1319. Severance — Music To Refine To feat. ODESZA | Apple TV+
↪ Music to work to. No spoilers for Severance. No need to have seen Severance, or even like the show. If you put it on straight away, you should be able to get through a bit of the material below before it is done. (If you listen to the first hour, you have more or less listened to most of it though.)
1320. 52 Things I Learned in 2024
↪ Yet another end-of-year post with interesting facts and things a person learned in a given year, this one by Kent Hendricks. Some of these facts would need a replication or a lot of caveats, e.g., facts such as swearing improves physical performance (even – or specifically – if the fact is from a scientific paper). However, the same can and should be said for a lot of the facts I have shared on this blog over the years.
1321. Killed by LLM
↪ An overview of various tasks and datasets that can now be defeated/solved by LLMs. It is a great reminder of the progress being made with LLMs in recent years (and how the goalpost seems to be moved again and again for what counts as satisfactory performance by LLMs).
1322. Math and Logic Problems
↪ If you are looking for an amazing resource with math and logic problems, look no further. There are puzzles within a lot of different categories, from geometry to money, and it is relatively easy to identify easier problems and increase the level of difficulty. Similarly, if you are looking for a goldmine of content, check out this great blog, Futility Closet, by Greg Ross (full of puzzles, quotes and other interesting things).
1323. Celebrating the Timeless Allure of Tintin’s Aesthetics
↪ As a huge fan of Tintin, both the comics and cartoons, this is a good appreciation post of the aesthetics and themes in Tintin. On a related note, all the comics are available here. I picked up some of the old Tintin comics during the pandemic, and due to this post I will most likely read a few more in 2025.
1324. The Most Mario Colors
↪ A high-quality post on the letter color scheme in the polygonal logos in 40 Mario games. As the author notes, this is probably not useful for anyone, but that is what I like about it (also as an example of how to communicate numbers with colors in tables).
1325. The Economic & Geopolitical History of Rwanda: Part 1: How Colonialists turned a Caste System into a Race, Part II: Post Independence Struggles, The Rwandan Civil War, & The Precursor to Genocide, Part III: The Rwandan Genocide & the 1st Congo War, Part IV: Rwanda-Congo Issues & Kagame’s Stewardship
↪ My knowledge of Rwanda is limited to specific events, most noteworthy the genocide in 1994. Here is a series of posts that provides a brief and interesting overview of the economic and geopolitical history of Rwanda.
1326. Beej’s Guide to Git
↪ A comprehensive yet relatively succinct guide to git. I picked up a few good tricks in this guide, and if you are using git for work (or your studies), check this out. If you have primarily used a GUI instead of the CLI for your git commands, this might be as good a time as any to improve your workflow. Also, all material is available on GitHub. On a related note, do also check out How Core Git Developers Configure Git.
1327. Learn Japanese: A Ridiculously Detailed Guide
↪ I have no plans of ever learning Japanese, but if you are planning to – or in the middle of – improving your Japanese, this seems like a good place to consult. There are also some good high-level considerations that apply to learning any language. I found this resource via Johnny Webber (always worth checking out).
1328. Is Ockham’s razor losing its edge? New perspectives on the principle of model parsimony
↪ I have previously written about types of parsimony in scientific models (see, e.g., this post), so it goes without saying that I found this paper on model parsimony and the conditional usefulness of complex models worth reading (and hereby sharing). I do enjoy how a lot of these debates are also informed by recent developments within machine learning (and in particular of course LLMs).
1329. Every day I draw The Titanic
↪ Self-explanatory. A new drawing of Titanic every day. Going back ten years (February 2015)! I obviously have not checked out all of the drawings, but it is an interesting website to scroll through.
1330. Defense Against Dishonest Charts
↪ Flowing Data by Nathan Yau is one of those websites that has been around forever and at some point you just take it for granted. Here is a new interactive resource on dishonest charts, or, more specifically, some recommendations on how to make sure you make your charts less misleading (and by extension be better able to spot misleading charts). I can imagine this is a perfect tool to use in statistics teaching.
1331. I reviewed every snack in our office kitchen
↪ This is not as detailed as I would have liked for it to be, but I do find it interesting to discuss the ideal office snack stack. I agree with the choice of dimensions to evaluate the quality of an office snack (i.e., taste, productivity, logistics, and social score), but I would also consider the interactions between different office snacks and maybe also seasonality. More importantly, I wouldn’t consider someone else’s lunch an office snack. The ideal office snacks are rather boring but popular for that reason, including granola bars and various fruits (such as apples, grapes, bananas, and berries). I would also consider most things that go well with coffee (preferably Americano) for an ideal office snack, including Snickers ice cream on extra warm days.
1332. 50 Years of Travel Tips
↪ It is always good to reflect upon why you travel – and how. I believe most people can improve their travelling habits (myself included). This is a collection of travel tips and I do in no way endorse all of these tips. For example, I will never hire a driver to take me to visit their mother or ever crash a wedding. That being said, again, it is always good to reflect upon the best way to travel, especially if that can result in not only better but also more travellng.
1333. An Intellectual’s Travel Guide to Madrid
↪ I have never been to Madrid, but if I ever go, I will most likely consult this post. Several interesting recommendations on museums, food, and various other cultural venues. The good thing is that I expect this article to be as relevant in five years as it is today (give or take a few recommendations).