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Pareidolia is what happens when you see a meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern like this little guy:

But it’s not just visual! It can relate to auditory and other sensory inputs too, like when people hear hidden messages in songs when played backwards.

Its cousin apophenia is when you find connections or patterns in random or meaningless data. It’s usually associated with mental disorders such as schizophrenia, but is also typical of conspiracy theorists!

Famous artists have used apophenia and pareidolia in their worka, most notably Giuseppe Arcimboldo — an Italian painter best known for creating portraits made entirely of everyday objects like fruits, veggies, flowers, and books:

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A comet is an icy rock shooting through space.

When it passes close to the Sun, it warms and begins to release trapped gasses — a process called outgassing.

Outgassing produces the bright circle we see in pictures, called the coma.

Radiation pressure and solar wind from the Sun blow on the coma, creating a long and bright tail.

This means comets have two tails: one pointing away from the direction they’re traveling in, and one pointing away from the Sun!

Amethyst is a violet variety of quartz.

The word is Greek for “non-intoxicating”, a reference to the belief they protect their owners from drunkenness.

The ancient Greeks want so far as to carve amethyst drinking cups from it in the belief that it would prevent them from getting tipsy.

Up until the 18th century, amethyst was included in the list of cardinal (aka most valuable) gemstones:

1. Diamond

2. Sapphire

3. Ruby

4. Emerald

5. Amethyst

   Why?

But since the discovery of extensive deposits throughout the world, it’s lost its rarity and with it most of its value.

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A kōan is a story, dialogue, question, or statement used in the practice of Zen.

It’s a challenge — intended to provoke a "great doubt" and test a student's progress.

Zen is a school of Mahayana Buddhism originating in China.

It emphasizes rigorous self-restraint, meditation-practice, insight into the nature of mind and nature of things, and the personal expression of this insight in daily life, especially for the benefit of others.

In Zen practice, an ensō (円相, "circular form") is a hand-drawn circle made in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes

It expresses a moment when the mind is free to let the body create.

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Pfeilstorch (pronounced “fi-el-storsh”) is the name given to storks who’d get injured by an arrow while migrating south to Africa for the winter.

Their name is German for “arrow stork” — they’d literally return to Europe in the summer with an arrow stuck in their bodies.

Not only was this stork gangster, but it was crucial to our understanding of the migration patterns of birds.

Before then, people guessed birds either hibernated or flew to the moon — both solid guesses imo! 😅

Extra Reading: https://www.countrylife.co.uk/nature/curious-questions-stork-spear-neck-solve-mystery-migration-birds-210144

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The Silk Road describes a network of trade routes connecting China and Europe.

Silk was created in China, and its trade was one of the first things the route was used for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road

🤝 Eventually it became central to the spread of money, culture, politics, and religion throughout the world between the 2nd and 18th centuries.

Unfortunately, it trafficked more than just goods.

Some studies found Black Death to have originated in Central Asia and carried westwards by Silk Road traders.

It was the deadliest pandemic recorded in human history, killing 75–200 million people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

Merchants along these routes participated in "relay trade", where goods would be passed from merchant to merchant until reaching their final destinations.

While it didn’t offer overnight delivery or Prime, the Silk Road was basically Amazon before Amazon!

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Wedding cakes first appeared in Ancient Rome.

What we’d now call a “regular loaf of bread” would be ceremoniously broken over the bride's head for good luck.

In the 16th century it was called the “bride's pie” — a crust-filled plate with assorted oysters, lamb testicles, pine kernels, and cocks' combs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_cake

🤵🏽‍♂️ Later on it became tradition to make two cakes: one each for the bride and groom.

Groom's cakes have mostly gone the way of the dodo bird, but the practice is still observed in parts of the modern American South.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groom%27s_cake

💍 Another extinct tradition was to hide a ring inside the bride’s pie, with the maiden who found it being dubbed the “next to marry”.

