Montana's economic strategy increases homelessness and profits the rich

https://youtu.be/dU2x0BmFhJI?si=ShQ95zgnhJwcuu-T

How physicists broke the solar efficiency record.

Very interesting description of how to squeeze every last photon of energy out of solar energy. 

You may have to read the next sentence twice to really take in the magnitude of it. 

20:00 "470 exajoules* of energy reach the Earth's surface every 8 minutes, which is the same amount of energy that the entire world's population uses in a year."

https://youtu.be/J1QDq5Ggz6s?si=MNG85ppWuVZF8S4E

*An exajoule is 10^18 joules, equivalent to 277.8 terawatt hours

Catenary curve in Christopher Wren's tallest building in London

https://youtu.be/iRv_syz2DAc?si=VmU2hia51_gDNgRe

3:15 Hooke -"As hangs the flexible line, so but inverted will stand the rigid arch." - the same shape taken by a hanging chain (in tension) will yield the strongest shape for a dome the other way up. 

4:20 "This allowed them to build taller, over a narrower opening, with less material." 

Women bosses - be nice, or be assertive?

 https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/men-45-women-0/

"It is really the very, very fine line of being a shrew on one hand and a puppet on the other that any woman in public life has to walk," says former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, a Democrat from Illinois.

So what's a woman to do? Be nice and kind and friendly, as our gender stereotypes about women require? Or be tough and decisive, as our stereotypes about leadership demand? To be one is to be seen as nice, but weak. To be the other is to be seen as competent, but unlikable."

https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/how-to-win-people-over/

" an amazing and depressing study...looked at longitudinal data of 15 years about of professors teaching evaluations...you might think, oh, evaluations are going to get better for the people who succeed and stay because they'll become more experienced professors. And then, I don't know, maybe at the end of their career, they tail off and they get worse...When they were younger, they would get high evaluations. As they went into middle age, their evaluations would drop, and as they got older, their evaluations would rise again...women who got the lowest teaching evaluations...middle stage of their career, those women were perceived as the most assertive and the least warm...Because if someone's gonna have control over me, I care a lot about the fact that they are gonna do good things with it, not just to help me, but to make sure they're gonna use it responsibly. If I don't respect somebody, I could be concerned, and wait a second, you're gonna have all this control, and you're just gonna mess it up."

An antidote: "humor bragging is saying something positive about yourself, while also using humor that is not self-deprecating"

https://youtu.be/F1bJYHl5iJw?si=KgW_bpadB5XySU6r

Largest iron mine profits from very little over-burden to be removed before encountering high-grade ore. Many of the mine's operations run autonomously, and trains ship out ore 365 days a year,

The surprising solutions to the world's water crisis with Hannah Fry

https://youtu.be/FDY2McKLvlM?si=OTflTWbMb1xOZdBF

7:12 "Practical Action" is drawing water up from aquifers using solar power, to sustain localized farming. 

12:39 a correlation between water depletion and social unrest. 

23:21 water is this issue of national security. Singapore had to teach rock bottom before they changed their approach to the importance of water. Let's hope the rest of the world learns how important water security is, and will continue to become. 

Take off shoes indoors - to limit exposure to micro plastics

https://youtu.be/tyuu6NYuo1Q?si=Pb6M8eeWpctf8ZRZ

"Finnish schools, shoes are taken off by coat racks near the classrooms (shoe schools). The new course of action is to take shoes off right when entering the building (sock schools)...concentrations in corridors were significantly higher in shoe schools compared to sock schools...elemental concentrations (Li, Al, Si, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd, Ba, Pb) in settled dust were also higher in shoe schools compared to sock schools" 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969719362680

"Contaminants tracked in from outside, such as lawn pesticides and lead dust from work or home renovation: Use a doormat, remove shoes at the door, and plant shrubs and grass to help reduce dust levels and limit the potential to track dust indoors." 

https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/2818/

"...estimated that between 9,000 and 400,000 metric tonnes of microplastics are released from shoes globally per year from regular use...trail running events deposit significant plastic fibres and rubber fragments onto soil...100 runners release about 425,000 rubber particles over a 10 km race...85% of used shoes in the UK were sent to the dump rather than recycled or reused...once they're in the landfill, shoe plastics degrade...and release ethylene and methane, two potent greenhouse gases" 

https://www.asparagusmagazine.com/articles/reducing-plastic-pollution-from-shoes-through-recycling-and-repair

