The Library of Consciousness is a growing collection of writings, lectures and media about the human experience and all its mysteries. You don’t have to know what you’re looking for, just click around or search for keywords to navigate. It’s a source of inspiration. Right now, there are 200 authors in the library, and the curator says that they are actively seeking female and POC perspectives and welcomes recommendations. — CD

The Curricula is a website to help you learn “anything” by generating a guide and resources. I’ve been curious about the Alexander Technique, a method of improving the mind-body connection, and what I was given was a summarized learning path and links to books, articles, and videos for each of the core concepts. All the content is generated by AI, so it is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate, but it did a decent job of providing a starting point for my research, and I appreciate the creator’s intent. — CD 

Here’s a list of 43 things that don’t work, according to the author of the Dynomight newsletter. I don’t agree with all of them, but I’m on board with item number 12: Explaining board games (you should just start playing and answer questions as they come up), and 17: Arguing with people (“Words do not exist that will make people [change their minds] aside from a few weirdos who’ve intentionally cultivated the habit.”) — MF

Someone on Reddit asked, “What industry ‘secret’ do you know that most people don’t?” and I wish I had time to read through all the thousands of comments. Many of the revealed secrets are what you might expect, like disinformation, uncleanliness, and high markups, but some are truly frightening! Below is a sample of the top-voted secrets: 

• “Are we still connected?” most times will get an immediate response from online chat agents.

• I'm an academic researcher and I can speak for a huge number in my field when I say: If you want access to our studies and they're behind a paywall, you can email us and we will send you the study.

• Trained artist here. Most oil paints are made with very toxic substances, as are most paint thinners and mediums. Every single one of my teachers was either very sick (Cancer, Ménière's disease) or a bit crazy (eating chalk, licking pallettes). All incredible artists I was privileged to learn from. One lesson I learned very well: I wear gloves and sometimes a mask when I paint.

• Worked in online community management and social media for years - Admins CAN read all of your PMs. Private only means private from the masses, not from administration, we had to be able to read them to check reports of abuse, grooming, illegal activity etc. 

• I make wildlife films for big streamers and broadcasters. The sound is all either library or foley.

  The last one has ruined nature documentaries for me. — CD

Morgan Housel compiled a list of ideas “that help explain how the world works.” Here are some examples:

• Compassion Fade — People have more compassion for small groups of victims than larger groups because the smaller the group, the easier it is to identify individual victims.

• Ringelmann Effect — Members of a group become lazier as the size of their group increases. Based on the assumption that “someone else is probably taking care of that.”

• Cobra Effect — Attempting to solve a problem makes that problem worse. Comes from an Indian story about a city infested with snakes offering a bounty for every dead cobra, which caused entrepreneurs to start breeding cobras for slaughter.

—MF

This website uses simple interactive animations to explain how a wind-up watch works. It begins with the power source—a spring—and illustrates how the power is transferred through gears to keep the watch running for up to 40 hours. The site then moves to the escapement mechanism and other key components found in modern mechanical wristwatches. — MF

Every December, Tom Whitwell, a managing consultant at Magnetic, compiles a list of 52 interesting facts and stories from the year. Here are a few examples from his 2023 list:

• The US Defense Department earns $100m/year operating slot machines used by soldiers on their bases.

• Psychedelic cryptography is a way of concealing messages (normally in videos) so that only people who’ve taken LSD can receive the messages.

• Scotland’s forest cover is nearly back to where it was 1,000 years ago, while England has risen to levels last seen in 1350.

— MF

When Spanish conquistadors marched into the island city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1518, they were stunned by what they encountered. The scale, richness, complexity, and advancement of this capital built by the local Aztecs surpassed anything in Spain at the time. I find this 3D virtual reconstructed Portrait of Tenochtitlan on lake Texcoco to reward endless scrutiny. The sliding overlay of modern Mexico City is genius. I am as much stunned by its grandeur as the first invaders. – KK

Genius Wisdom is a daily newsletter I don’t mind invading my inbox. Each issue highlights a “legendary thinker” with practical tips and tasks for applying their genius vision to your own life. It’s a good daily motivator. — CD

The legendary publications of the Whole Earth Catalogs — all 20,000 pages — are now available online for free at the Whole Earth Index. These hi-res scans are almost better than the original newsprinted ones. They are a breeze to browse and navigate, and on a large monitor, very easy to read. First published in the 1970s and 1980s, these pages were the internet before the internet. The how-to books were pre-YouTube, and the articles pre-web blogs. Most of the content is still refreshingly informative today. — KK

One of the advantages of having a poor memory is that I can read my favorite books every couple of years and they feel mostly new. But I’d rather remember them, and this video by Ali Abdaal has seven good tips for helping you remember what you learn. Two of the best tips:

• Teach Others — Explain what you've learned to others to reinforce what you learned.

