Top all-time · #1345
Jakub Marian
Personal blog · jakubmarian.comwritingculture
Jakub Marian's personal blog at jakubmarian.com covers writing and culture. Since 2013, 55 different Hacker News readers have linked it 57 times, most often “The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Articles and ebooks about language learning, science and art – and lots of maps.
Most-linked posts?
- The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-10-17
- Map of quotation marks in European languages2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-11-17
- Percentage of obese population by country in Europe (map)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-12-02
- Fertility by region in Europe2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-04-10
- /number-of-seats-in-the-national-parliament-by-country-in-europe-total-per-capita-map/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-09-13
- /english-words-spelled-the-same-but-pronounced-differently/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-08-27
- Why I stopped speed-typing with abbreviations2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-29
- /wp-content/uploads/2015/10/english-traditional-simplified.jpg2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-21
- 5 weird things you didn’t know about time zones2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-14
What Hacker News says?
14 is a common age of consent in East-EU/Balkans https://jakubmarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/age-of-co...
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/age-of-consent-europe.jpg
on “Richard M. Stallman resigns”Submitted The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory as a story · 447 points
HN discussionThanks. Got caught exactly by what this website describes [1]. “Heaven” was logical from French. [1] https://jakubmarian.com/is-it-tax-haven-or-tax-heaven-in-eng...
Comment linking /is-it-tax-haven-or-tax-heaven-in-english/
on “Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank”Submitted The Difference Between ‘Violet’ and ‘Purple’ (2015) as a story · 218 points
HN discussionIt is true. Here's a map of what Germany is called by other countries in Europe: https://jakubmarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/germany-e... Interesting that Finland/Estonia call them, essentially, Saxony. The Latvian/Lithunian name for Germany is the only one I don't understand. Does anyone know?
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/germany-european-languages.jpg
on “Pfizer is testing a pill that, if successful, could cure Covid-19”Submitted Where in Europe is electric car a good idea? as a story · 126 points
HN discussion> From what I understand, it's biodegradable above 50° C. Not something you'll find outside Death Valley. We’re not that far off in Europe. Give it a couple of years more and climate change will make sure we get there. https://jakubmarian.com/highest-recorded-temperature-by-coun...
Comment linking /highest-recorded-temperature-by-country-in-europe/
on “What if I don't want videos of my hobby time available to the world?”Submitted Map of quotation marks in European languages as a story · 85 points
HN discussion> »« is allowed but mostly used in Switzerland I think it's «...» in Switzerland, while »...« is widely used in several countries, including Germany, and is the "main" system arguably only in Denmark. See https://jakubmarian.com/map-of-quotation-marks-in-european-l...
Comment linking /map-of-quotation-marks-in-european-languages/
on “Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American”Submitted Average IQ in Europe by country (map) as a story · 30 points
HN discussionA quick google search seems to contradict your statement: https://jakubmarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/number-of... Average number of languages spoken: France: 1.8 , Germany: 2.0 , Spain: 1.7 , Portugal: 1.6 , Italy: 1.8 , Greece: 1.8 , Poland: 1.8 , Sweden: 2.5 , Finland: 2.6 , UK: 1.6
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2014/10/number-of-languages.jpg
on “No limit: AI poker bot is first to beat professionals at multiplayer game”Submitted The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory as a story · 29 points
HN discussion>> The United States has the worst education system known to science. Our graduates compete regularly at the level of third world countries This has been debunked so many times. Even if you take the data at face value, this statement cannot be backed up. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/us-students-are-laggi... Yes, we are behind a lot of countries. A lot of (VERY) small and (VERY) wealthy European countries f…
Comment linking /map-of-the-results-of-pisa-student-assessment-studies-in-mathematics-reading-and-science-in-europe/
on “U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers”Submitted French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference? as a story · 15 points
HN discussionThis is what you see if you look at the Perceptions of Corruption Index. That only looks at the public sector (not private companies), but one could reasonably assume the two correlate: https://jakubmarian.com/corruption-perceptions-index-of-euro...
Comment linking /corruption-perceptions-index-of-european-countries/
on “Earnestness”Submitted Origin of the phrase "Roger that" in English (2016) as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSanitisation habits. https://jakubmarian.com/a-study-reveals-how-many-europeans-w...
Comment linking /a-study-reveals-how-many-europeans-wash-their-hands-with-soap/
on “Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics”Submitted 5 weird things you didn’t know about time zones as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://jakubmarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/english-t...
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2015/10/english-traditional-simplified.jpg
on “Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language”Submitted Alternative mathematical notation and its applications in calculus (2012) [pdf] as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAlternative headline from "fish fish fish eat eat eat" [1,2]: Hitman hitman hitman hitman hitman hires hires hires hires hired [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231097 [2] https://jakubmarian.com/fish-fish-fish-eat-eat-eat-is-a-gram...
Comment linking /fish-fish-fish-eat-eat-eat-is-a-grammatically-correct-sentence-in-english-with-explanation/
on “Hitman hires hitman who hires hitman who hires hitman who hires hitman”Submitted Is American English ‘simplified’ and British English ‘traditional’? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSee this rather nice map: https://jakubmarian.com/map-of-quotation-marks-in-european-l... I like to call «this» the Swiss system, because in Switzerland they use it for four different official languages.
Comment linking /map-of-quotation-marks-in-european-languages/
on “Emojis paved the way for UTF-8 everywhere”Submitted European countries by percentage of population in capital metropolitan area as a story · 3 points
HN discussionActually not, it's /ˈɡɒdoʊ/ GOD-oh pronunciation is where phonetic alphabet shines[1] and English totally sucks [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe... [2] https://jakubmarian.com/english-words-spelled-the-same-but-p...
Comment linking /english-words-spelled-the-same-but-pronounced-differently/
on “Godot 3.5”Submitted Fertility by region in Europe as a story · 3 points
HN discussion440 is actually an international standard, not American. >In 1939, there was an international conference held in London that resulted in a recommendation to use A = 440 Hz, as a compromise between the various tuning systems used at the time, some of which reached beyond 450 Hz. This recommendation was further supported by the fact that the BBC required their orchestras to tune to 440 Hz instead of 439 Hz because 439…
Comment linking /the-432-hz-vs-440-hz-conspiracy-theory/
on “Acquiring absolute pitch in adulthood is difficult but possible”Submitted 5 weird things you didn’t know about time zones as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYou are getting downvoted for some reason but you are right, in fact this problem and this attitude is present in almost all countries from post-soviet block [0] Men are not allowed to be 'weak' and any display of it is usually ridiculed by society [0] https://jakubmarian.com/suicide-rates-by-country-in-europe/
Comment linking /suicide-rates-by-country-in-europe/
on “First government survey of hikikomori”Submitted Percentage of obese population by country in Europe (map) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion