🏫 The studying trick big tech swears by starts with thinking like a kindergartner

This simple mind hack exposes the gaps you did not know you had.

It’s often said that you don’t really understand a subject until you can teach it. And if you can teach it to kindergartners? Then you’ve got it mastered, or that’s what tech geniuses and experts say in this story by Erik Barnes. The best way to really get your head around something complex is to imagine trying to explain it to someone who’s five.

The power of this approach, conveniently dubbed ELI5, is in breaking down complexity into simpler units. When you imagine an audience that’s just out of diapers, you force yourself to clarify and refine your thinking. It’s a method that works well in coding, finance, medicine, and more. Erik breaks down how you can use this kid-friendly strategy to walk into your next test, project, or interview with actual confidence.

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🤳 Aaron Paul’s one-word reality check from his six-year-old daughter

One quick moment snapped him out of a habit most of us don’t even notice.

Aaron Paul, the star of Breaking Bad and generally cool dad, was doing what way too many of us do without even giving it a thought. He was on his phone. And when his six-year-old daughter bounded into the room full of excitement, ready to share something she’d discovered, he barely looked up.

Afterward, when he’d finished his email, he found her and apologized. It was a good apology, too, the kind that ends with a promise to change. But when he said he’d put his phone away around her, she responded with a heartbreaking and dubious “Really?”

Aaron says it cracked him open and changed his habits. In this story by Ryan Reed, we also get research from UC Santa Barbara that shows phone use around kids is doing more emotional damage than most of us realize. This story sits right at the intersection of guilt, hope, and the possibility of change, exactly where a lot of parents live.

🎨 This color test is breaking brains (and gender stereotypes)

Are you one of the 1% who can ace this visual color quiz?

A ten-question color quiz from UK eye care brand Lenstore is making people question everything they thought they knew about colors. It looks simple. It is not. As Tod Perry reports, less than 1% of the first 2,000 brave test-takers earned a perfect score. (I’m a trained graphic artist and I whiffed on #2!) Most folks barely cleared the halfway mark.

Women are outperforming men overall, which tracks with long-standing research on color perception. Age matters too. People in their early thirties are at their peak chromatic powers, while scores drop sharply after seventy.

The global breakdown adds even more curiosity fuel. Cyprus tops the leaderboard, Spain brings up the rear, and the differences raise fun questions without making any scientific claims about which nations truly see color “best.”

See the entire leaderboard and take the quiz yourself in the full story.

And what did we learn?

Heliotrope is a soft violet pink, but as reader Greg (no relation) points out, “It is also a plant with purple flowers and a pleasant but strong scent.”

To my delight, almost one in four of you

On November 18, 1928, Steamboat Willie premiered, ushering in a new era of synchronized sound and animation. It was just the first of many innovations Disney would bring to the world. Most would argue that those innovations changed entertainment for the better. But one of Disney’s most lasting contributions wasn’t cinematic; it was legal: a long campaign to reshape American copyright law.

Copyright exists to ensure creators can profit from their work, usually expiring after the author’s life plus a set number of years. Yet Steamboat Willie premiered 97 years ago, and only just entered the public domain in 2024. Why the delay? Because Disney successfully lobbied to extend copyright terms twice, culminating in the 1998 “Mickey Mouse Protection Act.” 

Now, nearly a century after his debut, the earliest version of Mickey Mouse is finally free for remix, and has become the poster critter for copyright reform.

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