Author: signoregalilei
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You’ll never guess who made the first wireless telephone
Alexander Graham Bell is widely credited with inventing the telephone, in 1876. It’s not entirely undisputed: Elisha Gray, Antonio Meucci, and Johann Philipp Reis each also have a decent claim as well, but Bell’s name is the one we most associate with the invention that lets us send a voice through a wire. So what…
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What Columbus used instead of the North Star
Christopher Columbus didn’t navigate by the North Star. At least, not directly. Columbus is a controversial figure from a modern perspective, and he undeniably made many mistakes. But this wasn’t one of them. Mariners sailing for Spain and Portugal in the 1490s just didn’t use the North Star as true north. Because back then, it…
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The round-the-world escape from Pearl Harbor
December 7th, 1941: a date that will live in infamy, though not exclusively for the reason you think. Imperial Japan didn’t just attack Pearl Harbor on the first day of the Pacific War. It was part of a coordinated assault across the Pacific. The Japanese bombed American territories in the Philippines, Midway, Wake Island, and…
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Mbabaram for dog is “dog”
On the entire opposite side of the planet from England, in the jungles of Northeastern Australia, the Mbabaram people independently invented the word “dog” for our canine companions by sheer linguistic coincidence.
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How sticky corn confounded western science
You might know about sticky rice. It’s pretty popular in Asian cuisines, often used in desserts and specialty dishes. It’s sometimes called “glutinous rice”, but it doesn’t actually contain gluten. Instead, it’s sticky because of the chemistry of its starch. Sticky rice starch is almost 100% made of the gluey carbohydrate amylopectin, while the regular…
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Going Back: Inkhaven
Inkhaven 2 is awesome, but notably different than Inkhaven 1. Everyone’s louder and a bit less rationalist and posting closer to the deadline. Also there are too many meta posts. (And now there’s one more. Whoops.) Mingyuan (from cohort 1, like me) has a good post about the differences between the Inkhavens and their causes.…
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Going Back: Rituals
I get 3 new years every year. It’s one of my go-to perks of having a mixed background. Each of them feels very different to me. Chinese New Year is the big production: it’s cooking and cleaning and feasting with friends and family. Rosh Hashanah is the most sacred: I’ve been to services a handful…
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“You don’t have to go back there”
Content warning: medical-related trauma I need to write this post, because I caught myself trying to avoid it. Inkhaven cohort 2 seems to be heavily invested in posting about their trauma. This is something I admire; it shows vulnerability and trust, and it’s probably cathartic or at least can help share a lesson. I wanted…
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Going Back: Judging Irrational Numbers
I’ve written three posts in the past judging geometric shapes. For this post, I’m going back to that series, this time for irrational numbers. As per the conditions of the series, we are judging them as fine, lame, awesome, overrated (not as awesome as they seem), and underrated (more awesome than they seem). Fine: π…