Friday, October 31, 2025
Incredible art generated from AI data
https://youtu.be/I-EIVlHvHRM?si=SxOGc3RMoLHasZ2y
Flowing morphing patterns are mesmerizing. Artist Refik Anadol.
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Auto shops don't work on old cars.
Interesting perspective from a local car enthusiast group. Older cars just aren't worth the hassle for repair shops to deal with. The owners tend to be cheapskates, and it's easy to damage something while fixing someone else, and parts are hard to find.
45 years a mechanic.
To make money as a mechanic you need to turn and burn cars, you want cars you can scan and diagnose easily that get parts you can have delivered in an hour. You can't have cars sitting waiting for parts or techs spending hours diagnosing issues.
Currently it's hard to get an oil filter or air filter for a 2002 VW or Mercedes. They are one to three days out.
Let's say you get a pre 1996 car in your shop. No codes, no live data, if you have a running issue you have to start at basics. Test the resistance of the temp sensor at the current temp, then start warming it up and constantly check temp and resistance comparing then to a graph. You need to pin out the ECU and install mechanical gauges on everything. Customers don't want to pay for that anymore and most of us old enough to have the experience to troubleshoot based on experience, have retired.
Let's say someone brings in a 30 year old car for coolant flush. What spec coolant do you use? Using the wrong coolant can pit the head or dissolve the head gasket. Chances are you can't just look it up, you need to read endless forum threads based on opinion and try to figure it out, no one wants to pay you for that.
Does it use a mineral oil or glycol based brake system? Are the fuel lines ethanol compatible? How many people have been knuckles deep in this cars private parts in 30 years? How many people have scabbed in wiring?
If you don't do older cars there are all sorts of issues. You won't know where to get brake shoes rebuilt or arched to the drum, or have the equipment to make lines.
Find some guy with gray hair who knows your car, establish a relationship. I have people whose cars I have worked on for 30 years, I work on their kids cars now…
I did a coolant service on a 1963 190SL, I flushed the system and replaced the coolant, when I did one of the intake manifold coolant fittings was leaking as was the radiator. Both had been fine before I flushed the system. I had to have the radiator rebuilt and painted, the intake fittings are no longer available. I had to get a CNC shop to make them based on what was left of the 4 rotten ones I had. That took two weeks. And three for the radiator. It seemed like a good time to replace the various cracked hoses, they took 9 days to arrive and two weeks for the correct vintage clamps.
Just saying. Don't play with vintage machines and think you're going to get parts at Autozone.
----
In some aspects , older cars can be harder to work on than the newer cars because of all the diagnostics on newer cars. Also, a lot of mechanics are not trained on how to work on the older tech. At this point most mechanics don't know how to properly tune and jet a carburetor.
---
You want your car to be worked on by a technician who is comfortable with working on it. If they say no, even for a basic service, then they probably are not. Parts are hard to find and little things can go wrong so easily. Find a place that specializes in your "classic" and it'll be better for both parties involved.
---
I've worked for shops with these type of policies. It has more to do with the higher probability of consequential damage and parts availability. As a repair shop you get tired of customers demanding you pay to replace the fifteen year old, brittle coolant hose that broke apart the second you touched it. If that part is no longer made, you're screwed.
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
It's impossible to avoid AI
A reporter attempted to avoid any connection to artificial intelligence, but it proved almost impossible.
Monday, October 27, 2025
Painting one wind turbine blade black reduces bird mortality
"Researchers in Norway found that changing the color of just one turbine blade from white to black resulted in a 70% drop in bird deaths. The effect was strongest among raptors.
The study, published in Ecology and Evolution, followed up on previous lab experiments." ref.
The study, published in Ecology and Evolution, followed up on previous lab experiments." ref.
This is because the black blade provides a high-contrast visual cue that makes the spinning blades more visible to birds, particularly raptors, reducing a phenomenon called "motion smear" where birds cannot track the fast-moving, monochromatic blades. In one Norwegian study, this intervention resulted in a greater than 70% reduction in bird mortality."