"We recommend not heating food in plastic containers, because chemicals leach from that plastic into the food product...placing plastic in the dishwasher can have a similar leaching effect by degrading plastic containers...[prevent exposure by] taking off your shoes when coming inside, to removing dust, and vacuuming frequently."

https://newsroom.uw.edu/video-library/limiting-your-exposure-microplastics-home

Faroe Islands tidal generators underwater kites

https://youtu.be/AbCIiUWhkd0?si=2hJkbkygSdbHmcd6

Small 1 MW tethered kites combined with battery storage to wean the insulated Faroe Islands off fossil fuel. 

What's the difference between "Internet" and "the Web"

https://youtu.be/_Cog9HRBZlY?si=qz9dzMtpOkIm88NZ

2:48 "I know that people use the words web and internet interchangeably but they are actually different things the web that's the bit that you see on your screen it's the collection of pages the stuff that is is stored in vast data centers owned by companies like Google and Amazon the internet however that is the physical infrastructure it's the network of cables running over land and along the seafloor that literally link up one machine to another carrying huge volumes of data." 

Getting Internet to remote impoverished people

https://youtu.be/_Cog9HRBZlY?si=TGYFtQwP_Z6Xb0jc

Ok first of all, I didn't know the "Internet" and "web" are different things. 

2:48 "I know that people use the words web and internet interchangeably but they are actually different things the web that's the bit that you see on your screen it's the collection of pages the stuff that is is stored in vast data centers owned by companies like Google and Amazon the internet however that is the physical infrastructure it's the network of cables running over land and along the seafloor that literally link up one machine to another carrying huge volumes of data." 

This team is distributing local Internet data 10-20 km by beams of light, rather than radio waves. 5:30 The challenge turns out to be small wind-induced movements of the tower, 6:09 solved by tiny compensatory movements of a mirror, akin to video stabilization gimbals. 

Google's moonshot "X" program 7:38 operates at "the intersection of purpose and profit," solving such problems to reach 2:20 the last 3 billion people not connected to the Internet. 

Unfeasable cons of cons' fees

https://youtu.be/gwwuV0X7rdE?si=ew88itAqNOI0cJ7B

A frustrating accumulation of predatory fees keeps ex-cons forever in debt. 

6:08 "The justice system cannot sustain itself on the backs of poor families while also striving to rehabilitate people who have committed crimes. This failure exacts a toll on all of us." 

QR codes or "quick response" -a deep dive

https://youtu.be/w5ebcowAJD8?si=tq_evsb1RzjEtFmk

Amazon hunting down counterfeiters

https://youtu.be/o_7XarmoDIw?si=RuoK5bdlNZa2Svxk

3:28 Amazon ends up paying $150 per seized item to deter counterfeiters. 

4:37 customers have a harder time detecting if his are counterfeit with online shopping because they can't see and touch them; clues are recently-launched sellers, and fewer reviews. 

6:46 the landscape changed in 2024 when a judge ruled that Amazon can't be "hands-off" when a product is fake, but has to take some of the blame, and recall defective goods. 

8:38 Amazon covers the cost of investigation and lawsuits, empowering small businesses to take on counterfeiters they wouldn't otherwise be able to tackle, financially. 

Finland has: Mandatory education in detecting fraud/fake news

https://youtu.be/NNco4dayC1M?si=GtL5GRkJjqKo3cWV

4:28 "So, critical thinking is a real priority here." 

7:00 "you have a right to your own opinion, but you don't have a right to your own facts." 

Reversing pump "battery" dam failure

https://youtu.be/zRM2AnwNY20?si=8FQJepDF0B9oSJds

This power plant is a net consumer of electricity, but it helps meet peak daytime demand. After pumping all night, and reversing during the day, out achieves

2:56 overall 70% efficiency

10:12-12:50 A combination of human errors led to the failure in this unmanned system: not accounting for wall settlement, dislodged water-level sensors, backup water-level sensors placed on the highest portion of the wall, and no human confirmation of water levels monitored by these systems. 

12:50 "unfortunately, when you rely on complicated systems for safety, the likelihood of failure goes way up."