How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler

by Ryan North

Scientists are often seen as turbonerds, but the philosophical foundations of science are actually those of pure punk-rock anarchy: never respect authority, never take anyone’s word on anything, and test all the things you think you know to confirm or deny them for yourself.

A rock tied to a string that can swing freely is called a pendulum, and it turns out that one second is the time it takes any pendulum on Earth—regardless of weight—to swing from one end to the other, as long as the pendulum is 99.4cm long.

Avoid introducing tobacco to your civilization, and you will save yourself billions of dollars and millions of lives and prevent the invention of vaping.

The mosquito is one of the few animals that, if removed, would have no lasting negative impact on the world: the activities they perform in the ecosystem (feeding birds, some light pollination) are already performed by other insects. The only legacy would be fewer human deaths from malaria.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

the same ingredients in bread, when turned into beer, have been used as an incentive to get people to switch to farming!

Congratulations! You have used the labor of microscopic animals to produce a more pleasant bread, then killed them the instant they were no longer useful. Millions of these microscopic animal corpses are baked into every slice of bread you eat.

Don’t let anyone tell you bread is vegetarian.

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Eyeglasses were first invented in the 1200s CE in India and brought to Europe through Italy.

We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

I think you travel to search, and come back home to find yourself there.

Is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?

the way humans can quickly and almost reflexively reject information that contradicts their established beliefs is named the Semmelweis reflex.