Sunday, October 26, 2025
Over vs under toilet paper
"So one of my tasks at work is to refill toilet paper in the bathrooms. Very dull. But I got to wondering if people had a preference to which way the roll was on the holder and decided to run my own experiment. After refilling a side by side dispenser, I loaded 1 roll going over and 1 under. Replaced at the same time. Waited a couple days and discovered the over side was almost gone and the under side was hardly touched. I replaced the over and continued to wait. A couple days later the under roll had been used but still the over was going faster than the under. I went through 3 over rolls before the under roll needed to be replaced.
Redid the experiment replacing both rolls at the same time and swapping which side the over and under was on.....this time the over roll was replaced 2 times before the under needed to be changed out....."
https://www.facebook.com/share/1CJSimeuXM/ Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Bali classic reproductions made by hand
https://youtu.be/A4pJhtKBl9A?si=P3lscHVRlIpF6mex
Bali craftsmen painstakingly reproducing every component by hand in these reproductions (with modern Toyota Crown engine and drivetrain.)
Rapid treatment for Alzheimer's
Scientists cleared brain plaques and reversed Alzheimer's symptoms within hours, in mice.
A new experimental Alzheimer's treatment has done what few others could: clear toxic plaques from the brain (in a mouse model of Alzheimer's) within hours – and even reverse memory loss in mice.
The therapy doesn't target neurons directly. Instead, it repairs the blood-brain barrier – the thin, protective membrane that separates the brain from the bloodstream and regulates what gets in and out.
In Alzheimer's disease, this barrier weakens. Waste products like amyloid-beta, a sticky protein that clumps into plaques, can't escape. Over time, they build up between neurons, interfering with communication and triggering inflammation.
Researchers from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and West China Hospital found a way to restore that barrier's natural "drainage system." Using engineered nanoparticles, they reactivated a key protein called low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1 (LRP1,) which helps shuttle amyloid-beta out of the brain and into the bloodstream for removal.
Within hours of a single injection, amyloid plaques dropped by about 45%. After three doses, the mice performed as well as healthy animals on memory tests – and the benefits lasted for six months.
"The long-term effect comes from restoring the brain's vasculature," says study coauthor Giuseppe Battaglia. "Once it starts working again, the brain can clean itself."
The findings offer a bold shift in Alzheimer's research: instead of forcing drugs across the brain's defenses, this approach repairs the defenses themselves.
It's still early – mouse models don't always translate to humans – but the study adds hope that the key to stopping Alzheimer's might lie not in the brain's neurons, but at its borders.
Read the study:
"Rapid amyloid-β clearance and cognitive recovery through multivalent modulation of blood–brain barrier transport." Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, 7 October 2025.
Monday, October 20, 2025
Sunday, October 19, 2025
Forest fire FPV documentary
https://youtu.be/a6CP5SKQjzg?si=xYh0dHW80788enxX
A first-person-view documentary of what life is like for hot-shot firefighters having physically demanding 16-hour days of a tedious, hot, dangerous job in punishing terrain.
Saturday, October 18, 2025
Can you tell if it's AI-generated video?
https://youtu.be/GMoOCKkcd_w?si=qb7v3mLT5bgbE0js
0:40 shadows don't line up with single source
(1:29 AI doesn't "reason" in 3D)
1:50 inconsistent vanishing point
3:13 examine how the video compression is 'packaged' or encoded
4:57 responsible AI generators are adding an embedded watermark
6:02 sound reverberation varies unnaturally despite a consistent setting
6:58 AI images from open-source coding have specific algorithms for image generation
8:35 cat-and-mouse game if
A recent AI-generated music video, with remarkably consistent face shape and continuity
Did she have a facelift?
https://youtu.be/9yWIi_l8LKQ?si=y231-3LzhBEQaI28
I've never seen such an in-depth analysis of face-lifts over time.
Delta's new "Parallel Reality" individualized billboard messaging
On this page you can see a clip where the camera travels behind several people who are each seeing unique displays of their information. Delta.com
Does the space station get struck by meteors?
