Cavalcade of Mammals

Donna and Walt audio: A Series of Unlikely Events

Americans are split on buying a house where the prior owners were murdered
Nearly two in five Americans say they believe that ghosts (36%), demons (37%), and psychics (37%) exist. Less than half of Americans say each one doesn’t exist. Far fewer believe in the existence of vampires (7%) and werewolves (7%); more than 80% of Americans say vampires and werewolves do not exist.

Panic! On the Editorial Page: Breaking down a “cancel culture” scare story by Michael Hobbes

I’m a Longtime Professor. The Real Campus “Free Speech Crisis” Is Not What You Think. I’ve never seen classrooms like mine in the pages of the Times. by Lucas Mann

“Long-term cardiovascular outcomes of COVID-19”, Nature, Feb 7 2022

The Other Speed Trap: America’s traffic laws hurt the poor, and don’t really deter anyone. But what if traffic fines scaled with income? by Brett Simpson

How To Keep Enforcers Like Police, Military And Spies Under Control By Ian Welsh

The Huanan market was the epicenter of SARS-CoV-2 emergence, pre-print

A Deepness in the Sky (1999) by Vernor Vinge. The Emergent mindrot virus, a tech of neurotoxins and a device that induces obsession with a single idea or specialty, called Focus, turning people into brilliant appliances.

“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967) is a post-apocalyptic science fiction short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. The AI “AM” tortures the last surviving humans.

The Jesus Incident (1979) by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom. Sequel to is Destination: Void. Ship develops super intelligence, the ability to manipulate space and time, and demands WorShip.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968) and The Sheep Look Up (1972) by John Brunner. Overpopulation and resource depletion have degraded life. Explores all the little ways the breakdown affects the characters and compounds.

Venus of Dreams (1986) and sequels by Pamela Sargent. The world government, a bureaucracy that sees social order as its prime goal, is a bleak but depressingly plausible future. The government suppresses individuality, initiative, and change. Strong resonance with the historic Chinese empire and current Chinese efforts to use technology to control and channel society.

The Space Merchants (1952) by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. Also The Merchants’ War (1984). Hyper-consumerism and advertising have destroyed society. Businesses run everything, run the political system as a product line. Through advertising, the public is deluded into thinking that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on the market. Some products are highly addictive. The most basic elements of life are incredibly scarce, including water and fuel.

Broken Earth series: The Fifth Season (2015), The Obelisk Gate (2016), The Stone Sky (2017) by N.K. Jemisin. The system used to control the orogenes is brutal.

Xenogenesis / Lilith’s Brood series: Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), Imago (1989) by Octavia E. Butler. Dystopic series starts with Lilith is held captive by strange aliens and interbreed with an alien of the ‘third sex’.

Classic stories

Make Room! Make Room! (1966) by Harry Harrison.

Suburban Chicago McMansions Follow a Dark Logic Even I Do Not Understand

Which glue to use: This to That

Childhood Leukemia Was Practically Untreatable Until Dr. Don Pinkel and St. Jude Hospital Found a Cure: A half century ago, a young doctor took on a deadly form of cancer—and the scientific establishment

Orrery (Earth, Moon, and Sun) project plans By amandaghassaei

Built to Lie: A new book about the Boeing 737 MAX disaster exposes the company’s allergy to the truth. by Maureen Tkacik

“fuzzy Wuzzy” bath soap grew filaments of aluminum hydroxide, link.

36 Most Clever Cooking Tips I Learned This Yearby Hannah Loewentheil

COVID-19 vaccination by county vote in 2020

Designing a Workflow For Thinking by Steven Johnson
Easy Focus Stack in Linux
Who Goes Fascist? A Political Psychologist Explains. Kristen Renwick Monroe looks at rescuers, bystanders, and perpetrators to understand why people do unspeakable acts. by Linda Mannheim

Reuters unmasks Trump supporters who terrified U.S. election officials by LINDA SO and JASON SZEP. Reporters track down criminals who made violent threats who police ignored.

GO client for linux, Sabaki

The ultra-wealthy have made full use of Roth individual retirement accounts. Here’s how you can do the same.

