If “multiple car-sized wasp nests” doesn’t say “God’s wrath”, I don’t know what does.
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The cost for the prototype home was comparable to conventional construction.
Damn.
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The structure eliminates the need for framing, separate insulation, siding, shingles on the roof, and nails; the panels are chemically bonded together, helping make the whole structure stronger.
I love how the properties of recyclable plastic turn building with it into a good thing.
Wish they’d included a floor plan, just because I liyne floor plans. I wonder if multiple-story buildings could be made of the same stuff?
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Really cool!
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In a cruel kind of irony, if urban landscapers had prioritized female trees in the same way, neither pollen nor unsightly seeds or fruit would be much of an issue. “If they had done it the opposite and planted hundreds of female trees with no males, it would have been just as sterile and tidy, without any pollen,” Ogren says. “Female trees don’t make fruits or seeds if there are no males around.
Just goes to show even botanists don’t use science like they properly ought to.
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this is the paper mentioned in your article
“I grew up about an hour from San Marcos, so I went there a few times,” says Jannotti who was enamored by the fort as a child, and now studies the dynamic behavior of materials. Years later in 2013, when Jannotti was working on his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with professor Ghatu Subhash at the University of Florida, Subhash’s daughter Sanika, a high school student, became curious about the walls’ unusual strength. She suggested doing an experiment to investigate coquina’s absorptive properties.
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The article is pretty skeptical about that. A better thing to call out would be the essentially sterile nature of the plants being sold, how that distorts the markets for live plants. Instead of changing the entire structure to match a rota of what’s attempting to breed and what isn’t and whether we should all switch over to female trees or whatever, maybe enumerate the seeds-versus-pollen equation and let people try the markets and see where they fail.
We might just end up with fruit everywhere. What a disaster.
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Cool, thank you!
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Anyone else read Subnormality? There is a newish one up:
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Geez, I recall that, when I was a kid, about half the houses on the block had plum trees in the backyard. What a disaster! (Of course, me being the little hellion I was, I loved gathering the fruits of disaster…)
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My parents retired to Florida; they told me the mangoes all got ripe at the same time.
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Well, there you go! You either eat 'em or they make a mess disaster on the ground…
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Well this is inter downright weird.
I’m working on a model building, and for various reasons decided to try 3D printing the brick walls. So I’m working on this 3D model in the open source program, Blender. For various reason I have to do a lot of mesh repair. It’s kind of mindless and fun, and lets my (often annoying) inner voice go elsewhere for a while – it’s definitely right side brain work. The mesh sort of looks like this:
So later, I wake up from a nap following a session with Blender, look at the white ceiling still relaxed and see an afterimage of a mesh. The same sort of regular mesh, but not fixed; it flows with bigger squares and irregular squares. Sort of gray on the background of the white. And it was still summon-able the next day.
Now, this isn’t a retinal afterimage, like when you look at a bright light and see a spot for a minute or two. I think this is an afterimage farther into the visual processing wiring somewhere. Apparently there is some memory in there, or maybe it gets burned in like an old CRT monitor? (I hope not.) And it’s there only when I sort of think about; otherwise I’m not bothered by it (the way a bright light afterimage sometimes does).
I had to give it up for a while due to tendonitis in my hand – all that mouse work. Maybe there’s a lesson in there somewhere.
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But when they are still tender and green, they are still great. Put a little salt and lime juice on them and it’s a tasty snack. Zingy slaw too!
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I’ve had similar things happen. I’ve also had kind of the opposite with text, where I don’t just read but see what I expect, and then the letters kind of transform into what they really say.
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