Topic · across the network

Cognitive bias

The systematic ways judgement goes wrong, reliably enough to name.

14: briefs
5: subjects
9:15: average
130 min: in total

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music.briefs Music

All 1 in music →

9:34

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

The Smashing Pumpkins · 1995

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is a 1995 double album by The Smashing Pumpkins. It contains 28 songs spanning over two hours. It was recorded with producers Flood and Alan Moulder, abandoning longtime producer Butch Vig. The band recorded first in a rehearsal space, used two rooms simultaneously, and employed Pro Tools for overdubs. All guitars were tuned down a half-step. The album was conceived as a double album from the outset, partly inspired by the Beatles' self-titled album. Corgan described it as 'The Wall for Generation X'. The songs were intended to symbolise the cycle of life and death. Time magazine praised it as 'the group's most ambitious and accomplished work yet'. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in October 1995.

science.briefs Science

All 4 in science →

9:55

Asch conformity experiments

Solomon Asch

The Asch experiments show that unanimous group pressure causes public conformity on simple perceptual judgments — not because people misperceive, but because they yield in speech. The effect is real, quantified, and limited: it depends on unanimity, not large numbers; it was tested only on white male undergraduates; and it measures response, not belief or vision.

9:58

B. F. Skinner

Skinner didn’t explain minds — he replaced them with measurable behaviour and its consequences.

10:08

Elizabeth Loftus

Memory isn’t stored — it’s rewritten every time you’re asked a question.

10:11

Jean Piaget

Piaget didn’t discover how children think—he discovered that we’d been misreading their wrong answers all along.

design.briefs Design

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10:00

Comic Sans

Vincent Connare · 1994

Comic Sans is a 1994 Microsoft typeface designed by Vincent Connare to replace Times New Roman in Microsoft Bob’s cartoon interface. It was drawn manually with a mouse, inspired by The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, and intended to be informal and child-friendly. Though it missed Bob, it shipped with Windows 95 and gained broad use in education and dyslexia support. A 2010 Princeton study found Comic Sans Italic improved information retention versus Helvetica. It demonstrates how narrow constraints — aesthetic, technical, and audience-specific — can yield unexpectedly robust functional outcomes.

9:46

Don Norman

Don Norman didn’t invent user-centred design — he abandoned it.

culture.briefs Culture

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8:45

food.briefs Food

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1:38

Siu mei

Cantonese roasted meats—often spit- or rotisserie-cooked, sometimes sauce-glazed, served hot or at room temperature in take-out shops and party platters.