designed by https://benbarry.com

Week of 12/16: Thanks to Jon Bois, I learned about the scourge of banana peels, which one would assume is merely a comic gag, but which are documented to have occurred 308 times and killed 21. One standout is William Lytle, whose story I will leave you to discover by watching the incredible story at the link, but who led to my jaw widening further and further in its recounting. Who knew how dangerous (radioactivity aside) bananas could be. via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8W5GCnqT_M

Week of 12/23: Gang nail plates, which are the rectangular plates you see at the joints of roof trusses, revolutionized roof construction by allowing wooden members to be attached securely without toenailing.¹¹ Because of this, it allowed roofs to be constructed which don’t need center support walls and led to open floorplans and massive house sizes. All a result of trying to solve for roofs getting blown off in hurricanes in Florida. via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oIeLGkSCMA

Week of 12/30: I’m a devotee of A Christmas Story, watching it at least 4 times every year as it streams on TBS and TNT. And yet it was only this year I learned that the reason “The Old Man” receives a leg-shaped lamp is because¹² the trivia contest he enters is sponsored by Nehi, a soda brand¹³. The logo for Nehi? A pair of women’s legs wearing “knee-high” stockings. The lamp is corporate brand swag!

And that’s a wrap! Thanks for taking a journey with me through a year of reading, watching, listening, and learning. Though the internet can increasingly feel like a cesspit of attention-demanding sludge and misinformation, it is still filled with wonder if one knows where to look. Here’s to another year to come of emerging a little brighter, a little smarter, and a little more entertained at its end.

Notes:

1
Heavily inspired by Tom Whitwell’s yearly lists.
2
Unless of course you’re Charlie Munger’s vision, in which case you get no windows, to encourage you to go outside or something.
3
See also Gerald Bull and Project Babylon.
4
I’m sure this won’t come into play later in the year for any reason…
5
Though they are to date the only source that was found to generate enough volume to be commercially viable to harvest.
6
Which itself is a companion to his awesome books.
7
Though I suppose I did learn just how out there Terrence Howard really is.
8
Spelled genes
9
adj, supposedly having the power to avert evil influences or bad luck: apotropaic statues.
10
Cedar Rapids, I also learned, is also sarcastically known as the City of Five Smells due to several pungent industries around town
11
Nailing at an angle to attach boards together.
12
In the story “My Old Man and the Lascivious Special Award That Heralded the Birth of Pop Art” from Jean Shepherd’s In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash.
13
Which in 1955 rebranded as RC Cola

Three Years Without

Published by Josh on December 7, 2024

My dad died three years ago today.

It’s a day that’s fallen into a pattern, in its third year of remembrance. I start to feel a weird level of anxiety in the week or two before, usually just after Thanksgiving, not immediately aware of the source. My mind, seeking answers, always seeking answers and reasons and causes, starts to spin and spiral. Am I sick? Broken? Is something wrong? Until I remember what is on the horizon.

I try not to think about it. Push the thoughts of it back and away, under and beneath. Cover them with business. With work, with reading, with projects and learning. Pile everything tangible and substantial and ephemeral on top until I can’t see nor feel nor sense it. And yet it moves.

In the first months after I didn’t know what to do with myself. My father wasn’t a Cleaver or a Cunningham, or even a Tanner. Not a stereotypical TV dad. He was an interstitial presence in my life. There, then gone. Here again. Gone again. I saw him in chunks of time.

Even when I lived with him in my twenties, as I relocated my life to try and find what I thought was missing, he was there and gone. Some part of me keeps expecting him to appear again. To come home from some three year trip, smelling of airplane fumes and leather and overhead bins. To appear out of the cold, swathed in cigarette smoke.

I didn’t know what to do with my Dad. I don’t know that he ever wanted to be a father, necessarily. His relationship with me wasn’t as a son so much as a friend. And yet we sound alike. Think alike. Talk alike and move alike. He was there and gone, but never left. He was bound into who I was. Who I am.

When I went back to school for the second time, trying to learn who I was by learning more about the world, I studied English. I’ve lived much of my life trying to fill the gaps in the world with words and stories, tales from others to live their lives within my own. And I’ve written some too. Mostly short works. Some starts at longer things. But in all of them, I seem to come back to the same themes. Fathers and sons. Fathers and sons. All my stories are, overtly or subtextually, about the relationships between fathers and sons.

He’s been gone three years, and he’ll be gone as many years as I have left here myself, and I’m certain I’ll keep looking. Keep expecting him. Keep writing about that space between. Fathers and sons. And though I miss him, and I always will, I’ll always be building him back up in my mind, in my words, and through my fingers and into the world. A curl of breath and life and smoke made man. My ephemeral, ethereal father. Always coalescing again.

Author: Josh

What I Learned: 2025

Notes:

Share this:

What I Learned: 2024

Notes:

Share this:

Three Years Without

Share this: