An independent library
Health, food, technology, repair, books. I try things, I read the actual research, and then I write the short honest version: in plain language, with the sources attached, free to read and with nothing to sign up for.
A book, a circuit board, a robotic arm, a knife. On this site a page can be about any one of them. That is precisely the point.
The idea
The internet is not short of advice. It is short of advice you can trace back to something. Wize2Know is small and deliberately slow: every page has to earn its place.
Most of what is here started as something I did, fixed, cooked, installed or lived through. Where I am reporting other people’s work rather than my own, the page says so in the first paragraph.
Claims about health, safety or money are traced back to the original: a study, a regulator, a manufacturer’s own documentation. Not a blog quoting a blog quoting a headline.
Technical words are used when they are the right words, and then immediately explained. A page has failed if you need a second page to understand it.
No account, no newsletter wall, no cookie banner theatre, no analytics following you around. You read the page, you take what is useful, you leave.
The library
Each guide lives in its own folder on this domain, stands on its own, and stays readable without an account. Unfinished projects are announced as unfinished: no dead links, no invented dates.
Health · Published
Intermittent fasting and Ramadan, explained without the noise. What actually happens in the body hour by hour, a live fasting timer with a Ramadan mode, a bilingual glossary of the terms everyone uses and nobody defines, food and drink guidance, and a frank section on who should not fast.
Home · In progress
The practical household guide: what actually removes what and which cleaning products must never meet, the maintenance worth putting on a calendar, and the small repairs with a clear stopping point. A running toilet, a dripping tap, a blocked trap. Jobs that need a licensed trade get a plain "stop here and call someone" instead of instructions.
Car · In progress
Car maintenance for the owner who wants to do what is reasonable themselves and understand what a garage is charging for. Oil, filters, bulbs, tyres, battery, reading a fault code, what a job should cost. Brakes, steering and airbags are explained rather than instructed. Some things are not a DIY page, and saying so is part of the job.
Start here
This is the format of the site in miniature: one idea per card, explained in a few lines, with the original source at the bottom. If the link does not convince you, do not believe me.
Rice takes up more arsenic from soil and water than other grains. Rinsing helps a little; boiling it in excess water like pasta and pouring the water away removes noticeably more. It costs you nothing but a colander.
↗US Food and Drug AdministrationThe US standards body now advises long passphrases over short scrambled ones, and advises against forcing routine password changes, because people respond by picking weaker passwords with a number on the end. Four unrelated words beat P@ssw0rd!.
↗NIST Special Publication 800-63BPerishable food left between 4°C and 60°C should not be eaten after two hours out of the fridge, or after one hour if the room is above 32°C. Bacteria multiply in that band regardless of whether the food still looks and smells fine.
↗USDA Food Safety and Inspection ServiceLithium ion cells age chiefly with heat and with time spent sitting at a full charge. Keeping a phone out of hot cars and direct sun, and not leaving it pinned at 100% all night, does more for its lifespan than any charging ritual.
↗Apple, battery documentationThe sensor degrades. Test alarms monthly, and replace the whole unit ten years from its manufacture date, which is printed on the back, not the date you installed it. A silent working alarm is the cheapest safety equipment you will ever own.
↗National Fire Protection AssociationPress and hold the space bar on the iPhone keyboard and the whole keyboard becomes a trackpad. Slide your thumb to move the cursor precisely instead of poking at the text and missing. It has been there for years and almost nobody is told.
↗Apple, iPhone User GuideThe subjects
These are the areas this site writes in. They have little to do with one another, and that is the point: the same honest questions work whether the subject is a fast, a robot, or a dripping tap.
Fasting, sleep, movement, what the research says and where it is still arguing with itself.
Technique, staples, what is worth buying, and the small things that make cooking easier.
What these systems genuinely do, what they cannot do, and how to use them without being fooled.
The machines being built now, where they are honestly useful, and where the demo is doing the work.
Settings worth changing, features hidden in plain sight, and making hardware last longer.
Doing it yourself: what is genuinely repairable, the right tool, and when to call somebody.
What is worth the hours, notes from the ones that changed how I think, and how to read more.
Passwords, documents, the boring paperwork that protects you, and avoiding common traps.
How to get good at something on purpose, and how to tell a real source from a confident one.
The method
Five steps, always the same. They are written here so you can hold me to them when a page falls short.
Something I needed to know for myself: a health question, a broken thing, a piece of technology everybody was talking about and nobody was explaining. If I did not need the answer, the page does not get written.
The study rather than the article about the study. The regulator rather than the summary. The manufacturer’s own manual rather than the forum post. Where the evidence is thin or genuinely disputed, that becomes part of what the page says instead of being smoothed over.
Some things can be tested by one person over weeks or months. Those get reported as experience, with the limits of a sample of one stated out loud. Everything else is reported as reading, and labelled as such.
The first draft is always too long and too pleased with itself. What survives is the part you could act on tomorrow, plus enough of the reasoning that you are not asked to take it on faith.
Evidence moves and products change. Pages carry the date they were last reviewed, corrections are made in place rather than quietly deleted, and if you can show me something here is wrong, I would rather know than be left looking confident.
About
My name is Papa Cissé. I write this site because I have spent too many hours looking for clear answers and finding copied content. What I publish is what I would have wanted to read at the moment I needed it: for myself first, then for whoever wants it.
Nothing here replaces a doctor, a pharmacist, an electrician, a lawyer or an accountant. It is written to help you ask them better questions, not to stand in for them.
Pages are written slowly and revised when something real changes. If a subject is moving too fast to write honestly about, it waits.
This is one person’s range of interests, not an encyclopaedia. The subjects here are the ones I know something about or care enough to learn properly.
A suggestion
If a question has cost you hours of searching and you never found a clear answer, tell me. The best pages on this site started as exactly that. A correction is just as welcome.