Youngest Olympian

https://youtu.be/CKJ8aTp9-OY
Pretty inspirational kid. Sticktoitiveness

Detailed Voice Guidance Comes to Google Maps

https://youtu.be/7PEbPYy56XI

@2:02 "Having access to new experiences helps me feel more included." 

Art interpretation

https://youtu.be/X75Roe_davA

Funny little video that is trying to present both an interpretation of a classical painting, and a life lesson. The little animations are curiously hilarious, like the ones Monty Python used to do.

https://youtu.be/pLpK_Htw-F8

Creative use of mirrors and servo motors - it seems like it took a lot of years to perfect his design.





And an older video - 

Day trader jargon

https://tradingsim.com/blog/first-hour-trading/
"What I will cover would have saved me 20 months of headaches if someone had told me day one...
"The first hour of trading provides the liquidity you need to get in an and out of the market.  On average the market only trends all day less than 20% of the time...
"The one time of day which consistently delivers on sharp moves with volume is the morning..."
"Within the first 5-minutes you will see a number of spikes in both price and volume as stocks gap up or down from the previous day's close. This will often be driven by some sort of earnings announcement or pre-market news.  This first five minutes is arguably the most volatile time of day."
"In today's world, there are way too many automated systems and retail investors all clamoring over pennies, stocks no longer move in a linear fashion where you can sit back and place your trades on cruise control.
"Since I trade, I know there are some of you reading this thinking, "I can make money all day". This is a true statement [but] the majority of people do not. You will see that around 11:00 am the volume just dries up in the market. This is because the institutional investors and hedge funds realize that there is far more work and risk to be had during the middle of the day than potential profits. The resulting price action when the true stock operators are away from their desk is basically a lot of sideways action."
"...I came across this great video from SMB trading where Mike Bellafore describes how some of his traders fight the desire to trade during the slow midday period..."
"I try to avoid stocks that are printing a lot of 2% and 3% candlesticks. Reason being, the stock will likely trip my stop loss order before I am able to realize my profit target."
"The first hour tends to be the most volatile, providing the most opportunity. Although it sounds harsh, professional traders know that a lot of "dumb money" is flowing at this time.

Dumb money is the phenomenon of people making transactions based on what they read in the newspapers or saw on TV the night before. The information these people are acting upon is typically old news. Their trades can create sharp price movements in one direction. Then professional traders take advantage of the overly high or low price and push it back the other way."

https://www.thebalance.com/best-time-s-of-day-to-day-trade-the-stock-market-1031361
"Ideally, risk 1% or less of your capital on each trade. This is accomplished by picking an entry point and then setting a stop loss, which will get you out of the trade if starts going too much against you."
https://www.thebalance.com/day-trading-tips-for-beginners-on-getting-started-4047240

Waymo tells riders to get ready for fully driverless rides

"Waymo is continuing its excruciatingly gradual process* for launching fully driverless technology. Rather than introducing self-driving technology in a single high-profile launch, the company has taken a series of baby steps toward full autonomy over the last three years."

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/10/waymo-starts-offering-driverless-rides-to-ordinary-riders-in-phoenix/

*Waymo's rollout over the last 18 months has been methodical, excruciatingly gradual, and sometimes conducted in secret. It's a formula for minimizing media-driven hype.

Mesmerizing

I found both of these mesmerizing and beautiful to watch. 

https://youtu.be/bVx-PFkDf_E

https://youtu.be/woCdjbsjbPg

Incidentally, mesmerizing comes from the 19th century astronomer-physician Franz Mesmer. 

"Experts can't agree on whether Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) was a quack or a genius, but all concede that the late 18th-century physician's name is the source of the word mesmerize. In his day, Mesmer was the toast of Paris, where he enjoyed the support of notables including Queen Marie Antoinette. He treated patients with a force he termed "animal magnetism." Many believe that what he actually used was what we now call "hypnotism." Mesmer's name was first applied to a technique for inducing hypnosis by one of his students in 1784."

