52 Things I Learned In 2025

Idea shamelessly stolen from Tom Whitwell.

1. You don’t have to know the language to compete in—and win—a Scrabble Championship. [Washington Post]
2. We are young many times and old many times over. Such are the phases of life. I don’t remember the source of it, but Gemini 3.0 suggests that Olga Tokarczuk wrote that.
3. GLP-1 receptor agonists have been shown to reduce alcohol consumption, decrease the motivation to consume alcohol, prevent relapse drinking, and reduce alcohol cravings in individuals with alcohol use disorder. [Endocrinology]
4. “People want a fair deal from someone they like.” When questioned about his actions to get people to like him, he simply says, “I tell them that I like them.” [Snippet.Finance]
5. Study evaluating large language models (LLMs) on Theory of Mind tasks—the ability to track unobservable mental states—found that older models failed, but newer models like ChatGPT-4 (June 2023) solved 75% of bespoke false-belief tasks, matching the performance of a typical six-year-old child. [PNAS]
6. In Canada, teenagers in French-speaking districts like Quebec tend to report higher levels of happiness compared to their peers in predominantly English-speaking districts. Research shows that life satisfaction for people under 30 in Quebec fell half as much as it did for young people in the rest of Canada, with those speaking French at home seeing a smaller decline in happiness than those speaking English at home. [The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages]
7. Forrest Mars built the Mars empire through fierce expansion, key product creation like Snickers and M&M’s, leveraging aggressive, colorful marketing rooted in personal drive and strategic rivalry ending in fist fights. You should listen to the Acquired podcast about him.
8. Feeling feminine threatens men, causing them to “overdo gender“ by favoring war, SUVs, and homophobia. [American Journal of Sociology]
9. Off with her hair: Intrasexually competitive women advise other women to cut off more hair [Personality and Individual Differences]
10. Poles aren’t big on investing — we tend to play it safe with money. I’m no exception, so I can definitely confirm that from experience. [Subiektywnie o finansach]
11. China pulled off some unbelievable architectural feats last year. [Dezeen]
12. Exploding Head Syndrome is a sleep disorder in which people experience sudden, loud, and realistic sound hallucinations—like explosions, lightning strikes, or slamming doors—while falling asleep or waking up, often accompanied by fear, confusion, or brief flashes of light. [Wikipedia]
13. In parts of the Balkans, especially Albania, some women take a lifelong vow of chastity and live as men—known as burrnesha or virgjinesha—gaining male social roles but giving up marriage and sexual activity. I first came across this in Rodziewicz-ówna’s biography written by Emilia Padoł.
14. BTW, in 1972 Rodziewiczówna was the 9th most popular author (right behind Sienkiewicz, Kraszewski, Żeromski, Prus, Mickiewicz, Orzeszkowa, Konopnicka and Hemingway), and by 1992 she had climbed to second place, surpassed only by Sienkiewicz.
15. Kurken Janikien, haunted by relentless nightmares tied to the Armenian genocide, murdered two Turkish diplomats in 1973 as an act of symbolic revenge that overpowered his lifelong pacifist beliefs. After the killings, the nightmares that had tormented him reportedly disappeared, as if the violence momentarily silenced the trauma he couldn’t escape. [James Hillman – A Terrible Love of War]
16. Globalisation isn’t new—it’s humanity’s oldest story: movement, mixing, and exchange have always shaped who we are. Forgetting this fuels fear and nationalism, even though our shared diversity is the real source of our strength. [Aeon]
17. Chinese cuisine is sooo complex [Chinese Cooking Demystified]
18. The Manhattan Project wasn’t one big “aha!” moment — it was people in the desert figuring out how to stop uranium from behaving like a moody fruit while inventing remote-controlled tools just so they wouldn’t glow in the dark. It felt less like building a weapon and more like constructing an entire industrial planet from zero, sprinting through the unknown and still somehow getting there before the map even existed. [Construction Physics]
19. “Beetroot Poles” were Polish seasonal workers — mostly young women — who, from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, travelled to Denmark every year to harvest sugar beets for painfully low wages and brutal hours. Many never went back: they married locally, built families, and left such a mark that their descendants, Danish as they come, still remember the sweet smell from the sugar factories and the Polish roots buried under those fields. [Wysokie Obcasy]
20. Lab-grown chocolate aims to steady a shaky cocoa market hit by climate chaos and soaring prices. [The Guardian]
21. Pizza evolved from ancient flatbreads to Naples’ 18th-century street food, later spreading to America in the 19th century. [Histories]
22. US movie ban in Yugoslavia led to ranchera and mariachi music influencing local culture. [Listen]
23. One of my favorite writers on the transformation of villages into thriving cities. [Uncharted Territories]
24. Britain paid slaveowners to end slavery. [Marginal Revolution]
25. Before the web, France had Minitel (1982)—a nationwide, state-backed “proto-internet” for banking, shopping, chat, and games. By the mid-’80s, 25 million used it, shaping France’s digital path differently from the global, decentralized internet that followed. [Messy Nessy]
26. Beachcombing and the world’s first museum dedicated to it. [YouTube]
27. Tech giants dream of tossing data centers into orbit—because if you can’t convince towns to host your noisy, energy-thirsty boxes, space has no neighbors to complain. [Wired]
28. Rüdiger Koch spent 120 days living in an underwater SeaPod, turning his habitat into an immersive micro-world. His experiment highlights a growing libertarian dream of ocean living as adventure (and escape for the wealthy). [The New York Times]
29. Heard The 1975’s I Like America and America Likes Me song years ago. Only in September this year I learned it’s named after a German artist who spent three days in a New York gallery… living with a coyote. Honestly, the backstory is wilder than the track itself. [Wikipedia]
30. Why the world feels a little too tidy and average these days. [Experimental History]
31. A hundred years ago, Warsaw had a café where poets ran what was basically an unfiltered open mic — the kind of place that pulled in a few future legends and a whole crowd curious enough to watch the madness unfold. Out of that wonderfully messy energy came Skamander, a group that went on to bend the shape of Polish literature for years. [Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak – Słonimski]
32. Scientists just figured out that your fingers wrinkle in the exact same pattern every time. [Discover]
33. The 1932–34 Geneva Disarmament Conference collapsed under ego, fear, and rising militarism. No one wanted to be the first to put their weapons down, which eventually led to a II World War. [Wikipedia]
34. Color field painting reduces art to expansive planes of color, crafting immersive experiences that resonate deeply with viewers. I’ve grown to love Rothko and have learned a lot about this approach through his work.