The ISS is shielded, just like most satellites and spacecrafts. Impact of a meteor is quite unlikely - they are very sparse even during a shower. The concern is micrometeoroids, and yes, there are lots of them during meteor showers.
Shields can resist hypervelocity impacts of particles up to a certain size (nearly a millimeter). These are called MMOD shield (Micro Meteoroid and Orbital Debris). It works because it has two layers. The first layer is penetrated and broken, it doesn't stop the particle but it breaks it. Actually the particle even vaporizes because of the heat released during the impact. The fragments expand and impact the second layer over a much larger area, so it's much easier to resist.
NASA podcast about orbital debris:
Larger debris objects are tracked by NASA so they can receive a warning and perform a collision avoidance maneuver. But meteors aren't as predictable as debris, so there's nothing they can do. Still, debris objects of intermediate sizes are not traceable and shields would not resist, so it's a matter of probabilities. I don't see any reason for not accepting the same probability with meteors.
...
It comes down to "pray it doesn't get hit and have a large electrostatic discharge that shorts out other equipment."
The ISS and other satellites can't give themselves enough thrust to move arbitrarily around the planet so as to shield themselves.
Fortunately, the chances of there being an impact are very low, and this particular meteor shower is slower than most others so the risk of electrostatic discharge on impact is lower than normal.
The biggest hazard to satellites during a meteor shower is electrostatic discharge associated with meteor impacts.
When a meteor hits a satellite at high speed, the tiny rock vaporizes into hot, electrically charged gas-or plasma-that can short out circuits and damage onboard electronics, causing the satellite to spin out of control.
Experts are banking on the idea that the electrostatic risks will be lower with the Draconids, since these meteors travel at less than half the speed of other showers and so shouldn't turn to plasma on impact.
"However, other than avoiding spacewalks, there isn't much the space station can do to avoid such hazards, aside from hoping the damage is minimal."
Gemini AI answer:
Yes, the ISS is regularly hit by small meteoroids and space debris, but it is designed to withstand these impacts and has systems to maneuver to avoid larger objects. While it has been hit many times, the damage has been minor and not dangerous to the crew.
Impacts from meteoroids and debris
The ISS is a large target, and small objects like microscopic meteoroids and pieces of human-made debris hit it frequently.
Impacts from objects smaller than a paint chip or a few millimeters in size are common and are often visible as small dents on the station's hull.
Space debris is a bigger concern than meteoroids, and the ISS has had to maneuver to avoid larger pieces of debris in orbit.
Protection and evasion
The ISS has multiple layers of protection, including shielding designed to withstand impacts from small debris.
Ground-based radar tracks objects in orbit and predicts potential collisions.
If a potentially dangerous object is detected, the ISS can use its thrusters to adjust its orbit and avoid a collision.
For planned spacewalks, a meteoroid forecast is issued to ensure there is no heightened risk of an accident.
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Blown-lift electric hybrid STOL aircraft
https://youtu.be/4INw9bclxeI?si=XnsFlsMIaWTd098V
4:49 "a fixed-wing aircraft that can take off and land in a football field" greatly enhances the number of small communities that can be served by air freight.
Monday, October 13, 2025
Does gardening improve health?
"A significant improvement in social connectedness was also observed..." but no improvement in cognitive functions, depression, anxiety, psychological well-being, and satisfaction with life.
"Gardening-based training programs have a small-to-medium effect on mental health in people living with chronic conditions. Relatively small effects were found for physical health and general health" [such as pain, obesity, anxiety, depression, hypertension, cognition dysfunction]
"may be helpful in helping seniors lose weight, reduce their waist circumference, lower their stress and cortisol levels, improve their physical flexibility, social interaction, and daily vegetables and fruit consumption.
Gardening activities have positive health-related consequences [including] improved diet and nutrition, decreased diastolic blood pressure, greater physical activity, and reduced weight gain/body mass index... However, the current literature does not provide sufficient evidence of the physical functioning consequences of gardening.
Restoration and Physical benefits were the strongest explanatory variables of participants' positive aging self-perceptions.
A semi-submersible cargo ship, anchors, and unmanned ships.