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mesmerize

Medlar: The Best Fruit You’ve Never Heard Of - Medlars

"...they have to be picked early, then put aside for a few weeks to blet [ the decay that happens in overripe fruit.] Then, when they're finally bletted, they're have to be eaten immediately. There's not a huge window of edibility. This level of persnickety-ness just doesn't jive with our industrial food distribution system."

https://www.rootsimple.com/2010/12/medlar-the-best-fruit-youve-never-heard-of/

Hold On by Sarah McLachlan

https://play.google.com/music/m/Tkt7ksfssucqdn44ej4dxh47uou?t=Hold_On_-_Sarah_McLachlan

Sarah McLachlan introduced it with this explaination at VH1 Storytellers...

"This is a song, basically another one of those few and rare occasions where a song came out very quickly and easily. It was from pure emotion. I [was] watching a documentary called a 'Promise Kept,' made in Canada. It was about this woman who discovered her fiance was HIV positive and basically the story followed her and her husband. They got married, and he got progressively sicker and she took care of him right up until the end, and she was telling her story with just such, beautiful clarity and honesty and it just struck home in a way that I couldn't really describe... except by writing this song and I really feel like it's something that came out of me through her. This is called 'Hold On'."

https://songmeanings.com/m/songs/view/5768/

Hold on
Hold on to yourself
For this is gonna hurt like hell

Hold on
Hold on to yourself
You know that only time will tell

What is it in me that refuses to believe
This isn't easier than the real thing

My love
You know that you're my best friend
You know that I'd do anything for you
And my love
Let nothing come between us
My love for you is strong and true

Am I in heaven here or
Am I
At the crossroads I am standing

So now you're sleeping peaceful
I lie awake and pray
That you'll be strong tomorrow
And will see another day
And we will praise it
And love the light that brings a smile
Across your face

Oh God
If you're out there won't you hear me
I know we're never talked before

And oh God
The man I love is leaving
Won't you take him when he comes to your door

Am I in heaven here or
Am I in hell
At the crossroads I am standing

So now you're sleeping peaceful
I lie awake and pray
That you'll be strong tomorrow
And we will see another day
And we will praise it
And love the light that brings a smile

So now you're sleeping peaceful
I lie awake and pray
That you'll be strong tomorrow
And we will see another day
And we will praise it
And love the light that brings a smile
Across your face

Hold on
Hold on to yourself
For this is gonna hurt like hell

Why is everyone bad at driving? A Traffic Q&A investigation

https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/traffic/article220282065.html

Ed Troyer gave the best answer. People take on a different personality when they drive, they feel empowered. They feel indignant when another car gets in front of them, though it adds mere seconds to their drive. 

I met Ed Troyer in person once, and he was the same gentle, calming, respectful person you see in this interview. 

Here's a technique showering how one driver can make a difference in traffic jams. 

https://youtu.be/MtwY9xKfaYo

And the low-quality video by the proponent of the above technique:

https://youtu.be/iGFqfTCL2fs

And here's someone's dashcam recordings of what I drive in every day. 

https://youtu.be/N1cmYMJ_SkA

Adjustable Manhole Frames Avoid Costly Problems

https://ucononline.com/magazine/2010/december-2010-vol-65-no-12/new-products/adjustable-manhole-frames-avoid-costly-problems

Why hasn't this idea taken off? How often do you drive over a manhole that's below road grade after the road was replaced, making a huge thud as your tires go over it. That's so destructive to the road surface, like having a thousand-pound rubber hammer striking it thousands of times a day. 

China is forcing the world to rethink recycling

https://youtu.be/8HROn34sDRk

China stopped accepting trash because of increased cancer rates where it was being processed. While plastic for recycling had been a convenient cargo to transport on otherwise empty return trips to China, the plastic waste has now been pushed onto China's Asian neighbors, particularly Malaysia. Localized illness outbreaks there are getting attributed to illegal burning of excess plastic waste there.

