Awesome Learning

WIRED sat down with forensic scientist Thiago Piwowarczyk and art historian Jeffrey Taylor PhD to get the inside skinny on ways that science and a skilled eye can help detect art forgeries. Abstract works like Jackson Pollock’s drips and splashes are especially challenging.

TierZoo takes a look at five animal abilities that are great on their own, but can become counterproductive or useless. For example, being extremely mobile means you get tired and hungry incredibly quickly. Being smart often leads to vulnerable young.

We wouldn’t be here on this planet if it weren’t for evolution – and a big part of the evolutionary process is natural selection. Primer presents a great 10 minute lesson on how the whole “survival of the fittest” thing works, along with a visual simulation with little blobby creatures.

(PG-13: Language) “…the cynics will be forgotten just as readily as your failures will be too.” Exurb1a names a few famous and infamous people before warning us not to be afraid of failing or being ridiculed, but of not using our limited time to its fullest.

Wendover Productions goes over the insane logistics of the International Space Station, particularly the process and cost of sending food. Resupplies can’t be sent to the ISS at anytime, and they are obsessive about saving weight to reduce costs.

“Anytime you combine 2 billion people in one location, people are gonna exploit that for money, power and influence.” After looking into how YouTube and Twitter are abused, SmarterEveryDay looks at the worst spot of manipulation online: Facebook.

In 1992, 12 containers fell off of a ship in the Pacific Ocean. Among the lost cargo – 29,000 rubber duckies. But those ducks would serve a greater purpose, helping oceanographers map currents based on where they washed ashore. Half as Interesting explains.

In theory, a clone should be an exact copy. But the reality is even if we chose to create engineered copies of humans, every little variable in their environment would make them a very different person from their genetic doppelgänger. Life Noggin explains.

Mental Floss lists some of the hilarious, gross, ineffective and outright counterproductive cures that were prescribed or probably made up in old times. The list includes cigarettes, cocaine, morphine, and even dead bodies.

“A frothing, bubbling, cooking mess.” Townsends reads passages from an 18th century British sailor’s memoir that lists some of the things that they ate, and cooks one simple item from the list. It’s burgoo – boiled ground oatmeal served with molasses. Or pork and beef fat.

With the right rhythm and melody, a good song can easily get stuck in your head. Earworms takes advantage of this phenomenon to help you learn another language. Choose from Spanish, Italian, German, or French lessons, and save 50% in The Awesomer Shop.

Avid learner Mike Boyd shares his tips on not quitting when you want to learn something new. To demonstrate his suggestions, he tries to learn a difficult guitar lick. His tips include having clear goals and reasons, being specific and purposeful with training and more.

(Gore) TierZoo explains the evolution of humans, enumerating the skills they acquired that would eventually lead us to become the most overpowered class. He also points out how Sapiens outlasted Neanderthals, even though the latter were stronger fighters.

Kurzgesagt takes on one of the most bizarre and terrifying objects in the universe: neutron stars. Formed when certain giant stars collapse, neutron stars are made of strange matter, which are theoretically “perfectly stable.” And that’s where Physics and English disagree.

Polyphonic lists some of the best classic rock songs that may not have existed if not for the Vietnam War. The list includes hits by the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, King Crimson, The Rolling Stones, Credence Clearwater Revival, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Edwin Starr and Marvin Gaye.

Captain Disillusion pauses from debunking viral videos to provide a little education for video newbies, with a great primer on how frame rates work, how they affect moving images, and why the NTSC broadcast TV standard is still an odd 29.97 fps.

Milk is supposed to be good for you, but our stomachs hurt at just the thought of consuming mass quantities of dairy. Life Noggin takes that idea to the extreme with a hypothetical scenario that will have lactose intolerants cowering in fear.

After looking at how evildoers mess with YouTube, Destin of Smarter Every Day takes a look at Twitter and its never-ending battle against bots. He spoke with security experts at Twitter and NATO to find out how these bots work, and why they are there.

We usually tune in to Melodysheep’s YouTube channel to listen to his songs, but this time, he’s brought us something even more compelling – a 10-minute review of the last 13.8 billion years, with narration by Brian Cox, Carl Sagan, and David Attenborough.

Insider gives us a tour of Air Hollywood, a movie studio in Los Angeles where movies, TV shows and music videos shoot airplane scenes. They have configurable airplane sets made from actual planes. They even have a terminal set and a warehouse full of props.

The B1M lists some of the world’s most locked-down buildings, and highlights their measures to protect their contents from access and attacks. There’s a military surveillance outpost, a data center, the Vatican’s archives, Fort Knox, and the White House.

(PG-13: Language) Casually Explained has some legitimate advice this time. He talks about how to manage our fear of missing out. First by comparing it to past experiences, then lowering our expectations. Of course, there will be times when you do miss out.

There are ready made kits for iron-on or heat transfer printing. Shmoxd tried out two of them, then at 5:24 shows us how you can make ones just as good using screen printing and heat transfer powder. This method is cheap and good for low volume production.