Favorites November 24th 2022

November 2022, Happy Thanksgiving!

Massimo @Rainmaker1973

In 1951, Adelbert Ames created the mind-boggling ‘Ames Window’. It’s so effective that even when you know how it works you can’t break the illusion [video from The Curiosity Show: buff.ly/36DvRNs]

I'm sure I've seen the Ames window before, but the part at the end with the pen was an amazing addition that I don't think I've seen before.

Joey Politano 🏳️‍🌈 @JosephPolitano

The European Union now gets more natural gas from the United States than from Russia!

That was a fast transition! Seems like this is all without building new higher capacity Liquified natural gas ship terminals.

Michael Beschloss @BeschlossDC

Dine on Thanksgiving 1899 at Hotel Majestic, Central Park West, New York City:

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

It’s wild that people used to just be boiling things constantly. By the time I was a kid meat at least was almost always roasted, but dry heat for vegetables wasn’t invented until 2005.

Among many other reasons to be thankful to live in the present day rather than the past, we're definitely better at cooking things.

Andrew Prokop @awprokop

I'd wondered why it was so common in old Japanese movies for characters to get stomach cancer, interesting here dynomight.substack.com/p/thanks-2?r=5…

I didn't go into this issue looking for reasons to be thankful to live in 2022, but refrigeration, that's a big one as well.

George Magnus @georgemagnus1

Most of us are old enough to remember when China’s zero covid easing measures were the start of the abandonment of the policy (2 weeks ago)

The Spectator Index @spectatorindex

BREAKING: China imposes coronavirus lockdown in Zhengzhou

Oh, and there's pretty serious rioting at the Foxconn facility, multiple videos in the last day or two

Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill

Wow! Scientists have observed a single-cell alga evolve in real time into a multicellular organism. The transition took around a year and was caused by the introduction of a predator into the environment. nature.com/articles/s4159…

This is so cool! One thing that I'm curious about is how multicellular life is better at avoiding filter feeders than single-cell. Does larger stuff bounce off?