UNITED 328 Engine Failure Explained

https://youtu.be/q5Wler87pwY 

I love how this pilot explains things. The above video helps you understand how much the pilots had to do in real time for the recent engine fire after takeoff. 

Here, https://youtu.be/mqPMANOEG7Y he explains why some aircraft wheels are tilted and others are not, and how the tilt is like wearing high heels for some aircraft. 

Fwd: Instant Monsters! 🐉

https://youtu.be/-Ny-p-CHNyM

It's amazing to me that this online platform can create 3D from a 2D drawing, and animate it. I think it's even figuring out where the joints in the limbs are automatically, but maybe that's being programmed in. 

SKYDIO 2 REVIEW for filming watersports

https://youtu.be/Mr5MVSJoAQ4

Great detailed review after dozens of flights. 

Choose an overcast day. (Sun confuses autonomy engine)

Some wind so the drone can see the water surface (vs smooth as glass surface)

Beware, land drone at 30% battery because it won't return to home on its own if flying with beacon. 

Cold Weather Testing | Rivian

https://youtu.be/bjjyeJ21YKQ

3:50 "What can we improve What do we change? How do we make it better? That sort of attitude resonates within the company." 

Mushroom brick could replace concrete

https://youtu.be/Pp7pSlwIlLA

10% of global CO2 emissions come from concrete - more than the entire airline industry

Mushroom bricks made from dense interconnecting mycelia growth makea sturdy lightweight material that can be used as bricks, leather, or packaging material

Wire rope splicing

https://youtu.be/oCKr1S3mKFk

I can't believe how much wrestling by hand has to be done by these workers, especially at 2:47. 

Infusion pumps that alarm

This anonymous post says it so succinctly - the frustration you feel as an anesthesiologist when your attention is totally diverted to an annoying infusion pump that is alarming for some trivial reason so that you can't pay attention to more important things. 

"especially during a cardiac case with multiple drips, the last thing you want is an infusion pump failing to deliver and also simultaneously occupying your disproportionate attention and effort...Why are these pumps so common everywhere despite such issues?"

Electric hydrofoil surfboard

https://www.activewake.com/shop/brands/slingshot-brand/foil-slingshot/2021-slinghot-hover-glide-wake-v3-package/

The price is finally coming down. $1650 for the Active Water Sports 2021 Slingshot Hover Glide Wake V3 Package - Active Water Sports

That's definitely a learning curve, as you can see from these photos. 

https://www.wakeboardingmag.com/story/howto/old-dogs-learning-new-tricks-water-skiers-try-wake-foiling/

Hydrofoil electric surfboard

https://www.activewake.com/shop/brands/slingshot-brand/foil-slingshot/2021-slinghot-hover-glide-wake-v3-package/

The price is finally coming down - $1650

Active Water Sports 2021 Slingshot Hover Glide Wake V3 Package - Active Water Sports

CLEANING MACHINES

https://youtu.be/HJQV-BMWiIk

Big machines for big cleaning jobs

Fire on a jet explained by a pilot

https://youtu.be/q5Wler87pwY

 

I found this explanation by a pilot much more interesting than other reports of aviation mishaps. You can really understand what the pilots are doing in real time.

 

Condensation harvests drinkable water from the air

https://youtu.be/THJVuinPbc0

Designed for erection without scaffolding using local materials, and open-source. This saves the villagers from having to walk miles a day to get water. 

20 Drone Tips

https://youtu.be/Wo-QaHGD6eA

Best advice I've seen for flying drones. Simple rules based on experience and well illustrated. 

Powering EVs with Solar

https://youtu.be/kbKjjwWBWW0

Going off-grid, well, in summer at least. 3:53 He figures he'd need 60-70% more panels to power an EV for his commute. 

At 4:27, he says "adding a sun-tracking system is more expensive than just adding extra panels [facing a different direction.]"

At 5:58, he has 18 tons of lead-acid batteries. He feels that's better than bidirectional grid access where you take power from the grid when it's fa dark out. 

Vaccine refusals

A vaccine shot? No thank you (from NY Times)

Vaccine alarmism - it goes something like this:

The coronavirus vaccines aren't 100 percent effective. Vaccinated people may still be contagious. And the virus variants may make everything worse. So don't change your behavior even if you get a shot.

Much of this message has some basis in truth, but it is fundamentally misleading. The evidence so far suggests that a full dose of the vaccine — with the appropriate waiting period after the second shot — effectively eliminates the risk of Covid-19 death, nearly eliminates the risk of hospitalization and drastically reduces a person's ability to infect somebody else. All of that is also true about the virus's new variants.

Yet the alarmism continues. And now we are seeing its real-world costs: Many people don't want to get the vaccine partly because it sounds so ineffectual.

