Switzerland is a country that is now famed for its delicious chocolates, precise and luxurious watches, chilling alps, and high-security vaults in state-of-the-art banks.

However, in the early 1900s, when Europe was hellbent on tearing itself apart, little Switzerland somehow stayed neutral despite being surrounded by fierce enemies on all sides.

I'm not sure why they remained neutral, but the story of how they managed to do this baffles me.

There are 5 things you need to know to understand how they stayed neutral and what they'd do if they were invaded:

1) Swiss Foreign Policy
2) Switzerland's geographic advantage
3) Tunnels
4) Buying time in case of invasion
5) Secret plan to deter the Nazis from invading them.

1) Swiss Foreign Policy:

At the time, their foreign policy could be oversimplified as, "We will not take sides in the conflict, but we will continue to trade with everyone." 

And yes, this did mean they were friendly with both the allies, as well as Hitler and the axis powers.

2) Switzerland's Geographic Advantage:

The Swiss had made their commitment not to attack anyone, and so they needed a way to prevent attacks. 

The alps to the South were an impenetrable natural defence. No army in the world could march through such mountainous and cold terrain.

Besides, by invading from the South, invaders would have to march further to reach places worth attacking, because most of the population and infrastructure are North of the freezing alps. 

3) Tunnels:

Since these mountains cover 58% of Switzerland, the Swiss were experts at digging tunnels through them. 

The Swiss prepared for a possible invasion by building bunkers into these mountains and connecting them by tunnels. 

These bunkers had food, supplies and guns. 

4) Buying time in case of invasion:

The Swiss were lucky enough to have massive mountains and smart enough to know how to build bunkers, but how would they get into their defensive positions should an aggressor approach their northern borders (where most of the country was)?

Turns out the answer was simple: by bombing their own borders.

The Swiss had installed tons of TNT and other explosives on all the roads, train tracks and bridges at the borders leading into the country.

The idea was that they'd detonate those explosives when an invader approached, making it impossible for the invader to invade their land (or at the very least, buy the Swiss some time to take defensive positions in the bunkers).

5) Secret Plan to deter the Nazis from invading them:

During the 2nd world war, Switzerland needed a plan to prevent the Nazi invasion. 

The Treaty of Versailles didn't allow Germany to have an army bigger than 100,000, but Hitler did not abide by that. The allies did nothing.

Hitler wanted 'Lebensraum' or 'Living Space' for what he called the "Master Race", so he invaded parts of Germany's South-Eastern neighbours, Czechoslovakia. 

Britain then signed a deal with Germany and made it promise not to take any more land that didn't belong to them

Germany agreed... then invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia.

The allies did nothing.

Six months later, they proceeded to invade Poland in the North-East.

WWII begins

The Swiss knew that Nazi Germany wasn't playing by the rules, which is why they devised a plan to prevent the Nazis from invading them. 

Hitler had a strategy for how they would take over small Switzerland (Operation Tannenbaum), but that never happened, being deemed too costly.

However, the head of the Rhine river is in Switzerland, and rumour has it that the Swiss threatened to poison the main source of Germany's water if they invaded.

To think that while other countries were conscripting young men into the army and making ammunition, the Swiss were silently installing bombs on their bridges, stocking food in their bunker fridges, and mixing poison blows my mind.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/treasure__n/AyrUc3K

How Switzerland Stayed Neutral in WWII

Words in foreign languages shouldn't be as hard as they are to pronounce.

Speech was developed universally among humans, not exclusively to certain cultures.

Of course, it makes sense that different cultures would develop different languages, but surely humans should be able to use their speech attribute points to be able to pronounce foreign words, even if they don't understand the words themselves.

Many non-native English speakers struggle to say words like rural, or mirror, or thorough and likewise, English speakers struggle saying words with the Spanish 'r' or the Xhosa 'x', or the Dutch 'g' or the German 'ch'.

Look at it this way.

Even though cows probably don't have a common language expressed through sounds, they all make cow sounds.

By comparison, humans struggle to make human sounds that are not in their native language.

What I'm saying is that I don't stand a better chance of pronouncing the name of the Welsh town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (see video) than an elephant, whereas an elephant wouldn't have any trouble with any elephant noise.

Isn't that weird? 

Why Are Words in Foreign Languages So Hard to Pronounce?

How I taught myself to play the piano at 16. 