35. A Moscow-based network called Pravda has been sneaking propaganda into Western AI, with generative models repeating its false claims a third of the time. By flooding web crawlers with pro-Kremlin content, they’ve found a way to manipulate AI outputs worldwide without ever talking to humans directly. [News Guard]
36. A Harvard study of over 58,000 women suggests that families often lean toward having all boys or all girls, rather than a perfect 50/50 split. Factors like maternal age and biology may nudge these “weighted coin tosses.” [NPR]
37. The economic theory of alliances models collective defense as a public good, where member nations act in self-interest, often leading to under-contribution and larger members shouldering a disproportionate share of costs. This explains why alliances like NATO see wealthier nations subsidize smaller ones and struggle with equitable burden-sharing. [RAND]
38. Helsinki has gone a full year without a traffic death. [Yle]
39. A Loughborough University experiment found that applying a thin layer of yoghurt to the outside of windows can lower indoor temperatures by up to 3.5°C on hot, sunny days. The yoghurt reflects sunlight as it dries, with the smell disappearing within seconds, offering a low-cost way to reduce overheating and improve health during heatwaves. Researchers noted it’s less effective than tinfoil but still a surprisingly useful cooling method. [BBC]
40. Camille du Gast was a pioneering French sportswoman, motorist, balloonist, and philanthropist, known for her achievements in racing and adventure. After surviving an attempted murder by her daughter, she devoted herself to animal welfare, women’s rights, and charitable work in France and Morocco. She also became the only female official of the Automobile Club de France and was involved in the famous Parisian scandal La Femme au Masque. [Wikipedia]
41. I got interested in this after meeting a blind cat and being impressed by how confidently it navigated its usual environment. Blind cats build detailed mental maps using senses other than sight—mainly touch through their whiskers, hearing, and smell. They explore slowly, rely on familiar routines, and use tactile cues like floor textures and furniture placement to remember their surroundings. Stable environments, consistent layouts, and sensory markers help them move safely and confidently despite their lack of vision. [Coape]
42. I read an article about the rise of niche coaches—there’s literally a coach for everything, from IVF to travel to focus. It made me think that maybe we turn to coaches so much because either we don’t have friends to lean on or we want to optimize every part of life. It’s like outsourcing not just tasks, but emotional support and decision-making too. [The Atlantic]
43. About a quarter of people are naturally “hangover resistant,” likely due to genetics, faster alcohol metabolism, lower inflammation, and lower anxiety levels. [The New York Times]
44. The modern practice of statistical analysis traces back to Ronald Fisher’s 1920s tea-tasting experiment, which introduced randomization and the concept of testing a null hypothesis. Fisher’s methods, including the 5 percent significance threshold, shaped scientific research, though later debates with Neyman and Pearson led to the development of confidence intervals and error-type concepts still used today. [Wired]
45. Research shows that “cool” people are seen as powerful, extraverted, hedonistic, autonomous, adventurous, and open, and these traits are surprisingly consistent across cultures. While some of these qualities overlap with what’s considered “good,” coolness is distinct, reflecting traits that help people stand out, shape social hierarchies, and influence cultural norms worldwide. [Journal of Experimental Psychology]
46. AI might actually become the best wingman for anyone battling thinning hair. Mine started disappearing this year too — easily my biggest L — so trust me, I’m very motivated to stay on top of this tech. [MyHair.AI]
47. The Soccer Factor Model basically puts every soccer/football player through a “truth serum,” stripping away the boost or drag of their team to reveal their real skill level. It might quietly change how top clubs scout talent. [Source]
48. The Schulz von Thun model shows that feedback isn’t just “what you say,” but four hidden layers that shape how it lands — facts, self-expression, relationship, and a quiet call to action. Once you see those layers, giving and receiving feedback feels less like walking into an emotional minefield. [Semcore]
49. “L’appel du vide” describes that strange, split-second urge you get when standing on a cliff edge — the brain’s dramatic way of saying, “Hey, be careful.” It’s not a real wish to jump but a common quirk of human psychology. [Wikipedia]
50. Asking “how” nudges you to explore the moving parts — the history, the people, the emotions — instead of chasing a single neat cause. [Behavioral Scientist]
51. We live in what Shoshana Zuboff calls the big existential contradiction of the “second modernity”: we want control over our lives, yet the world keeps slipping it from our hands. As Zuboff argues in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, our choices feel personal, but more and more of the script is being written for us behind the scenes. [Shoshana Zuboff – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism]
52. Frederick Forsyth once described a wild real-life plan to overthrow a cruel dictator in Equatorial Guinea — the kind of story that sounds made up, but wasn’t. A group of mercenaries tried to reach the island of Fernando Po on a ship called Albatros, hoping to kick out the tyrant Macías Nguema and help his enemies take control. The whole mission collapsed when Spanish border officers stopped the ship near the Canary Islands, ending the plan before it even began. To this day, people still argue about who actually came up with the idea — and Forsyth’s name keeps popping up in the rumors.