And here's some terrific drone photography by another photographer:
https://youtu.be/FCPdIvXo2rUWednesday, August 19, 2020
Ideas for Drone Videos
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Giving it to the man, Uber
8:09 "until we get more rules, we're going to break some!"
In Nairobi, there's a subversive movement to use Uber to hail a ride, then cancel it and offer the driver the full amount without Uber's commission after you get in.
Monday, August 17, 2020
Qwerty
A fascinating podcast that explores the dilemma of entering thousands of Chinese characters with the qwerty keyboard, and how its solution created a hero. It then ends on the eerie premise that predictive keyboards, when they get fast enough, can start to give you ideas you maybe weren't thinking of as you started to type. And in a Machiavellian subterfuge, influencing what you were about to write (and think.) That is, if there's a hidden agenda behind the words the computer suggests you might want to write, a government can influence your thinking, which the reporter emphatically believes is the case in China.
Friday, August 14, 2020
Bitter is back
A variety of companies making complex, often bitter non-alcoholic drinks.
Pleasantly Bitter and Thoroughly Grown-Up, No Alcohol Needed https://nyti.ms/3kJRIuI
Saturday, August 8, 2020
Veery augury
Veery predicts hurricanes months ahead of time
In the inaugural episode of this new series "Connected" on Netflix (below), he interviews a Delaware researcher who has concluded that Veeries leave their nesting site earlier in years when hurricanes are more severe, and they do this with much better reliability than the best supercomputer modeling. Amazing! He was puzzled what evolutionary advantage there was to leaving the brooding site early, since an early departure lowers breeding success - he ruled out predators, food supply, and then stumbled upon weather patterns that impeded their migration to Brazil. He tested prospectively and was able to predict a bad hurricane season better than long-range weather forecasts.
Do you think the bird does this by gauging temperature, humidity, weather patterns? What's your hunch as to how the bird can augur* when hurricanes season is bad enough to force them to migrate early?
* I used augur instead of "divined" or "guessed" because augury was a means of predicting the future using birds: An augur was a priest and official in the classical Roman world. His main role was the practice of augury: Interpreting the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds – whether they were flying in groups or alone, what noises they made as they flew, direction of flight, and what kind of birds they were. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augur#History_and_public_role
Vitamin D for COVID-19: a case to answer? - The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(20)30268-0/fulltext
There is a correlation between vitamin D deficiency and severity of COVID infection, and although there is mechanistic reasoning for a beneficial effect through immune modulation and regulation of renin-angiotensin pathway, they acknowledge this could be a spurious association.
They assert that it would take a huge population-based study to show benefit of prophylaxis, and that administration of vitamin D as treatment after infection is confounded by the co-administration of dexamethasone.
They conclude by saying that it's probably worth taking vitamin D at least for its bone and muscle effects, even if this association with reduced COVID severity proves to be spurious.
Friday, August 7, 2020
The pursuit of happiness and the hedonic treadmill.
Getting off the "hedonic treadmill" briefly can enhance your pleasure when you return to whatever you deprived yourself of.
Buying experiences rather than things fulfills this idea of pleasure and then abstinence, making for an intense enjoyment of something not routinely possible.
"Hedonic adaptation" occurs when we have unlimited access to enjoyable things, which then no longer give us as much pleasure.
Thursday, August 6, 2020
Rimac C2 drivetrain
10:20 At the eleventh hour, and in order to beat the competition, they redesigned the entire rear powertrain again from acratch to get more torque and more RPM.
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Car-Free Streets
Despite vocal opposition, multiple cities have seen that removing cars from streets makes streets safer, improves the number of people moving through per hour, and surprisingly increases local commerce.
Sunday, August 2, 2020
Saturday, August 1, 2020
NYTimes: Indian Billionaires Bet Big on Vaccine Race
Indian Billionaires Bet Big on Head Start in Coronavirus Vaccine Race https://nyti.ms/2XicLKP
Incredibly, one family - one entrepreneur, really - has the resources to stockpile hundreds of millions of doses of a vaccine that may prove unhelpful.
NYTimes: Aboard the Diamond Princess, a Case Study in Aerosol Transmission
"calculated the most likely contributions of each route of transmission. The researchers concluded that the smaller droplets predominated, and accounted for about 60 percent of new infections over all, both at close range, within a few yards of an infectious person, and at greater distances..."
Solar E-Bike
I love this "maker" mentality, where he constantly tweaks things to get better performance.
I didn't realize that wiring the solar panels in series allows him to use smaller gauge wire. I was also surprised that airflow over the panels cools them and makes them more efficient.
Here's a clever variation where the solar panel tilts to aim at the sun.
This second maker has more of his projects at https://solare.bike/
Dribble Like Mad! 🏀
I find these animations are a significant leap forward. I don't follow this field closely, so I haven't watched such animations for a while, but this seems very lifelike to me. It's incredible how many calculations are being done about each bone, each bounce of the ball. I like the comparison of how a previous iteration seemed to have the basketball "sticking" to the player's hand, at 3:20
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