what "quiet quitting" really means in a recent-history perspective of "Figuring out how work fits into a life well lived." The Year in Quiet Quitting https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2022-in-review/the-year-in-quiet-quitting
Friday, December 30, 2022
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
For Better Browned Meat and Veggies, Just Add Water
Monday, December 26, 2022
Geology of Snoqualmie pass
A surprisingly interesting discourse on the geology of Snoqualmie Pass, where several unusual geologic events converge.
Plane saved from crashing, despite 2 failures of emergency thrust increase
Easy Trick For The Fluffiest Bread
Ooh, she's good - she explains it so well from the chemistry standpoint. (She was a chemistry major before becoming a chef.)
6:20 a "tangzhong" is used to incorporate more water into the dough. (It binds it into the starch)
Sunday, December 25, 2022
The Art of Design | Es Devlin: Stage Design
27:26 "It's interesting because the word "show" suggests "revelaing" something, it doesn't suggest "finding" something. And because I do what I do every day, I have to make sure the showing of things is in itself the seeking for things."nd because I do what I do every day, I have to make sure the showing of things is in itself the seeking for things.
Uzufly - Google Earth on steroids - helps urban developers get but-in for their plans
(Use the English subtitles)
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Why You Can’t Smell Yourself (and Other Ways Your Senses Lie to You)
5:38 A "just noticeable difference" is the percentage difference in a stimulus, not an absolute difference.
10:48 why our eyes move in small saccadic movements
18:51 what you "sense" is only a fraction of what's out there.
The Best Way To Cook Steak?
Avoiding the "grey band" of overcooked steak beneath the crust.
Pepper, but don't salt it before cooking, which draws out the moisture.
10:46 steak has to rest for 5 minutes, so those internal juices are "in the bite, not on your board."
How lightbulbs are recycled
Extracting mercury from the white powder inside fluorescent bulbs is a complex process of crushing, vacuuming, heating, vacuuming, and condensing.
Cheating With ChatGPT in high school| WSJ
Friday, December 23, 2022
Happy Tibb's Eve
"In jokes and plays four centuries ago, Tib often referred to a girl with loose morals, so there was no Saint Tib and therefore no Tib's Eve. To say something would happen on Tib's Eve was to say it would never happen...The phrase traveled to Newfoundland and Labrador. George Story describes Tibb's Eve as "generally 'neither before nor after Christmas', i.e. never" as an Anglo-Irish term in Newfoundland English dialect." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibb%27s_Eve
Thursday, December 22, 2022
How Manhattan's NYU’s E.R. Favors the Rich
'Major Trustee, Please Prioritize': How NYU's E.R. Favors the Rich https://nyti.ms/3vbMQFi
"Some said medical specialists, often in short supply, were diverted from other cases to attend to mild complaints from high-priority patients."
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Hidden Brain - how to complain productively
A useful episode making the distinction between (@44:04) "expressive complaining" and "instrumental complaining," the latter of which complains to the root source of the problem.
(@23:43) "as [complaining] went up, their feelings of anger also went up and their feelings of hope went down [hence] forgiveness went down, and as hope goes up, forgiveness goes up...we found that the more that employees talked about unfairness, the less likely they were to forgive the supervisor for any unfair actions."
Complain to someone who emphasizes an internal locus of control - you need to fix this problem, not some outside entity.
(@39:48) "when we are complaining, we are increasing the extent to which we see things with an external locus of control. We are essentially saying, the world happens to me and there's nothing I can do about it. When we talk to somebody who reframes [rather than just commiserating], they're helping us give us that internal locus of control, helping us see that we are an agent, that there are ways to move forward to fix the situation."
A Swarm of Robots Built This Tunnel
Start watching at 3:47 - a swarm of robots injects material into soft rock to harden it before tunneling.
This method must depend on having rock that can sustain small, but not large, tunnels until the hardening material is injected. That is, if the rock is too soft to tunnel through without collapsing, it could collapse on the small robot tunnels also. I assume such conditions are common, though, making this a viable solution for a lot of tunnel construction.
Monday, December 19, 2022
Malcolm Gladwell answers research questions
9:43 "boredom is a plateau you reach when you've just scratched the surface of a problem. Virtually everything is interesting if you dig deep and hard enough"
We collected 300000 pounds of plastic
7:24 you can sponsor a collection barrier at a river for a year for $215 that includes constructing the barrier, removing, and sorting the trash.
