Things I Learned - 11 Jan 2026
This week, I learned: Software Heritage is a non-profit that archives software. You can submit any Git repo for archival. Over 400 million projects have been archived so far. Everything Bad Is Good For You by Steven Johnson (2005) argues that pop culture isn’t all bad. But it isn’t all good either, unlike the book’s claims. Claude Popular culture formats (e.g. video games, manga, soap operas, game shows) are steadily more cognitively demanding, complex. They provide a dopamine kick from problem-solving. These may have led to the Flynn Effect (rising IQs in 1990s-2000s). Or it may be due to nutrition, smaller families, education, etc. Action games correlate with visual-spatial skills. Strategy games correlate with memory, planning. But is it causation? It doesn’t always translate to real-world skills. Also, side effects are real and bad: screen-time, addiction, misinformation, etc. The purpose of a featured image in a blog post is to help readers decide whether to read it. Share the article’s output/focus (e.g. for data stories, products). Else a visual summary (e.g. sketchnote, comic capturing the essence). Else skip. Avoid stock photos. # NFLSavant.com has play-by-play data for NFL games. Ten of the least well known psychology / sociology research findings. ChatGPT Learning styles are a myth. People might prefer visual / audio / … learning but it doesn’t help learning. Mix learning modes. NotebookLM can help. Casual acquaintances help find new information or jobs much more than close friends, since they’re in different social circles. Nurture weak ties. Use a relationship architect. Tell a lie often enough and people mistake familiarity for truth. Fact-check habitually. The more you see / hear something the more you like it. (Exposure effect.) Expose to good things. When others mess up, we blame them. When we mess up, we blame the situation. (Attribution error.) Pause before judging. Sometimes, rewarding people makes them like doing it less. (Overjustification effect.) People who know less over-estimate their knowledge. (Dunning-Kruger effect.) Habitualize calibration via feedback and tests. People do worse when they’re afraid their failure will reflect on their stereotype. (Stereotype threat.) Practice emotional resets. Higher expectations lead to better performance. (Pygmalion effect.) Engineer positive expectations. Benevolent sexism (e.g. protective paternalism) can be harmful too. Scan for well-meaning bias. Liberalism => economic growth, peace and expanding rights. Also colonial violence, exclusions (women, slavery, …), and eroding community. It is vulnerable to authoritarianism (e.g. emergency powers, recessions). Since 2006, democracy has consecutively declined, reversing half the progress since WW2. But alternatives are unclear. Claude Notes from The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. Pure Zinc does not dissolve easily in sulphuric acid. An impurity like Copper Sulphate pulls electrons from Zinc and offers them to Hydrogen ions, speeding up the reaction. Impurities, foreign bodies, etc. have a purpose, too. Discomfort = Information. Overcoming discomfort = Capability. Capability = Freedom. Therefore: Seeking discomfort (carefully, purposefully) = Building freedom. Simple != Easy. Simple = Clear. Clear = Actionable. Indifference often feels like malice. ⭐ Analogies have limits. (The Map is not the Territory.) When using analogies, always explore where, when and why they will break. Pay close attention near where they break. ⭐ Knowledge vanishes with people unless written down. Write “Do X. Because of Y. Unless Z changes.” The last two are critical. I could NOT have read the book without a Randall Munroe re-styling. I cried anyway. “There’s about 300-400 that were corporate assets. One watched them all the time. These are people who in 15 years could be CEO. There’s something about them that caught your fancy when you were in a meeting… brilliant ideas that challenged your thinking… We called them “Corporate Assets” and tracked them, to make sure we game-planned them, give them the right assignments.” Indra Nooyi, The Knowledge Project The accesskey attribute works a bit like magic. Adding an accesskey="h" on a home page link, or an accesskey="t" on a theme toggle button automatically enables keyboard shortcuts Alt+H or Alt+T to activate them. (Varies by browser and OS, but hovering shows the shortcut!) Familiarity and recency feel like learning but they’re not. Instead: Take tests. Review (spaced repetition). Interleave learning. That’s what helps. Claude Make It Stick (Peter C. Brown, 2014) A Mind for Numbers (Barbara Oakley, 2014) Ultralearning (Scott Young, 2019) How to Take Smart Notes (Sönke Ahrens, 2017)