-----| A Thread 👇 |-----

I wasn't interested in learning to play Bach's Symphony or Mozart's Requiem.

I just wanted to play my favourite song.

I didn't have a piano at home, but fortunately, there was a baby grand piano at my school.

Most of my friends were guitarists, so I didn't have much of a reference point or any idea of where to start.

Nonetheless, I did.

Every day after school, I'd go and play the piano for at least an hour. 

At least, I tried. 

I learned by watching videos on YouTube and listening to the song over and over.

After day 3, I could roughly play the intro. Even then I messed up a lot. 

But I didn't stop. 

There were so many helpful videos and resources on the internet that I couldn't stop. 

https://twitter.com/treasure__n/status/1344352092341858305

I wanted to spend every spare moment playing the piano.

Before long, I could play the song with relative ease.

Then I learned another song.

And then another. 

Then another.

From not knowing the first thing about the piano, I'd learned how to play a few songs within weeks. 

Am I better than Mozart ever was? Well, I'd like to think so, but I have a feeling that no one else would agree.

In the immortal words of Kanye West, "I guess we'll never know."

Since graduating from high school, I haven't been playing nearly as much as I used to, but I'm still confident enough in my ability that I could sit down at an airport piano and tickle the ivories.

Learning a new skill in the 21st century is orders of magnitude easier than it was at any point in history.

If you apply these 3 principles to your learning, there is no reason why you cannot acquire any skill:

1. Plan to Learn.

I played (or rather created a cacophony) for no less than an hour in the first 3 weeks that I learned to play.

In that hour, I may as well not have even existed because I devoted that time to learning the piano.

2. Set Clear Goals.

Set your goals in terms of the outcome, not the means. 

My goal was never to learn the piano. It was always to play my 𝘧𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 song on the piano.

The goal was clear from the beginning.

By aiming for the outcome (learning my favourite song), I attained the means (playing the piano).

3. Stick Your Goals

When I first started playing, my hands didn't do what I wanted them to do.

If I had changed the goal (to learning a different song), then I would never have made any progress, and would never know how to play the piano.

It all boils down to The Goldilocks Principle: 

The learning project needs to be challenging enough to demand focus, but easy enough to make consistent progress.

If you apply these things to your learning endeavours, you can learn anything.

If you liked this thread, go and give the first tweet a ♥ and a 🔁.

How I Taught Myself The Piano Aged 16

Learn to separate confidence and eloquence from intelligence. 

Question what the charismatic says passionately with the same vigour as what the uncharismatic says feebly.

2 reasons my code doesn't work and
6 simple methods I use to debug it || A thread

There are two main reasons why I would need to debug:

1. My program throws some sort of error

2. My program doesn't do what it's supposed to do

1. Program throws an error

This can happen for a number of reasons, but this is how I get around errors:

a). Check for typos
b). Check the syntax
c). Google the error

a). Check for typos

I've found that the most common reasons I get errors are because I may have mistyped a variable/function name

This happens all the time because I think faster than I type and that invariably leads to errors

b). Check the syntax

This occurs to me especially when I code in C++

Sometimes I may try to store the result of a function in a variable that is different from the return type of the function

Or maybe I put the arguments of a function in the wrong order

Generally, I spot problems when I make a thorough inspection of my code

c). Google the error

When my program throws an error that throws me out of my depths, I resort to Google

Searching the specific error and language that I'm coding in always brings the best results. I trust StackOverflow, but other sites (like Geeks4Geeks) can be useful too

2) My program doesn't do what it's supposed to do (faulty logic)

When I skip the planning of a function because I have a vague idea of how to implement it, that function almost never does what it's supposed to do

There are 3 ways I fix my faulty logic.

a). Use comments
b). Break functions up
c). Print the variables

a). Use Comments

I use comments both to explain what each section of the code does and also (sometimes) to comment out sections of code to see how the absence of that section of code affects the rest of the program/function.

b). Break functions up

If there are many sections inside one function, I break that function up and make smaller functions using each section. 

That can narrow down the part of the function that is buggy.

c). Print the variables

This is probably the technique I use the most.

Printing what's stored in the variables gives insight into the values that the program is working with.

From there it is a matter of deducing whether I am using the variables incorrectly or if I'm operating on them incorrectly.