Saturday, December 17, 2022
How AI works
Friday, December 16, 2022
Expression "Keep your powder dry"
"The phrase "keep your powder dry" means to "always be prepared to take action yourself if necessary". The allusion is to gunpowder which soldiers had to keep dry in order to be ready to fight when required."
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Religion of Nobel Prize winners
Monday, December 12, 2022
When Honda Civic was introduced in 1973
"the new Civic, at $1973"
"At 139.8 inches...about halfway between the true micro-cars (Honda 600 and Minis) and...standard little cars (Fiat 128, Datsun 1200 and Toyota Corolla)... corresponding light weight (1536 lbs.)"
The Fight to Save Coffee
3:40 the industry has to find ways to support farmers
4:37 coffee is called the goldilocks crop: it has very distinct amounts of rain and hits of daylight to survive
5:10 breeding new varieties is the most immediate change for safeguarding our coffee supply
7:30 a historic specimen was found to have just a few remaining live plants in Sierra Leone, which can thrive at temperature 7 degrees higher than arabica coffee.
A global coffee crisis is coming:
4:29 In fact, a recent study estimates that by 2050, the world's area of land that can produce coffee will decrease by 50%.
Saturday, December 10, 2022
(Behind The Scenes) Taylor Swift - All Too Well: The Short Film
In this bildungsroman (coming-of-age story), Taylor Swift has a very specific vision as she directs her video, and is very involved in its production.
Here's the final video:
Making Plastic From Seaweed
3:07 powdered seaweed extract mixed with sugars and starches makes a film with properties indistinguishable from poly bags
5:10 poly bags are some of the biggest polluters of marine systems6:08 seaweed can be harvested (cut back) without killing it, provides Maritime jobs in overfished areas, and supports biodiversity
7:25 tested in actual composting facilities, it's gone in 48 days
Friday, December 9, 2022
Fresh water on tiny islands
I was wondering, after my trip to Fiji (and watching a surprisingly interesting TV documentary about Richard Branson buying his own private island) how one gets a supply of fresh water.
This webpage suggests that in an underground aquifer, the denser salt water sinks below the fresh. I thought these two would mix readily, but apparently not.
I was surprised by the picture of the Miami shoreline with huge amounts of fresh water displacing the salt water along the beach.
Monday, December 5, 2022
Broker briefing - Bannerman ASX:BMN Uranium Forum - November 2022
11:00 Bannerman is uniquely positioned to meet the upcoming demand.
Namibia is in the top 3 world producers already, with permits and port infrastructure and shipping lines up and running, government compliance regulators and multilateral treaties and obligations in place. They also have their mine closest to the large population which makes them a competitive employer. It's a huge resource with over 200 million pounds. They have demonstrated their ability to recover 92% of the uranium on the ore, and are ready to scale up production when the spot price reaches $65.
This one is a longer version of the presentation:
Sunday, December 4, 2022
Old Refrigerators Warm the Planet and They Must Be Destroyed
5:30 The company Tradewater imports and safely dispose of the refrigerant. How do they do this? "fed continuously to the two-zone plasma reactor. With a reactor temperature of over 1300°C, the steam plasma hydrolysis reaction quickly and efficiently breaks down the waste into carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). The gas stream is then rapidly quenched to prevent any reformation of dioxins and furans."
Effective Altruism
Sam Bankman-Fried, Effective Altruism, and the Question of Complicity
He was an apostle of "effective altruism" - doing the most good every donated dollar. But...
"the mask of optimized benevolence has slipped to reveal the naked will to power."
Saturday, December 3, 2022
3M and the history of sandpaper
I had no idea that there were so many innovations in abrasives, nor how recently many advances were made. 13:54 Getting modern synthetic hard abrasives to be sharply angulated at the microscopic level, and placing them on a weave to allow extracting dust through the abrasive surface, have made newer materials more competitive.
https://youtu.be/kTiIFzhxhq4
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Six-junction III–V solar cells with 47.1% conversion efficiency under 143 Suns concentration | Nature Energy
I had no idea that solar cell efficiency had come so far. I thought that somewhere near 30% was the maximal theoretical efficiency. Amazing how they've combined layers to absorb different wavelengths.
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