The modern version of catching the flower bouquet!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_bouquet

🍏 It’s said the bouquet tradition may be related to the Golden Apple of Discord — a story from Greek mythology.

The goddess Eris is tossed into a wedding feast as a prize of beauty, sparking a tussle between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite — which eventually led to the Trojan War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_of_Discord

…and that’s today’s random walk!

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Random Walk:
Wedding Cake → Groom’s Cake → Flower Bouquet → Apple of Discord

The word means “passing afternoon” in Coptic — but there’s just one small problem:

No one actually knows how it’s played.

The board is three rows of ten squares, with each player controlling 5+ pawns.

💬 Someone asked whether a game with unknown rules can be said to exist at all.

Alex de Voogt of the American Museum of Natural History nails it:

There’s no such thing as a game with fixed rules - they’re constantly being updated and molded by who’s playing and when.

How often do you follow (or even know!) the "official rules" of the games you play?

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Random Walk:
Senet → Coptic Language → Alex de Voogt → American Museum of Natural History

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Twike is a portmanteau of the words twin and bike.

It carries two people + cargo and can be driven in electric-only or electric + pedal power modes.

Tesla who?

👩‍🏫 Portmanteaus are created when you take parts of multiple words and combine them into a new word.

Not to be confused with compounds — which is the smushing of two whole words together, so:

“Starfish” is a compound of star and fish, while “smog” is a portmanteau of smoke and fog.

Awesomesauce!

🔍 The word portmanteau was coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass.

Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the coinage of unusual words: Slithy means "slimy and lithe" and mimsy means "miserable and flimsy" :)

Mirrors are one of the motifs in Through the Looking-Glass.

🪞 Mirror writing is text meant to be read through a mirror.

Ambulances and fire engines use it so you can clearly see what the heck all that noise is behind you while driving.

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Path:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_the_Looking-Glass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_image

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Randomness is much harder to achieve than you’d think.

So hard that computers need to store a watered-down version of randomness called “entropy” in their brains in order to simulate it.

More entropy = more randomness.

🎮 Video games use randomness, most notably via procedural generation.

This is the random generation of maps, levels, characters, etc. — and is a subset of what’s known as “synthetic media”.

🤖 If you’ve seen a deepfake, you’ve seen synthetic media.

It's existed since ancient Greek civilization, where people like Hero of Alexandria designed machines capable of writing text, generating sounds, and playing music.

😇 Hero was indeed a hero as well as a scholar — inventing many things, not the least of which being the first vending machine.

How’d it work?

1. Insert a coin.

2. A set amount of holy water is dispensed.

🔥🔥🔥

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Path:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_media
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria

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Harlequins were mischievous "devil" characters from 11th century French plays.

In the 16th century they were re-interpreted as scheming, manipulative, Loki-like tricksters.

🤡 Harley Quinn’s name is a play on the word harlequin.

She’s a DC villain best known as Joker’s frequent accomplice and lover.

Quinn was an intern psychiatrist at Gotham City's Arkham Asylum, and the Joker was one of her patients — a perfect match!

🟩 Harlequin is a color between green and yellow (closer to green) on the color wheel.

Silver Patron tequila is sold in a harlequin box. Tequila makes you act mischievous. You get it.

🥃 Tequila comes from the city of Tequila, Mexico.

It’s made from the heart of blue agave succulents, but they’re not your average houseplant.

These baddies can grow over 7ft high!

🇲🇽 At one point, Mexico tried to declare the word “tequila” its intellectual property — weird flex, but OK!

The Tequila Regulatory Council approved an "official tequila glass" made by the world’s oldest family-owned glass brand, Riedel.

💅 Tequila snob? Put your bougieness on full display for just $25.

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Path:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harley_Quinn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_green#Harlequin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_agave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riedel_(glass_manufacturer)

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The Hunter-Killer program was the first use of drones (sorry, “unmanned combat air vehicles”) for killing, in addition to intelligence gathering.

