OK, yeah, I featured one of Exurb1a’s videos yesterday, but the guys content is almost entirely good and worth watching. He humorously blends sci-fi with philosophy and science, and sometimes something that vaguely resembles music.
Some good examples:
Basically the history of rockets, done right.
Also:
And this one, which was chuckleworthy throughout… until the very end when I actually did Laugh Out Loud:
“Generation Tech” is the YouTube channel of the very best kind of nerd: the kind who over-analyzes Star Wars and tries to apply logic and rationality to it. Some people think it’s silly to try to make popular science fiction or fantasy franchises such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings or the last eight years of the White House make sense, but I find it to be a good way to exercise the brain. With Star Wars, things are complicated by decades of officially licensed novels and comic books and the like that are now officially considered non-canonical, but which still slip into the new canon (witness Grand Admiral Thrawn now being wholly canonical).
Still, some interesting conclusions can be drawn by taking some widely separated, and almost certainly unrelated, hints (hints that were never meant to be linked together by the various authors) and drag them kicking and screaming into some sort of grand unified nerd theory. For example, several details hint at the idea that Emperor Palpatine wasn’t just a simple one-dimensional Bad Guy. Instead… early on in his career he had visions of the galaxy being invaded by an extremely dangerous foe, one that the hidebound Galactic Republic would have been utterly incapable of fighting off. So his obsession with building up a remarkably pointless military (honestly, who was the Imperial navy, with those tens of thousands of star Destroyers supposed to fight?) wasn’t just a pointless obsession, but was a buildup to prepare the galaxy for incoming foes. The Death Stars turn out in this scenario to not be one-off weapons of internal suppression (though that’s what most of the people involved with them thought them to be), but basically the first of a new class of really big battleship to fight off the incoming world-sized enemy ships. There are rumors that this scenario just might ply out in the future Star Wars flicks, presumably the Episodes 10-12 trilogy.
And then there’s the question of “how does a regular schmoe take on a Jedi?” And the answer is the same that I thought up decades ago: shotguns.
Let’s face it: there are few enough situations where “shotgun” is the wrong answer. But against some self-important magical jackass with a laser sword, a shotgun would be extra-handy. Sure, they can use their Force-powers to accurately place their blades to reflect an incoming blaster bolt, which will bounce right off. But what happens to a chunk of lead, copper, steel, or depleted uranium flying at a Jedis face if said Jedi intercepts it with a light saber? He *might* vaporize the projectile. And I’m not sure than an ounce of uranium *vapor* heading at his face it going to be a whole lot safer for him. Not mentioned in the video: grenade launchers. Shoot projectiles at the Jedi that are designed to explode when struck with a light saber… and at no other time. Maybe he can hurl them back at you with the Force, but big whoop. If they go *kerblam* if he uses his blade on them, then he’s got a grenade going off at arms length.
The next best thing to video of new atmospheric nuclear tests is previously unseen film of old nuclear tests. Sure, it’s not even close… it’s patently obvious that new atmospheric nuclear tests is something the United States needs to do, but I guess we’ll just have to take what we can get.
Lawrence Livermore National Labs has embarked on a project of finding and scanning and digitally restoring up to ten thousand films of above-ground nuclear tests. This is being done partially for the historic aspect, but mostly because nuclear weapons designers today have nothing to go on *but* old data, so, the more data they have, the better.
LLNL has set up a YouTube playlist of some of these.
And this one. HOLY CARP, this one.
Chris here is simply entertaining. Like many popular YouTubers, he started off as one thing (yapping about video games) and morphed into something else (mockery of current political insanity). He’s a self-proclaimed Leftie, but he’s got a decent head on his shoulders… and a damn fine sense of humor. If I were to yammer about politics on YouTube (not gonna, don’t worry), it would be like this, just probably less funny and less watchable. And certainly with less musical ability.
As one might expect, Chris tends to focus a lot on video game and YouTube culture. But even if you are not involved in those, the crazy nonsense that infects them troubles the rest of society, or soon will. And so I appreciate Chris Ray Guns energetic and foul-mouthed takedowns of nonsense.
… here are two Thunderf00t videos discussing recent projects that have consumed lots of money but which were based on bad science, bad math and bad engineering.
The self-filling water bottle remains a stumper to me. The basic idea is quite simple: a solar powered dehumidifier. Not exactly staggeringly new technology. Yet, the math behind the concept is available and accessible for anyone to do… and the math shows that the idea is *monumentally* impractical. And still people shovel truckloads of cash at these efforts.
This YouTube channel is not a producer of content, but an aggregator of vintage documentaries. Additionally, the videos have improved audio and stabilized video – i.e., they’re better to watch and listen to than the originals. The videos are *all* over the place… you’re as likely to see one on nuclear bomb testing as you are on household cleansers. But there are a *lot* of videos that should be of considerable interest to readers of this blog. Lots of military and NASA vids.
Here the page is broken down into convenient playlists.
Some recent videos of interest:
There are a bunch of YouTube channels that I look at from time to time. I figured I might as well point them out… these channels will probably be of interest to a great many of the blog readers. Some are history, some aerospace, some humor, some politics.
First up: Forgotten Weapons. This channel is pretty much what it says on the box… videos are uploaded ever day or so that show some unusual and/or rare firearm. Often these videos are shot in an auction house where the firearm is soon to be sold, so, at least theoretically, if your pockets are deep enough you can end up owning them.
https://www.youtube.com/c/forgottenweapons/videos
Some recent videos include this one of the M134 minigun (which, contrary to popular opinion, you *could* legally own, you just can’t afford it… much less afford to feed the thing):
And this one of an entirely odd “chain gun” (the Guycot chain pistol) I bet you’ve never heard of… I sure hadn’t. It’s very, very clever: a double-action “semi automatic” pistol from the 1870s with a built-in 40-round capacity. The downside was that it fired a round that would have had a hard time taking down a rabbit. Sometimes cleverness isn’t enough. Sometimes you need brute force.