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Gnerd

posted Oct, 2025

YouTube Channels for Hungry Minds

1Big Think

Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content -- with thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, we help you get smarter, faster. Get actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers & doers. Our experts are either disrupting or leading their respective fields. We aim to help you explore the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century, so you can apply them to the questions and challenges in your own life. Other Frequent contributors include Michio Kaku & Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

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Gnerd

posted Sep, 2025

Weird Geometries You Didn’t Learn in School

1Taxicab Geometry
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In this geometry, distance is measured like a taxi driving along city blocks instead of a straight line. That means “circles” look like tilted squares.

2Hyperbolic Tilings
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Patterns that fill an infinite curved space where tiles shrink forever at the edges. Made famous by M.C. Escher’s Circle Limit.

3Penrose Patterns
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A tiling discovered in the 1970s using just two shapes that never repeats, yet still looks symmetric and beautiful.

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Gnerd

posted Sep, 2025

Toxic Tonics & Trephines: Weird Medicine from the Past

1Bloodletting (Ancient–19th Century)
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For thousands of years, doctors treated everything from fevers to headaches by draining a patient’s blood. This practice stemmed from the ancient belief in balancing the four bodily humors; an excess of blood was thought to cause illness history.com jlgh.org . Techniques ranged from cutting veins with lancets to applying leeches.

2Trepanation (Skull Drilling) (Prehistoric–1800s)
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One of the oldest surgical procedures, trepanation involved drilling or scraping a hole in the skull to treat ailments like seizures, headaches, or mental illness. Ancient skulls from the Stone Age show survivors of this practice, which was often intended to release evil spirits or relieve pressure

3Mercury Cures for Syphilis (16th–Early 20th Century)
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A night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury” warned a saying about syphilis – and indeed, for centuries the go-to treatment was mercury in various forms