Dealing with waste in Antarctica to keep the land pristine.

https://youtu.be/yTaVvSe03TQ?si=8a8F5Z3EelZXnrIL

4:41 we no longer burn, bury, or dump waste in Antarctica...4:51 a ship removes 400 containers full of garbage to California each year. 

5:20 digesting organisms are "recycled" back from the end of the wastewater process to the incoming side. 

11:34 this is the best place in the world to be a trash worker - no flies, no rats, nothing rots. 

Bird simulator drone

https://youtu.be/5n8Mlsi7tFk?si=SWmYR7LaOZuKr4J4

Deep-learning bird simulator adjusts multiple control surfaces to optimize efficiency and stability. 

Musician Charged With Music Streaming Fraud Aided By AI and bots

https://youtu.be/qkYeDE5OeAU?si=T__WbswRAC7z_bJ5

Where can you find songs with names like: "Zygophyceae," "Zygopterous," "Zygotic Washstands," "Zyme Bedewing," "Zymoplastic," and "Zyzomys," written by the artists you love, like: "Calliope Erratum," "Calm Baseball," "Calm Knuckles," "Calms Scorching," "Calorie Event," "Calorie Screams," "Calvinistic Dust," "Camaxtli Minerva," and "Camel Edible."

What a great idea! If you don't have talent in music, just get AI to generate songs, and computer bots to "listen" to the songs billions of times, and you can make millions in royalties! The only downside, and it's just a small one, is that after several years the FBI slams you with multiple counts of fraud and a lifetime in jail. 

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-musician-charged-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence

"Some music distributors and streaming platforms caught wind of Smith's activities a year or two after he started [and] removed Smith's music from its stores... A source close to Spotify confirmed it was the streaming platform that detected the fraud in 2019." 

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/ai-music-fraud-indictment-brings-scrutiny-to-streaming-inflation

Brick-laying robot

Interesting robot with proprietary bricks and adhesive/mortar. 

https://youtu.be/EGBRA24qlEg?si=qaNwVHgRjUz0ykSV

But probably cheaper and easier at the building site than this concrete 3-D printer, which 2:59 requires 10 minutes before the next layer is added, and 2 weeks to cure before it can support weight. 

https://youtu.be/vL2KoMNzGTo?si=kJcCubMFSM5MFHsw

Cheapest e-foil 1 yr review

https://youtu.be/j-qAsiApf7E?si=sDDW7Iy_VWhYZenx

Displacing the Panama canal.

https://youtu.be/NMDCKpmc-uo?si=vaVcjEgVi-w2-w8U

If this container-shipping railway were built, 7:25 it's estimated to increase the GDP of the entire country of Mexico by 3-5%. 

4:28 the rail would be slower than the Panama canal route, because it necessitates unloading and reloading a ship at each end. However, freight conditions have restricted the number of ships that can pass through Panama canal, leading to 3:30 a bidding war, where ships can bid up to millions of dollars to jump the queue. This makes the shipping railway 

How to apply Teflon tape - clockwise, full threads with thin strand first.

https://youtube.com/shorts/dpu__tRdNL4?si=hJYuv0sGPNhw1nBA

How Singapore is trying to build a climate-proof city.

https://youtu.be/7Af6lb4rBQw?si=MQiCmGZmJUmhrbLJ

Singapore is a tiny island-city nation with a high population density, imbuing it all the constraints that encourage development that propels the world towards a carbon-neutral future. 

3:11 Singapore installed a massive 45-hectare solar farm on its water reservoir, generating 60 MW of power. (For comparison, the large wind turbines you see are 2MW.) The advantage is two-fold: the underlying water keeps the solar panels cool, optimizing their efficiency, and their presence diminishes evaporation from the reservoir. 8:44 They also claim it improves the water quality of the reservoir. 

8:05 The solar panels are tilted at 5 degrees, as a compromise between rain runoff that keeps the panels clean when they're tilted, vs maximizing sun exposure at 0 degrees (Singapore is near the equator.) 

10:25 they even have drones to scope out bird poop on the panels. 

11:12 Singapore is partnering with Equatic, a US company that is cleverly combining carbon capture with hydrogen fuel generation (CO2 + H2O = NaHCO3 + H2) 

Interestingly, 13:35 almost 80% of Singapore's population live in government housing. The latest development 14:05 will have minimal vehicles, autonomous trash collection, and a centralized multi-building solar cooling system. 

The city has long been seen as a concrete jungle 20:51, so new developments are designed (and computer-modeled 16:48) to optimize greenery, shade, and wind-flow between buildings in what they call 19:12 "biophilic" design. 

Talhotblond, a dark rabbit-hole of internet catfishing leads to murder

"while "Jessi" was a real person, Thomas had been chatting [online] with her mother, Mary Shieler, catfishing and posing as her daughter online" 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talhotblond_(2009_film)

Design constraints of piston rings

James, you first introduced me to the concept that high-performance engines are designed to burn through a lot of oil on purpose - a liter every 1600km. I understood in general, but this in-depth analysis goes into great detail about the way a piston ring exerts pressure on the cylinder wall, and how the lower rings are cleverly designed to scrape oil and deposits off the cylinder walls. 

You can skip to 3:56 after the discussion of steam-engine piston rings. 

6:26 I didn't realize that combustion pressure forces its way behind the inner diameter of a piston ring, pushing the ring against the cylinder wall. 

7:39 I also didn't realize that piston rings convey half the heat from the piston to the cylinder wall. 

14:23 graphite-steel is stronger, and chrome or other minerals are deposited onto the surface of the piston ring to enhance strength and wear-resistance. 

18:19 piston ring design is a trade-off between performance, engine break-in, and friction. 

https://youtu.be/EFfyWbi3APk?si=IhceImT53gWgj9e4

The world's biggest desalination plants shouldn't exist

10:25 "multi-stage flash" desalination (boiling under low pressure) uses 10-25 kWhr per m³ of fresh water produced. 

11:45 reverse osmosis of seawater uses far less energy, about 4-5 kWhr per m³

https://youtu.be/Dd9q30yjEqc?si=sjhi6916s6V5zauB

Why are street lights turning purple?

https://youtu.be/4Mll-YDDAF4?si=MK2FpKhtTfmbUqJM

The main reason is that the phosphor layer on top of the LED is failing and popping off, causing the blue light to shine through without being converted to white light (see 10:29).

Incredible dexterity with a backhoe

https://youtu.be/7_iyiOLpRVA?si=zYSsLf712eLRghcA

Acquired savant math genius developed after Tacoma brain injury

 

Montana's economic strategy increases homelessness and profits the rich

https://youtu.be/dU2x0BmFhJI?si=ShQ95zgnhJwcuu-T

How physicists broke the solar efficiency record.

Very interesting description of how to squeeze every last photon of energy out of solar energy. 

You may have to read the next sentence twice to really take in the magnitude of it. 

20:00 "470 exajoules* of energy reach the Earth's surface every 8 minutes, which is the same amount of energy that the entire world's population uses in a year."

https://youtu.be/J1QDq5Ggz6s?si=MNG85ppWuVZF8S4E

*An exajoule is 10^18 joules, equivalent to 277.8 terawatt hours

Catenary curve in Christopher Wren's tallest building in London

https://youtu.be/iRv_syz2DAc?si=VmU2hia51_gDNgRe

3:15 Hooke -"As hangs the flexible line, so but inverted will stand the rigid arch." - the same shape taken by a hanging chain (in tension) will yield the strongest shape for a dome the other way up. 

4:20 "This allowed them to build taller, over a narrower opening, with less material."