A journey that began in 2017 to hike from the tip of South America to the northernmost top of Alaska, a site to learn how to tie all kinds of knots, and learning the history of the English language in 22 minutes are some of the interesting stories I’ve read and enjoyed in the past month.
I hope you enjoy them, too!
What I Found Interesting
-
When I was in Girl Scouts, so many years ago, one of our badges required us to learn how to tie knots. I became expert at tying about a dozen knots back then.
Now, I can’t remember how to tie a half hitch knot.
Thanks to Animated Knots by Grog, I can relearn the knots I knew back in grade school.
And get reminded how to tie a Windsor tie (I’ve always used the Half Windsor necktie knot).
The knots are organized by category—climbing, boating, household, scouting, and more. Or you can use their search feature to find the knot you’re looking for.
-
In only 22 minutes, you can learn the entire history of the English language from a YouTube video.
And discover that folks who speak English are “… much of the time, actually speaking French.”
Who knew?
-
If DuckDuckGo is your preferred search engine, a new option was added to filter out AI-generated images in image search results.
The filter operates based on manually curated open-source blocklists containing known AI image sources, including major contributions from uBlock Origin and the uBlacklist Huge AI Blocklist.
In addition, DuckDuckGo offers a site where you can avoid AI search results altogether.
-
What an amazing journey!
Lucy Barnard, an Australian writer, filmmaker, and adventurer, is hiking from the southernmost tip of South America to the northernmost top of Alaska.
Why?
According to her website:
There is a moment between having an idea and acting on it, when you choose to do something or you won’t… I decided to become the first woman to walk the length of the earth.
It’s a 30 000 km trek from the southernmost point of South America to the highest point of Alaska.
When I finish I will be the first woman, and one of only a handful of people to have ever completed it.
Barnard started her trek in 2017 in Ushuaia, Argentina and is currently in Montana in the United States.
She expects to cross from Glacier National Park into Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada in the next two weeks.
-
To commemorate the 80th anniversary, students from The University of Manchester’s Physics Society constructed a remarkable 30,500-piece Lego model of the iconic Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank.
One of the students, James Ruston, spent six months using computer software to model structures for the design, resulting in a 4,000 page instruction manual.
Work on the Lego design began in late April; the 30kg weight of the sculpture required reinforcement with a steel pole.