This semi-submersible ship can carry massive loads on its deck.
7:05 the deck needs to remain very flat; if it twisted just a little, inordinate loads on the high section would break the deck.
You can skip ahead to 28:28 in this video - where this ship submerges its deck to take on loads.
----------------
Another concept in shipping - the drag of the anchor rode (chain) on the sea floor creates much of the friction that keeps a ship from moving, not the anchor itself. See 3:00 in
----------------
This video predicts a big future in unmanned ships that can safely deliver payloads to areas of conflict without risking human life. The onboard systems are simpler (no fresh water, heating and cooling, light...) if they don't have to accommodate human crew.
1:52 China has come to dominate world shipbuilding at 53% of tonnage built, while the US contributes a mere 0.1%.
Sunday, October 12, 2025
Cool clock ideas
Clock made of hundreds of clocks
Waterfall clock
Drop clock screensaver
Sweeper's Clock by Dutch designer Maarten Baas
Sundial that displays time digitally.
Homeboys Industries - Father Greg Boyle transforms lives in ex-gang members
Episode starts at 5:09 after ads. This episode is so rich with the wisdom and experience of patiently working with very troubled people (ex-cons) to induce change in their lives.
6:40 [When working with marginalized people,] don't let it become about you...Foster and create a community of kinship. Paying attention and noticing others. It's not about how many people you "save."
8:21 Global homeboy is a network of 300 programs across US - love is the answer, community is the context, tenderness is the methodology. The solution to all the vexing social dilemmas starts with creating a safe place, and then people can come to terms with what was done to them, and what they've done.
10:01 everybody is unshakably good...we're all born wanting the same things...and we all belong to each other.
11:40 make progress in the good, and do what you can today to be as loving as you can be.
13:30 George Saunders: "kindness is the only non-delusional response to everything." Everything else is delusional, our righteousness, our "high horsiness," our cleverness, our fear, our terror at things changing. That's a good thing to work at with daily intention.
14:35 no I don't ever think this [program] is not going to work. [If it's true that hurt people hurt people, then it also has to be true ] that a cherished person is going to be able to find their way to the joy there is in cherishing themselves and others. [If they come through our system,] even if they leave, and start to get high again or go to jail...it doesn't matter, they got a dose [of cherishing] and they'll be back...they're all going to find their way. It's just a matter of time if they get enough of a dose of kindness and cherishing and tenderness.
15:30 With the homeboys, you're always trying to get them to a place where they see, especially in the excavation of their own wound and story, that they're the hero of their own story.
18:30 none of us are well until all of us are well; none of us are whole until all of us are whole. Wouldn't it change everything if our frame of reference was: Loving each other into wholeness.
5:55 Have the same response to both praise and blame. "Notice and return:" have the same response to praise and blame: You notice it, you lean into it, you're curious about it, but you don't cling to it. And you return to your true self and loving others.
18:55 Beginner's mind. A concept where you're always in a place where [the moment] is new. [Like an actor in] his four thousandth performance, and it feels like it's new. It's the illusion of the first time, they call it, in acting. You really want to have beginner's mind when you come to things. It's hard as you age, as you think you have wisdom, you want to catch yourself [and] say: This moment has never happened in the history of the world, and it'll never come again ever, no matter how much it feels like other moments. This is absolutely new.
21:18 I've learned how to deal with death... You have to put death in it's place. It doesn't mean you don't grieve...
23:18 my friend and spiritual director...runs a program where he's immersed in food insecurity...inhabited his role where he helps folks on the margins, all the while having this image of God that feeds me every day...the work he does is remarkable - is anchored in the God we have, not the God we settle for.
23:35 Everybody [alongside a former gang] enemy - folks they used to shoot at they're now making croissants together...puts a human face on your rival - you can't demonize people you know...something breaks down and there's a sameness.
24:37 We're invited to be inclusive, to take seriously what Jesus said about non-violence and lovingkindness. If your God is punitive and puny, you're going to be that. If your God is infinitely merciful and giving and loving and adoring of us, that's how you're going to treat others. It matters how you see these things, because it always shows up in how you treat others.