These are the basic ways I debug my code. There are advanced methods (like using debugging software), but that's a matter for another day ;)

How I Write Code That Does What It Is Supposed To

How Spotify (Almost) Always Recommends Songs You Love | A Thread 

If you're a Spotify user, you'll know about the Discover Weekly playlist. Every Monday you get a playlist of 50 songs that Spotify thinks you'll like. But there are around 50 million songs on Spotify, so how does it know which ones you'll like?

Spotify makes use of two main factors to accurately suggest songs that fit your taste: "Likeability Metrics" and advanced Machine Learning algorithms.

Spotify analyses a variety of aspects of each song to determine how much you like it. The song's tempo, length, artists and featured artists, how long you listen to the song before you skip it (if you choose to), &amp; many more elements all teach Spotify how much you like that song.

With that data, Spotify can find similar songs to recommend to you. But that's not the impressive part.

Spotify owes much of it's success to the underlying artificial intelligence and machine learning engines that it runs on.

Spotify has ~250 million active monthly users and among them, there are a total of 3 billion playlists. Spotify looks at the songs you have in your playlist and recommends songs you haven't heard that appear in similar playlists to yours.

That means if your playlist with 10 songs has 9 songs in common with another playlist, then the algorithm will recommend you that one song from the other playlist which doesn't appear in your playlist.

That's just one part of the multifaceted approach Spotify has to machine learning. With the extensive amounts of playlists and data that Spotify has to its disposal, it's only a matter of time before Spotify recommends songs you wish you knew earlier.

A High-Level View of the Genius Behind Spotify's Music Recommendation Algorithms

SQUIRRELS | A thread

It turns out that you could drop a squirrel out of a plane and it wouldn't die. 

Let me explain... 

Before we can understand why squirrels can survive high falls, we need to understand the way things fall. When anything moves through air, it experiences air resistance (or drag). This is caused by the friction between the air molecules and the object.

Friction, by definition, opposes motion so whichever direction an object may be going in, friction will slow it down.

Thus, the greater the height from which an object falls, the longer it falls for and therefore the less down wards acceleration it experiences (because the friction will oppose that downwards motion over more time).

Bear with me here. Gravity pulls anything with mass towards the center of the earth at an acceleration that's about 9.8m/s².

If something falls from high enough, there is a point where the it experiences so much friction that the total downward acceleration = 0m/s² (the friction cancels out acceleration due to gravity).

This is terminal velocity: when an object has reached it's highest falling speed.

As a result of having fur and a relatively low mass, squirrels have a low terminal velocity (because the fur creates more friction). This means that a squirrel's top speed while falling is slow enough for it to survive the fall.

You could drop a squirrel off your roof, the Eiffel Tower, or out of a plane and the impact would not be enough for it to die. 

Crazy right?

Squirrels

"Humans are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished."

-Daniel Gilbert

Sometimes I feel like my best is not enough and I just don't measure up. Maybe you feel like that, too. Mentally, It's a terrible place be.

The good news is that you're not going to stay that way. You will get better. The person you were 5 years ago is not the person you are today and the exact same is true for the person you will be in 5 years. 

Just keep going. 
I believe in you. 
You've got this.

The End of History Illusion

FEBRUARY 29, 2000 | A thread

February 29, 2000, was a leap day that wasn't supposed to be a leap day that was supposed to be a leap day.

Let me explain... 

The calendar year is designed so that the spring and autumn equinoxes (beginning of autumn and spring) are on the same day every year. The problem is that astronomically, a year is approximately 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 45 seconds.

This means that after a long period of time, the equinoxes would fall on a different day. That's why every four years there's an extra day in the calendar (29th Feb - leap day).

The problem with adding an extra day every four years is that we assume that the lost time is 6 hours every year as opposed to the actual 5 hours, 48 min and 45 sec.

Therefore, every 100 years (when there is supposed to be a leap year), we skip a leap year, to readjust to the 11 min and 15 seconds that we add with every leap day.

But even that readjustment is too much! So every 400 years, when we're not supposed to have a leap year (because we skip a leap year every 100 years), we do have a leap year.

As it stands, that is the best we can do to prevent seasons going out of alignment after thousands of years. Since 2000 is a year that is divisible by 4, 100 &amp; 400, it had a leap day.

That's why the 29th of February 2000 was a leap day that wasn't supposed to be a leap day, that was supposed to be a leap day.