Sketchplanations makes complex ideas simple with clear, insightful sketches. Explore topics from science, creativity, psychology, and beyond explained in pictures.
I like these common settlement patterns — look out for them. Nucleated settlements, or clustered settlements, gather around one or more central hubs like a church or a square. Linear settlements form alongside roads or landscape features like waterways or shoreline. Dispersed settlements are common in agricultural areas where houses or farmsteads are spread out but form a loose settlement area. Isolated settlements are the loners in the most magical and isolated wilderness by themselves.…I like these common settlement patterns — look out for them. Nucleated settlements, or clustered settlements, gather around one or more central hubs like a church or a square. Linear settlements form alongside roads or landscape features like waterways or shoreline. Dispersed settlements are common in agricultural areas where houses or farmsteads are spread out but form a loose settlement area. Isolated settlements are the loners in the most magical and isolated wilderness by themselves.WWW…
It's all too easy. Someone's talking with you and you make a connection to a story to share or a solution to give. From that point on it's so easy to switch off from what they're sharing with you and just be waiting for your moment to jump in and regale your story, or share your solution. You might have noticed it when it's happened to you — it didn't seem to matter what you said, they didn't really seem to take in what you were saying and why it was important, it just bounced off. It's not very satisfying. The alternative is to really listen, perhaps to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard. It can be a little scary. You might not have an answer, and what you hear might challenge your beliefs or teach you something you didn't really want to learn — it might change you — and it requires effort. But it's surely a better way to relate to each other. I don't get this right all the time, but I did at least become aware of it when learning improvisation with Dan Klein and the second rule of improv: be spontaneous.…It's all too easy. Someone's talking with you and you make a connection to a story to share or a solution to give. From that point on it's so easy to switch off from what they're sharing with you and just be waiting for your moment to jump in and regale your story, or share your solution. You might have noticed it when it's happened to you — it didn't seem to matter what you said, they didn't really seem to take in what you were saying and why it was important, it just bounced off. It's not very satisfying. The alternative is to really listen, perhaps to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard. It can be a little scary. You might not have an answer, and what you hear might challenge your beliefs or teach you something you didn't really want to learn — it might change you — and it requires effort. But it's surely a better way to relate to each other. I don't get this right all the time, but I did at least become aware of it when learning improvisation with Dan Klein and the second rule of improv: be spontaneous.WWW…
Brilliance bias is the tendency for people to think of 'brilliance' as generally a male trait. With fewer women generally recorded in the history books, the brilliant people that come to mind from a young age tend to be men. Underrepresentation has consequences. Careers that are generally understood to require 'brilliance' to succeed, such as maths, physics, or philosophy, are likely to have fewer women working in them. Even at school age, attitudes start to shift in both girls and boys. For example, having an interest in games that require you to be 'really smart' or whether, when asked to draw a scientist, we draw a woman or a man. We need to stop teaching brilliance bias, and we need to celebrate the many female role models we have. My sister shared with me a page on drawing famous faces that showed 49 men to draw, and an example of the board game Guess Who having as many women to guess as it has men with facial hair as an attribute. Caroline Criado Perez's eye-opening book Invisible Women taught me about brilliance bias, including the examples here. Related Ideas to Brilliance Bias One size fits men Build your own panel of advisors…Brilliance bias is the tendency for people to think of 'brilliance' as generally a male trait. With fewer women generally recorded in the history books, the brilliant people that come to mind from a young age tend to be men. Underrepresentation has consequences. Careers that are generally understood to require 'brilliance' to succeed, such as maths, physics, or philosophy, are likely to have fewer women working in them. Even at school age, attitudes start to shift in both girls and boys. For example, having an interest in games that require you to be 'really smart' or whether, when asked to draw a scientist, we draw a woman or a man. We need to stop teaching brilliance bias, and we need to celebrate the many female role models we have. My sister shared with me a page on drawing famous faces that showed 49 men to draw, and an example of the board game Guess Who having as many women to guess as it has men with facial hair as an attribute. Caroline Criado Perez's eye-opening book Invisible Women taught me about brilliance bias, including the examples here. Related Ideas to Brilliance Bias One size fits men Build your own panel of advisorsWWW…
