Here's Seattle's plan for American Rescue Plan Act funds | King5.com

Good news that substantial funds are being spent on the homeless. 

"Seattle will get $116 million from the American Rescue Plan Act and an additional $12 million from the HOME Investment Partnerships Program. The city council will vote to authorize spending the funds on June 1. The biggest portions of the money will go toward Seattle's homelessness response and community well-being efforts, like direct cash assistance and aid programs. 

Seattle will spend $49.2 million total on investments in permanent housing and resources for emergency housing, shelter and services, according to the plan. Over $28 million will go toward developing permanent housing alone. Around $13 million will go toward enhanced shelter and outreach, building capacity with housing providers, and additional diversion efforts. 

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/128-million-seattle-releases-plan-for-american-rescue-plan-act-funds/281-22dbbf10-3393-4033-b769-8a9b3b7a000f

DIY lithium battery setup

https://youtu.be/L43bArxyszU

This video describes the setup for used lithium batteries with a built-in battery management, and an external inverter to give 120 V power from them. Seems like an easy way to get a good DIY power source. 

Early Electric Trucks Will Be Terrible for Towing RVs

https://youtu.be/CZ7HSCcP9YM

This otherwise-loyal electric enthusiast runs the numbers and discusses the practical constraints of towing a trailer with an electric truck. 

Very enlightening. If a Ford Lightning ends up having 48 miles practical range in real-world conditions, and takes a day or several days to charge at an RV campground, that's a non-starter. Until battery technology improves and the charging network expands significantly. 

Offgrid Solar Trailer to Level 2 Charge a Tesla

https://youtu.be/_4zOVhjSbY8

By bargain shopping and buying used equipment, he got 30 x $50 of solar panels, 14 kWh of batteries (about $800) an inverter to charge the batteries, and a $1400 inverter to supply battery output, he's able to add 17 miles range per hour of charging. 

That's about $5K in costs, or the equivalent cost of fully charging your Tesla 50 times at current $0.10/kWh utility rates. 

Repacking Makita 18v Lithium battery with New Cells

https://youtu.be/3KDiecphUk8

What a great idea to salvage an old battery pack for power tools. Of course, you have to get the spot welder he mentions to avoid batteries blowing up, so probably only worthwhile if you can salvage many batteries. 

Manipulating public opinion with scientific evidence

Interesting concept in manipulating public opinion: 

22:30 "This was a government agency that just didn't like the science, so it pointed to different science that was just plausible enough to be confusing." 

That is, you don't need to refute the damning evidence, you just need a contradicting paper that sows enough confusion so that people who skim the headlines don't know who to believe.

This podcast is about the regulatory agencies purportedly preserving the forests but which profited from licensing logging, who were countering evidence of impending owl extinction with a vaguely-related hypothetical paper of field mice having larger broods to recover population numbers. 

https://www.opb.org/article/2020/09/22/timber-wars-episode-3-the-owl/

Curved pulleys

https://youtu.be/TNuzi-jMXoY

He always does such a good job of clearly and thoroughly explaining. In this case, the rubber band behaves curiously and counterintuitively, but he takes pains to describe why it happens. 

Shoes

Surprisingly interesting podcast about shoes. Why do we cover our feet anyways? Our ancestors didn't. Are we doing more harm than good by wearing shoes - maybe so. Inducing osteoarthritis, maybe. 

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/shoes-rebroadcast/

World's deepest hole

My patient today is 84 and said he helped drill the deepest oil well in Texas at the time - since superseded. It was 18,000 feet. He said it took 12 hours to pull the pipe out to change the drill head, and 8 hours to put it back in. (That would be very frustrating!)  He also said the pipe would come out far too hot to touch.

Found an interesting article, which distinguishes between length of drill pipe versus actual vertical depth. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Truth-About-The-Worlds-Deepest-Oil-Well.amp.html

I would suspect that there are some physical principles at work when you have a pipe of 15km length that you are torquing where a significant amount of it has changing metallurgic characteristics due to high basal temperatures, and then friction-heating on top.  In spite of them being Russian and broke I would suspect there were some physical limitations placed upon them as well.

