Categorie: Overig
Who will conquer the world?
Risk has been one of the most beloved board games since its release more than sixty years ago. With this classic board game, a fun evening with your friends or family can soon turn into an hours-long war where alliances are forged, troops are lost and battles are won. This family game has brought a lot of joy as well as quarrels and has produced many victors over the years. But what exactly is the best way to conquer the world? Is there a way to ensure your victory? In this article I will […]
Estimated reading time: 9 minuten
Embrace the spook
Scratching noises, soft but certainly close and drawing closer. You wake up and listen to them getting louder. Right in front of your bedroom door, the noise stops. The door handle starts to move down and the door is opening. Startled you reach for the light on your nightstand and turn it on. Movement at the doorpost. A hand, black and rotten, as if the owner has been dead for years, pulls back from the doorpost, back into the hallway. You scream. You hear loud stumbling noises in the hallway and the next moment the […]
Estimated reading time: 3 minuten
Do you really need a VPN?
Are you reading this article using a VPN? If so, what made you decide to buy one? If not, did you ever consider getting one? Chances are quite small you have never heard of them, as everywhere you surf, advertisements flood you with the advantages of using a VPN. Many famous youtubers are getting sponsored by VPN companies to inform you about discount opportunities at the start of their videos. They all make claims about how you are unsafe on the internet and how using a VPN will solve these problems and wholly protect your privacy. […]
Estimated reading time: 5 minuten
Do we need medication to cure diseases?
The whole world has been undergoing quite some big changes since the start of the year 2020, all due to the new disease COVID-19. The scientists are in a hurry to find either a preventative vaccine or a curing medicine. However, what if something as harmless as a sugar pill could cure the disease? Now, I’m not saying this would work in this situation, but this kind of treatment has worked for different situations. This mysterious idea is called the placebo effect. What is the placebo effect? The placebo effect is based on the idea […]
Stop the Democracy
The liberal democracy. For long, we have been led (or rather misled) to believe that the liberal democracy is the ideal system of governance. On one hand, it is true that democracies tend to give their subjects great freedom and prosperity. However, on the other hand, decision-making in democracies is negatively affected by emotions and biases. The average individual is politically uninformed, biased, and even incompetent, resulting in irrational decision-making. Perhaps, in our increasingly complex world, we need another system of governance. A system where rational political decisions are made to achieve optimal outcomes. Epistocracy […]
Never lose ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ again
We all suffer from it from time to time. You have just had a quite big meal with your friends and the last thing you would like to do is wash the dishes. To decide who will do the terrible job, you play a game of ‘Rock, paper, scissors’. However, how great would it be to never lose the game again? That every time you are at the point of deciding who will do the dirty job, you can have the winning strategy. The rules of the game are very simple. Scissors cut paper. Paper […]
What is true randomness?
The shuffle function on Spotify is an easy way to listen to music without having to pick some numbers. However, once in a while we all seem to recognize patterns in the numbers that we listen to. The shuffle function does not seem to be so random at all, so are these numbers truly randomly picked? This recognition of a sequence is partially caused by the functioning of our brain. It is very easy for the brain to distinguish patterns in seemingly random things like shuffled music or dice roles. Especially when these “processes” are […]
7 tips voor de leukste podcast
Podcasts zijn tegenwoordig erg populair. Naar schatting luistert één op de vijf zeker eens per maand naar een podcast. Voordelen zijn dat je ze wanneer je maar wilt kunt luisteren en je niet naar een scherm hoeft te kijken. Daarnaast is er een enorme keuze aan genres: van sport en economie tot eten en politiek. Om de keuzestress wat te verlichten heb ik 7 leuke en interessante podcasts uitgekozen met elk een andere genre. Politiek: Haagse Zaken Haagse Zaken is de politieke podcast van NRC. Elke week praat politiek redacteur Lamyae Aharouay haar luisteraars bij […]
Estimated reading time: 3 minuten
The ‘Do-Nothing’ Democrats
In late 2019, U.S. President Donald J. Trump caused widespread uproar amongst the Democratic electorate. The turmoil came after the president called the Democrats ‘Do-Nothing’. Okay. Stop right here. I know what you’re thinking. First of all, this is not going to be the nth article talking about President Trump. In fact, this article will be solely dedicated to the topic of widespread public disagreement, that is: controversy. Many people associate controversy with something ‘bad’. Hence, when certain controversial topics become the topic of debate, a heated exchange of views is nothing out of the […]
Dark humor to lighten the mood
‘If the coronavirus doesn’t kill me, being stuck in the house with my wife for three weeks will.’ Tasteless or funny? Since the lockdown, the number of jokes concerning the current pandemic has grown day by day. And while some may take offense from this dark type of humor, others just use them as a laugh to pass the time. They might be tasteless, but for most it’s just a distraction from the current situation. While sitting at home and being separated from the world, we use humor to connect with others. No matter in […]
Estimated reading time: 3 minuten
The Duisenberg Pranksters
Sometime in the future, when physical college lectures are once again allowed, one hundred students are attending a lecture of the Multivariate Calculus course. The students, after hearing multiple savvy jokes about their intellect and ability regarding calculus, decide to play a prank on the professor and his colleagues. They plan to boobytrap some of the one hundred doors on the 7-th floor of the Duisenberg building. However, knowing that the professors are quite brilliant, they need to allocate the boobytraps in a manner that is hard to figure out. Near the end of the […]
Estimated reading time: 3 minuten
The many-worlds theory
The many-worlds theory or also know as many-worlds interpretation is one of the two most supported theories within quantum mechanics. The theory was first proposed by Hugh Everett at the age of 26. That is also the reason why this theory was claimed to be nonsense by many other more experienced physicists. Though in the 60s and 70s the theory became more popular under the name many-worlds interpretation. The theory basically claims that there are a number of parallel universes created at every instance. The theory was concocted to solve the problem of measuring in […]