Pigeons were used in WW1 and WW2 for communication. Paddy the pigeon [0] flew 230 miles across the English channel to relay the success of the D-Day invasion.
I've known about pigeons being used for communications and even bottle-nose dolphins being used for clearing mines in WW2. But I'm just curious if they've ever attempted to use crows for reconnaissance or early warning systems. Especially for use at something like forward operating bases that are always prone to enemy ambushes. Or maybe even using crows to alert of enemy movements.
I watched a video earlier today on a YT channel I follow called Curious Droid. This episode went into how the U.S military had a hard time determining vietcong troop movements due to the thick jungle foilege. So DARPA developed this concept of electronic fenses, where the airforce would drop these sensor packages into the jungle. The package would have sesmic sensors and microphones to capture movement of enemy forces through the jungle. The problem was that this being the 1960s/70s - the batteries only lasted couple of weeks. Also data storage and tranmission rates weren't advance enough at the time to send that information to a centralize location far from the contested area. So they had to have an aircraft loitering above to collect this data and then fly the collected data to a processing facility in Thailand. By the time the data was classified and analyized, the intelligence collected wasn't really actionable for the commanders in the field.
I find it fascinating how scientists still haven't definitively figured out how magnetoreception in birds works. Humans have utilized homing pigeons for thousands of years [1], but it is still a mystery as to how it works. To quote a paper from 2019 [2]:
> Yet in spite of considerable progress in recent years, many details are still unclear, among them details of the radical pair processes and their transformation into a nervous signal, the precise location of the magnetite-based receptors and the centres in the brain where magnetic information is combined with other navigational information for the navigational processes.
Hilariously, during WW2 there was also a research project to build guided missiles using pigeons in the nose cone. "The nose cone of the missile would be split into three compartments, with a lens projecting an image of the intended target onto a screen at the front. A pigeon in each compartment, trained by operant conditioning to recognise the target, would peck at it continually."
Triangulation of the sender (or the receiver by way of emissions of the receiving set) was a problem in WWII. There's also the problem of traffic analysis. I would think birds would be immune to both.
These days, I ask Claude/ChatGPT to create the regex and usually I know enough to be able to verify it. To double check, I'll start a new conversation and ask it what the regex does and verify it that way.
You can also ask it to create unit tests with edge cases. It might not catch every edge case, but usually it will create edge cases that you might not think of when writing unit tests yourself.
A note-taking app that is similar to Obsidian where I can link notes to each other.
Some differences include no naming rules (a lot of my note titles have a colon) except uniqueness, custom clusters so my knowledge graph is manageable.
I’m going to add different note types (i.e. not every note is .md, but have .csv and .ical as well) that can be expanded and linked within a note.
It’s written in React, hosted on AWS (so not an Electron app… yet), and CodeMirror for the editor.
Seems like a great idea/book, but I've never managed to make any of the advice work, despite trying pretty hard. I suspect this has something to do with having ADHD. In general there are a ton of productivity books out there that seem to be great advice, but are missing some steps that make it possible to implement for some people with ADHD.
In the same category, I also love the book "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, but also haven't gotten much real world traction from it.
Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg might be a better book for you. The key to building habits is to start with a habit that is ridiculously small and once you feel like you've got that locked in, you can add another ridiculously small habit on top of it.
e.g. To build a flossing habit, floss just one tooth a day. Once you've got into the habit of pulling out floss and flossing just one tooth, you can move onto flossing two teeth and so on.
If at any point you feel resistance to doing the bigger habit you're trying to build up, you can always revert back to doing the initial tiny habit of flossing just one tooth.
I'll take a look at it, but after years of basically trying every productivity hack and book on the planet with no success, I've decided to mostly limit myself to productivity tools written by and for people with ADHD. Is there a specific reason you think this version is more effective with ADHD?
A small habit isn't easier for me, because the difficulty of the task isn't the obstacle: I simply don't seem to have the part of the brain other people have, where they can choose what they are going to be doing.
