Favorites January 7th 2023

Dublin, Ireland, 2013

Science Is Strategic @scienceisstrat1

India is forecast to grow at a blistering 7% in 2022. India’s GDP is around $3.2 trillion, ahead of the UK ($3.1 tr) but behind Germany ($4.2 tr). At this growth rate the size of the economy would double in 10 years Cc: @Noahpinion @erikbryn @azeem @tejeshwi_sharma

Keeping that up for 10 years would be quite an accomplishment.

Joe Lonsdale @JTLonsdale

It’s been a mystery why Roman concrete often lasted thousands of years, but ours decays in mere decades. Turns out they incorporated chemicals in a process that induces self-healing; scientists at MIT just figured this all out - in 2022. Extraordinary.

news.mit.eduRiddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?Researchers have discovered ancient Roman concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated self-healing. Applying this knowledge toward modern cement production, they hope to improve the material’s environmental impact.

8% of global co2 emissions are from concrete, so learning small tricks from the romans could have a big impact. From the article: They directly used quicklime in the concrete so there are lots of little white specks of it. if there are any microfractures, they pass through the quicklime deposits, and then when it rains, it melts and reforms the lime to close the crack.

Threads

• Thread about how a peer therapy chat app added GPT-3 copilot capability. TL;DR: People really liked the responses, until they found out that they were partially machine-generated, at which point they didn't like it anymore.