About one-third of members of the U.S. military have declined vaccine shots. When shots first became available to Ohio nursing-home workers, about 60 percent said no. Some N.B.A. stars are wary of appearing in public-services ads encouraging vaccination.

Nationwide, nearly half of Americans would refuse a shot if offered one immediately, polls suggest. Vaccination skepticism is even higher among Black and Hispanic people, white people without a college degree, registered Republicans and lower-income households.

Kate Grabowski, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, told me that she has heard from relatives about their friends and co-workers choosing not to get a shot because they keep hearing they can still get Covid and pass it on to others — and will still need to wear masks and social distance. "What's the point?" she said, describing their attitude.

The message from experts, Grabowski said, is "being misinterpreted. That's on us. We're clearly doing something wrong."

"Our discussion about vaccines has been poor, really poor," Dr. Muge Cevik, a virologist, told me. "As scientists we need to be more careful what we say and how that could be understood by the public."

image

An 83-year-old woman receives a vaccination in Idaho this month.Janie Osborne for The New York Times

The cost of confusion

Many academic experts — and, yes, journalists too — are instinctively skeptical and cautious. This instinct has caused the public messaging about vaccines to emphasize uncertainty and potential future bad news.

To take one example: The initial research trials of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines did not study whether a vaccinated person could get infected and infect another person. But the accumulated scientific evidence suggests the chances are very small that a vaccinated person could infect someone else with a severe case of Covid. (A mild case is effectively the common cold.) You wouldn't know that from much of the public discussion.

"Over and over again, I see statements that in theory one could be infected and spread the virus even after being fully vaccinated," Dr. Rebecca Wurtz of the University of Minnesota told me. "Is the ambiguous messaging contributing to ambivalent feelings about vaccination? Yes, no question."

The messaging, as Dr. Abraar Karan of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston said, has a "somewhat paternalistic" quality. It's as if many experts do not trust people to understand both that the vaccines make an enormous difference and that there are unanswered questions.

As a result, the public messages err on the side of alarmism: The vaccine is not a get-out-of-Covid-free card!

In their own lives, medical experts — and, again, journalists — tend to be cleareyed about the vaccines. Many are getting shots as soon as they're offered one. They are urging their family and friends to do the same. But when they speak to a national audience, they deliver a message that comes off very differently. It is dominated by talk of risks, uncertainties, caveats and possible problems. It feeds pre-existing anti-vaccine misinformation and anxiety.

No wonder that the experts' own communities (which are disproportionately white, upper-income and liberal) are less skeptical of the vaccines than Black, Latino, working class and conservative communities.

Over the next several weeks, the supply of available vaccines will surge. If large numbers of Americans say no to a shot, however, many will suffer needlessly. "It makes me sad," Grabowski told me. "We've created this amazing technology, and we can save so many lives."

What should the public messaging about the vaccines be? "They're safe. They're highly effective against serious disease. And the emerging evidence about infectiousness looks really good," Grabowski said. "If you have access to a vaccine and you're eligible, you should get it."

The Morning: Underselling the vaccine

This summary helps people understand that just because it's not 100% effective, the vaccine is still very useful in the remaining 5% - the illness they get is very mild. 

From: The New York Times 

Underselling the vaccine 

January 18, 2021 

  We explain why the vaccine news is better than you may think. 'We're underselling the vaccine' 

Early in the pandemic, many health experts — in the U.S. and around the world — decided that the public could not be trusted to hear the truth about masks.

 Instead, the experts spread a misleading message, discouraging the use of masks. Their motivation was mostly good. It sprung from a concern that people would rush to buy high-grade medical masks, leaving too few for doctors and nurses. The experts were also unsure how much ordinary masks would help. 

But the message was still a mistake. 

It confused people. (If masks weren't effective, why did doctors and nurses need them?) It delayed the widespread use of masks (even though there was good reason to believe they could help). And it damaged the credibility of public health experts. 

"When people feel as though they may not be getting the full truth from the authorities, snake-oil sellers and price gougers have an easier time," the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote early last year. 

Now a version of the mask story is repeating itself — this time involving the vaccines. Once again, the experts don't seem to trust the public to hear the full truth. 

This issue is important and complex enough that I'm going to make today's newsletter a bit longer than usual. 

'Ridiculously encouraging' 

Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They're not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn't change their behavior once they get their shots. 

These warnings have a basis in truth, just as it's true that masks are imperfect. But the sum total of the warnings is misleading, as I heard from multiple doctors and epidemiologists last week. 

"It's driving me a little bit crazy," Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health, told me. 

"We're underselling the vaccine," Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said. 

"It's going to save your life — that's where the emphasis has to be right now," Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said. 