What 4 words would you say to someone? You are exactly right, you're exactly what God had in mind.
27:27 If your goal is to be happy you're not as sturdy as you think. Don't settle for happiness when you are being offered joy. Joy doesn't ask for return, it's just out there, it's just loving for being loving.
It's not about success. That divides people into good people and bad people. It's not about the measurable and the evidence-based outcomes... Is about dosing and living. And what happens when you cherish people is that you can watch them inhabit a sturdier getting. Now the world will throw whatever it will at them and they won't be toppled because they're sturdy.
On podchaser:
On Amazon:
On Apple:
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Guyed towers
https://youtu.be/3nDdLiXS5wk?si=YhfdrBSA2-71-sOm
This is Practical Engineering at his best. Great explanations illustrated in his garage.
Monday, October 6, 2025
Vaccine study suppressed
I have several problems with the logic and statements in this podcast. The person interviewed is knowledgeable, well-spoken, and not confrontational. And he does not interrupt or challenge or distract - he sticks to his points, and I appreciate that.
The whole interview is premature - discussing the intents and results of an unpublished study is as foolish as the statement from the lawyer that the investigators had a conclusion before they started. One simply cannot draw any conclusions from a study that is unpublished - these results amount to "leaked" results before a study is published, and the methods are not published.
Having said that, some knowledge of the Ford study methods was clearly made public at a hearing, and the methods were flawed. This biostatistican's commentary on what is known of the study mentions that the vaccinated kids were studied for far longer ("surveillance bias") and by a different set of doctors with more than 3 times as many doctor visits annually.
0:44, 1:35 the investigators "wanted" a pro-vaccine result. This is the lawyer's view, not any statement from the investigators. Every investigator has a bias or a hope that the results of their study may go a particular way, but they are ethically bound and bound by scientific method to avoid biasing the results. No one is perfect and ethical, so there are scientists who falsify results and they are ultimately uncovered, through peer review, external data review, and revelations from jilted employees and so on.
0:07 in the video. His statements that vaccines are not placebo tested is false. Here are 2 papers addressing that, one fact-checking that vaccines are placebo controlled unless it's unethical to do so, and the other discussing specific situations where a placebo is unethical.
3:01 "these chronic diseases can be caused by immune system dysregulation" - yes for asthma and atopy, but not for ADHD, tics, learning disability, speech defects. Autoimmune connections to these have been proposed or associated for tics and ADHD but are not proven as causative.
3:37 "a positive result would have been published." 5:02 "probably been hushed up." Every scientist that puts hundreds of hours' work into a study tries hard to get it published. The report about the hearing for this study says it was not published because of serious flaws with methodology, not because of a conspiracy to suppress the results. But conspiracy theories are very hard to disprove because almost any statement to disprove then can be considered false by one who believes the theory.
7:09 they did not investigate "overall health outcomes" - this is not done in studies. It is done during the FDA approval process phase 2 and phase 3 drug trials where healthy subjects are given a medication and all possible side effects are recorded without regard to cause, and compared to the placebo group, and they are inherently small and of short duration to keep costs down. In drug studies after FDA approval, as would be the case for established vaccines, they look at outcomes directly related to the drug mechanism; if one were to look at every possible overall health outcome in a blood pressure medication, for instance, for every 20 outcomes you look at one would be positive merely by chance, since studies generally consider outcomes positive if there's a less than 5% chance that the outcome is due to chance...when you look at 20 outcomes, those chances cumulatively add up to 100% for at least one outcome, so this is not done.
9:14 "clobbering the immune system [with multiple vaccines simultaneously.] He incorrectly asserts that the body only deals with one foreign protein at a time. If you leave a piece of bread or fruit out, it quickly becomes covered with mold or bacteria. These spores or bacteria that spoil our groceries are abundant in the air we breathe, and our body fights off many every day. We may be breathing in 60,000 spores every day. The immune system is perfectly designed to handle many simultaneous insults. On the contrary, quite alarmingly, if one gets measles because they weren't vaccinated, it can cause the loss of previous immunity to other diseases, known as "immune amnesia," as follows:
"In a normal, healthy vaccinated person, we can expected a 5% to 10% drop in antibodies over time," ...After severe measles, children lost a median of 40% (range, 11% to 62%), and after mild measles they lost 33% (range, 12% to 73%), of their total preexisting pathogen-specific antibody repertoires." Ref
9:40 vaccination depletes vitamin D 10:43 the "topsy curve" of multiple synchronous vaccines...