... I'll copy my father, who is always moderate of opinion, and see what his thoughts are on this!  You know, since he's a engineer in the oil patch and has been involved in one or two drilling projects (although usually through ice...)

 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole

The subject is very complex and perhaps intractable. Realize that a drill string that long will twist significantly more than  360 degrees from the rotary table to the bit. Just one thing to consider. Also, the weight of the string and drill collars (drill collars are heavy pieces of steel connected into the string to keep it from floating out of the hole and to assist in maintaining sufficient weight on the bit to ensure penetration) will require a huge rig with a massive draw works and accompanying horsepower. The drill string itself is a piece of spaghetti in the hole.

https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/7752

To picture the drill string as a long piece of spaghetti suspended in a hole is very different than how I pictured it. I pictured rigid steel supported by the drill mud but I can see that wouldn't be the case as you lower it most of the way down. 

I still think they were speaking politically when they said conditions were "too hot" to drill deeper. I think there were many other constraints, that prevented  drilling deeper. 

 Also, in this video at 13:27, he says that above 400 Celsius the logging, and diagnostics systems to monitor the drilling process fail. 

https://youtu.be/J0Zk6sVxKbI

Ferrofluid display cell bluetooth speaker

https://youtu.be/pgp2sp0EB7w

A painstaking project. Nice result - hope he can fine tune it to keep the ferrofluid as a single mass. 

https://youtu.be/i9O7iBMVG_g

Looks better in this one. 

Why captchas are getting harder

https://youtu.be/lUTvB1O8eEg

Nice explanation of how captchas discern you are human, but the very information you give them eventually trains computers to be better at the task then humans...so you have to redesign captcha. 

The latest iteration observes your clicking and typing behavior, throughout your use of the website, recognizing the rapid random attempts of a bot. 

The Oroville Dam Spillway Failure in 2017

https://youtu.be/jxNM4DGBRMU

A nice discussion of the engineering efforts to prevent spillway failure. 

3:00 the spillway is capable of releasing an Olympic-size swimming pool full of water every 2 seconds. 

13:24 the spillway had drains to release any water inadvertently getting underneath the slabs, but these drains were carved into the underside of the  slabs, making the slabs thinner, instead of being charged into the underlying rock. Cracks developed along the lines of each of these transverse drains, ultimately leading to slab failure. 

14:34 missing from this spillway were several features to prevent slab uplift: reinforced concrete, flexible water stops between slabs, keyed joints (like tongue-and-groove) to prevent uplift, lateral cutoffs (outcroppings of concrete embedded into the underlying surface,) anchors adequate for the underlying material, and offset slabs to prevent protrusion of a slightly elevated downhill slab. 

15:22 human error and inspection failures led to a "consequential chain of tribulations."

VAWT

 

Vertical axis wind turbines - a great engineering discussion about their pros and cons: less efficient, but better able to use low wind speeds for distributed energy generation in cities. And the complex components are more readily repaired because they're closer to ground level. 

At 8:13 she points out that the downwind blade generates only about 20% of the power of the upwind blade, because the energy has been captured by the upwind blade.

Rally racing co-drivers at the top of their game

https://youtu.be/rf0ChcwZq4Q

Communication and trust. 

4:34 repairing a loose steering wheel while still driving! 

China's desert highway

https://youtu.be/ggmCjWD-iuA

I was thinking about this struggle to build on sand, and wondering why all grains of sand are similar in size. As rock breaks down, eventually it's so small that it gets carried by the wind and I wondered if at some size it encounters less friction with its neighbors that it doesn't break down as fast into smaller particles and forms endlessly roving sand dunes. I wasn't able to find a specific answer, but found some interesting discussions. 

Guess what Hawaii beaches are made from? 

"The famous white-sand beaches of Hawaii, for example, actually come from the poop of parrotfish. The fish bite and scrape algae off of rocks and dead corals with their parrot-like beaks, grind up the inedible calcium-carbonate reef material (made mostly of coral skeletons) in their guts, and then excrete it as sand."