Their first drone is appropriately and unimaginatively called…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAF_Hunter-Killer

☠️ The Reaper

Drones are the future of air combat, with more pilots being trained to operate them than any other weapons system.

Reapers hunt using sensors and thermographic cameras that can read license plates from two miles away!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper

📷 Thermographic cameras create images by comparing the heat coming from an object’s surface against its surroundings.

Created for military use, we now use them for chill activities like building scans, medical diagnostics, and collision avoidance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermographic_camera

⛑ Medical thermology uses infrared images of human skin to help diagnose and treat medical conditions.

There’s controversy around infrared devices re-marketed for COVID screening, because not every carrier has a fever.

More: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/general-hospital-devices-and-supplies/thermal-imaging-systems-infrared-thermographic-systems-thermal-imaging-cameras

🧖🏽‍♀️ Infrared saunas differ from traditional saunas in that they heat you directly, rather than by heating the air around you.

In other words, microwaved versus steamed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_sauna

🌈 The first one was called an “incandescent electric light bath” by its inventor John Harvey Kellogg, of Corn Flakes fame.

I feel like the “light bath” branding would land very well with Gen Z — someone bring it back, there’s a million dollar idea in there somewhere!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg

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Extra Credit

John Harvey Kellogg Believed Light Could Cure Diabetes
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/12/john-harvey-kellogg-believed-light-could-cure-diabetes/382916/

That was today's Random Walk.

Remember to dream your dreams, THEN LIVE THEM because a life without dreams is black and white, but the universe flows in TECHNICOLOR and SURROUND SOUND!

✌🏼🤓

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There's no other way to put it — this was a massively fucked-up 40-year experiment.

600 African-American men were told they'd be getting free health care, but were instead observed to document the effects of untreated syphilis…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study

It was kept secret until 1972, when its revelation lead to federal laws requiring review boards protecting human subjects in studies.

Genius researchers rationalized they weren’t harming anyone, under the presumption the men were unlikely to ever get treated anyway 🙄

🦠 Around 30 different bacteria, viruses, and parasites can be transmitted by doing the nasty.

The invention of antibiotics not only brought about a more lax public perception in the 60s and 70s, but also gave us the entire Austin Powers franchise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexually_transmitted_infection

🌐 Contact tracing is the tracking of everyone who’s contacted an infected person, and collecting information on them.

It’s been our best weapon for disease control or decades — i.e. the eradication of smallpox wasn't made possible by vaccines, but by exhaustive tracing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_tracing

🕵🏽‍♀️ Trace evidence is a term from forensic science describing the stuff left behind when two objects make contact.

Material is transferred by heat or induced via friction — and analyzing these materials is done via macro-photography (extreme close-ups).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trace_evidence

🥷🏼 In forensic science, Locard's principle says:

Criminals always bring something to the crime scene and leave with something from it.

It’s the reason behind why every crime scene should be investigated!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locard%27s_exchange_principle

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That was today's Random Walk.

Remember to dream your dreams, THEN LIVE THEM because a life without dreams is black and white, but the universe flows in TECHNICOLOR and SURROUND SOUND!

✌🏼🤓

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We’ve all heard of them, but what are they??

A chain of events where each cycle reinforces the previous one ♻️

Two famous examples are sleep and hyperinflation …

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuous_circle_and_vicious_circle

📈 Hyperinflation is high and quickly accelerating inflation, usually caused by governments trying to get out of debt by printing money.

Printing money causes prices to go up, which leads to more money needing to be printed, which leads to prices going up…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

🎨 Vicious Circle is a 1895 oil painting by symbolist painter Jacek Malczewski.

Some say it represents the tortured creative genius searching for inspiration, I feel it’s more about the emotional roller-coaster ride that comes with creating.

What do you see? 🧐

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicious_Circle_(painting)

👩🏾‍🎨 Symbolism was a 19th century art movement about representing reality as an ideal, rather than as it truly is.

To not depict things 1:1, but to capture the emotion they convey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolism_(arts)

📖 The term "symbolist" was invented to squash a beef between the Symbolists and Decadents — they hated being confused for each other!

