90s rock

The first episode of the Yacht Rock web series, a comedic parody about the smooth soft-rock musicians of the late 1970s and early 80s. It is a short, scripted sketch set at Koko's Boat House.

Curious Droid surveys vertical take-off and landing rockets that predate SpaceX and Blue Origin, including the McDonnell Douglas DC-X of the 1990s. It shows that propulsive landing has about 60 years of history.

Everyday Astronaut's Tim Dodd runs an hour-long, data-driven analysis of what rockets actually emit and how that compares with airliners and other industries. It breaks down exhaust by propellant type, per-passenger and total emissions, and ways launches could be cleaner.

Destin Sandlin tours United Launch Alliance's rocket factory with CEO Tory Bruno, showing friction stir welding, structural rocket skins and large milled parts.

Scott Manley explains the plumbing of rocket engines, including pressure-fed, gas generator, expander and staged combustion cycles. He shows why more complex designs exist and what they gain.

A two-minute explanation of what a rocket mass heater is, starting from how a conventional wood stove works and why creosote and chimney fires occur. It shows how burning hot and storing the heat in thermal mass makes for an efficient heater.

Joe Barnard of BPS.space shows his model rocket Scout F landing vertically like a SpaceX booster after seven years of attempts. The video documents the successful landing and the build-up to it.

Scott Manley explains the nuclear salt water rocket, Robert Zubrin's concept of a rocket fueled by a rapid nuclear reaction in uranium salt dissolved in water. He covers its extraordinary performance and the dangers of managing it.

A Veritasium video touring Relativity Space and explaining why 3D printing whole rockets cuts tooling costs, allows rapid iteration, reduces part count and enables new designs. It includes an interview with Scott Manley on aerospace engineering.

A one-minute clip of an Atlas Agena rocket losing pressure on the pad and collapsing. The Atlas relied on tank pressurization for structural integrity, so a simple failure tore it apart.

Everyday Astronaut explains the basic physics of rocket engines, the main engine cycles and fuel types, then compares SpaceX's methane-fueled full-flow staged combustion Raptor to other engines. It runs nearly 50 minutes with chapter markers.

A very long, detailed look at the A4/V2 rocket turbopump, the steam-turbine-driven twin propellant pump system. It covers the peroxide and permanganate catalysis that drives the turbine. This is part 1 of a series on V2 components.

Tim Dodd's hour-long deep dive on how rocket engines start, from solid motors to liquid engines. It covers thermal conditioning, spin-up, ignition methods, starting in space, and a step-by-step RS-25 startup.

A 1966 NASA safety film teaching workers how to handle toxic rocket propellants such as hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide. It explains the hazards of these corrosive, flammable and toxic chemicals and what to do after contamination.

A Chris Rock stand-up routine from Bring the Pain (1996) distinguishing between two groups of people, built around a controversial word.

The official 1994 music video for Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun.

Douglas Crockford's first Yahoo lecture puts JavaScript in historical context. He traces the language's structure and quirks back through the early decades of computer science and programming language history.

Douglas Crockford's Nordic.js 2014 talk on 'the better parts' of JavaScript and programming in general. He argues against `this`, `new` and ES6 classes, and for classless, composition-based object patterns, with some broader remarks on building better structures for the future.

Douglas Crockford tells how JSON was discovered rather than invented, and how its simplicity made it a dominant data interchange format. He also covers surrounding history such as earlier Netscape usage and the 'Good, not Evil' license story.

Douglas Crockford's YUIConf 2012 evening keynote tries to explain monads in a way programmers can actually understand, in the context of JavaScript. He aims to break the 'monad tutorial curse'.

OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman explains the design principles behind ChatGPT and demos unreleased plug-ins at TED 2023. In the follow-up, TED head Chris Anderson presses him on the timeline of development and the risks of releasing such a tool.

Douglas Crockford's code::dive 2022 talk on what the next programming language should look like. He presents ideas behind his Misty language, including message-passing actors.

A short video built around Douglas Crockford, creator of JSON, saying JavaScript is a flawed language and that developers should eventually move on from it. It is a brief commentary clip with little technical detail.

Tom Lehrer's satirical song about Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who went from the Nazi missile program to the US space program. It includes the famous line about not caring where the rockets come down.

A Dutch Top 2000 a gogo segment in which Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim) explains how The Rockafeller Skank is built, in his studio. The studio shows a long-running Atari ST setup.

The official music video for They Might Be Giants' "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" from the 1990 album Flood.

The Who performing Won't Get Fooled Again at Shepperton Studios in 1978, filmed for The Kids Are Alright. It was Keith Moon's last performance with the band.

The official music video for Blues Traveler's song Hook, remastered in HD. The song is known for using the melody of Pachelbel's Canon while its lyrics comment on how hooks work.

A Channel 4 Equinox documentary on the NK-33 engines built for the Soviet N1 moon rocket and how they ended up in the USA. It includes rare footage and interviews with veterans of the early Soviet space program.

A 2008 documentary by Brett Whitcomb about the Rock-afire Explosion, the animatronic band built for ShowBiz Pizza Place restaurants. It follows the band's history and the fans who keep the machines and their technology running.

Douglas Crockford's YUIConf 2011 keynote on why programming style matters, particularly in JavaScript. He draws on science about the brain and shows how tools like JSLint help.

The Schoolhouse Rock! cartoon song 'I'm Just a Bill', in which a bill explains how it travels through Congress to become law.

SpaceX footage of the Grasshopper vehicle's 744 m test hop, filmed from a hexacopter that gets closer than earlier flights. Grasshopper was a vertical takeoff and landing rig built to test returning rockets to the pad.

Short Curious Droid video on why NASA could not simply rebuild the Saturn V's Rocketdyne F-1 engine for the SLS boosters. It explains that the engines were hand-tailored and that much of the know-how was never documented, so the blueprints were not enough.

A University of Tokyo demo of a rock-paper-scissors robot that always wins, using high-speed vision to read the human hand and respond faster than people can perceive.

A short clip from Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown in which he and chef Sean Brock end a long night of drinking at a Charleston Waffle House. It celebrates the unpretentious, welcoming late-night diner. Bourdain's remark comparing the meal favorably to the French Laundry is what people remember.

A Chris Rock sketch giving comedic advice on how to behave during police encounters to avoid getting hurt.

Footage of DC-X Flight 8 from July 1995 at White Sands, in which the Delta Clipper Experimental reusable rocket turned over into a re-entry profile and re-oriented itself for landing.

A one-minute clip from The Simpsons in which Lisa demonstrates the Anti-Tiger Rock to Homer, showing that the rock keeps away tigers because no tigers are around. It is a short comedic scene about faulty causal reasoning.

Conan O'Brien interviews Jack White in a Serious Jibber-Jabber episode shot on 35mm film. They discuss White's creative process, his use of constraints and his approach to music and art.