This guy seems really incredible to me, programming electronic control units for fuel injection himself, to not only revive old engines but make them more fuel efficient and powerful.
Monday, October 14, 2024
What's "Eggs Halifax?"
Wow, this journalist went down a convoluted rabbit-hole in search of the origin of eggs Benedict with smoked salmon sometimes taking on the name "Eggs Halifax."
Although there's no definitive answer, it could get well get its name from Halifax, NS.
Being ok with Uncertainty
This podcast explains so much about human nature, politics, and conspiracy theories based on whether our brain is wired as prey or predator. If you want to skip past the researcher's personal history to the meat of the episode, start at 23:32.
Dividing people into those who 1) have a need for closure vs 2) are ok with uncertainty turns out to be much more useful than the classic "type A vs B" archetype. And it turns out this affects everything in our lives - whether we like abstract art, are prone to like conspiracy theories, what political party we lean towards.
To me, it also explains why politicians will lean into bizarre things like scaremongering of transgender surgery happening in schools, immigrants eating cats and dogs, and immigrants being rapists and murderers.
From the transcript -
"our brains are wired to make sense of the world. You know, we are sense-making animals. And each of these traits in some way speaks to our drive to make sense. How quickly do we need to make sense of the world? How much are we willing to live with uncertainty? This difference turns out to have ramifications in all kinds of different areas. One of the areas that you have looked at and others have looked at is in our appreciation of aesthetics."
"conspiracy theory beliefs are really rooted in a very simple causal mechanism. They say that whatever the crisis is, or the horrible event is, it's not some complex systemic thing. It is something that has been caused by powerful people operating in the shadows to benefit themselves and harm others. And it provides a really quick closure to what could be a complex problem...what you're looking for is, I'm dealing with a situation of high ambiguity, high uncertainty, and if I can just locate the culprit that's responsible for all of this, in some ways it moves you from that world of uncertainty to a world of predictability and closure."
"I think about need for cognition as something that's a bit of a luxury. Because if you're high in need for cognition, it signals that you have the time, you feel that you have the time and security to be able to dedicate to thinking about something for a long period of time. Having high need for cognition is actually correlated with people who are less likely to be monitoring their environments for threat. If you're not monitoring for threat, and you're not looking around the corner to see who's lurking, you can just, you know, I call it CUD chewing. You can chew your CUD all day."
"people who enjoy thinking about things, and you know, really kind of struggling to solve problems, these are the same people who really enjoy abstract art and syncopated jazz, for example, over really predictable, like pop music or country music, that has a more predictable cadence, chorus, and verse structure."
"people who enjoy thinking actually are less likely to be persuaded by more emotional or heuristic kind of appeals. They require evidence-based argumentation to be persuaded by information."
"I think about this in terms of how people monitor for threats in their environment. And when I think about it that way, it actually gives me sort of a unifying narrative that helps explain a lot of what's going on. I think that based on what we know now, it seems that individuals are born, perhaps genetically... predisposed, to have physiological systems that deal with threat in their environment. And that shapes physiological patterns, which then shape psychological tendencies. And for people who are high-threat monitors, they are all about survival in the face of threat, and it's on their mind all the time. What serves these people best is making decisions quickly and efficiently based on heuristics, emotions, intuition, and shortcuts. That is what causes them to have this lower need for cognition. It's not that they can't, it's that it doesn't make sense for them based on their sort of psychophysiological predispositions. Similarly, these are folks who, because they're monitoring for threat, of course they're going to want to be in situations that are highly certain, ordered, predictable. They're not going to be very high in tolerance for ambiguity because that exposes them to threat."
"In a survey, we looked at whether or not individuals who had higher or lower need for closure had different levels of support for transgender individuals. What we found is that even accounting for all these other things, need for closure is associated with more negative opinions of transgender people, transgender candidates, and transgender rights. And this is one of those things that is intuitive on its face. And when we thought about studying this construct, I just thought, you know, for folks who need for there to be a yes or no answer, black and white, it would make sense for these folks, the concept of gender fluidity or the concept of gender being a social construct, that I could imagine that that might be hard for them to reconcile. And sure enough, our results actually showed quite a robust effect of need for closure on these outcomes."
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
Criticism of Amtrak and Via rail
This well-illustrated critique of traveling in North America by train compared to Europe (where population densities are much larger) is quite a stark comparison - our rail system is expensive, slow, not prioritized relative to freight traffic, rough ride, and expensive with unnecessary charges and delays. Rail is much cheaper and environmentally friendly per mile.
Monday, October 7, 2024
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Are we running out of sand?
