jinavie

[jinavie]

New webpage!

Hello to everyone who follows me on Tumblr! 

If you haven’t noticed already, my Tumblr blog has been retired and my Encyclopaedia of Absolute and Relative Knowledge has been fully migrated over to my new website, Jineral Knowledge at https://jineralknowledge.com/

Since the new website has been up and running smoothly for more than a year, I’m officially closing down this Tumblr and will stop linking new articles here! If you would still like to receive updates on new posts, please use this new email subscription that I set up today~

Looking forward to seeing y’all on Jineral Knowledge and/or on the email list!! Thank you for all the support the past 10 years~

https://jineralknowledge.com/

[jinavie]

Intentionality

I've been thinking a LOT this year about being more intentional about how I use my time, phone and internet. I think it's a great concept for y'all to ponder about and consider trying as well! Yet another step in Jin's quest for a more productive life~

How many times have you opened a social media app, scrolled through all of the new information, closed it, only to re-open it immediately? You may blame it on muscle memory or a slip of the mind, but this is an intentional design of the app to habituate you into consuming content passively.

Recommended videos, autoplay functions, infinite scrolling and constant notifications are all examples…

[jinavie]

Periodical Cicada

Classic Jin, sneaking maths into a blog post about cicadas. On a side note, I love that Adventure Time uses "mathematical!" as a synonym for "AWESOME".

In certain parts of eastern North America, it has been noted for centuries that some summers seem to bring a massive swarm of cicadas. Observant naturalists such as Pehr Kalm noted in the mid-1700’s that this mass emergence of adult cicadas happened every 17 years. Since then, a similar pattern has been observed with many different broods of cicadas, with precisely 17 or 13 years between…

[jinavie]

Theme Of The Year

Recently, I learnt about an amazing concept that helps you practise self-improvement and enact long-term positive change by having a THEME for the year. 2020 is going to be the "Year of Balance" for me. What theme will you choose for the year? :)

Even though nothing special actually happens on January 1st, we like to think that it is the perfect time to start anew and become a better you. We set goals and resolutions for the New Year in the hopes of making a positive life change, but we quickly find that it is insanely hard to change our behaviours.

Our brains love defaulting to the lazy option and will justify bad behaviours, so we…

[jinavie]

Shoot For The Moon

Today, we study the oft-quoted positive thinking quote: "Shoot for the moon: even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." and how if you did, you will probably end up as a frozen corpse in space, as a monument to your failure.

A common saying goes:

“Shoot for the moon: even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars”.

The saying was coined by author Normal Vincent Peale, who was a minister famous for his books and work on the power of positive thinking. He was also widely criticised by many psychologists and mental health experts, who noted that his style of positive psychology was not founded in evidence and…

[jinavie]

Serenity Prayer

800th Jineral Knowledge post!!! As is tradition, I'm celebrating another 100 posts by writing a looong post on a topic of interest. Today, we discuss the importance of knowing when to fight and when to accept things as they are. Hope it adds to your life!!

In the early 20th century, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a prayer preaching about how one should approach hardship. The most well-known version of the prayer goes:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.”

Regardless of whether one is religious or not, this prayer is very helpful as it…

[jinavie]

Zero-Sum Game

Starting the year (and decade) by reminding people that we should be happy for other people's happiness! Happy new year :)

Game theory is the study of using mathematical models to understand how rational decision-makers would strategically act in a given environment. One concept from game theory is that of the zero-sum game, where there is a finite amount of utility shared between players, meaning that if one person gains something, another must lose something to balance it out.

