Archive - Lamprey/Hippopotamus

How to easily learn the Persian alphabet

In the past week or so I decided to seriously try learning the Persian alphabet.

Jul 5 •

June 2025

I recently read two pamphlets.

Jun 18 •

May 2025

Review of the Dao De Jing (Legge translation)

Reading the blog of Victor Mair, I noticed Mair’s respect for James Legge’s translations of the Chinese classics into English (especially over Giles’s…

May 23 •

Review of "$2.00 A Day" by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer

I bought this book (for under $2.00 on Kindle in an Amazon sale) due to Bryan Caplan recommending it in his book list on poverty. I do not recommend…

May 8 •

April 2025

Review of "A Long Walk to Water" by Linda Sue Park

I decided to read this book in order to learn a bit about tropical Africa.

Apr 30 •

March 2025

Map of Empire Zones

I created this map because there is far too much talk about the European dark ages without specifying which parts of Europe had dark ages.

Mar 17 •

February 2025

Updated world language map

Here is a map of languages spoken in more than 2 countries of over 100,000 people:

Feb 11 •

January 2025

Why I don't like the Selected Writings of Ho Chi Minh

For some reason or other, a few months ago I decided to read the Selected Writings of Ho Chi Minh. I did not like them. They were too information rare…

Jan 31 •

Review of "The Quantum World" by New Scientist

This has to be one of the worst guides to a subject I’ve read, possibly worse than Oxford’s Very Short Introductions (which are generally uniformly bad…

Jan 25 •

Understanding the Party Shift

First Party System (typical election: 1812):

Jan 12 •

December 2024

Diet soft drinks

People seem to think of diet soft drinks as equal, but I strongly doubt this is the case.

Dec 9, 2024 •

November 2024

Review of "Korea: a very short introduction" by Michael J. Seth

This is probably the best Very Short Introduction book I’ve read in the soft sciences (remember that Oxford University Press never does any editing).

Nov 30, 2024 •

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