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are "essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease," Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said. "It's ridiculously encouraging." 

The details Here's my best attempt at summarizing what we know: The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — the only two approved in the U.S. — are among the best vaccines ever created, with effectiveness rates of about 95 percent after two doses. That's on par with the vaccines for chickenpox and measles. And a vaccine doesn't even need to be so effective to reduce cases sharply and crush a pandemic. 

If anything, the 95 percent number understates the effectiveness, because it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure. But turning Covid into a typical flu — as the vaccines evidently did for most of the remaining 5 percent — is actually a success. Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, do you want to guess how many contracted a severe Covid case? One. 

Although no rigorous study has yet analyzed whether vaccinated people can spread the virus, it would be surprising if they did. "If there is an example of a vaccine in widespread clinical use that has this selective effect — prevents disease but not infection — I can't think of one!" Dr. Paul Sax of Harvard has written in The New England Journal of Medicine. (And, no, exclamation points are not common in medical journals.) On Twitter, Dr. Monica Gandhi of the University of California, San Francisco, argued: "Please be assured that YOU ARE SAFE after vaccine from what matters — disease and spreading." 

The risks for vaccinated people are still not zero, because almost nothing in the real world is zero risk. A tiny percentage of people may have allergic reactions. And I'll be eager to see what the studies on post-vaccination spread eventually show. But the evidence so far suggests that the vaccines are akin to a cure. 

Offit told me we should be greeting them with the same enthusiasm that greeted the polio vaccine: "It should be this rallying cry." 

The costs of negativity 

Why are many experts conveying a more negative message? Again, their motivations are mostly good. As academic researchers, they are instinctively cautious, prone to emphasizing any uncertainty. Many may also be nervous that vaccinated people will stop wearing masks and social distancing, which in turn could cause unvaccinated people to stop as well. If that happens, deaths would soar even higher. 

But the best way to persuade people to behave safely usually involves telling them the truth. "Not being completely open because you want to achieve some sort of behavioral public health goal — people will see through that eventually," Richterman said. The current approach also feeds anti-vaccine skepticism and conspiracy theories. 

After asking Richterman and others what a better public message might sound like, I was left thinking about something like this: 

We should immediately be more aggressive about mask-wearing and social distancing because of the new virus variants. We should vaccinate people as rapidly as possible — which will require approving other Covid vaccines when the data justifies it. 

People who have received both of their vaccine shots, and have waited until they take effect, will be able to do things that unvaccinated people cannot — like having meals together and hugging their grandchildren. But until the pandemic is defeated, all Americans should wear masks in public, help unvaccinated people stay safe and contribute to a shared national project of saving every possible life.

California Floater Mussels

https://youtu.be/m7p_w4zE3s4

Baby mussels (glochidia) have hooks to latch on to fish for a parasitic ride to new feeding grounds. 

How Blind People See With Sound

https://youtu.be/08smCjKWNL0

Teaching yourself to use clicks for echolocation

Here's an 8 year old who navigates remarkably well with echolocation.

 

How a COVID vaccine is made

It's fascinating how many tightly-controlled steps are needed to manufacture vaccine: 

"...hundreds of gallons of an amber-colored solution containing specially designed E. coli bacteria. Using a process called biosynthesis, these bacteria churn out trillions of the DNA plasmids over the course of two weeks."

"...[Purified...linearized...] DNA material is tested to ensure... nothing extraneous in the purified mixture and the DNA strands have to all be exact copies."

"...the linear strands of DNA are turned into RNA in 40-liter vessels full of enzymes and chemicals over the course of three to four days...the body's immune system can "see" these foreign [mRNA] proteins and begins creating antibodies to fight them."

"the mRNA must be separated from the liquid it was created in and the excess chemicals used to make it."

"All this happens in an extremely high-tech manufacturing suite. The air is filtered, the equipment constantly tested and all employees wear head-to-toe cleanroom coveralls"

"...the fragile strands of mRNA are enclosed in tiny balls of fat known as lipid nanoparticles...Without the balls of fat, the vaccine would disintegrate before it could deliver its payload."

"...Quality control and testing take weeks. Each lot of vaccine is tested to ensure product quality – identity, potency, purity and safety."

"...When the FDA licenses a vaccine, they license the building, they license the product and they license the process"

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/health/2021/02/07/how-covid-vaccine-made-step-step-journey-pfizer-dose/4371693001/

China’s Mass Surveillance

https://youtu.be/ZWwzDnq7poQ

Scary levels of surveillance through 200 million state-connected cameras, and a publicly available social credit ranking system that affects travel, access to schools and hospitals, and so on. 

