Helllooooo, Trav here. I’m 27 and live in the San Francisco Bay Area (though my home is Vermont, shout out to my homies). One of my favorite things to do is getting lost in the depths of Wikipedia. What follows is a small subset of my list of favorite articles in the following format:
“interesting quote”
--------article [my comments]
--------List of cognitive biases [makes me wish I had studied psychology]
--------List of common misconceptions
“Fagan entered the palace through an unlocked window on the roof and spent the next half hour eating cheddar cheese and crackers and wandering around. He tripped several alarms, but they were faulty. He viewed the royal portraits and rested on the throne for a while. He then entered the postroom, where Diana, Princess of Wales had hidden presents for her first son, William. Fagan drank half a bottle of white wine before becoming tired and leaving.”
--------Michael Fagan Incident
“more people commute by bicycle in greater Copenhagen than cycle to work in the entire United States.”
--------Copenhagen [I’d like to visit/live there]
--------List of unexplained sounds
“Saying “Hey baby, you’re looking good” varies greatly from the use “Baby, don’t swim at the deep end of the pool!””
--------Term of endearment
--------List of air filtering plants [your air is dirty but plants can help]
“communities who live … without significant contact with globalized civilization.”
--------Uncontacted Peoples
--------Yolo County, California [It’s not just a state of mind, it’s the state of California]
--------Apollo 17 [Things I didn’t know about the last time people went to the moon:
•2 guys hung out there for 3 whole days
•They collected rocks, left bombs around and repaired their car with duct tape]
“There is a widespread consensus that substantial long-term sea-level rise will continue for centuries to come.”
--------Current sea level rise
“a medical disorder characterized by uncontrollable bursts of sneezing brought on by fullness of the stomach”
--------Snatiation [it’s fun to say hehe]
--------Timeline of Solar System exploration [a lot of cool stuff has happened in space y’all]
“A toast sandwich is a sandwich made by putting a thin slice of toast between two thin slices of bread”
--------Toast Sandwich
“Jeanne Calment … had the longest confirmed human lifespan in history, living to the age of 122 years
…
At age 85 (1960), she took up fencing, and continued to ride her bicycle up until her 100th birthday
…
Calment smoked from the age of 21 (1896) to 117 (1992)
…
Calment ascribed her longevity and relatively youthful appearance for her age to olive oil, which she said she poured on all her food and rubbed onto her skin, as well as a diet of port wine, and ate nearly one kilogram (2.2 lb) of chocolate every week.”
--------Jeanne Calment
--------Évariste Galois[even better than the Wikipedia article is Danny O’Brien’s blog post, “touch of the galois”]
And also, here’s a bonus riddle, if you can tell me what is meant by the following statement, I’ll give you a prize (maybe),
“he’s a gray baloney at my almond butter”
…and if this wasn’t life motivating enough, lookup Steve Roggenbuck’s “stop pretending it’s boring to be alive”
have a nice day,
-Trav
Trav Fryer
[email protected]
Mountain View, CA