It's World Kindness Day. One of the simplest and wisest views on kindness from Brené Brown. Can you be clearer with someone today? It's kinder.

Roses are red, roses are blue, depending on their velocity relative to you. (from __Dawn__Amber__ on Reddit)

The remarkable illusion of a mirage

November is usually a good month to start thinking about snerdling

A collective noun is a word used to describe a group of individuals or things — most commonly groups of animals. The best capture character and imagination in a single word. As there appears to be no established authority, may the best collective noun win. A torment of personal trainers?

Do you know what Halloween means and where it comes from? Excerpt from Big Ideas Little Pictures - bigideas.pictures

Heating people, heating spaces With well-insulated houses and central heating as standard, I always grew up with heating the space as how you stay warm in the winter. A colleague once shared with me that where he'd lived, they thought of it as heating people, not spaces when looking to stay warm.

A tool for making sense of complex problems Rich pictures are a systems thinking tool to visualise what you know or think about a problem space — without needing a strict method, structure, or artistic skill.

I absolutely loved listening back to yesterday’s podcast episode with author and etymologist Mark Forsyth - @Inkyfool True to form, Mark is both fascinating and at times hilarious. Have a listen: podcast.sketchplanations.com/ordering-adj... Or search Sketchplanations wherever you listen

The heart is a really, really amazing thing. I was always curious to know what the 120/80 numbers I'd get in a blood pressure reading actually meant. Voila. -- This is not medical advice, and I am not a doctor.

How to remember if you did something A simple way to remember if you locked your car, turned the gas off, watered the plants or whatever, is to do something unusual around the time that you do it.

Advice from Jane Goodall's mum. Maybe your kids will hear what you tell them after all. Jane shared these lessons from her mother in the course I took from her on MasterClass

It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not. — Thich Nhat Hanh

In the most recent podcast episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with @grantdraws.bsky.social We started with Apricity and quickly got into all sorts of fun words and how and why to draw them. Have a listen. podcast.sketchplanations.com/words-of-won...

1. Cats always land on their feet 2. Falling toast always lands butter side down So what will happen if you strap buttered toast to the back of a falling cat? Presumably, the cat righting reflex will fight against the pull of the buttered toast. Please don't drop cats.

Fast-moving layers bring novelty and experimentation, while slower layers provide stability and memory. Together, the layers support, reinforce, and challenge each other—creating robust, adaptable societies. "Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power." — Stewart Brand

Been thinking about this one a lot this year. Gaslighting is manipulating someone psychologically such that they start to doubt their own sanity. Lying or deceiving persistently plants seeds of self-doubt in others' minds. If it continues people can start to question their own reality.

Here's a simple illusion for you. Our minds love taking mental shortcuts. The psychology of what we actually do when we read is much more complex and fascinating than I first realised—as I find so often the case with things. PS Did you catch the repeated 'are', too?

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is fond of saying: "Timing, perseverance and ten years of trying will eventually make you seem like an overnight success."

What makes science science and engineering engineering? Aerospace engineer Theodore Von Kármán on Scientists and Engineers: Scientists discover the world that exists; Engineers create the world that never was. — Theodore Von Kármán

How to instantly feel better? Let's talk about it on the podcast! sketchplanations.com/podcast or on Spotify and Apple podcasts

9-Enders (nine-enders) Nine-enders are people in the last year of a decade, say, 29, 39, 49, 59. Adam Alter and Hal Hershfield, who introduced the term, propose that as we approach the end of a decade we are more likely to do a kind of "meaning audit" of our lives.

When a figure skater pulls into one of those incredible spins, they provide one of the clearest examples of the conservation of angular momentum. More: sketchplanations.com/the-figure-s...

The Learning Pit James Nottingham's metaphor of The Learning Pit illustrates the struggle before "getting it."

Chiasmus: arranging words, phrases, or ideas in the structure A-B-B-A The symmetry of thought of this rhetorical technique makes language more memorable, striking, and often more persuasive. Chiasmus can involve just ideas or the exact repetition of words, called antimetabole.

The Goldilocks Zone is the range around a star that’s not too hot or too cold to support liquid water. Liquid water is vital to sustaining life like we have on Earth, so fortunately for us, Earth sits in the Goldilocks Zone.

