Trypophobia and a "unified theory of disgust," that holes remind us of parasitic infections. Gives some background on the genesis of phobias.
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
How Much Leisure Time Do the Happiest People Have?
Too little, and people tend to get stressed. Too much, and people tend to feel idle.
A research paper released late last year ...analyzed data covering about 35,000 Americans, found that employed people’s ratings of their satisfaction with life peaked when they had in the neighborhood of two and a half hours of free time a day. For people who didn’t work, the optimal amount was four hours and 45 minutes...The research traced a correlation between free time and life satisfaction, but didn’t provide any definitive insight into what underlies that correlation...
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/02/free-time-life-satisfaction/583171/
A research paper released late last year ...analyzed data covering about 35,000 Americans, found that employed people’s ratings of their satisfaction with life peaked when they had in the neighborhood of two and a half hours of free time a day. For people who didn’t work, the optimal amount was four hours and 45 minutes...The research traced a correlation between free time and life satisfaction, but didn’t provide any definitive insight into what underlies that correlation...
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/02/free-time-life-satisfaction/583171/
Robot on stairs
Finally, a video that walks you through what they're working on in improving gait.
Cassie is blind to the world, and treats all obstacles as a gait disturbance.
Cassie is blind to the world, and treats all obstacles as a gait disturbance.
At 1:10, "Cassie is able to walk forwards, backwards, and sideways over an obstacle without any knowledge of the environment. Cassie thinks the world is flat, and the combination of passive dynamics and software control is robust enough that this does not matter."
This reminds me of earlier experiments where a robot had to generate random movements to figure out how to walk, which then made it adaptable when encountering difficult terrain.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-clever-clumsiness-of-a-robot-teaching-itself-to-walk/
And more complex virtual experiments in self-designing a walking style.
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Illegal drug labs - King County
Updated weekly, and yet there are no listings in the last 8 years, that I can see. Interesting.
School Locks Up Students' Phones
Phones locked up: grades improved and disciplinary proceedings decreased, and students did a lot more social things.
Friday, February 22, 2019
Night sight on Google pixel
The camera on my phone was recently upgraded by Google with a clever software trick. It can shoot video in extremely low light conditions. It takes a super-long exposure, and overlays multiple exposures while adjusting for camera movement using the phone's gyro sensors to provide image stabilization. It also somehow adjusts for elements of the picture that might be moving, perhaps by separately tracking that one element in the photo and removing it's movement also.
This article gives a really good side-by-side comparison of what the night-sight can do.
There software even uses artificial intelligence to figure out the white balance.
This page illustrates what it looks like on your phone as you shoot, and gives an example of how it removes motion.
I took this shot in a dark parking lot with minimal overhead lighting.
Thursday, February 21, 2019
Ellen Degeneres Commencement Address
At 5:20 she sums it up by saying -
"For me the most important thing in life is to live your life with integrity, and not to give into peer pressure to be something that you're not. To live your life as an honest and compassionate person. To contribute in some way. Follow your Passion. Stay true to yourself. Never follow someone else's path, and everything will be fine. Some of the most devastating things that happened to you will teach you the most."
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
What Not To Do Abroad According to the U.S. State Department | Travel + Leisure
Tim Starkweather, an officer at the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs, recently took to Reddit for an "ask me anything," pinpointing...what you'll want to avoid doing when abroad.
His first tip? Don't transport prescription medications that are illegal in the country where you're going...some countries have different laws about medications available in the U.S. and mistakes can lead to years of jail time for unaware travelers who bring in an illegal prescription.
...check availability before a trip in case they run out of the medication they take. Some countries may not have a certain prescription drug, leaving travelers in tough situations should they be faced with an emergency while there.
To get a better understanding of how these regulations vary, travelers can utilize the State Department's country pages, which list out local laws and health information for your travel destination.
Starkweather's second main tip is not to attend demonstrations or protests.
Should you be traveling to a location where protests and demonstrations are taking place, Starkweather advises sharing your travel itinerary with friends and family, making sure to include your address, travel dates, and contact information.
Since phone lines can often go down during emergencies, he also suggests that travelers sign up for the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP). The free service provides you with safety information on destinations, sends regular updates and alerts on your destination, and allows both the U.S. Embassy and your family and friends to contact you during emergencies.
