Thoughtful pieces from around the interwebs:
https://calculusmadeeasy.org/ – Text published in 1910 by Silvanus P. Thompson with a focus on conveying knowledge to the reader instead of building up his own ego. From the prologue: “Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. What one fool can do, another can.”
https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/how-to-be-more-agentic?r=4cj46 – Article on “agency”, i.e. making things happen from a top poker pro, former Supreme Court advocate, and startup co-founder.
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/search?open_content=true – Library of over 80,000 open-source images from the Getty Museum Collection.
https://randsinrepose.com/archives/an-unreasonable-investment – A story about how Chuck made a choice to invest his time and energy into the development of intern for no obvious reason. “The selfless act of helping humans will teach you more about being a credible leader than any book.”
https://1517.substack.com/p/forgetting-the-asbestos – Commentary on the challenges of documentation and how massively difficult it is to describe a process for others to replicate. Examples: Roman concrete recipe, FOGBANK synthesis, use of asbestos blankets to protect Saturn V rockets during launch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANv5UfZsvZQ – “The Falcon has landed” | Recap of Falcon 9 launch and landing. Now a somewhat frequent occurrence, this was a massive engineering achievement. Seeing the euphoria in those gathered around is magical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AXv49dDQJw – Fantastic visualization of electricity through a branched wire where one end leads to an open circuit and the other ends in a shorted circuit. Comparable to the flow of fluids through a similar setup, albeit at a time scale a billion times smaller.
https://pmichaud.com/toast/ – Observations of Pop Tarts subjected to aggressive toasting methods. Probably don’t try this at home. Or, at least, keep it outside.
https://www.hasselblad.com/about/history/hasselblad-in-space/ – History of the cameras used during the Apollo missions. One of the overlooked details of capturing the momentous events of space exploration.
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