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For math/programming, it's better to keep it short in my experience. But for other things, like knowledge from books, I use both methods, here are some examples:

---- What happen to slaves in Africa after the slave trade was abolished by the America/UK in the early + mid 1800s?

simply led to a redeployment of the slaves, who were now used within Africa rather than in the Americas

“So the abolition of the slave trade, rather than making slavery in Africa wither away, simply led to a redeployment of the slaves, who were now used within Africa rather than in the Americas. Moreover, many of the political institutions the slave trade had wrought in the previous two centuries were unaltered and patterns of behavior persisted. For example, in Nigeria in the 1820s and ’30s the once-great Oyo Kingdom collapsed. It was undermined by civil wars and the rise of the Yoruba city-states, such as Illorin and Ibadan, that were directly involved in the slave trade, to its south. In the 1830s, the capital of Oyo was sacked, and after that the Yoruba cities contested power with Dahomey for regional dominance. They fought an almost continuous series of wars in the first half of the century, which generated a massive supply of slaves. Along with this went the normal rounds of kidnapping and condemnation by oracles and smaller-scale raiding. Kidnapping was such a problem in some parts of Nigeria that parents would not let their children play outside for fear they would be taken and sold into slavery.”

Excerpt From: Daron Acemoglu. “Why Nations Fail.” iBooks.

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What are two reasons why large scale wars no longer occur ?

1. Price of war has gone up because of Atomic weapons. 2. Weath is no longer is physical goods (gold,etc) but in the minds of the citizen (Silicon Valley).

Scholars have sought to explain this happy development in more books and articles than you would ever want to read yourself, and they have identified several contributing factors. First and foremost, the price of war has gone up dramatically. The Nobel Peace Prize to end all peace prizes should have been given to Robert Oppenheimer and his fellow architects of the atomic bomb. Nuclear weapons have turned war between superpowers into collective suicide, and made it impossible to seek world domination by force of arms.

Secondly, while the price of war soared, its profits declined. For most of history, polities could enrich themselves by looting or annexing enemy territories. Most wealth consisted of material things like fields, cattle, slaves and gold, so it was easy to loot it or occupy it. Today, wealth consists mainly of human capital and organizational know-how. Consequently it is difficult to carry it off or conquer it by military force.

Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens (p. 372). Harper. Kindle Edition.

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Basically, I create cards with short answers but provide the context (usually the paragraph I found it in). This method works extremely well for remember everything you read. I could write a more technical blog post on this if people actually care and find this interesting.




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