Schwab and Ameritrade Cut Fees to $0.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Brokerages make their money from net interest margin, just like banks do. 

"...Schwab pays accountholders a little bit of interest on their cash balances (0.27 percent, on average, in 2018) and earns a lot more interest by lending those balances out (2.57 percent, again in 2018)."

"...They are able to offer "free" robo-advising because their robot will put a substantial fraction of your assets in lucrative-for-Schwab cash deposits, typically 6 to 10 percent but sometimes as much as 30 percent. If using this "free" robo-adviser will lead to you holding more cash (and giving up more yield) than you intended."

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/schwab-and-ameritrade-cut-fees-to-usd0-whats-the-catch.html

Creating Doubles

https://youtu.be/Mys8_k5PNPM
This is a great documentary...not worth it unless you devote the whole 25 minutes to it. It's painstakingly illustrated from dozens of films detailing how doubles effects were done across an entire century of moviemaking. It's surprising to recall how many movies split the same character into 2 or more people. 

Smile intensity in photographs -> less divorce, long life

"we posited that smiling behavior in photographs is potentially indicative of underlying emotional dispositions that have direct and indirect life consequences. In the first study...college yearbook photos and in [the second study] we examined a variety of participants’ photos from childhood through early adulthood. In both studies, divorce was predicted by the degree to which subjects smiled in their photos."
"causes one’s cheeks to raise as well as bagging around the eyes...causes the corners of the mouth to move upward forming a smile. The intensity of each action unit was scored utilizing a 5-point intensity scale..."
http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2009-08UVM-300/docs/others/everything/hertenstein2009a.pdf

Baseball players who turned a high-wattage smile on the photographer were only half as likely to die during any given year as those who smiled only partially or not at all.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797610363775#

..."A warm smile says that person is probably engaged, interested in others, and in general feels warmly about life."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2014/04/07/can-your-yearbook-photo-predict-happiness-divorce-death/#57cb054f56ea

What not to say to patients with cancer.

A trenchant disparagement of the things we say to cancer patients - poignant, and instructive.-TE

The New York Times

HEALTH | March 15, 2010

Well: With Cancer, Let's Face It: Words Are Inadequate

By DANA JENNINGS

The clichés most people use when talking about someone with cancer make Dana Jennings, who was treated for prostate cancer, bristle.

"Words can just be inadequate. And as we stumble and trip toward trying to say the right and true thing, we often reach for the nearest rotted-out cliché for support. Better to say nothing, and offer the gift of your presence, than to utter bankrupt bromides. Silences make us squirm. But when I was sickest, most numbed by my treatment, it was more than healing to bask in a friend's compassionate silence, to receive and give a hug, to be sustained by a genuine smile."

"the words "fight" and "battle" make me cringe and bristle."... "We are caught in the middle, between our doctors and their potential tools of healing and the cell-devouring horde."

"We long for pain to end, for ice chips on parched lips, for the brush of a soft hand."

"Then there's the matter of bravery. We call cancer patients "brave," perhaps, because the very word cancer makes most of us tremble in fear. But there is nothing brave about showing up for surgery or radiation sessions. Is a tree brave for still standing after its leaves shrivel and fall? Bravery entails choice, and most patients have very little choice but to undergo treatment."

"Which brings me to "victim." ...Sure, I felt unlucky and sad and angry, but not like a victim...Victim implies an assailant, and there is no malice or intent with cancer. Some cells in my body mutinied, and I became a host organism — all of it completely organic and natural."

"And what are we once treatment ends? Are we survivors? ...I'm just trying to lead a positive postcancer life, ...pleased that I can realistically think about the future. I'm trying to complete the metamorphosis from brittle husk to being just me again."

"And I'm still troubled by this sentence, which I've heard many times: "Well, at least it's a good cancer." ...Most people mean well, but the idea of a good cancer makes no sense. At best, the words break meaninglessly over the patient. There are no good cancers, just as there are no good wars, no good earthquakes."

https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9A04E7D71E3CF935A25750C0A9669D8B63.html

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