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Update 2

It’s time for another update on the state of the blog.

1. Thank you again

As always, thank you so much for reading, sharing, and commenting – either on this site, on the accompanying Facebook page, or via the Twitter feed. Particular thanks to the people who have shared interesting topics with me! I have so many great posts coming up thanks to the time and generosity of readers like you.

I also wanted to thank the websites, podcasts, and mailing lists that have shared some of the posts on this site. Thank you to

I’m sure that I’ve missed some names here, or messed up some pronouns – apologies, if either is the case.

2. Updates on previous topics

As is my tradition (twice is a tradition, right?), here are some updates on topics previously covered on the Generalist Academy.

Surprising eponyms – David S. observes that macadamia nuts and tarmac are both named for John MacAdam, although it’s two different John MacAdams.

Parahawking – a friend of mine, after reading the blog post, reported that he had actually been flying with Adam Hill in Nepal. Crazy coincidence.

Oldest art – it’s not the oldest figurative art any more! An older example has just been discovered and dated in Sulawesi, Indonesia: earliest hunting scene in prehistory

Decimal time – I didn’t mention it in the post, but there’s a website that will tell you what time it is right now in decimal: Decimal time now!

3. Simultaneity

Today’s post was on simultaneous discovery. It’s one of my biggest fears for this website, that I’ll write a post in advance and then someone else will coincidentally write about the same topic before mine is published. Well, it finally happened. Except in reverse.

Four days after I wrote about the second-fastest animal, the same topic was mentioned in the radio programme Engines of Our Ingenuity (as observed on Twitter).

One week after I wrote about ice delivery across the Sahara, it was mentioned in No Such Thing as a Fish Episode 293.

In both cases, I assume that it’s just a coincidence, that we have both picked up on the same topic at roughly the same time independently. Which is great! No-one owns these – or any – topics, I’m always delighted to see interesting things get a wide audience.

Categories: Updates

The Generalist

I live in Auckland, New Zealand, and am curious about most things.

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