Symbolism attempts to elevate the viewer beyond the gritty reality of nature, while decadence tries to distort nature in the name of pleasure and fantasy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadent_movement

🍷 Speaking of seeing nature as it is…

Absinthe is commonly thought to be hallucinogenic, but no peer-reviewed study has shown it to be.

Its reputation comes from poisonous mixers like wormwood oil being added to cheaper versions of the drink in the 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe

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That was today's Random Walk.

Remember to dream your dreams, THEN LIVE THEM because a life without dreams is black and white, but the universe flows in TECHNICOLOR and SURROUND SOUND!

✌🏼🤓

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Did you know there are 10 types of waterfalls? 💧

They’re grouped based on average volume of falling water, calculated using the water’s average flow and height.

Niagara Falls is a Class 10...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall

The “Father of Modern Geography” Alexander von Humboldt pioneered the marking of waterfalls on maps for river navigation.

He was the first to notice and describe human-induced climate change, based on his travels through Venezuela in 1799.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt

Humboldt is the OG tree-hugger 🌲

He observed that by cutting down trees we create an imbalance in nature’s "threefold" approach to moderating temperature:

cooling shade, evaporation, and radiation

In “The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World” Andrea Wulf (@andrea_wulf) discusses his letters to a young Charles Darwin, who attributs to Humboldt the inspiration for an interest in natural science 🤯

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Nature

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That was today's Random Walk.

Remember to dream your dreams, AND THEN LIVE THEM - because a life without dreams is black and white, but the universe flows in TECHNICOLOR and SURROUND SOUND! ✌🏼

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"Airchecks" are highlight / sizzle reels for radio personalities.

Some airchecks of older radio programs are highly prized by collectors due to their nostalgia value.

The oldest known surviving aircheck is a 1931 broadcast by Bing Crosby -- who was like The Rock + Beyonce of his era.

He led record sales, radio ratings, and movie grosses from 1930 to 1954 and has a whole THREE stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame ⭐️

His life was literally a movie:

• Co-owned beaucoup businesses including the Pittsburgh Pirates

• Dated Playboy bunnies after his wife died

• Casually made a fortune from the Minute Maid Corporation -- in which he was a principal stockholder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minute_Maid

In 1945 Minute Maid won a government contract worth $750,000 for 500,000 lbs of powdered orange juice for the war.

The war ended before the factory could be built so they used the investment to make, that's right:

concentrated orange juice 🤮

Sales floundered for years until Crosby was brought on to do a daily radio show to promote the company.

Now it's owned by Cola Cola and worth $2+ billion 💰

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“Random walk” is a math term used to describe a series of randomized decisions across some mathematical space.

Think of it like taking your dog out for a stroll, and rolling a die to at each intersection to determine your path 🤔 💭

🤯 “Stochastic”(from Greek στόχος (stókhos) 'aim, guess') and “random” have different meanings — one is for things which can be described as having a random probability distribution, the other is for the phenomenon of randomness itself.

🌐 I first encountered the phrase “random walk” while learning about Google’s Page Rank algorithm, which tries to measure the importance of websites by following the links between them.

👨🏻‍💻 Robin Li made a search engine with site-scoring and page-ranking called RankDex back in 1996.

He called this process "link analysis", but it similarly ranked the popularity of web sites based on how many other sites had linked to it.

📄 Google co-founder Larry Page actually referenced Li's work as a citation in some of his U.S. patents for PageRank.

Li later used his work to co-found Baidu in China in 2000.

💻 The name PageRank plays on the name of Google founder Larry Page, as well as of the concept of a web page.

Gotta love a good double entendre! 😍

🤑 PageRank is a Google trademark, but the patent is actually assigned to Stanford University.

Stanford got 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for its use, selling them in 2005 for $336 million.

That was today's Random Walk!

✌🏼🤓

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Path:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Li
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page
https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285999