Archive - Lamprey/Hippopotamus

Utah v. New Jersey

There is a constant dichotomy between Utah and New Jersey (similar to the more famous one between Vermont and Mississippi).

Jul 14 •

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 •

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