One of my fun learning goals for 2025 is to read at least one Wikipedia page per week. I've always loved Wikipedia for the incredible source of knowledge that it is, and I think learning random things this way will be fun! This log will be used to record each page I browse and highlight the most interesting things that I learn - or at least to jot
stuff down so I don't forget!
If you happen to notice that I've gotten something wrong in my notes, please feel free to leave a comment on my profile and let me know! Wikipedia isn't infallible
and neither is my reading comprehension.
Week 4 (Jan 27) - article title
intro text
Here's What I Learned:
- list item
Week 4 (jan 20) - Great Wall of china
This week my partner showed me a picture of the great wall in a desert area, where it looked vastly different from any photo I’d seen before! This prompted me to look it up so I could learn more.
Here's What I Learned:
- The Great Wall is not, as I foolishly assumed, one single continuous wall, but a series of military constructions including the long stretches of actual wall that we often see photos of
- Building of the Great Wall or Ten Thousand Li Long Wall as it directly translates (Li being a unit of measurement which has varied over time, but has now been standardized as 500 meters) first began in 7th century BC, however the most well known sections were built from 1368-1644
- Collectively, the structures that make up the Great Wall stretch over 13,170.70 miles (as an US American, the best way I can think to comprehend this is that the most direct route from San Diego to New York is 2,851 miles)
- Early constructions were built by independent states, made mostly from stone or board frames filled with earth and gravel, and were only built to withstand attacks from small weapons such as swords and spears
- In 221 BC, China was unified and parts of the wall were destroyed to centralize ruling power
- Since transporting materials was difficult, builders would use local resources, which explains why the desert Great Wall photo that I saw looks so different from the photos most folks are familiar with!
- During the Ming Dynasty, from 168-1644, construction of the wall changed, and builders began to use brick and stone - the sections of the wall in Beijing are most developed because it was the capitol of the Ming Empire
Week 3 (jan 13) - Internet in North Korea
My partner and I have been talking a lot about internet censorship lately, and North Korea came up because of the heavy censorship by their government. I suspected we were repeating some misinformation about what life is actually like there and wanted to learn more, which led me to this page.
Here's What I Learned:
- Average citizens of North Korea have access to Kwangmyong, an intranet that links only computers within North Korea (very cool to realize that I understand exactly what this means beacause I've been watching a lot of videos about how the internet works and what came before it!)
- This page has some info about ISPs and exactly how North Koreans get their internet access, but I'm more curious about who gets internet access, what the restrictions are like, and what the intranet is like
- It's reported that those who can access the global internet are mostly government officials, people with personal ties to Kim Jong Un, and foreigners, while researchers and students are said to have access to a more restricted version of the global internet
- The source for this is a Wired article that sites the group Pscore (People for Successful Corean Reunification, a group that advocates for North Korean rights) as their source, and I beleive they're referencing this report in particular
- The Wiki page for the Kwangmyong goes into more detail about how this network functions and notes that most of its pages are usually only accessable from within
- Development on the Kwangmyong began in 1995 and the service became more widely accessable in the early 2000s, with email services established in 2006
- Content on the Kwangmyong ranges from scientific and technical documents to social media and video sharing platforms supposedly similar to Facebook and Youtube, message boards, domestic news sites, video games (though seemingly only simple ones), shopping and banking sites
- North Koreans mostly access this network through a mobile app, which also allows law enforcement to track their usage and location data
- Content on the Kwangmyong is monitored and managed by the government, but it is said that information from the global internet still makes its way there after processing
Further Reading:
After reading this page I've decided to find some interviews with North Korean defectors to hear how they describe their life, and specifically what their perception of the rest of the world was like before they managed to leave. If I find anything particularly interesting or relevant I will link it here!