a worthy sidekick to artifacts from the future
2022-02-16: And here’s an alternative archive of artifacts from the future.
Month: May 2014
Imperial History of the Middle East
this is really well done. i hadn’t known about how large the persian empire was relative to earlier ones like the hittites, for example.
Brute force design
v0.1 of programmable matter:
Autodesk’s new CAD software lets the designer specify the parameters of a solid (its volume, dimensions, physical strength, even the tools to be used in its manufacture and the amount of waste permissible in the process) and the software iterates through millions of potential designs that fit. The designer’s job becomes tweaking the parameters and choosing from among the brute-forced problem-space of her object, rather than designing it from scratch
Gov island reopens
it will be open 7 days a week now, instead of just the weekend. on the other hand the ferry will now cost $2
Georgia Now Allowing Guns In Churches
amen
NYAS view
NYC crazy uncles
imagine 6 weird uncles in your attic, and you get New York Historical Society special exhibitions
Matter from light
a device that would use a key piece of fusion equipment to convert light into particles with mass. It would do so by smashing photons together to create electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons. Physicists have never observed this process in the lab.
China Construction
China produced more cement from 2011-2012 than the US did in the entire 20th century
other than the crazy growth, there is also the US infatuation with wood for construction.
500 ma Jellyfish
jellyfish are at least 500 ma old, some are immortal, and: If I offered evidence that jellyfish are displacing penguins in Antarctica — not someday, but today — what would you think? If I suggested that jellyfish could crash the world’s fisheries, outcompete the tuna and swordfish, and starve the whales to extinction, would you believe me?
Gregor J. Rothfuss 