Mechanicking

I Was Fixing a Fuel Tank - It Did Not Go Well
Watch Wes Work

This is kind of a long video, but it moves right along. Wes doesn't have just one problem, just when you think the truck is fixed and the video is over you find out that there is another one. New fangled plastic parts appear several times. 

In the last three minutes he gives an economic report which is especially interesting. I would like to blame the fact that he is in Illinois, but I don't know if that really makes any difference.

10 Short Videos #6137

10 Short Videos #6137

Nice catch!

What grew from this hand dryer - anniversary test!

The Best Landing View

Brackets for working in the attic

Is this the best way to drink a beer?

Watch This Helmet Visor Change Color Instantly

[현장의 기술] 평평한 가죽이 축구공으로? 순식간에 모양을 잡아주는 신기한 마법의 기계! - [Technology on the Field] Flat leather turning into a soccer ball? A fascinating magic machine that shapes it in an instant

My next bed I’ma have it lay completely flush so I don’t have to struggle

What Time Is It

This Goes Inside Your Hip (Acetabular Reamer Explained)

Funnies

Stagecoach

Stagecoach at Shepherd's Wild West Showdown

People have been using teams of four horses harnessed like this for over 2500 years.

Chemistry & Physics

DSA - This New Technology Could Disrupt ASML and Intel
42 Index

DSA stands for Directed Self Assembly which involves polymers fitting themselves to structures laid down by conventional photolithography. I suspect this is what my neighbors are working on.

Funnies

Moth

Antheraea Polyphemus

Fillyjonk talks about moths:

It's a polyphemus moth. Probably  Antheraea Polyphemus.  They're related to silkworms (I don't know if you can make silk from the cocoons, though, and I don't know that they're destructive in the way Lymantra dispar is (the common name on that contains what some now regard as a slur to the Roma people, so, I don't know if we have a new common name* or not but I can remember it as Lymantra). Of course Lymantra is an invasive in the US and Polyphemus is native here.

(*oh hey yes, you can call it the "spongy moth" which makes me laugh so maybe I use that with my classes now) 

These creatures don't live long; they don't have functional mouthparts (unlike some moths and butterflies that eat nectar); they only live about a week and they exist to mate, lay eggs, and die. Which looking at that with a human bias, that seems kind of sad, but then again: will moths ever write symphonies or novels or draw maps?

The other thing that always weirds me out if I think much about it is the metamorphosis process: lepidopterans dissolve into a puddle of goo, leaving behind "imaginal disks" that direct reorganization of what's left into the adult. 

There's a short essay here (Scientific American) that talks about it, and here are some photos from a natural historian who raises silkmoths and had one that "oopsied" and somehow metamorphosed without a cocoon (so apparently the "puddle of goo" was an overstatement)