At 2:00 in this video, a reporter tests the system, and police find him within 7 minutes. 

https://youtu.be/pNf4-d6fDoY

PLASTIC waste

https://youtu.be/n8gfbKVQXz0

Compelling illustration of how much plastic we waste. 

Skydio uses AI synthesis of 6 cameras to optimize flight path

This post gives a detailed description of how the Skydio drone takes reams of incoming data to figure out where it is, and where to go to safely and optimally track an object in real time.

At a rate of 500 times per second, the autonomy engine refines its flight plan by considering over forty objectives that balance smooth flight, effective tracking, image framing, obstacles, aerodynamics, power constraints, and many other factors.

https://medium.com/skydio/inside-the-mind-of-the-skydio-2-b1b78aa6dfa7

This video superimposes what the navigation computer sees when trying to avoid obstacles. 

https://youtu.be/Yku8hujfA1Q

Electric car charging

 https://youtu.be/pLcqJ2DclEg

Incredibly clearly and thoroughly explained. The tipping point for adoption of electric cars has been reached in terms of vehicle cost and range: 

Consumers expect: 

And fast charging: 

Battery costs are declining rapidly:

But DC charging inverters are expensive!

The average American lives 4 miles from the nearest gas station, but 31 miles from the nearest electric charging station. To make up that difference, Tesla, for example, would have to spend $8bn 

Interestingly, he also points out that higher kW charging stations do not make charging faster, once the battery is above 50% capacity (where most consumers do their charging) and where the battery is physically unable to accept charge any faster. Note the identical rate of charging from 50% to 90% full despite almost twice the kW charging potential output. 

He argues that government standardization of charging plugs, as in Europe, would greatly facilitate the adoption of electric vehicles. 

 

Here's an interesting idea - Electric vehicle batteries can be used to supplement the electric grid during peak demand, then charge back from the grid at off-peak times. It starts at 10:42 

https://youtu.be/3FSMG5KbQkM?t=642

 

Here's a consumer survey report from 2011 about consumer perceptions of electric vehicles. Such perceptions are very valuable to automakers, before they pour billions into electric car development. So I'm sure the surveys are well funded to be an accurate representation of consumer interest regarding desires like EV range and charging time. 

https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Manufacturing/gx_us_auto_DTTGlobalAutoSurvey_ElectricVehicles_100411.pdf

Vehicle range is a funny thing - it's such a preoccupation for electric vehicle sales, and yet 99% of our driving is just our daily commute of a few miles. But this is what consumers want, so they get it. 

Swappable EV batteries have been proposed and tried, but there are just too many technical challenges. I like this vlogger and how she summarizes things. She begins talking about it at 1:09 in this video:

https://youtu.be/xPzXzKpv1xY?t=69

"Ensuring the battery is properly aligned, the vehicle is completely immobilized, and the battery is isolated to prevent shock...and the size of facility needed to inventory and recharge all the proprietary battery packs for each vehicle..."

First date body language

https://youtu.be/PBDgOU_kr5E Wow, incredible insights from body language on a first date.  Ventral fronting, mirroring, and isopraxis.

Simulating a cloth falling and draping over something

https://youtu.be/7O7W-_FKRMQ

Beautiful simulations, and it's incredible how much calculation has to go into making the cloth move realistically.

 

 

CNN money quote forecast

Has a nice summary of quarterly earnings, and recent analyst's estimates. Oddly, you can't search for another quote this directly on this site on your phone, have to Google search each time.  

Charging a Tesla with a solar trailer - nope.

This youtuber tried adding solar panels to a trailer, and finally got it charging – but only when it was stationary.

https://youtu.be/9uE6eaZRBcQ

This blogger notes that his math was wrong, and it would take 10,000 of his panels to charge merely at the rate a wall outlet does. Supercharging charge speeds would take even more.

"Unfortunately, it would take quite a few solar panels even to bring the trailer up to wall outlet levels of charging speed. The Tesla Model 3's maximum charging rate is 7.7 kW—assuming the same 75% efficiency, that's 10,267 solar panels. And that's just to get the Model 3 fully-recharged within an 8-hour workday."

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/can-you-charge-a-tesla-model-3-with-a-solar-panel-trailer/

Using one of these pre-built trailers would be easier. 

https://www.mobilesolarpower.net/products/ms-series-solar-generators/

Extreme mountain biking

Both the film, and the "making of" are interesting to watch. He returned the second time with "soft
compound" tires which made him more confident on the steepest part.

https://youtu.be/4Ym2F-tHdkk

"Making of" – incredible FPV drone footage. Some shots were not used in the film because you can see the shadow of the drone.

https://youtu.be/8IdwtKlXZB8

 

 

Kamaz Truck Does The Unimaginable

https://youtu.be/JnhpPnmrFyw

At 2:06, the 9 ton truck flies 37 meters through the air.