If you do get arrested while on vacation, Starkweather says the first step is to ask to speak to the U.S. Embassy or Consulate.
"In general, if you are a U.S. citizen, you have the right to request the U.S. embassy or consulate to be notified of your arrest," Starkweather writes, adding that you can either request this of the local police or prison officials or call directly if you have access to a phone.
While U.S. State Department officials cannot get a traveler out of jail, they can provide a list of local attorneys who speak English, assist in visits during the time of detainment, and insure that prison officials administer proper medical care.
Anesthesia safe for kids
The Lancet: General anesthesia is unlikely to have lasting effects on the developing brains of young children
One brief general anesthetic in early
infancy is unlikely to be harmful to long-term neurodevelopment, but
the safety of longer and repeated exposures remains unclear.
"...The trial provides the strongest evidence to date that one brief exposure to anesthesia is safe in young children.
"...The study is the first randomized trial to investigate whether exposure
to general anesthesia in infancy (aged 60 weeks of postmenstrual age or
younger)...
"...For over a decade, the potential neurotoxicity of commonly used
anesthetic drugs in children has been debated. In 2017, the US Food and
Drug Administration warned that prolonged or repeated anesthesia in
children younger than 3 years of age might affect brain development.
However, this warning was based largely on animal studies which showed
increased cell death in developing animals.
"...722 children undergoing surgical repair of inguinal hernia...randomly assigned to general anesthesia (363 children) or
awake-regional (local) anesthesia (which does not cause brain injury in
animal models; 359 children)...average duration of general anesthesia was
54 minutes.
"...researchers report the final results of the GAS trial at 5 years of
age--a time when intelligence testing is strongly predictive of future
achievement.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/tl-pss021319.php
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Newfoundland English Explained
I thought this was just a joke at first, but it's a plea for accepting that there are actually rules and patterns in Newfinese that have roots in Irish, and ties to the American South and Ebonics, it's not just talking funny.
Monday, February 18, 2019
How Amazon Makes Money
Amazon web services, mostly. (Without this aspect of their business, they would have lost money overall last year.) These numbers are, really, astounding.
Watch Parrots Learn the Art of the Deal | NYT
Birds making tough choices about future rewards. Fascinating.
Ants follow tiny pheromone trails with their antennae. Fascinating.
Ants follow tiny pheromone trails with their antennae. Fascinating.
Slowing Down A Stock Exchange With 38 Miles Of Cable
Very interesting that slowing down the stock exchange, on purpose, leveled the playing field and didn't cause the predicted calamity. If anything, it improved things. At 3:51 he says that the SEC white paper concluded that the market has been more stable since the advent of their system.
At 2:38, 3*10^8 m/s * .00035 sec = 105km, but it turns out that's using the speed of light in a vacuum.
As Sebastian Jezierski points out in the comments for this video, the speed of light in glass is 1.5x slower than in a vacuum which accounts for some of the difference. The speed of light in a given medium is decreased in proportion to the refractive index of that medium.
The Guy Who Wraps Celebrities' Luxury Cars
Cool, if you have a few extra thousand bucks lying around.
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Tokimonsta
I enjoyed this video. It's quite long, but it tells the story of a musical innovator. Someone who got a new lease on life through brain surgery, and that gave her the freedom to excel. I like the graphical interpretation of her music as well.
Saturday, February 16, 2019
P!nk Gives a Preview of Her New Song, 'Walk Me Home'
Ellen at 1:28, - "I think inspiration comes from pain... I think that most of us in this business are trying to fill some void, and our creativity is what gets us out of painful situations."
The shopping mall where everything is recycled - BBC News
Here's a good idea - put a shopping mall that sells used and upcycled (repurposed) items right next to a transfer station where people discard unleashed stuff. Better yet, they have a design studio there to teach how to better upcycle items.
When Will We Stop Using Oil?
It's up to us, consumers, to stop using oil.
We are using more and more green, renewable sources of energy.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Baby Brezza Formula Pro
Mixes and warms baby formula so it's perfect every time. That's a whole lot easier.
Image File Formats - JPEG, GIF, PNG
File formats explained.
JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
- save lots of space.
