Always Interesting: “52 Things I Learned in 2022”
Something I look forward to at the end of each year is Tom Whitwell’s list of 52 things I learned in 20221 because I know I’m about to read about a bunch of interesting things. As always, here are a few of my favorite items from the list:
6. Heavenbanning is a hypothetical way to moderate social networks. Instead of being thrown off the platform, bad actors have all their followers replaced with sycophantic AI models that constantly agree and praise them. Real humans never interact with them. [Asara Near]
13. Older travellers use airport toilets to hear flight announcements, because acoustics are much clearer. [Christopher DeWolf via Ben Terrett]
22. Applicants are 1.5% more likely to be granted asylum by a US judge the day after their city’s NFL team won. [Daniel L. Chen]
32. Before the industrial revolution, silver didn’t need to be polished, because there was less sulfur in the atmosphere (unless you lived near a volcano). [Michael Briggs]
52. During a French Navy exercise, a frigate was (virtually) destroyed despite radio silence. The (virtual) enemy was able to roughly locate the ship via an (real) active Snapchat account from one of the sailors. [Arthur Laudrain]
I did my own list of these last year and have been keeping sporadic track of interesting morsels I’ve come across this year, so hopefully I can pull a post together in the next few weeks. (thx, john)
Ok, I do not specifically look forward to 2022’s specific list each year, but you know, unless you want to take the awkwardly long way ‘round, sometimes English makes you take the L. AKA, you know what I mean.↩
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