Most of us behave differently in a flashy restaurant than we do in a job interview or at a funeral. We naturally tune our behaviour to our audience and environment. As part of the metaphor of Life As Theatre with Social Life As a Performance, the famous sociologist Erving Goffman called this front stage behaviour — how we behave when people are watching. In contrast, we may only let our guard down and fully relax when we're by ourselves — here we're back stage. In a flashy restaurant, wait staff will behave differently in their interactions with guests than they will out back in their break time, and you may find yourself saying a wine you've just tasted is lovely even when you don't think it is. Once you start thinking about front stage and back stage behaviour you'll spot the "performance" of social life throughout almost every daily interaction. In his classic sociology book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman explains the front stage, the back stage, and more.…Most of us behave differently in a flashy restaurant than we do in a job interview or at a funeral. We naturally tune our behaviour to our audience and environment. As part of the metaphor of Life As Theatre with Social Life As a Performance, the famous sociologist Erving Goffman called this front stage behaviour — how we behave when people are watching. In contrast, we may only let our guard down and fully relax when we're by ourselves — here we're back stage. In a flashy restaurant, wait staff will behave differently in their interactions with guests than they will out back in their break time, and you may find yourself saying a wine you've just tasted is lovely even when you don't think it is. Once you start thinking about front stage and back stage behaviour you'll spot the "performance" of social life throughout almost every daily interaction. In his classic sociology book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman explains the front stage, the back stage, and more.WWW…
Russell's teapot is a memorable example illustrating how, if you are going to make claims that are difficult to verify, the burden of proof lies on the one making a claim — not on any skeptics to disprove it. The example he gave was claiming there's a china teapot in elliptical orbit somewhere between Earth and Mars that's too small to spot with a telescope. He suggests it would be unreasonable to expect anyone to believe such a patently unfalsifiable claim. Bertrand Russell original invoked the teapot in the context of religion and the existence of an unverifiable God, in a similar vein to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Carl Sagan's invisible dragon. It can however be applied much wider than that. I learned about it from a helpful commenter on the BS Asymmetry Principle, also known as Brandolini's Law.…Russell's teapot is a memorable example illustrating how, if you are going to make claims that are difficult to verify, the burden of proof lies on the one making a claim — not on any skeptics to disprove it. The example he gave was claiming there's a china teapot in elliptical orbit somewhere between Earth and Mars that's too small to spot with a telescope. He suggests it would be unreasonable to expect anyone to believe such a patently unfalsifiable claim. Bertrand Russell original invoked the teapot in the context of religion and the existence of an unverifiable God, in a similar vein to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Carl Sagan's invisible dragon. It can however be applied much wider than that. I learned about it from a helpful commenter on the BS Asymmetry Principle, also known as Brandolini's Law.WWW…
Content drift is how a piece of linked content may change over time such that what was once linked may in fact now be very different. An article you link to may be corrected, opinions may be changed, content may be expanded or removed, a paywall may be put in the way, and yet the link keeps steadfastly pointing. Content drift, along with link rot — pages being lost — is one of the ways that the information we have come to rely on on the internet can be gradually undermined. Here's a thread on content drift and link rot from Harvard's Jonathan Zittrain — at least, it was a thread on it when I wrote this. Also see: The Internet is Rotting.…Content drift is how a piece of linked content may change over time such that what was once linked may in fact now be very different. An article you link to may be corrected, opinions may be changed, content may be expanded or removed, a paywall may be put in the way, and yet the link keeps steadfastly pointing. Content drift, along with link rot — pages being lost — is one of the ways that the information we have come to rely on on the internet can be gradually undermined. Here's a thread on content drift and link rot from Harvard's Jonathan Zittrain — at least, it was a thread on it when I wrote this. Also see: The Internet is Rotting.WWW…