This Is How Many Calories You Burn on a Hilly Hike

60 Minutes Helps Andrew Sullivan’s Whitewashing: The blogger gets some prime time help with rewriting history by Jeet Heer

Raccoon Was Once a Thanksgiving Feast Fit for a President. Calvin Coolidge refused to cook the raccoon sent to him, but the critter was a beloved staple for many Americans. by Jason Daley

Flourless chocolate cake recipe

I’m Confused Why All These People Are Quitting Jobs That Pay No Money and Make Them Want to Die by Chas Gillespie

Chicago Tool Library, South side

Plan C, information on access to mifepristone and misoprostol

Typical Employee Equity Levels
The 10 commandments of salary negotiation

Why $15 minimum wage is pretty safe. And why economists changed their minds on the minimum wage. by Noah Smith

Frank Wilhoit: The Travesty of Liberalism: “There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation. There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely. Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

Coqz Heaumez, or Helmeted Cock

The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism: Scare stories on “left-wing illiberalism” display a familiar pattern. by Michael Hobbes

Saw this paper, “Voxelated soft matter via multimaterial multinozzle 3D printing“, pdf. Two or more fluids come together at bend, and static pressure is enough to keep the current printing liquid moving towards the outlet, not backing up into the second material source tube. And the pressure of the current print liquid keeps the other fluids back.

There is effectively no mix chamber, so the change from one fluid to the other is quite quick, and there is little mixing after a switch.

This works because of the size and orientation of the fluid tubes in relation to the viscosity and other properties of the liquids. The authors make the print heads out of plastic and print with silicon and wax.

To use this for 3D printing plastic, the print head should be made out of a material with better heat resistance, such are metal or ceramic.

Idea
Make a print head like this out of ceramic (alumina, or similar ‘technical ceramic’). 1) 3D print the flow chamber and nozzle geometry out of a thermoplastic (or wax), then 2) slip cast ceramic around this. 3) When the ceramic is fired, the plastic will melt out or vaporize, leaving the desired nozzle geometry.

Idea 2
The geometry needed is simple, at least for two inputs. The thin join can be a very short segment, a few mm in length. The lead in tube can be drilled 2-3mm wide, then the 0.5 or 0.25 mm join tubes can be drilled out. Drill the outlet from the bottom, then drill the inlets from the bottom of the lead in holes. This would require precision to make the segments join up correctly, but the drill holes would be short.

Filamentation cutting
The output of an ultrashort pulse (< 15 picoseconds) laser is focused to a small spot within the substrate. The very high laser intensity achieved produces self-focusing of the beam (due to the Kerr optical effect) within the glass. This self-focusing further increases power density, until, at a certain threshold, a low-density plasma is created in the material. This plasma lowers the material refractive index in the center of the beam path and causes the beam to defocus. If the beam focusing optics are properly configured, this focusing/defocusing effect can be balanced to repeat periodically and self-sustain. This forms a stable filament, that is, a line of tiny voids, which extends over several millimeters in depth into the glass. The typical filament diameter is in the range of 0.5 µm to 1 μm.

Example system: 50 W of average output power at a wavelength of 1064 nm, 100 mm/s – 2 m/s.

Selective laser-induced etching (SLE)
An ultra-short pulsed laser (Satsuma HP2, Amplitude Systèmes, Pessac, France) with a central wavelength of 1030 nm and the maximum output power of 20 W was used. The maximum laser pulse energy was 40 μJ at the pulse repetition rate of 500 kHz and the pulse width variation was from 370 fs to 10 ps. The pulse repetition rate was variable up to 2000 kHz. For 3D fabrication machine, the laser amplifier was integrated with a 2-axis (XY) galvano scanner (DynAXIS, ScanLab, Puchheim, Germany) and an air bearing 3-axis(XYZ) servo motion stage with a controller (A3200, Aerotech, pittsburgh, USA). A focusing objective lens (NA = 0.4, model No. 378-867-5, Mitutoyo, Kawasaki, JAPAN) was assembled with the galvano scanner for high scan speed. The focused laser beam size is estimated about 2 μm. The combined scan speed of the scanner and 3D stage is up to 200 mm/s and the field size is 100 mm × 100 mm. After laser modification process, the exposed glass substrate was etched using 8 mol potassium hydroxide (KOH) at 85 °C in an ultrasonic bath for uniform concentration control. (Kim et al, 2019)

Possible laser: Osram SPL PL90 3 pulsed laser diode. It is constructed from three epitaxially stacked emitters with a laser aperture of 200 μm by 10 μm and has a peak output power of 75 W, a wavelength of 905 nm, and a maximum pulse width of 100 ns. The rated duty cycle is 0.1%, but this has been exceeded without damage to the diode. $20. datasheet, (Parziale_et_al, 2015)

Diodes with ps pulses are low energy mW or less, so coupling and amplification through a fiber laser is needed.

Oh My Fucking God, Get the Fucking Vaccine Already, You Fucking Fucks
by Wendy Molyneux
COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Cases: Data from the States

Make Your Best Oktoberfest by Josh Weikert

semaglutide, weight loss of 20%, injectable drug, peptide analog. semaglutide + cagrilintide in trials, more weight loss. bimagrumab, in trials, causes weight loss and gain of muscle.