Maderisation is a process that involves the heating and oxidisation of a wine. The term is named after the process used in the production of Madeira wine, where it occurs while the wine is in cask. The resulting wine darkens in color and acquires a Sherry-like character.
Thursday, December 31, 2020
Monday, December 28, 2020
Beauty transformations
It takes so much Photoshop editing to produce a billboard
https://youtu.be/iYhCn0jf46U
Time-lapse of incredibly extensive makeup to transform Asian women
https://youtu.be/rKWEut3WKAg
Supermodels without their makeup
https://youtu.be/Mt2lro3xhsE
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Sounds on frozen lakes
Incredible sound.
But this is still probably the best example:
Skating on a newly-frozen lake
8 cinematic drone movements
Bird's eye - create symmetry, gives viewer something to decode
Tracking - follow subject through a scene
Crane/jib shot - emulate a crane, lift above eye level, use slow motion
Pullback shot - like a "dronie"
Orbit
Low altitude - dynamic sense of speed with landscape rushing under camera
Friday, December 25, 2020
Arctic Dining: Think Frozen Sashimi - The New York Times
"Fishermen and reindeer herders in northern Siberia have long snacked on raw, frozen fish and meat. Shaved thin and often dipped in sauce, the dish is one of Russia's hidden delicacies."
"It is raw, frozen fish or meat, shaved thin with a sharp knife so that it curls off the blade. Hurry — you have to eat it before it thaws for the best flavor and texture, dipping the frozen shavings into a salt-and-pepper mix or your favorite sauce, then chewing lightly as they melt on your tongue, like a Popsicle version of sashimi or carpaccio."
"Its bracing and freezing rawness, followed by its subtle tenderness, distills the wild, blustery, softly lit grandeur of the Far North."
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Driving in snow
Control a skid by steering INTO the direction of the skid: look where you want the car to go, and steer hard that way. You can start watching at 1:29 if you don't have a lot of time.
For a more detailed look with lots of examples, they illustrate this in more detail in this video at 6:11.
And in the same video, at 1:52, beware of bridges where the wind cools the road surface from both top and bottom, so it freezes earlier.
Monday, December 21, 2020
Parent's Kiss to remove nasal foreign bodies
Genius. It's such a clever technique because the kid will only cooperate with their own parent putting the straw in, and they will naturally close their glottis when surprised when the parent blows air in, forcing the air out through the nose and expelling the foreign body.
Sunday, December 20, 2020
Actors Studio Questions
Here are the 10 interview questions always asked to guests on the "Inside the Actor's Studio" series.
The 10 questions Lipton asks are:
- What is your favorite word?
- What is your least favorite word?
- What turns you on?
- What turns you off?
- What sound or noise do you love?
- What sound or noise do you hate?
- What is your favorite curse word?
- What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
- What profession would you not like to do?
- If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
Here's a compilation of celebrities answering these questions:
Sunday, December 13, 2020
Flex walls and ceilings
Inventive and creative architectural spaces that mechanically flex in response to your footstep.
This reminds me of the great ending scene in the Matrix, where he realizes he has power over the matreix to bend it with his mind - flexes his muscles and the walls bend, at 4:32.
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
OR behavior as studied by primate biologists
"By analyzing 200 surgeries, anthropologists found mixed-gender operating room teams exhibited the highest levels of cooperation. Christopher Intagliata reports."
60-second podcast:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/primate-conflicts-play-out-in-the-operating-room The original paper:
Ethological observations of social behavior in the operating room.
Friday, December 4, 2020
Physicists in China challenge Google’s ‘quantum advantage’ - DNA Zone
The numbers in this report are absolutely mind-blowing.
"Pan and colleagues could find solutions to the boson-sampling problem in 200 seconds. They estimate these would take 2.5 billion years to calculate on China’s TaihuLight supercomputer — a quantum advantage of around 1014."
Maurice Hilleman arguably saved more lives than any other single person in history.
One single scientist developed over 40 vaccines in his lifetime, including eight of the vaccines that are still routinely given to every child. He's described in this podcast as someone who just had an innate gift for the judgments in a lab when making a vaccine.
Reflecting on his life, he said, humbly, at 35:40 "I'm kind of pleased about it – I'm not smug. There's a great joy in being useful in life."
Monday, November 30, 2020
Thursday, November 26, 2020
Some incredible water art installations
Painting with water at Osaka station
Or watch from 0:33 in this one:
Intriguing art installation that prevents rain from hitting you.
Fascinating sculpture imitates moving water
And another, in Grand Central station
Sculpture with moving water
A practical application of printing on falling water - a tunnel Stop signal that was being ignored. You can skip to 0:17.
