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Just showing the simulation which we used to validate the Whirly Dirly Corollary. Kind of a fun fact about our Solar System and orbiting bodies in general. Check out our Physics Today article!
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The Pet Shop Boys have just released a new four-song EP, Agenda, and it’s flipping brilliant.
“Ammo can” style cache containers are commonplace in the USA but very rare in the UK. As a result, British cachers coming across them for the first time sometimes report difficulty in opening or closing the containers or accidentally removing the lid and being unable to reattach it. This video quickly examines an ammo can cache so that you might know your way around it.
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New Family Vlog day is like Christmas. This one shows the highlights of my sister’s trip to VidCon London.
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Autotuned the cat because he won’t shut up in the mornings. I don’t know how this helps but I did it anyway.
Today I’m attaching a clothes peg to my nose and breathing through a straw for 60 seconds. As I won’t be able to talk while I’m doing this, I’ll type an explanation why:
Like most people, I’ve spent most of my life lucky enough to not really know anything about cystic fibrosis. I first really became aware of it when my friend Jen‘s son Lorcán was diagnosed with it (you may remember I shared a video of hers previously).
It’s a lifelong disorder with no known cure.
It’s a genetic disorder, and as many as one in every 25 people carries the gene that can cause it. Inherit two genes and you’re a sufferer. Among other symptoms, it causes frequent lung infections and difficulty breathing.
I’m taking part in the #strawfiechallenge as an exercise in appreciating how difficult it can be to cope with reduced lung function. A new drug, Orkambi, is helping to extend the lives of sufferers in other countries around the world. But it’s not yet available in the UK. :-(
CF sufferers want #OrkambiNow. They need your politicians to act.
Find out how you can help: www.cfsupportgroup.org
This video is also available at:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yht_zE_mT7U
4-minute explanation of where we’re “at” with Brexit, with the usual clarity that the IIB folks provide. Nice.
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Summary: if an idealised weight slides into another, bouncing it off a wall then back into itself, how many times will the two collide? If the two weights are the same then the answer is 3: the first collision imparts all of the force of the first into the second, the second collision is the second bouncing off the wall, and the third imparts the force from the second back into the first. If the second weight weighs ten times as much as the first, the answer turns out to be 31. One hundred times as much, and there are 314 bounces. One thousand times, and there are 3,141. Ten thousand times, and there are 31,415… spot the pattern? The number of bounces are the digits of pi.
Why? This is mindblowing. And this video doesn’t answer the question (completely): it only poses it. But I’ll be looking forward to the next episode’s explanation…
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Brian and Nick are back for the first time in, like, forever. Do you remember what happened before this? It was The Faux Pas, two years ago. And before that? And before that? And before that? The short of it is that it’s been a long time since your mom’s butthole was just fine.
On the morning of my 38th birthday I set out on an expedition to the geohashpoint in my graticule as a diversion from my way to work: read my full hash log for details (or on the geohashing wiki). Inspired by a spot near the hashpoint, I also hid a geocache (“2019-01-08 51 -1, 09:19”, OK049E, GC827X6). You can download my tracklog [GPX] here.
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Computerphile at its best, here tackling the topic of additional (supplementary) processors, like FPUs, GPUs, sound processors, etc., to which CPUs outsource some of their work under specific circumstances. Even speaking as somebody who’s upgraded a 386/SX to a 386/DX through the addition of a “math co-processor” (an FPU) and seeing the benefit in applications for which floating point arithmetic was a major part (e.g. some early 3D games), I didn’t really think about what was really happening until I saw this video. There’s always more to learn, fellow geeks!
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AC/DC’s Thunderstruck played on a Gayageum, a traditional Korean stringed instrument. You might also enjoy it performed on a pair of cellos. Or, as I shared earlier this year, sung by a 21-month-old.
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Mongolian folk rock. Until right now, you probably didn’t even know that this was missing from your life.
Be sure to switch on the translated subtitles (assuming you don’t speak Mongolian): they’re not perfect, but they’re good enough to get the idea. Awesome.
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One man – who appears to be afraid of chickens – plays Toto’s Africa on a rubber chicken, with backup from a real chicken. Congratulations: if you watched this, you just won the whole damn Internet.
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Fantastic lightweight introduction to bacteriophages and how they can potentially be our next best weapon against infection as we approach the post-antibiotic age. Plus an interesting look at the history and the discovery of bacteriophages!