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sand.html

Sand from land erosion on beaches is in transition from large river rocks to dissolved sediment that gets carried out into the ocean and settles on the ocean floor. 

"sand grains on our beaches are not at the end of their life: these tiny rocks have likely been sand before, and will be sand again. Sand grains get deposited in layers on the ocean floor, and once they are buried deep enough, the pressure transforms sand to sandstone...sand creation is a continuous process that is part of a larger rock cycle"

https://medium.com/@georgeannsack/where-does-sand-come-from-cd348b2d8f5b

The processes of sand formation are well described on this page: 

"Geologists describe sand by measuring the roundness of grains and the distribution of grain sizes... Roundedness usually gives information about the length of transport route and distribution of grain sizes helps to determine from which environment these grains come from. River sand is usually poorly sorted and compositionally immature. Beach sand is more rounded and eolian [created by the wind] dune sand is generally well sorted...The average size of grains is determined by the energy of the transport medium. Higher current velocity (either stream flow or sea waves) can carry heavier load. Coarse-grained sediments therefore reveal that they were influenced by energetic medium because finer material is carried away...sand occurs in a harsh environment where only the strongest survive. By "strongest" I mean the most resistant to the weathering processes. Quartz is one of these minerals but not the only one. It is so dominant in most sand samples because it is so abundant. 12% of the crust is composed of ....quartz is very resistant to chemical weathering. It does not alter to any other mineral — quartz is quartz and will remain that way. It eventually goes into solutions but VERY slowly. Hence, disintegrated granite yields lots of quartz grains which will be transported mostly by running water as sand grains. " [see illustrations at:]

https://www.sandatlas.org/sand/

Growing Crops in the Desert with Seawater

https://youtu.be/PvV-iPdORLc

Unlike previous desalination farming efforts, this one uses evaporators to cool the greenhouse, reducing water requirements. Since desalinated water can be more valuable than the crops grown from it, a solution that reduces water usage is needed. 

Bizarre physics of fire ants

https://youtu.be/NpiDADw5Omw

To survive periodic flooding, these ants have evolved an interlocking swarm that behaves like a viscoelastic material, floats, arranges itself into towers, and other bizarre behaviors. 

Left brain vs Right Brain

This week's podcast from Hidden Brain is about how and why the two sides of the brain function differently. He asks interesting questions like "What would the world be like if everyone only had left hemispheres?" And at about 28 minutes in, "What would music sound like to someone with only a left/right brain?" 

The best mental image of the necessity of two different hemispheres is the following: When a bird needs to pick up a seed, the left brain concentrates on coordinating the task, while the right brain maintains situational awareness of the rest of the flock and potential predators. 

@25:16 The left hemisphere is to do with functioning and utilizing. Reading and writing, and it doesn't really deal with the structure of reality. Whereas the right hemisphere is more emotionally literate, it reads expression and it gives emotional expressivity. 

https://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=690656459:691406169

Never Buy an RV That Has One of These 11 Problems - AxleAddict

Top 11 Reasons Not to Buy an RV 

Signs of delamination. 

A rubber roof - not durable, are difficult and expensive to repair

Older tires > 5 yrs

Signs of water damage. 

Clogged AC filters, dirty generator compartment. (Sign of poor maintenance)

Cigarette smell. 

Pet odors. 

Sewer smell. 

Heavy rust. 

Body damage. 

Windshield damage - windshields are expensive. Have the owner replace it.

https://axleaddict.com/rvs/11-Items-That-Can-Make-an-RV-Unacceptable-for-Purchase

Taking The Emergency Exit 50 Meters in the Air.

https://youtu.be/UWSckm8zTc8

Interesting explanation of the failsafe emergency descender froma wind turbine, if for instance, a worker is unconscious and can't descend the ladder. 

Nomadland

Interesting review and description of how the movie was made.  https://www.indiewire.com/2020/09/nomadland-interview-chloe-zhao-1234584703/

I can appreciate, having recently roamed through the same lands, how it was important not to politicize the movie. It is, ultimately, a sad portrait of displaced people trying to live as cheaply as possible.