Things I’ve learned in 2023

Isla Martillo, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina: a king penguin being annoying to two gentoo penguins, who bicker back

Look at that, another year has passed without me writing a single blog post about any of the things I’ve learned throughout the year—or about anything else. Not that I’m surprised about my lack of writing. There are reasons, and I’ve almost made my peace with it. There will be no New Year’s resolutions to write more.

But hey, it looks like in 2023 I learned more things than in 2022:

  1. Compasses are region-specific.
  2. By the time I started writing this I’d forgotten about the Lindy effect, which maybe is ironic. Or maybe just Alanis-ironic.
  3. Harvesting heart of palm may result in the death of the tree.
  4. Cistercian numerals are something I would have been into as a kid, if I’d known about them.
  5. There’s a Berlin U-Bahn station tiled with uranium 😱
  6. In 1942 musicians’ unions imposed a recording ban, which coincided with a musical revolution.
  7. There are various theories about mass extinctions corresponding to movements of the solar system within the Milky Way. I have no patience or ability to understand which is more plausible, if any, but it’s fascinating.
  8. Mercury has a sodium tail.
  9. Franco Battiato’s “Summer on a solitary beach” was the B-side for “Centro di gravità permanente”.
  10. “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” was written in 1931 and then rewritten in 1936. The Hot Sardines seem to be using a line from the older version.
  11. I thought the Italian erica translated the English heather, but it’s not quite that simple.
  12. The Panama Canal has fresh water.
  13. Cymbal maker Zildjan has been based in Massachusetts for almost a century.
  14. There’s a variety of ferromagnetic metals I wasn’t aware of.
  15. The word amour in French is often feminine in the plural, despite being masculine in the singular.
  16. In the ’80s an iceberg broke off in Antarctica and took a Soviet research station with it.
  17. Thebes had a gay army. Also, Xenophon was kind of a dick not the most reliable historian.

The photo at the top (a king penguin being annoying to two gentoo penguins) has nothing to do with anything on this list, except for the fact that I took it in Tierra del Fuego—as close to Antarctica as I’ve ever been.