"In a new global chapter defined by perilous conflicts, distracted leaders, and a retreating sense of international responsibility to keep peace, the safety net had never seemed thinner."
Sunday, May 11, 2025
NYTimes: The Danger for India and Pakistan Has Not Gone Away
The Danger for India and Pakistan Has Not Gone Away
Saturday, May 10, 2025
Priorities in making traffic faster
https://youtu.be/Mi_R9vVwPNI?si=BLwWH7ENlauSwtdq
Here are the top countries with the highest traffic-related death rates, based on the information I found:
* Burundi: 35.5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (2019)
* Democratic Republic of the Congo: 34.9 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (2019)
* Chad: 32.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (2019)
* Burkina Faso: 31.0 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (2019)
* Cameroon: 30.2 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (2019)
* Congo: 29.7 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (2019)
* Ethiopia: 28.2 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (2019)
* Dominican Republic: 27.5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (2022)
...
* USA (12.8 - 2022)
...
* Canada (5.0 - 2022)
...
* Britain (2.6 - 2022)
Friday, May 9, 2025
Sand deposition
We think of sand on the beach as stable, but it is really mid-journey between rock and silt. This graph cleverly illustrates that it takes high flow to move both large and small particles sizes - large ones because of their bulk, and silt particles because of their cohesion.
https://www.alexstrekeisen.it/english/sedi/index.php Sand comes in many forms, as discussed in this video.
Sand is increasingly more expensive to procure for construction - because useful particles to impart strength to concrete need to be (6:36) jagged to add strength. However, (12:03) round wind-blown sand requires less water to make workable concrete that ends up being stronger. He says that the idea that windblown sands can't be used in concrete is a myth.
This video promotes the myth that round sand can't be used for construction. However, (3:55) recycled glass particles might make the perfect substitute.
Commercial flights have become significantly safer in recent decades - Our World in Data
As the chart shows, this figure has dropped steadily in the last 50 years. According to the latest data, it is now about half a fatality per million flights. This means that, on average, it now takes more than 2 million flights for a fatal accident to occur.
Thursday, May 8, 2025
Who owns California's water supply?
https://youtu.be/4B19qb1Az94?si=rgcwRn574mOm0FN-
Wow, incredible selfish manipulation of legislation for personal profit.
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Asphalt origins
https://youtu.be/-m6-LF0lptg?si=BWWH1ULSTe1cbdU7
1:25 asphalt roads were discovered by accident when some tar was spilled in a dirt road.
NYTimes: MAGA Beauty Is Built to Go Viral
""Lifestyle influencers exist in an ecosystem that prizes homogeneity," because social media algorithms reward it." https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/opinion/maga-beauty-viral-women.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
Why American Communities Began Adding Fluoride to Water
"Colorado Springs in the early 1900s, where residents with brown-stained teeth, later linked to high fluoride levels, also had lower rates of tooth decay."
"first major trial of water fluoridation to a community water supply began in 1945 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where dental exams soon confirmed that children who drank fluoridated water from birth had significantly fewer cavities."
"for every dollar spent, communities of 1,000 or more people save an estimated $20 in dental treatment costs...Water fluoridation has played a very important role in helping to reduce the prevalence of complete tooth loss from 50 percent to close to 10 percent today."
"concerns have been around neurotoxicity and cognitive problems affecting children—at levels more than twice the recommended level—could harm developing brains." https://www.history.com/articles/fluoride-water-teeth-health Monday, May 5, 2025
Lifeboat launch
https://youtu.be/UGuLXLTWiCA?si=wY5lWSkOrfm22lyy
I've seen these lifeboats pitched precariously at the stern of ships - and they're about 90 feet above the water. I'm glad they have a four-point restraint seatbelt for when they hit the water! Looks like quite a jolt.
Sunday, May 4, 2025
No nation healthier than its children
Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley first promoted the farm-to-table movement. In Chef's Table "Legends" she quoted "In the long view, no nation is any healthier than its children or more prosperous than its farmers."