A classic example is a game of…

[jinavie]

Decade Review

Recently, I got inspired by a recent John Green video to do a review of the last decade, sharing ten photos representing a moment from each year that I remember fondly. Turns out I've lived a pretty awesome ten years, and looking forward to the next ten :)

A year is the amount of time the Earth takes to rotate around the Sun once. But strictly speaking, this does not have a large impact on our lives or our progress and growth as a person. The concept of a year is largely a construct of our minds to keep track of time; we could just as easily count time in 100-day increments or 3 years, given that most of our lives are not based on agriculture…

[jinavie]

Friendship

A topic I've thought long and hard about the past couple years! I'm so grateful and happy to have such incredible, wonderful friends in my life :D Love y'all homies

We have very little choice about who we have as family. But friends are a different story: we choose who we want to spend time with and call our friends. The beauty of friendship is that it is an active choice. By calling someone our friend, we are telling them that we appreciate their presence in our lives, that we enjoy spending time with them, that we care about their well-being and wish them…

[jinavie]

Grandi's Series

Start your Monday morning by learning about what an old Italian mathematician's proof of God existing can teach us about infinity and paradoxes. Maths is fun :)

In 1703, Italian mathematician and monk Guido Grandi posed a deceptively simple-sounding question:

What is the sum of the following infinite series? 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1…

With simple arithmetic, we can easily divide the series using parentheses (brackets):

(1 – 1) + (1 – 1) + (1 – 1) + (1 – 1)… = 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 +… = 0

But what if we changed the way we used the parentheses?

[jinavie]

Hurricane

I feel like naming a hurricane after your wife or girlfriend is not the best way to score points, but maybe it's considered romantic in the meteorology world...

We often hear on the news of cataclysmic storms with oddly common names such as Hurricane Sandy, Katrina and Harvey. It seems weird that we give such devastating forces of nature a basic name, let alone naming them human names at all.

A hurricane is the name given to tropical storms that occur in the Atlantic Ocean. For reference, a hurricane is essentially the same as a cyclone or typhoon.…

[jinavie]

The Story You Tell Yourself

A really important concept I've been thinking a lot about the past couple years that I've learnt from the AMAZING podcast Dear Sugars. Have a read :)

It is the human condition to be our own worst enemies. Yes, life can get hard and it will throw various obstacles and challenges at us, creating all kinds of stress and distress. However, much of our anguish will come from the stories we tell ourselves.

We often think that we feel emotions as a reaction to a stimulus or a change in our environment. This makes us feel powerless and as if we are…

[jinavie]

Grasshopper Mouse

Just a short post on a very cute, very cool animal I learnt about recently!

Grasshopper mice are a species of New World mice found in deserts throughout North America. They are small-to-medium sized, growing up to 13cm in size and weighing around 40-50g.

Despite their cute appearances, they are carnivorous, ferocious hunters. They feast on various insects, but are also known to hunt other mice.

Grasshopper mice have interesting adaptations that make them seem…

[jinavie]

Yesterday's Tomorrow

Some life admin tips! How to stop procrastination from ruining your life. Huh that sounds so buzzfeedy....

In life, procrastination feels almost like a base human impulse. It is so easy to put off tasks until tomorrow. But what is today but yesterday’s tomorrow?

It is difficult to find motivation to do tasks that we find boring, hard or unimportant. But delaying it by a day does nothing to fix that issue. The best approach is to sort out easy tasks early so that they do not accumulate until you feel…

[jinavie]

Elephant Riding

Taming your emotions is one of the hardest challenges of becoming a well-adjusted adult, but so damn worth it. Tame those elephants within, yo :)

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt described the relationship between our rational and emotional minds as that of a person riding an elephant. The rational person can guide the elephant using reins, but if the elephant really wants to go a certain way, it will easily overpower the rider. Fighting against the elephant risks it throwing you off or going on a destructive rampage.

This analogy is…

[jinavie]

Compound Interest

Jineral Knowledge - now dabbling in amateur finance advices. Actually, I was talking with some friends over the weekend how financial skills are something that not all of us learnt when we were younger, so it's good to talk about the basics! :)

When is the best time to invest? Is it when you have sufficient income and savings that you feel that you have a surplus to invest with?

The correct answer is much simpler: yesterday, with the second best time being today. Because of the magic of compound interest, investing early is the best strategy possible.

Thanks to a simple mathematic rule, compound interest rewards early, small…

[jinavie]

Unspeakable Names

An important part of the Harry Potter story is the infamous villain Voldemort, who is so fearsome that the general populace are too afraid to say his name out loud. Instead, they call him “He who must not be named” or “You-know-who“.

The phenomenon of taboo avoidance of names is fascinating and examples can be found all around the world. In ancient China and Japan, it was forbidden by law to…