Incredible high-speed strobe photos of paired drops splashing onto water.
A dramatic crashing wave projected above a building entrance.
Some incredible sculptures, not necessarily about water.
Mesmerizing "Liquid Shard" installation in LA mimics starling murmurations.
Singapore airport's "Jewel" waterfall, especially after 1:45 in the video:
And a little more detail about the billion dollars airport complex around it:
Finally, some good news: Coronavirus pandemic leading to huge drop in air pollution
satellite images reveal marked fall in global nitrogen dioxide levels
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Rechargeable things in my home
I can remember just twenty years ago, I had just two rechargeable items in my household - my shaver and my laptop.
Now I have
Shaver
Toothbrush
Smartphone
Laptop
Portable Laryngoscope
Electric skateboard
Drone, drone controller
Bike lights
Power bank for smartphone
Noise cancelling headphones
Wireless headphones
Boiling water dispenser (seriously! It has a battery-powered pump to dispense hot water at your picnic.)
Osmo (gimbal) camera
Solar-powered lamps
Solar security light
Solar floating pool light
Lawn trimmer
Ororo heated jacket
Electric car
The number of rechargeable batteries I've purchased has gone up exponentially over time.
Sunday, November 22, 2020
Babies prefer to gaze upon beautiful faces | New Scientist
"[Researchers] showed paired images of faces to babies as young a one day old and found that they spent more time fixated on the more attractive face.
"Attractiveness is not in the eye of the beholder, it's innate to a newborn infant," says Slater."
"...[they] took pictures of a variety of female faces and asked adult subjects presented to rate them for attractiveness. Subjects scored each face on a scale from 1 to 5. The researchers then searched for pairs of photographs that were similar in all respects – in brightness and contrast, for example – but at opposite ends of the attractiveness scale.They then presented these paired photographs to newborn infants, who ranged in age from one to seven days old. All babies were still in hospital after birth. One researcher held each infant upright about 30 centimetres away from the two photos. Another stood out of view and noted where the babies eyes were directed."
Saturday, November 21, 2020
SPAC investments
"Special purpose acquisition companies" are shell companies offering venture capital as a quick shortcut to raising capital without the paperwork of an IPO. A spate of them recently NKLA, DKNG,. UTZ has made them popular.
This article offers these caveats to consider:
"
- Is the target business established and generating cash flow?
- If not, does it have a viable strategy and is it positioned to achieve its goals?
- Will the company need to make major investments in technology, talent or other resources to succeed?
- How accomplished is the management team, and are they staying with the company after its acquisition by the SPAC?
- Does the target company have a durable, competitive advantage, such as a patent or cutting edge technology, that gives them "a wide and long-lasting moat," to quote from Warren Buffet's most important factor when evaluating an investment?
- What are the target's biggest risks factors? "
Friday, November 20, 2020
Types of Bridges, Explained By an Engineer
This is the sort of video I love - going in-depth with an engineer about how they think about a bridge conceptually, what design problems and constraints they have to address, and how the different solutions differ. This video is particularly well illustrated with animations over the images to emphasizing their points.
Monday, November 16, 2020
How Delta Fixes $32 Million Jet Engines
Sunday, November 15, 2020
The Sailboat Designed to Fly
Pretty amazing sailboat design. Huge weight saving by eliminating a keel and instead having an outboard hydraulic hydrofoil generating force like a buttress holding the sailboat from heeling (heeling is lateral roll or tilt caused by force of wind on the sail versus drag of the hull in the water)
You can start at 2:19 in this video for an explanation of the "canting T-foils" that buttress the boat from the leeward side.
And you can start at 1:46 in this video for an analysis of hull design, with the lift created by the upper surface of the deck described at 5:03.
Saturday, November 14, 2020
Ex-Tesla startup engineer is now recycling batteries
The evils of concrete
3:46 manufacturing concrete requires 9% of global water usage
Is concrete destructive
The Denialist Playbook - Scientific American
"...the predictable tactics of those clinging to an untenable position:"
- Doubt the Science
- Question Scientists' Motives and Integrity
- Magnify Disagreements among Scientists and Cite Gadflies as Authorities
- Exaggerate Potential Harm
- Appeal to Personal Freedom
- Reject Whatever Would Repudiate A Key Philosophy
Sunday, November 8, 2020
Florida Releasing 750 Million GMO Mosquitoes?
Companies seeking out potential employees with autism
Autistic people can be intently focused for very long periods; they
have a different way of seeing things, of problem solving. Certain jobs are particularly attuned to their unique talents, and accordingly, employers are seeking them out.
