Consumption Week 24
My notes from some of the media I consumed this week.
Glastonbury’s ‘biggest fan’: UK festival gets an eye-catching 28 metre wind turbine
- “It took just two weeks to build the parts and a single day to get the turbine up and spinning. That’s how fast green energy can get done when people work together.”
- Spinning its eight-metre long blades, the turbine will generate up to 300kWh of power a day.
Tags: Wind, Renewable Energy, Festivals
How the myth of food miles hurts the planet
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/mar/23/food.ethicalliving
- The counter-intuitive discovery that air-transported green beans from Kenya could actually account for the emission of less carbon dioxide than British beans.
Tags: Food, Emissions, Logistics, Trade
Microplastics are now in the air we breathe – can we stop them?
https://interestingengineering.com/science/microplastics-in-airways
- According to the researchers, an average human might inhale 16.2 bits of microplastic every hour. So, the amount of microplastics we inhale in a week would be enough to make a plastic credit or debit card.
Tags: Microplastics, Plastic, Disease
This wafer-thin intelligent heating system warms your house in seconds
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/thin-intelligent-heating-system-warms-house-in-seconds
- A Finish-based firm has developed a novel concept of an intelligent warming wall, a digital warming surface product. You can use Halia to warm only the regions you require when you require it.
Tags: Heating, Energy Efficiency
10-Year Annualized Forecasts for Major Asset Classes
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/10-year-annualized-forecasts-for-major-asset-classes/
Tags: Investing, Stocks
[The Innovation Show] Charles Conn - The Imperfectionists
- During turbulent times, don’t aim for stability, focus on innovation. Experiment and disrupt yourself. Avoid the Risk-Aversion Tax (cost of not acting) - especially if a decision is reversible. Focus on taking small steps, not large risky jumps. Show and tell, not presentations and statistics.
Tags: Business, Innovation, Risk
[Founders] #32 Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built
- Luck - growing up in a rapidly developing country which has lots to learn/copy from more developed ones; meeting the right people (through putting himself in the right place)
- Hard working - tried and failed and tried again, put in the time.
Tags: Business, Entrepreneurship
Always the Same Warning Signs
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/always-same-warning-signs
- Another (smaller) Theranos: Laronde.
- Warning signs: Only one person can get this great stuff to work; Legitimate questions are met with stonewalling; Important data are missing or kept secret.
Tags: Scams, Business, Entrepreneurship
Why There Aren’t Diesel Motorcycles
- Bigger, heavier, more vibration, and lower revs
Tags: Motorbikes, Engines, Engineering
Why America Is Terribly Designed (Part 2)
- 8 parking spaces for each car.
- 14% of the bridges are ‘functionally obsolete’.
Tags: Transport, Infrastructure
Why is @ on your computer keyboard?
- It started with the church!
Tags: Computing
Cursed Units
$\frac{1 litre}{100km}=\frac{10^{-3}m^{3}}{10^{5}m}=10^{-8}m^{2}=0.01mm^{2}$
$28mpg=\frac{28 miles}{1 gallon}=\frac{1 gallon}{28 miles}\approx\frac{4.5l}{45km}=\frac{4.5\times10^{-3}m^{3}}{45\times10^{5}m}=0.01mm^2$
Tags: Maths