Today I Learned #3: There's a wiki for everything!

[Kyriakos]

"People think (hypnosis) is [] dangerous".
Yeah, so did Freud. The practice was attacked already more than a century ago. Also, if you read 19th century literature you will see hypnosis mentioned in loads of short stories, eg by Poe and De Maupassant. It's not something new.
But maybe some very different version is used for addiction.

 

[Zkribbler]

When I still had my high-pressure job I used self-hypnosis to calm down enough to get to sleep at night.

 

[amadeus]

Dwight D. Eisenhower was awarded the Soviet Union’s highest military honor in 1945, the Order of Victory.

Leonid Brezhnev awarded one to himself in the 1970’s, but was revoked after his death in 1982.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

When I still had my high-pressure job I used self-hypnosis to calm down enough to get to sleep at night.

I just tell myself part of the story I'm working on (paper and pen are usually handy in case a really good idea occurs or a line of dialog I need to preserve NOW). Or I read (thank goodness for the Kindle, since I don't have a bedside lamp due to nowhere to plug one in).

It's also handy having a cat who likes to snuggle. Getting a facewash with a sandpaper tongue is actually relaxing... unless her whiskers accidentally get up my nose. That's painful.

 

[Zkribbler]

... I don't have a bedside lamp due to nowhere to plug one in).

Wha..?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Wha..?

My bed is in the living room, due to it being the easiest place to set it up, plus I've had to move twice now in this building due to plumbing issues involving the bathroom, soaked carpets, and mold (neither time was my fault). Therefore, I sleep as far from the bathroom as possible.

The tradeoff is that there's only one plugin on that wall, and it's being used by the TV/PVR/modem, plus my bed. There's nowhere to plug a lamp in unless I use an extension cord plugged into a powerbar, because the lamps I have don't have long enough cords. I'm trying to see if I can find an extension cord to run from the plugin in the kitchen (would have to be a long one to get past the bookshelves), but right now I just have one of those little battery-operated bedside lights that you touch to turn on. I use it if I'm up when it's dark in the room (which is fairly often since I never open the blinds - the room faces east, and having the sun in my eyes isn't how I like waking up). I don't use that for reading, as I'd be spending a fortune on batteries.

There were actually more plugins in my old suite, and it's annoying to not have them in this one. The living room here was obviously set up with media in mind, rather than anything sensible that allows multi-use/multi-tasking.

Therefore, I only read on my Kindle in that room.

 

[AdamCrock]

Only our star: the "Sun" gives light optimal for reading !! I understand You want want to indulge Yourselves in the comfort of Your own bed - during those long winter evenings - reading to Yours hearts content , feeling all comfy ! (I am guilty of that too ), but...., but .... think of Your health !

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Only our star: the "Sun" gives light optimal for reading !! I understand You want want to indulge Yourselves in the comfort of Your own bed - during those long winter evenings - reading to Yours hearts content , feeling all comfy ! (I am guilty of that too ), but...., but .... think of Your health !

I've got some odd-sized large furniture items, and using sunlight to read by in the living room would mean doing a complete mirror-reverse of that room (there are reasons why I can't just turn my bed around).

In the room I'm in now (which actually is the room closest to the bathroom), I get plenty of natural sunlight, from sunrise until about 3 pm.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Will My Popcorn Explode?
The odds that all of your popcorn kernels will pop simultaneously aren’t zero. Maybe think instead of the multiple lotteries you’re more likely to win.

By Randall Munroe

• Published Dec. 29, 2020Updated Dec. 30, 2020

What would happen if, while I was popping popcorn, all the kernels popped at once? Should I be worried?

— Skye M., Portland, Maine

Don’t worry, all of your popcorn kernels won’t pop at once.

Popcorn kernels pop because the water inside them heats up and boils. When water boils, it usually expands, but the tough outer hull of the kernel keeps the steam contained. For a while, the steam keeps getting hotter, until the pressure rises enough to break open the outer hull, releasing the pressure with a popping sound.