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-the-president-upon-signing-the-national-school-lunch-act From the Statement by the President Upon Signing the National School Lunch Act. 1946
Advanced drone techniques explained
https://youtu.be/yRl3cr6kzcw?si=JSIykLQjR_mII-PU
Excellent advanced drone techniques.
2:26 turn down the gain on gimbal settings so gimbal movements are gradual
3:27 adjust the exponential stick settings so that initial snap stick movements are very gradual
4:42 Put objects in the foreground to create a reveal.
7:40 stay close to the ground, or against the direction of moving water
8:55 keep the amount of sky in frame to a minimum
11:49 use photo ephemeris to determine the best lighting conditions for a location.
13:40 Set shutter speed to 1 over twice the frame rate to
14:02 avoid really small apertures as diffraction distorts the image. Use neutral density filters in bright conditions instead.
14:47 set white balance manually for each shot so you don't get white-balance changes happening automatically during the shot.
Ship exhaust particles increase lightning
Lightning does not flash everywhere equally on Earth. The phenomenon occurs more often over land than over the oceans, and more often in areas closer to the equator than in the mid- and high latitudes. According to recent research led by Joel Thornton, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, humans also can affect where lightning flashes.
The connection between people and lightning is visible along two of the world's busiest shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The top map shows the emissions of particles from ship exhaust (orange), calculated from a database of maritime vessel traffic in the region. The second map shows the average density of lightning per year from 2005 to 2016, as detected by the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN). The narrow light-purple bands indicate where increases in lightning occurred. Turn on the image comparison tool to see where areas of increased lightning coincide with shipping routes.
The researchers found that on average, the frequency of lightning over shipping lanes is double that which occurs in the regions immediately adjacent to those lanes. "It has been a surprise to find this feature in the data and to have it be so clearly pronounced," Thornton said. He notes that the idea of aerosol particles influencing storm intensity and lightning has been discussed for more than a decade, but that there has not been consensus that the effect would be important. "Our finding provides one of the clearest examples of a human perturbation to aerosol particles and lightning in an otherwise clean region."
The WWLLN is a treasure trove of data, with ground-based sensors recording lightning strokes around the planet. Work by Katrina Virts, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, recently made the network even more valuable. By reprocessing the global lightning climatology, she was able to increase the resolution by a factor of five. The location of lightning strokes can now be pinpointed to within 10 square kilometers.
Virts' high-resolution maps led Thornton and colleagues to pursue the hypothesis that ship exhaust was enhancing lightning. The team compared surface lightning data observed in the Indian Ocean shipping lanes with data from the Lightning Imaging Sensor on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. They also used radar data from TRMM to test whether certain parts of the storm clouds contained more liquid droplets amidst the water vapor and ice particles. Such an increase would occur if the particles in ship exhaust were changing cloud structure in the area.
"Our results indicate the ship exhaust particles are, in fact, changing what would be a tropical rain storm into a thunderstorm—from no lightning to a storm with lightning," Thornton said. "Or, the particles are increasing the vertical development of thunderstorms to have even more lightning than they otherwise would have."
Saturday, May 3, 2025
How to use AI better.
https://youtu.be/wv779vmyPVY?si=FvBooH1Qjw0uDdoH
12:59 "I don't use AI, I work with it." Interesting perspective on getting the most out of AI - treat it like a teammate rather than a tool, and give it feedback to improve. Don't accept "good enough," but persist beyond the first answer you think of. 11:22 "creativity is doing more than the first thing you think of"
8:26 Ask AI "what could I have asked to get a better answer?" "What do you need to know from me to get the best response?" "What's the best way if framing that question to AI"
Container port volumes
https://youtu.be/YXkWbhAQK5c?si=Lc_7MlTkUU-pFm6d
More than you ever wanted to know about volume of shipping containers.
The number of enjoy containers in US ports waiting to return to China is staggering.
Robot agility
https://youtu.be/NAcanWv_2Z8?si=kmz5yEhg4XBY6q_R
Wheels on legs - incredible agility in difficult terrain
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