Tom Elwood -best of the internet.
Here are some youtube videos, or articles that caught my eye - from the New York Times, Consumer Reports, Popular Science etc.
Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Monday, July 21, 2025
Billy Joel
"I can't say there was a time when I wasn't struggling with something." - Billy Joel
In the amazing documentary by Tom Hanks, "And So it Goes."
Sunday, July 20, 2025
Desperately Seeking Symmetry: emotion is expressed on left side of face
40:47 And almost like a contour map, you could actually look at the amount of change, amount of muscle movement that had occurred. Which you will see if you measure the muscle movement in millimeters on each side of the face, you'll see that the smile curves a few extra millimeters on the left side of the face. He says this is nearly always the case, always on the left side. What it's really telling you is that when somebody smiles or when they frown, they're doing it slightly more strongly on the left side of their face.
Now, if this is the case that our left side is saying more emotionally than our right side, then if you think about the mirror, it's a discombobulating thing, because it's taking your left, which is sort of broadcasting emotion, flipping it to your right, you're seeing yourself, you're all mixed up. You don't know which part of you is where. So, you're saying because I tend to address you with my attention on your left side, unbeknownst to me, and your left side is actually flipped over to your right, so it's a "Where are we?" sort of question.
Friday, July 18, 2025
Parents! Get off your cell phones!
No surprise here.
Parental Technology Use in a Child's Presence and Health and Development in the Early Years
A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. 2025
"Parents' use of technology in their child's presence was negatively associated with cognitive and psychosocial outcomes..."
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Aluminum in Vaccines not associated with Risk for Autism or other Childhood Disease. Annals of Internal Medicine 2025.
The study included 1,224,176 children born in Denmark between 1997 and 2018 who were still living in Denmark at age 2 years...
The researchers found no association indicating that aluminum exposure from vaccination during the first 2 years of life increased the risk for autoimmune, allergic/atopic, or neurodevelopmental conditions through age 5 years.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997-PS
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
NYTimes: Supreme Court Keeps Ruling in Trump’s Favor, but Doesn’t Say Why
Supreme Court Keeps Ruling in Trump's Favor, but Doesn't Say Why https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/us/politics/supreme-courts-shadow-docket.html
Why the supreme Court can give unsigned orders to emergency docket decisions without writing a justification. It's complicated.
Sunday, July 13, 2025
Larger trucks?
https://youtu.be/WpenLsHEHaY?si=J0rA1hBo2R8EJQ8S
7:58 Finland and Sweden allow 120-ton trucks (vs US 40 tons) and 210 foot length (vs US 53 ft.)
8:45 these "high capacity" trucks have a lower cost per pound per mile, and 33% lower emissions per pound of cargo.
Wednesday, July 9, 2025
Extreme opinions
https://youtu.be/mvtEINcqc6c?si=qnjfsfVhueOLqAF7
This video makes a good point that extreme opinions are very newsworthy and are weaponized by the opposition as representing the opinion of an entire group, when in fact they may be espoused by only a small minority of that opposition.
4:40 "the mistaken belief that the most vocal or visible members of a group represent that group as a whole"
To fight back against the opposition based on the assumption that they all have an identical opinion is a waste of time and energy.
Monday, July 7, 2025
Human breast milk oligosaccharides
http://www.wnycstudios.org/story/the-elixir-of-life/
Human milk oligosaccharides can not be digested by humans or bacteria - why are they there?
22:31 Bifidobacterium sticks to the walls, prevents any other bacteria from coming there, so that basically nothing bad gets to the walls, so you can actually see the disappearance over time because if you look back over time at poop samples
Be good ancestors
Jonas Salk, known for development of the polio vaccine, once shared a simple yet profound statement: "Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors." This quote encapsulates a timeless truth that speaks to the core of our humanity and our duty to future generations.
This podcast talks about the value of having purpose in life - transcendent purpose that goes beyond our hedonistic values, and how that gives happiness and longevity, and the ability to withstand natural disasters and war. People with purpose are far more resilient.
For instance, at 43:50 - people who were told that their backpack contained important scientific equipment reported less struggle with an uphill trudge than those who were not told the backpack contained anything important.
The Villa Where a Doctor Experimented on Children | The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/02/the-villa-where-doctors-experimented-on-children
A dark and sobering story of an abusive post-Nazi psychiatric institute and the lifetimes of trauma inflicted h and one woman's brave quest to bring it to light.
Most craters are round - even though steroids strike at random angles
https://youtu.be/BCGWGJOUjHY?si=nmtvSJgF80rnVxaF
Interesting simulations of the massive kinetic energy of asteroid strikes.
Friday, July 4, 2025
Magnetic field effects on plant growth, development, and evolution - PMC
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4154392/
"...a low frequency magnetic field (16 Hz) can be used as a method of post-harvest seed improvement for different plant species, especially for seeds of temperature sensitive species germinating at low temperatures"
"promoted activity of cells and enzymes in germination stage of the seed."
"a linear increase in germination"
"seeds of pea exposed to full-wave rectified sumusoidal non-uniform magnetic field of strength 60, 120, and 180 mT for 5, 10, and 15 min prior to sowing showed significant increase in germination. The emergence index, final emergence index and vigor index increased by 86, 13, and 205%, respectively."
Thursday, July 3, 2025
Physics of windmill design
Summarized at 2:50: windmills are most efficient of they're tall, large, fast-rotating, and narrow-bladed.
https://youtu.be/WGKIjojADmg?si=T37bwjBWKqwBq-AX
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)