A typical bag of microwave popcorn might contain 300 kernels. If all 300 popped at once, the bag might rupture and make a mess, but your microwave would probably be fine. According to the 3M Noise Navigator sound protection database, the average popcorn popper produces about 80 decibels of sound power. A sound wave 300 times more powerful than the noise of a typical popcorn popper would be about as loud as a nightclub and quieter than many power tools. If your microwave can survive the vibrations from being near the speakers at a nightclub, I’d bet it could survive a mega-pop.

But how likely is a mega-pop?

A popcorn kernel pops when its internal temperature reaches about 180 degrees Celsius. The critical temperature is different for each kernel: It depends on how much moisture it contains, how strong the hull is and how quickly your microwave heats the particular area where the kernel sits. Most kernels will take roughly the same amount of time to pop, but some will cross the line earlier or later than others by random chance. If we assume they are heated independently, then there’s no reason they couldn’t happen to reach their critical internal pressure at the same time — it’s just statistically unlikely.

24 living descendants — let’s suppose he has about 50 now, and that they all have phones with U.S. numbers. Now you decide you want to talk to them. You pull out your phone and start dialing digits at random, and somehow you reach all 50 on your first round of calls — without a single wrong number. As they pick up, you correctly guess their birthdays and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. Once you’re done with those calls, you take out a sheet of paper and write down the winning Mega Millions jackpot numbers for the next seven lottery drawings. Finally, you guess the result of 100 coin tosses in a row.

Image

The odds of successfully accomplishing all of those tasks on your first try with no mistakes are small, but they’re still better than the odds of every popcorn kernel in a bag popping all at once.

So I wouldn’t worry about it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

You’re Never Too Old To Become a Beginner

Learning a new skill as an adult is challenging—which is why it brings so many cognitive and emotional benefits.

By Tom Vanderbilt

Have we ever needed a fresher start than the one promised by 2021?

As we head into a new year with all its hopes—new year, new you, newly recovered world—there is one thing from the outgoing annus horribilis we should carry forward and even deepen: the spirit of the novice.

The pandemic turned us all into beginners. Suddenly, the usual ways of doing things were no longer an option. Governments and businesses scrambled to develop new protocols, and we all struggled to reinvent the activities of everyday life. From queuing to Zoom to mask etiquette, we were faced with an unsettling societal learning curve.

Just as noteworthy is how many people, in the face of such disruption, decided that they wanted to learn new things. Online learning sites like Skillshare, Duolingo and Coursera saw extraordinary growth. Enrollments in online art and music classes spiked, while novice bakers flooded the help lines of the Vermont-based flour company King Arthur Baking.

Even before “The Queen’s Gambit,” online chess lessons were flourishing. From gardening to camping to bicycling to sewing, people have been taking up new pursuits with abandon. But cultivating new skills and habits is a challenge. Even as we commit to new activities, we struggle to shake off the stasis of familiar routines, especially if we are older.

I had this feeling a few years ago when I suddenly realized, shepherding my young daughter to any number of classes and lessons, from swimming to piano, that I couldn’t remember the last new skill I had learned. I had gently ossified into a finished being, coasting along on midcareer competence.

So I decided to become a beginner in a number of things that I’d long wanted to try to learn, from singing to surfing. Being a beginner is hard—it feels better to be good at something than to be bad. It’s even harder for adults. The phrase “adult beginner” has an air of gentle pity. It implies learning something that you perhaps should have learned already. Though the first steps can be difficult, it’s worth the effort: Becoming a beginner is one of the most life-enhancing things you can do.

A good starting point is to take up juggling. The innocuous little act of throwing balls into the air has been found, in a number of neuroscience studies, to alter the brain. This “activation-dependent structural plasticity,” as it’s called, pops up in as little as seven days. Juggling changes not only gray matter, the brain’s processing centers, but also white matter, the networked connections that bind it all together. “Learning a new skill requires the neural tissue to function in a new way,” says Tobias Schmidt-Wilcke, a neuroscientist (and juggler) at Germany’s University of Bochum.

After that initial burst of activity, the brain settles down. By the time you can do the skill without much thinking— when it becomes automatic—gray

ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN CUNEO; PETE STILL/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES (BOOKS)

This essay is adapted from Mr.

