For my non-Dutch-speaking friends and colleagues who are wondering what is going at Dutch universities: Last weekend the rector of the University of Leiden called upon all its alumni and retired lecturers to help (for free) with grading papers and supervising theses, because...

Pollution doesn't just hurt health: even short exposure to air pollution impacts your productivity & judgement. This paper looks pollution & bad calls by umpires finding big effects: a high pollution day in Phoenix or LA lowers productivity by 3%-12% over a low pollution day!

Sporo się dzieje, więc mogło umknąć... To Ravn X, największego na świeci, ważący 25 ton dron. Jest zaprojektowany do umieszczania... satelitów na orbicie. Na odpowiedniej wysokości odpala rakietę, która leci w kosmos.

The returns to additional education for entrepreneurs is actually higher than for non-entrepreneurs. This study finds that each year of school is associated with a 9.1% income increase for founders but only a 6.4% increase for employees. The gap is the same in the US & Australia.

Uniwersytet Gdański, Gdański Uniwersytet Medyczny oraz Politechnika Gdańska utworzyły Związek Uczelni w Gdańsku im. Daniela Fahrenheita: uczelnie.info.pl/PL-H31/48/2294… -- Uniwersytet Gdański Politechnika Gdańska #GdanskiUniwersytetMedyczny

Scale model showing how mangrove forests protect the coast from wave erosion.

We tend to overestimate how easy it is for technological solutions to replace animal ones: the first canaries in coal mines were actually used after 1913, around 7 million horses were used in WW2, and dog noses are still better than many sensors. This👇 is a great example.

"An average, “respectable” eighteenth-century English labourer household would spend about 75-85% of their income on food and drink alone, with much of it going just to bread." - Age of Invention: The Paradox of Progress, Dr Anton Howes #HumanProgress antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-inven…

My top 10 tweets of the year. A thread 👇

I'm excited to share my course website and interactive textbook, which introduces Python programming for analyzing cultural materials like books, movies, songs, & social media. 📘Textbook/website: bit.ly/IntroCA 🧐Blog post: bit.ly/IntroCA-blog 👇 More details

Congrats OpenAI on really cool image generation result from a text+image prompt! Here's my favorite set of generated examples:

It takes some guts to walk across Ruyi Bridge, located in #China's Taizhou City😱🇨🇳 #Architecture GiGadgets Alvin Foo Christine Boursin 🌐 Dr. Marcell Vollmer #StaySafe #CES2026 Neville Gaunt 💡💡💡 Joanne Moretti. @fogle_shane Baskaran Ambalavanan Jeroen Bartelse Mario Margaret🌴Siegien 🐦📷 Eric Gaubert 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗗𝗮𝗵𝗹 🔸 Learn as if you will live forever

For 10+ years we’ve been exploring the hidden side of everything, from the economics of sleep to the costs of noise, and everything in between. And starting Sunday, Jan. 17th, every one of our nearly-450 episodes will be available on all podcast apps. Happy New Year!

#K2winter2021 10 Nepali Sherpas reached top of #K2. "WE DID IT BELIEVE ME WE DID IT-JOURNEY TO THE SUMMIT NEVER DONE BEFORE" Word from Chhang Dawa Sherpa a team member of the Expedition The Karakoram Savage Mountain has been Summited

Researchers tested a tool, AdNauseam, to confuse Google’s ad network. It works and you should use it. bit.ly/2XIjCgz

Brother to brother, shoulder to shoulder, we walked together to the summit whilst singing the Nepali national anthem. We all stopped around 10m before reaching the summit to huddle and make our final steps together as a team to mark this historical feat .. 1/4 #K2winter

#HoryzontEuropa to nowy program UE w zakresie badań naukowych i innowacji na lata 2021-2027. Zachęcamy do udziału w „Tygodniu z Horyzontem Europa” – cyklu webinariów dla uczestników z całej Polski. 📅 Termin: 8-12 lutego 2021 r. Formularz do rejestracji tiny.pl/r1phg

It’s worth spending a few minutes with these two charts showing all the money in the world. One is an older XKCD Comic chart that does a better job with the economy at different scales. The other is a current chart from Visual Capitalist, good for getting the size of markets. Zoom in!

After decades of failures and misunderstandings, scientists have solved a cosmic riddle — what happens to the tons of dust particles that hit the Earth every day: they silently deposit on our roofs, sidewalks and park benches & this is what they look like buff.ly/2mKNEPf

Here is a list of 16 facts about innovation checked by a detailed study of all US patents and inventors during America’s Golden Age of innovation (1880-1940). Among the strongest is the link between the number of innovations in a region & long-term success nber.org/system/files/w…