I was not previously aware that an immune response uses up vitamin D, but that's true. However, given that our immune system is fighting many foreign substance every day, it is unlikely that a response to a vaccine is going to deplete our vitamin D stores to a significant degree. The actual amount of vitamin D needed is not known and is complex: "However, the specific serum 25-(OH) D level that would be relevant to vitamin D's immune actions has not yet been defined. There are also inter-individual variations in production of vitamin D, dietary intake, VDR and other pathway genetic polymorphisms that might make a universal recommendation for an ideal "target" [vitamin] D level difficult given our relative lack of knowledge." ref
Having said that, it's easy to generate vitamin D from sunlight [except during the darkest periods of winter when we cover ourselves with warm clothing and spend little time outside] - "8 to 10 minutes of sun exposure at noon produces the recommended amount of vitamin D." ref Probably a good supplement for all of us to take during the winter.
12:54 "frightening...neurodevelopmental disease...neurons can't regenerate." This is scaremongering. There is no proven link between autoimmune and the chronic diseases he refers to. There are diseases like Multiple Sclerosis that are autoimmune neuron destruction, but it is a big leap from vaccination to immune dysfunction to neurologic disease like speech defects, ADHD, autism, and none of those steps are proven, I believe. I had a post recently about the science disproving the link between vaccines and autism despite an early much-quoted study that said otherwise.
13:40 "chaotic system...butterfly flaps ...causes thunderstorm..." The immune system is far from chaotic. It is highly precise and specific. It is incredibly complex, certainly, but not chaotic. (There is an element of chaos that allows the body to randomly produce new antibodies against previously u encountered substance, but even this process is tightly controlled in nature.)
14:46 "RFK wants to give kids vaccines one at a time to see what their whole body effects are. And he's being painted as a devil for wanting that." 15:03 "we have brilliant scientists who could dream up ways of studying this that we can't even think of." This would be unethical given the risk of a child acquiring a preventable disease while awaiting the delay between successive vaccines. For instance, ADHD is usually diagnosed at ages 6 to 12. To study each vaccine's risk of ADHD, one would have to give vaccine or placebo to thousands of kids, AND not give them any other vaccine until they were 12. That would be thousands of kids not getting every other childhood vaccine until they were 12.
15:06 "the Amish avoid vaccines and they seem to be doing fine, right?" Not so. Here's a report of pertussis, a completely preventable disease affecting 345 preschool kids in an Amish community. It is not particularly lethal however. So, here's a report of polio cases in an Amish community - a lifelong disabling and preventable disease.
15:53 "Bill Gates study...vaccinated...died prematurely."
This has been disproven:"There was no evidence of interaction between DTP or BCG vaccination, neonatal vitamin A supplementation, and infant sex, on infant survival."
I hope this information and these references are helpful.
Measles infection can lead to "immune amnesia"
"Two studies present biological evidence that measles infections in unvaccinated children wipe out immune memories of other pathogens, putting the kids at risk of other deadly diseases."
Measles does long-term damage to immune system, studies show.
"In a normal, healthy vaccinated person, we can expected a 5% to 10% drop in antibodies over time," ...After severe measles, children lost a median of 40% (range, 11% to 62%), and after mild measles they lost 33% (range, 12% to 73%), of their total preexisting pathogen-specific antibody repertoires."
Saturday, October 4, 2025
Clever simple parachute design
https://youtu.be/6rrDW6YIbXI?si=eVacdJXxojP-GXP0
Reminds me of a clever packaging material that is compact, recyclable, and cheap.
https://youtu.be/BxVGLdMR_8A?si=zoSNcrPnz5Pknwju
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)