Thursday, July 9, 2026

Place sliced white mushrooms in the sun.

Exposing white button mushrooms to direct sunlight for 15 to 30 minutes significantly increases their Vitamin D content. This happens because they contain a plant sterol called ergosterol, which naturally converts into Vitamin D2 when hit by ultraviolet (UVB) rays—the exact same process our own skin uses to produce Vitamin D.
Place the mushrooms with the gills (the ribbed underside of the cap) facing upward directly toward the sun. Because Vitamin D is heat-stable, these "sunbathed" mushrooms will retain their enhanced nutritional value even after being cooked or dried for up to a year.

Wednesday, July 8, 2026

C. S. Lewis on love in marriage

It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by the grace which both partners ask, and receive from God.

Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Voice like chocolate and nicotine

He has a wonderful sonorous speaking voice ("chocolate stained with nicotine" is how Rachelle's sister Naomi described it)

-London Falling, by Patrick Radden Keefe, p.13

Monday, July 6, 2026

How AI "thinks"

https://youtu.be/rKV5JcALQoQ?is=xuurxSp6FK869raH

Peeking under the hood of AI reasoning, words that the model is "thinking about" but not actually saying are important to achieving results; eliminating the ability to use such intermediate words in the process made some prompts impossible for it to answer. 

When AI was fabricating results, these inner words in the "J-space" indicated the model knew it was fabricating. 

Soldiers use silly string to detect fine-wire booby traps.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14kBRNWuZyu/


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Saturday, July 4, 2026

Unsinkable metal

https://youtu.be/lGpOkQ_6iT8?is=D9t1Z5TMLurTfsrk

Tiny groves on the surface and a hydrophobic coating make these tubes, of 6:33 a very specific diameter, unsinkable. 

Predatory loan takeovers forcing foreclosure

https://youtu.be/2U9kSz1pFhs?is=qPfphBBhi37J-h29

Predatory bankers take over loans that homeowners thought were forgiven, making 30-fold profits and devastating people's personal finances. 

World-record longest drone flight

https://youtu.be/cA1Asda-jTk?is=2RG-aTvjRc5jBMJA

It takes a lot of 3D printing, tinkering, and innovation to get a some to fly for over 4 hours. 

Is court evidence accurate?

https://youtu.be/mvcesPWvUIc?is=2deKEEPcEvXFxSPQ

When you actually subject court-approved evidence to the test, to scientific method, most methods are woefully inaccurate. 

Modular homes - barriers to adoption

https://youtu.be/2pbYafEcsbk?is=GLZ8aOzsr9Hqte_F

The broken system of "stick-built," on-site construction is favored by regulation, permitting, banks and neighbors. Changing that to the modular-friendly process popular in Sweden and China is going to take a long time. 
21:43 "But if we really could build homes and apartment buildings 20 to 30% cheaper, twice as fast, make them more environmentally friendly, and make them with better materials then maybe, just maybe, one day, we could address this housing shortage"

Thursday, July 2, 2026

Horses rebuild after desertification

https://youtu.be/Hl8vErrqjKY?is=nO5pfnHNYYIOS4k_

Start at 9:00. Horses selectively trample bare ground, not the grasses they eat. Seeds in their dung germinate better after traveling through their gut, essentially providing a 11:20 "self-watering, pre-fertilized seed packet." Nitrogen levels rose, insects, then birds, and then predators started to return. 
21:25 China had planted 66 billion trees in a failed attempt to thwart desertification, but 21:58 grasslands require 90% less water than trees. 
By 2023, a desert that was 23:27 expanding by thousands of km² per year was now shrinking by 47 km² per year. 

Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Homeless

https://youtu.be/0pcDKYLIHXY?is=_kYiwedM2TkvfKhb

Such a depressing report - hard-working people sleeping in their cars, getting evicted and living in motels, surviving on food stamps. Not addicted, not avoiding hard work, just struggling. 

 Los Angeles has a higher homeless population per capita than Seattle. In the city of Los Angeles, the rate is roughly 1.1%, while Seattle's rate is closer to 0.9% to 1.0%

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