Wednesday, November 4, 2020
Creating a back alley in a virtual world
If you really want to dive deep, here's an extended version:
The Sisal Plant allowing Kenyan Farmers Prosper
Sunday, November 1, 2020
The largest medical need in the world.
"No single country has lifted themselves out of poverty without access to contraception."
"It only takes one generation to see a decline in birth rate."
-Melinda Gates, on
Quote from Warren Buffett
"I'll give my children 'enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing' "
Saturday, October 31, 2020
This American Life: The Feather Heist
Pandemic effects on society
Just as I thought. Police are worried about catching COVID from traffic stops, so policing decreases and people are feeling free to speed more.
"The rate of crash deaths in the U.S. rose as the coronavirus pandemic erupted this spring, fueled by an increase in risky behaviors like speeding and by a reduced police presence on roadways"
What about STDs? I thought maybe people are isolating and not interacting with others as much...but that's outweighed by individual's reluctance to get tested (for fear of getting COVID) which fuels rampant spread from unabated sexual activity despite the pandemic, combined with a hampered ability to trace their contacts.
STD rates appear to be quietly skyrocketing across the US, as fewer people get tested and treated during the pandemic.
Trillions of Questions, How Google Search works
An enjoyable, intriguing, deep look into how Google improves search capabilities.
...And here is how Google presents all the above to the public in an easily digestible summary:
Friday, October 30, 2020
"Flash" graphene made from plastic waste
Sounds like a win-win:
"at industrial scale, the process could produce graphene for about $125 in electricity costs per ton of plastic waste..."
"Rather than recycling plastic into pellets that sell for $2,000 a ton, you could be upcycling to graphene, which has a much higher value..."
"We produce considerable amount of hydrogen, which is a clean fuel, in our flashing [production] process..."
"The nice thing about graphene is its biological degradation under many conditions is very slow, so in most cases it doesn't reenter the carbon cycle for hundreds of years..."
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Hidden Brain
In this otherwise dull and slow-moving episode, he uncovers the truth that
20:38 "journalist's favor the zealous voices of the deeply involved."
That is, when you watch the news, the people you're seeing interviewed are the ones who are fanatical about the subject.
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Artificial intelligence
Want to see Roger Federer play himself in a game of tennis? Amusing, fascinating, and a little creepy.
Sunday, October 18, 2020
Starting A Drone Company
Monday, October 12, 2020
Repairing a $45,000 Tire.
Road Repair Technologies
https://youtu.be/8h7ivH4A2jc
7:58 polylevel high pressure polyurethane foam lifts and elevates blocks of pavement with fewer small holes than previous methods.
Statue of David
A podcast about cracks in the statue of David, and how that relates to fallibility, Dostoyevsky, opaque bureaucracy in Italy, iconoclastic Freudian urges, and a host of other things.
Saturday, October 10, 2020
Electric shocks to tongue decreases tinnitus
How bizarre! Tinnitus relieved by simultaneous brain overload with auditory tones and electric shock to the tongue for 12 weeks. And relief later for up to a year.
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
wasp zombifies cockroach
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Police have no special duty to protect - Radiolab
This podcast is an intriguing and rather sobering investigation into the landmark cases that have defined what the police must do. It turns out, in order to broadly protect us all from living in a police state with severe punishment for everything, surprisingly, the police have no duty to protect you from imminent harm. Unless four (almost never true) conditions are met - you ask them to help, they perceive the threat is real, they agree to help, and you change your behavior as a result of knowing that they will help.
It's also an extension of the fact that citizens are not legally required to help someone in need when they're passing by - it might be heroic or morally right to help them, but not legally in that you wouldn't have to cover their damages.
As they explain, certain people have a "special relationship" with you so that they are legally bound to protect you - like a hotel owner, a transit organization when you're their passenger, or a cab driver. So they're legally bound.
So in the contemporary angst about what the "police role" is and whether we should fund them, there isn't any fundamental specific guide or charter describing what they're legally bound to d. This surprising absence is distinctly different than the entire rest of the government like the FDA, FAA and so on.
Journalists have to refrain from protesting
This podcast begins with an interview with the journalist, who mentions that journalists are forbidden from participating in protests. This was new to me, but the ethics of journalism are pretty clear on this issue.
"NPR's code, for instance, says quite bluntly that "NPR journalists may not participate in marches and rallies" concerning issues that NPR covers — which is pretty much everything."
"Reporters covering politics are at the other end of this spectrum of what may be tolerated. For them, almost no political activity is OK...If a reporter's spouse, family member or other relative — or even a close friend — runs for office, the reporter should not be covering the campaign."
Ultimately, "Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Remain free of associations that may compromise integrity or damage credibility."
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