100 Facts, Bouncy Meatballs, Map of Metal & Wordiply
#80 of 10+1 Things | Kerala, India
⏳ A week late.
10+1 Things is a reader-supported publication.
If you enjoy this, you can support by buying me a coffee ($1 or ₹85).
Sorry I’m a bit late this week. I usually publish on Wednesdays but missed it last week with some travel, even though I had the newsletter drafted.
The week before last, I traveled to Chennai to spend some time with my in-laws, and weather wise it was a stark contrast against Kerala. When I left Kerala, monsoon was almost there with occasional rains, but Chennai greeted me with 37 degree humid heat.
Both places are less than 500 miles apart, but there’s this huge mountain range called the Western Ghats that runs parallel to the coast, trapping moisture and giving Kerala all that rain. Fun fact, there’s a gap in the range that’s about 32km (~20 miles) wide, and some scientists believe a piece of the Ghats remained in Madagascar when the continents split, creating the Palakkad Gap. If you’re curious, this digital elevation map of the Western Ghats is fascinating.
Enough geography for the week. I’m back to full fledged work from this week with lots of pending tasks, while eating lots of jackfruit and trying hard not to get fat!
Without further ado, here are 10+1 Things worth sharing:
🏙️ London's Free Roof Terraces: Some London developers found a loophole where adding a free public roof terrace made it easier to get planning permission! This fun blog post by Diamond Geezer reviews a bunch of them. Some have genuinely great 360° views, others are just pointless! Great read if you’re visiting London or live there.
✨ Unlived Dreams: Niklas Göke writes about accepting the things you'll never get to do. He'd love to snowboard but his knees won't allow it, and the list of things he wants to try keeps growing while time stays the same. I think about this kind of stuff a lot.
🌳 Historical Tech Tree: Étienne Fortier-Dubois built an interactive visualization of the entire history of technology, from prehistory to today. It's inspired by Civilization's tech trees but based on real history, with about 1,750 technologies and 2,000 connections between them. You can trace how one invention led to another, and the rabbit holes are endless.
🗺️ Map of Metal: This interactive map lets you explore every metal music sub genre from the 1960s to today. Click on a genre and it plays YouTube samples, shows you key bands, and traces how one style evolved into another. Great rabbit hole if you're into metal or just curious about genre trees!
🤖 They're Made Out of Weights: If you haven't read Terry Bisson's classic short story "They're Made Out of Meat," about aliens discovering humans are made of meat, go read that first. This story by Max is a brilliant twist on it, where the discovery is that AI is nothing but floating-point numbers. Funny and unsettling at the same time.
⚡ 100 Facts: Climate Drift compiled 100 wild facts about the US electricity grid. Edison announced electric lighting before he even had a working bulb and gas stocks crashed overnight. Squirrels have shut down the NASDAQ twice. Texas built its own grid just to avoid federal oversight. Fascinating read even if you have zero interest in energy.
🧩 Wordiply: I love word games and when I get time I play these in order: Wordle, Connections and Crossherd (thank you NYT for paywalling the Mini!). My new addiction is Wordiply, a free word game by The Guardian where you're given a short word and have to find the longest word containing it. The story of how they created it is also a great read.
Also if you play NYT games, here's my invite to join my leaderboard!👟 Ian's Shoelace Site: There's a guy in Melbourne who's been running a 300-page website about shoelaces for over two decades! Ian Fieggen has lacing tutorials, knot comparisons, and even invented his own knot. This is the kind of single-person website the internet was made for.
📐 Mathematical Instruments: Nicholas Rougeux took a 17th century French book on scientific instruments and turned it into a beautiful digital edition. The original had nearly 500 illustrated figures buried in separate engraved plates, and he extracted each one by hand and placed it right where the text references it. All the restored illustrations are public domain too, so you can freely use them.
📸 Windows of New York: These window photographs by Dave Krugman are a delight to look through. He walked through the streets of New York at night capturing apartment windows, each one glowing differently with cat beds, curtains, and holiday decorations. Arranged in grids, they become this beautiful mosaic of city life.
🥢 Bouncy Meatballs: This Atlas Obscura video shows how beef meatballs in China's Chaoshan region are hand-pounded until you can literally bounce them off a table. They say machines can't replicate it because they destroy the muscle fibers.
That’s 10+1 Things for the week!
Which one was your favourite this week?
Leave a comment or reply to this email.
This newsletter is FREE, but not CHEAP. It takes effort and time from my end (~ 2 hours) to deliver this newsletter every week. You can help me in keeping it going by forwarding it to someone you like, buying me a coffee ($1 or ₹75), sending me some crypto, visiting my blog, signing my guestbook or following me on X.
I also have an AMA section on my blog where you can ask me any questions. Plus, I’m available for a chat during my Unoffice Hours.
See you next week!
With Love,
Rishi
“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation”
~ Gustava Petro