- Compression by recognizing 64 patterns in each 8x8 block explained at 1:08
- struggles with sharp edges and graphics
GIF - graphical image file, limited to 256 colors
PNG - portable network graphics, avoids compression artifacts
TIFF - supports uncompressed files
SVG - scalable vector graphics
RAW - "digital negative" - minimally processed file, allows for more editing like white balance or over-exposure after the fact.
JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
- save lots of space.
- Compression by recognizing 64 patterns in each 8x8 block explained at 1:08
- struggles with sharp edges and graphics
GIF - graphical image file, limited to 256 colors
PNG - portable network graphics, avoids compression artifacts
TIFF - supports uncompressed files
SVG - scalable vector graphics
RAW - "digital negative" - minimally processed file, allows for more editing like white balance or over-exposure after the fact.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Potatoes and carrots that grow in seawater.
Painstaking testing disclosed some vegetables that were saltwater viable, although the vegetables were smaller than normal.
Why boarding a plane is slow, and how it could be better.
This contributor (CGPGrey) always does a good job with explanations and animations. It's funny, lighthearted, and yet explains a common frustration in airports in great detail.
"First to go reaches their row and starts to stow, so slow.
And for passenger two, while their seat's in view, there's nothing to do,
The aisle's one queue, where all can naught but stew, stuck like glue until this guy's through. Phew!"
Best compromise, as he explains at the very end, would be to board even rows, then odd rows.
Cheap drone combo
OK, I'm amazed at the footage you can get from strapping a GoPro camera onto the tiniest little palm-sized drone, thanks to the image stabilization software in the GoPro. It's actually comical looking at this overburdened mini-drone trying to stay aloft. Of course, you only get horizontal views...or I suppose single-plane views since you could probably strap the camera on at any angle.
Inside Corning's Gorilla Glass Factory
A seven-storey tall furnace drops molten glass into a trough which extrudes a thin sheet handled by robots. A final stage takes place at the recipient factory where an ion exchange in a hot bath forces large ions into the surface creating a strengthening outer layer of tension, much like a Rupert's drop - see the great little animation at 3:45.
What makes employees happy at work | TED
Trust: leaders trust their employees to do the right thing. Four Seasons, for example, states " Do whatever you think is right when servicing the customer."
Fairness: a leadership that seeks out inequity based on gender or seniority or age, and invests to correct it.
Listening: when an employee speaks, it matters so much, it might change your mind.
Change: changing because there's some purpose you have, something you believe in so much, that you're willing to risk everything because it's so important to you.
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Incredibly tiny implant
Watch this video at 1:10, it shows an implant to drain eye pressure, and it's sitting in top of a metal surface. You'll be surprised when you see what the surface is.
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Why do we love SUVs so much?
I can't believe how many SUV's Americans are buying - look at that sales figure graph. No wonder GM is closing plants that manufacture cars. But the car makers are not in trouble, they're having a heyday.
Sunday, February 3, 2019
Bringing Handmade Back to America
Making a handmade leather bag has a lot of steps. Sanding, burnishing, painting, bringing out the grain, stitching, burning the thread-end and burning the end under the leather...
Traffic Is Your Fault. Here's Why. | WheelHouse
Don't use your cellphone. Don't tailgate. Encourage rotaries.
At 3:55, this video includes the famous experiment of subjects asked to drive in a circle, but a wave of slowdowns inevitably emerges.
How Robinhood Makes Money
A disruptive upstart in the online trading world, making money through kickbacks from those who amalgamate multiple trades for a profit.
Excel Dynamic Arrays
"unique" function
data validation for a drop-down list can reference an entire column with a "#" postscript that dynamically adds new entries to the drop-down list as the column is modified.
For a dependent drop-down menu, the "filter" function can dynamically add more categories as the source cell references them.
And the "sort" preface can sort the drop-down list and the resulting column alphabetically.
What's that pan made of? Not copper, that's for sure.
"...I voiced my concern about copper touching the food and how that isn't safe.
He put me on hold to go and search for the answer and came back with this explanation:
"The layer of copper is in the middle, between the layer of ceramic and the aluminum pan."
Further hmmmm…..
It must be a very thin layer of copper for the pan to be so light… and cheap. And since no copper is supposedly touching the food, the top surface must be just copper colored ceramic non-stick coating. "
Marina Bay Sands Hotel Singapore: full tour (spectacular rooftop pool)
Start at 25:32 - dramatic infinity pool.
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