Sand is a complex material: It's not just beach sand, but a range of materials with different properties. (0:22)
Sand is essential for concrete: Concrete is a vital building material, and sand is a key ingredient. (3:19)
Sand is not evenly distributed: It's a non-renewable resource, and mining it can have environmental impacts. (4:49)
We can make sand: Crushing rocks can create manufactured sand, which can be more environmentally friendly and even stronger than natural sand. (5:09)
Sand shape matters: Rounded sand is easier to work with, but angular sand can make stronger concrete. (6:48)
• Workability vs. strength: Adding water to concrete makes it easier to work with, but weakens it. Rounded sand requires less water, leading to stronger concrete. (9:32)
The myth of dune sand: The idea that dune sand is unusable in concrete is a myth. (12:19)
Sand scarcity is misleading: The real issue is the cost of fans is increasing, due to environmental regulations and transportation costs. (14:27)
The video concludes that while the world is not running out of sand, we need to be more mindful of the costs associated with its extraction and use. (17:36)
Concrete is a huge industry: The scale of concrete production leads to significant environmental and social impacts. (14:47)
Sand is not the only option: We can use recycled concrete aggregates and other materials to reduce our reliance on virgin sand. (17:11)
• Technology can change the game: Just like diamonds and timber, sand can be produced synthetically and sustainably. (15:30)
Clever illusion - circle turns into square.
Interesting illusion:
Ambiguous cylinder explained:
Another explanation video:
Monday, September 23, 2024
Post-pounding machine
Pounding posts into the ground without having to dig a hole, and without pouring concrete.
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Auditory illusion
This is so wild - you hear different words from the same sirens depending what words you're reading at the same time as the sound.
Interactive sculpture?
This sculptor creates art with sugar.
@5:25 the sculpture will melt, unless people ride bicycles to generate electricity to run the air conditioner that preserves it.
Now that's interactive sculpture!
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Human versus AI Geoguesser
I find this a very significant milestone, like the computer that beat the world chess master 27 years ago. Some grad students built an AI platform to guess geographic location over 2 months, and it easily beat the world champion who is superhuman at this task, who has practiced and memorized for years how to recognize a random location. Watch this guy idly talk while doing this superhuman task.
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Cloth concrete forms
Permeable flexible cloth concrete forms facilitate labor-saving rapid construction is unusual shapes.
Barefoot walking
"We didn't evolve to wear shoes."
at 0:13, I think he's saying that cushioning in footwear increases the duration of time that a foot impacting the ground transfers forces to your body, which increases damage.
1:43 The calluses that build up naturally from barefoot walking toughen the surface without impairing tactile sensitivity.
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Coffee grounds improve concrete
Scientists Discovered An Amazing Practical Use For Our Leftover Coffee Grounds
We could be producing concrete that's 30 percent stronger by processing and adding charred coffee grounds to the mix, researchers in Australia discovered.
Their clever recipe could solve multiple problems at the same time.
Every year the world produces a staggering 10 billion kilograms (22 billion pounds) of coffee waste globally. Most ends up in landfills.
"The disposal of organic waste poses an environmental challenge as it emits large amounts of greenhouse gases including methane and carbon dioxide, which contribute to climate change," explained RMIT University engineer Rajeev Roychand.
With a booming construction market globally, there's also an ever increasing demand for resource intensive concrete causing another set of environmental challenges too.
"The ongoing extraction of natural sand around the world – typically taken from river beds and banks – to meet the rapidly growing demands of the construction industry has a big impact on the environment," said RMIT engineer Jie Li.
"There are critical and long-lasting challenges in maintaining a sustainable supply of sand due to the finite nature of resources and the environmental impacts of sand mining. With a circular-economy approach, we could keep organic waste out of landfill and also better preserve our natural resources like sand."
Organic products like coffee grounds can't be added directly to concrete because they leak chemicals that weaken the building material's strength. So using low energy levels the team heated coffee waste to over 350 °C (around 660 °F) while depriving it of oxygen.
This process is called pyrolyzing. It breaks down the organic molecules, resulting in a porous, carbon-rich charcoal called biochar, that can form bonds with and thereby incorporate itself into the cement matrix.
Roychand and colleagues also tried pyrolyzing the coffee grounds at 500 °C but the resulting biochar particles were not as strong.
The researchers cautioned that they still need to assess the long term durability of their cement product. They're now working on testing how the hybrid coffee-cement performs under freeze/thaw cycles, water absorption, abrasions and many more stressors.
The team is also working on creating biochars from other organic waste sources, including wood, food waste and agricultural waste.
"Our research is in the early stages, but these exciting findings offer an innovative way to greatly reduce the amount of organic waste that goes to landfill," said RMIT engineer Shannon Kilmartin-Lynch.
"Inspiration for my research, from an Indigenous perspective, involves Caring for Country, ensuring there's a sustainable life cycle for all materials and avoiding things going into landfill to minimize the impact on the environment."
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-discovered-an-amazing-practical-use-for-our-leftover-coffee-grounds
That's a good thing, because (remarkably) we're running out of sand - at least, 3:21 the rough-edged sand that's good for binding concrete together.
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