Vanderbilt’s new book, “Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning,” which will be published by Knopf on Jan. 5.

Learning to juggle starts to alter the brain in as little as seven days.

 

[Berzerker]

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/li...-original-twilight-zone-canceled-rod-serling/

Short version: Rod Serling got burned out

 

[GinandTonic]

Will My Popcorn Explode?

I was wondering what had happened to What If?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

You’re Never Too Old To Become a Beginner

Learning a new skill as an adult is challenging—which is why it brings so many cognitive and emotional benefits.

By Tom Vanderbilt

A few months ago I was browsing YouTube in search of information regarding soprano and baroque recorders, and what popped up in my recommendations were several videos on how to play the spoons.

It's a very cheap musical instrument, as all you need are two identical metal kitchen spoons - but once you learn to play them, you can make people feel like dancing.

 

[The_J]

TIL: For me, the antlion was always this insect, which sits at the bottom of a sand pit and eats up prey which falls into it.
Turns out this is only the larva. The adult antlion looks more like a dragonfly.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

TIL: For me, the antlion was always this insect, which sits at the bottom of a sand pit and eats up prey which falls into it.
Turns out this is only the larva. The adult antlion looks more like a dragonfly.

The antlion is what inspired this Pokémon evolution.

 

[r16]

not today but ı have recently noticed that the Miyoshi clan in the Civ lll Sengoku scenario has the name Obama in its city list . No , ı haven't captured it yet .

 

[Takhisis]

And there's a city mayor in Japan whose name's characters can be read as ‘Jō Baiden’, but who's counting?

 

[Kyriakos]

TIL: For me, the antlion was always this insect, which sits at the bottom of a sand pit and eats up prey which falls into it.
Turns out this is only the larva. The adult antlion looks more like a dragonfly.

While I knew it was in the larva stage as the feared antlion pit nightmare, I thought the adult antlion looked like a fruitfly.

Turns out it looks a lot cooler:

The antlion killed enough enemies gruesomely when young, then retired to live in his Thema-granted farm estate in the outer limits of the Byzantine Empire

 

[Hrothbern]

TIL that the market cap of Tesla is as of now the same as the next 10 biggest car manufacturers, whereby the amount of cars produced in 2020 by Tesla was only 1% compared to the other 10.
The other 10 produced in 2020 50 million cars, against Tesla only 499,550. Which was despite Covid BTW 35% more than in 2019 (367,500). The growth in 2019 was 50%.

2020 was a memorable stock market year for Tesla. On the Nasdaq, the company increased its value by 750% in one year, while three share issues raised some $ 10 billion from investors. They take a gamble on future growth. The ten largest car manufacturers in the world together have the same market value as Tesla, while together they build more than 50 million cars annually.
https://fd.nl/beurs/1369237/tesla-heeft-massaproductie-onder-de-knie-maar-concurrenten-komen-eraan

 

[Hrothbern]

TIL about malleable Gallium-composites.
The metal Gallium becomes paste or putty-like with the addition of diamond or graphene oxide, with new properties like high thermal conductivity (like needed in your PC) and electromagnetic shielding.
Pure Gallium has a melting temperature of 30 C (85 F).

Abstract
We report a versatile method to make liquid metal composites by vigorously mixing gallium (Ga) with non-metallic particles of graphene oxide (G-O), graphite, diamond, and silicon carbide that display either paste or putty-like behavior depending on the volume fraction. Unlike Ga, the putty-like mixtures can be kneaded and rolled on any surface without leaving residue. By changing temperature, these materials can be stiffened, softened, and, for the G-O–containing composite, even made porous. The gallium putty (GalP) containing reduced G-O (rG-O) has excellent electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness. GalP with diamond filler has excellent thermal conductivity and heat transfer superior to a commercial liquid metal–based thermal paste. Composites can also be formed from eutectic alloys of Ga including Ga-In (EGaIn), Ga-Sn (EGaSn), and Ga-In-Sn (EGaInSn or Galinstan). The versatility of our approach allows a variety of fillers to be incorporated in liquid metals, potentially allowing filler-specific “fit for purpose” materials.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/1/eabe3767