• Active Recall — Test yourself and actively try to recall information rather than passively reviewing by rereading.

— MF

The online Merriam-Webster.com dictionary regularly adds new words based on usage and last month 690 words were added. Here is just a sample list of them, including new slang and words made popular by online culture, like edgelord noun, slang : someone who makes wildly dark and exaggerated statements (as on an internet forum) with the intent of shocking others. Also the word “hallucination” has an new definition meaning “a plausible but false or misleading response generated by an artificial intelligence algorithm.” Worth checking out to stay in the know. — CD

Author and bookstore owner Ryan Holiday is a voracious reader. He’s compiled a list of 38 rules to make book-reading more rewarding. Excerpts:

• In every book you read, try to find your next one in its footnotes or bibliography. This is how you build a knowledge base in a subject — it’s how you trace a subject back to its core.

• Don’t just read books, re-read books. There’s a great line the Stoics loved — that we never step in the same river twice. The books don’t change, but you do.

• Ruin the ending. I almost always go straight to Wikipedia and figure out the plot — especially if I am reading something tough like Shakespeare or Aeschylus. Who cares about spoilers? Your aim as a reader is to understand WHY something happened, the what is secondary.

— MF

The concept of a “bioregion” is a powerful tool. A bioregion will share animal and plant types and a similar climate. It is the most natural way to divide up the planet since it follows nature. For instance parts of California, Italy, Chile, Australia and South African share a similar bioregion. Maps of bioregions can aid gardening, home design, urban planning, climate adjustment, and understanding of culture. The best bioregion maps are no longer printed on paper but can be downloaded online from One Earth at Bioregions 2020. — KK

When I want to understand dense subjects, I just visit Simple Wikipedia. All the entries are written in shorter sentences with easier words. The site is designed for children, adults with learning difficulties or for those trying to learn English, but for me it’s a great way to grasp complex topics, like how nuclear weapons are built and work. It doesn’t work with all pages, but sometimes replacing the “en” with “simple” in the URL will redirect to you the Simple English Wikipedia. — CD 

The Public Domain Review is a free website that features fascinating material discovered in the public domain. A lot of it is curious illustrations, vintage images, oddball visuals, but also forgotten literature, weird poems, and excellent essays. It’s a fountainhead of exoticness and hard-to-find otherness. And of course, it is free to reuse.— KK

I'm fascinated by optical illusions and how they challenge my perceptions. I'm currently working my way through this collection of 151 Visual Phenomena & Optical Illusions with explanations on how they work. My mind always feels bendy and agile after just a few minutes spent on the website. — CD

I've been trying to create a new habit of asking myself "what is my intention?" before I speak. Sometimes I communicate to empathize, or to think out loud, but a lot of the time my intention is to connect and to be understood. This article on Alan Alda's 3 rules for expressing your thoughts is useful for all types of communication. They are: 1. Make no more than three points 2. Explain difficult ideas in three different ways and 3. Make important points three times. This is helpful for me because I speak in emotions and imagery, and if I want to be understood by someone who is more logical-minded I have to remind myself to use analogies rather than metaphors. — CD

Youtube history is my latest obsession. There’s now a ton of very good history YT channels that tackle history in oblique and idiosyncratic ways. One of my favorite streams is ToldInStone. They tackle the kind of questions I’ve always had, but couldn’t find in books or other programs. Like: how fast was Rome mail? How did the ancients prove their identity? What were their kitchens and bathrooms like? Much further in the past, North02 tackles prehistory. What were humans like 1 million years ago, what kind of life in the Sahara when it was tropically green? And so many more! — KK

Technology Connections is a fantastic YouTube channel for learning about the inner workings of everyday items. With a bit of lighthearted humor thrown in, the videos break down complex concepts into easy-to-understand explanations, and give me a greater appreciation for the technology I use all the time, like smoke alarms, water heaters, and microwave ovens. — MF