In a classic Murphy's Law style example, I've concluded that I generally misunderstood Murphy's Law. It doesn't have to highlight all the bad luck I have. Instead, it can be a call to consider what can go wrong, and given there's a chance that it will, prepare for that so it doesn't.

The Union Jack The Origins of the Union Jack The Union Jack, one of the most recognizable flags in the world, is a combination of three historic flags. It represents the union of nations within the United Kingdom at the time the Union Jack flag design was created and is made up of:

Handy conversion between Fahrenheit and Celsius Like learning a new language or switching between miles and kilometres, the best way is to immerse yourself in a new scale so you just know what 55°F or 24°C feels like. But if you haven't reached that point, it's helpful to have a few benchmarks.

Animals that regenerate While our bodies will generally make light work of repairing a cut in our skin or even healing a bone, some animals are able to go much further.

Ways of making yourself or others do things 101: Grandma's Rule The technique of sequencing a preferred activity contingent on completing a less preferred one is known as Grandma's Rule. It follows the pattern: First ____. Then ____. Grandma's Rule is also known as the Premack Principle.

How do you remember the difference between stalactites and stalagmites in a cave? And how do you spell them? A simple mnemonic that’s helped me is this:

Topography and bathymetry: overland and underwater cousins Bathymetry is like topography flipped upside down. Bathymetry is the study of the ocean depths, underwater features and terrain. It's everything from the water's surface downwards rather than upwards.

A short article for paid subscribers on my favourite sketches of 2024. This time: The Writer's in the Writing, the Artist's in the Art: open.substack.com/pub/sketchpl...

The start of the famous moral dilemma of The Trolley Problem.

Second cousins once removed. Even when you’ve figured out how family relations work, families, in just a few generations, can get surprisingly complex. I won’t pretend this one doesn’t require a little study.

Looking Back in Time The farther you look, the farther back in time you see So, as you look up in the sky, it's also like looking at a map of different times. Crazy.

Banner cloud Banner clouds can form on the side of a high or exposed peak and seem to stick to the mountain face like a banner, even on an otherwise cloudless day.

"I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in." — John Muir Is there some "out" that you can make your "in" this week?

Chickens and pigs is a metaphor for who's got skin in the game. Or to leave metaphors behind, who's involved in a project vs who is fully committed.

The reality is that most actions have benefits and costs. A halfpinion is a handy term for when someone is ignoring one half of a topic. When you only consider one side of an issue, often just the benefits, you don't have a full opinion, you just have a halfpinion.

While both are excellent starts to an evening, it's easy to mix up a bellini with a blini, if only because you might mishear one for the other. What's the difference between a bellini and a blini?

A new piano track out on all platforms Listen: ditto.fm/outro-jono-hey The cover artwork is from the first camp on our climb of Volcán Tajumulco, Guatemala, from 2009. One of the more spectacular views I've had the pleasure of enjoying. Hope you enjoy it!

From congested equilibrium comes the maxim in travel planning circles: "You can't build your way out of congestion." I learned about this and the trials and challenges of travel planners in the book Good to go? Decarbonising Travel After the Pandemic by Professor David Metz.

Pollution is highly localized: take the back streets

Michael Caine: Ducks look calm as they glide along the surface of the water but they're paddling like hell underneath. When you're doing your preparation right, it sometimes looks so good that people watching you make the mistake of assuming it's all...effortless. In my experience, it never is.

Think cradle to cradle From Michael Braungart and William McDonough’s groundbreaking book Cradle to Cradle (you should buy it just to feel the book itself). Production and use need not be a straight line. It has to be a loop. Known often as the circular economy.

One of the seeming contradictions in a company's journey is that, as Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, points out, to get to scale, you first have to do things that don't scale. AirBnB's Brian Chesky: Do it until it hurts, then automate it away. More at: sketchplanations.com/do-things-th...

Awkward moments are an opportunity to learn about ourselves and grow. Just one gem from a fascinating and hilarious conversation with Melissa Dahl about awkwardness. Have a listen! podcast.sketchplanations.com/the-awkwardn... This sketch appears only in the book Big Ideas Little Pictures.

Bycatch Bycatch is other stuff you caught when trying to catch something else. Bycatch makes me sad. Any fish or sea creatures can be caught unintentionally during fishing, and it also affects larger animals such as sharks, turtles and of course dolphins.