From the notebook.

The notebook is the long-form side of MojQuiz. Where the quiz pages are short and timed, this is the slower thing — essays we sit with, rewrite a few times, and only publish once the argument actually hangs together. Topics circle the same questions in different ways: how memory works, why active recall outperforms rereading, what cognitive-science research says about effective study, and how trivia ends up being one of the more useful low-stakes ways people sharpen their general knowledge.

We try to keep two rules. First, cite the source. When a piece references a study — the testing effect, the spacing effect, sleep-dependent consolidation, the Method of Loci — we name the researcher and the year so you can follow it up: Roediger and Karpicke (2006) on retrieval practice; Cepeda et al. (2008) on spacing; Walker and Stickgold on sleep; Maguire and colleagues on London cabbies and hippocampal volume. Second, don't pad. Most of what gets written about learning is filler. The notebook tries to be the opposite — every section earns its place or gets cut.

If a piece changes materially after publication we mark it with an "Updated" date in the article header so you know what's been revisited. Our full editorial standards — research process, citation policy, AI use, corrections workflow — sit on a dedicated page. The archive below is newest first.