52 Things I Learned in 2024
You have just six seconds to capture someone’s attention — but if you interest them, you earn another twenty to thirty seconds. Practically, this means you have about thirteen words to hook them and another thirty to forty to deliver your most compelling information. If your email exceeds 100 words, allocate your editing time wisely: dedicate 40% to perfecting the first sentence, 40% to refining the next 2-3 sentences, and just 20% to polishing the remainder. - Shane Parrish
52 Things I Learned in 2024: Before buying a web domain name, you should definitely check if it is haunted or cursed... In 2022, 55% of Macy’s income came from credit cards rather than retail sales. That’s fairly normal for US department stores... People whose surnames start with U, V, W, X, Y or Z tend to get grades 0.6% lower than people with A-to-E surnames. Modern learning management systems sort papers alphabetically before they’re marked, so those at the bottom are always seen last, by tired, grumpy markers. A few teachers flip the default setting and mark Z to A, and their results are reversed.
https://medium.com/@tomwhitwell/52-things-i-learned-in-2024-75efffe44f15
How Did Chicory Become the Villain in Our Coffee: Despite coffee’s popularity across class and castes, the culture of its preparation and consumption was shaped by middle-class Tamil Brahmins, who could consistently afford it. In their hands coffee was both a symbol of status and a ritual of precision... Caste inevitably played a significant role in this Brahmin-led culture as well. The rimmed tumblers and davaras, symbolic of South Indian coffee, are a material legacy of Brahmin concerns about being ‘polluted’ by members of oppressed castes. Serving coffee to guests became a social obligation of respectability, so balancing hospitality with caste considerations, they designed rimmed tumblers that allowed coffee to be poured into the mouth from a height, avoiding contact with the lips. While coffee is no longer consumed in this manner, its caste heritage still lingers in these iconic cups.
https://www.goya.in/blog/chicory-the-root-of-indian-coffee
Inside the Vatican's Secret Saint Making Process: Who gets to be a saint is not just about holiness; it is about identity, politics, economics and geography. The historian Peter Burke regards saints as “cultural indicators, a sort of historical litmus paper sensitive to conditions between religion and society”. Canonisation has long been a way for the Catholic church to shape its image, and the Vatican has an incentive to approve candidates with useful profiles. In Acutis, the Holy See found an avenue to connect with a younger generation. From the moment his Cause was officially opened, Acutis was referred to as potentially “the first millennial saint”. He has been nicknamed “God’s influencer” and “the patron saint of the internet”.
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Did you hear about the Colour of the Year for 2025!