It feels sort of like people are trying to tell me I could just walk through a doorway if I exercised a tiny bit to get in good enough shape to just walk a few feet like they do... but actually I have a brick wall where everyone else has a doorway, and I'm already 10 times stronger than they are from trying to push against a solid brick wall for years, but still can't walk through a brick wall.
I think there needs to be some feedback that the goal is sustainable, one tooth a day to an adhd mind is just as bad as not doing anything as it's still a very tall staircase to climb. Too granular a step
There is a reward at the end. That is an important requirement for this method.
It’s easy to try this out in a little more structured way and with assistance. Tiny habits [1] has a free five day program where you can try it and seek assistance from a person trained in this method. I tried it and it didn’t really stick for me, but I wouldn’t say that it was a total waste of my time. I could relate to the advice and I plan to read the book sometime.
Has someone properly summarized Atomic Habits in an essay or perhaps a podcast episode? I'd rather just read an essay or listen to an episode repeatedly.
Funny you'd mention it; I write summaries of most non-fiction books I read and Atomic Habits stood out in particular in that its summary runs only about a single page. I reproduce it here, though you may want to copy it into something that can render markdown. (On a side note, I every so often mourn the fact that there seems to be no market for concise books. I think the publishers are right about this, padding really does increase their profit and makes it easier to justify the price of a book to the average buyer. Still, many books would just be way better books if they were one fifth as long.):
# Identity
There are only two possible foundations for long-term behavioural change:
1. a re-prioritisation of personal values
2. a substitution of an existing behavior $X$, which is based on a personal value $V$, with a different behavior $Y$, which is also based on $V$.
# Dealing with Existing Habits
Before we can effectively build new habits, we need to get a handle on our current ones. All habits serve you in some way—even the bad ones—which is why you repeat them.
# Implementation Intentions
Implementation intentions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implementation_intention) have been empirically shown to be effective. The idea behind implementation intentions is to eliminate ambiguity. Explicitly write down WHEN and WHERE you will do WHAT.
Write down a list of implementation intentions for all habits you wish to develop.
# Three Layers of Behavior Change
1. Identity
2. Process
3. Outcome
Identity is what you believe, process is what you do, outcome is what you get.
Systems lead to outcomes.
# Four Steps of Habit Formation
1. Cue (triggers behavior)
2. Craving (desired change of state)
3. Response (behavior performed to achieve change of state)
4. Reward (outcome delivered by response)
Of these four, only cues can reliably be manipulated. Design your environment around the habits you wish to develop. The two most common cues are time and location.
## Breaking Habits
1. Remove the cues from the environment.
2. Expose how the bad habit inadequately addresses the underlying motive that caused its formation. Clearly describe the negative consequences of the habit in writing.
3. Replace the bad habit with a good one that more effectively addresses the underlying motive.
# Habit Scorecard
You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them. To create your scorecard, write down everything you do for an entire day. At the end of the day, mark each behavior as either bad, neutral, or good.
# Underlying Motives
* *Reducing uncertainty*
* Conserve energy
* Social bonding
* Social approval
Cravings are arbitrary manifestations of underlying motives. Evolution hasn't set up our brain to reward e.g. playing video games in particular. But it did set up our brain to reward a reduction in uncertainty.
Products and services don't create fundamentally new motives, they latch on to existing ones.
# Miscellaneous
Without good health habits, you will always seem to be short on energy.
It is easier to associate a new habit with a new context, than to build a new habit in the face of competing cues.
You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it. This means that trying to resist temptation is an ineffective strategy. In the short-run, you can choose to overpower temptation. In the long-run, environmental cues overpower you.
Every day has multiple decisive moments, where split-second decisions decide how you will spend the next one to three hours. It's easier to continue what you are doing than to start it.
In deliberate thoughts, as well as in speech, always use formulations of the form "I go for a run", not "I have to go for a run", regardless of how you feel about it.
Every habit is about overcoming obstacles to get what you want. You don't want the habit itself, you want what it delivers.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_(pigeon)