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Here's the blog post

https://improbable.com/2026/03/10/the-ig-nobel-prize-ceremon...

> Abrahams explains: “The city of Zurich and its institutions rapidly moved mountains (only metaphorically — in Switzerland it is illegal to physically move mountains) and committed to make this possible. Switzerland has nurtured many unexpected good things — Albert Einstein’s physics, the world economy, and the cuckoo clock leap to mind — and is again helping the world appreciate improbable people and ideas.”

I would like to point out the cuckoo clocks originate from the Black Forest in southwestern Germany - not Switzerland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock


Makes me think there could be a big cognitive difference when playing with Lego as well, for example, divergent vs convergent thinking.

Actual article was in the evening standard, but like all things Rory Sutherland, it’s worth to watch him tell the story: https://youtu.be/OTOKws45kCo?si=jbTdx3YCGkZv3Akb

For those who want more of him, check out his classic TED talk from decades ago: “Lessons from an ad man”

https://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_...


I’m a subscriber with the mobile app and the “video” is a still image for me.


I have a pet theory about increasing phone sizes

> Screen size is area (x^2) and battery size is volume (x^3). As battery life is a critical feature, a bigger screen supports (a nonlinear) better battery life.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44588733


This does not square with especially Apple's unending obsession to make phones as thin as possible. Which is doubly stupid when it makes them so fragile that the first thing you do after taking it out of the box is to wrap it in a thick rubber shell.


What obsession about making thin phones? iPhones are pretty thick and have been that way for years. The Air being an outlier, of course, but it's an intentionally thin phone in a lineup of thick and heavy ones.


I think it’s even better than that. Your cellular modem (on all the time) scales at O(1) with phone size. Same for on-board tasks that do not involve the screen. Powering your RAM (also on all the time) is similar, but larger (more expensive) phones may tend to have more RAM.


I had a Sony Xperia Z1 mini, that was close to the size of a SE but had double the battery lifetime.


If Tesla is a meme, is it worth a trillion dollars ?


This is the much better question :)


"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - (probably not) John Steinbeck

I guess with inflation we can update the quote to “temporarily embarrassed billionaires”


Socialism never took off in America because Americans know that disincentivizing work shrinks the economy and makes everyone poorer.




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