Here are 5 things you should know.
1. The 20 second rule.
If you notice something wrong with someone’s appearance, don’t point it out unless it can be fixed in 20 seconds or less.
Loose hair, food in teeth, untucked shirt, etc. are all things that can be fixed very quickly. Acne, weight, etc. take a long time to fix, and the person you’re talking to probably already knows about the problem, and drawing attention to it can make them self-conscious.
Most people want to look their best and finding out that something was wrong at the end of the day can be a bit disheartening. Politely pointing a small issue out can help them feel better about their appearance, even if only slightly.
2. You can get your taxes done free online.
You shouldn’t have to pay to do your taxes correctly.
In the USA, the government offers many free resources to do your taxes. Here is a direct link to the site with every company available through the IRS Free File Online: https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers/
3. Small speed increases can drastically affect your stopping distance in a car.
The main takeaway is that, because kinetic energy is proportional to velocity squared, braking distance/time (which brings the kinetic energy to zero at a full stop) also scales proportionally to velocity squared.
For example, imagine two cars of the exact same mass, one traveling at 50mph and the other at 70mph. They are traveling next to each other and see a wall ahead, braking at the same time. The 50mph driver stops just before the wall; intuitively you’d think the other driver hits at about 20mph, however, it hits the wall at roughly 50mph. There’s some wiggle room for things like braking efficiency at higher speed and reaction time for the real world, but it’s something to keep in mind for deciding your speed on the road.
Driving is a major part in everyone’s lives but also incredibly dangerous and keeping in mind how your speed affects your stopping distances can greatly increase your safety with little impact on normal commute times.
4. The food you eat is not only for energy supply but also has important signaling functions in the body.
Your diet is not only a supply of energy but also has important signaling functions of genes. Many micro and macro metabolites of the food you eat, work as ligands to nuclear receptors in your body. This way they work as switches of genes. Thus it is important to eat mostly foods that we know to be healthy, not only for your weight but also for your metabolism and overall function of the body. Humans haven’t had enough time evolutionally to adapt to the current diet, making cancers, heart diseases, metabolic diseases, like type 2 diabetes, mostly man-made diseases. The diets consisting of deep-fried foods or not eating vegetables has huge effects on your body. Please take care of your diet.
Source: Carlberg C, Ulven SM, Molnar F. Nutrigenomics: How Science Works. Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2020.
5. Google Scholar often finds direct pdf links to scientific publications, whether on the publisher’s website or reuploaded elsewhere, effectively bypassing the paywall.
It’s good to check primary sources. Unfortunately, many scientific journals have prohibitively high prices for access to articles, making it impossible for most people to access the original write-up of the research results. That’s why YSK the following trick:
Google Scholar search engine for scientific publications often allows bypassing the paywall. It looks at the journal websites, but also at other websites and preprint servers. Effectively, many publications are accessible for free somewhere else. Sometimes, Google Scholar finds even a direct link to pdf on the publisher’s website, which bypasses the paywall.
So if you got linked to a scientific journal website, but can’t access the publication, copy-paste the title to Google Scholar. There is a decent chance you’ll be able to get access to the article there.
