algorithmic generation

AlphaPhoenix uses Monte Carlo simulation and annealing-style methods to draw North Carolina congressional district maps, both gerrymandered and fair. He focuses on the fascinating computational problem rather than the politics.

Alex O'Connor shows that ChatGPT cannot draw a wine glass filled to the brim, and ties the failure to David Hume's missing shade of blue. It asks what the failure says about how image models learn.

Martin Donald explains the Wave Function Collapse algorithm using Sudoku-like constraint solving and shows how he implemented it with Blender and Godot. It links demos and reference articles.

A short animated explainer that stages a $100 footrace in which contestants start at different distances from the line, depending on the advantages or disadvantages they inherited. It uses the race as a metaphor for how unequal starting points shape outcomes, citing US census income and poverty figures.

Vsauce looks at 'juvenoia', the exaggerated fear that new media and youth culture are corrupting the young. It gives historical examples of older generations complaining about the next one.

A guest video by Welch Labs on 3Blue1Brown explaining how text-to-image and video models work. It covers CLIP, shared embedding spaces, diffusion models (DDPM, DDIM), conditioning, guidance and negative prompts.

A short CGP Grey bonus video explaining the shortest-splitline algorithm, which draws electoral districts by repeatedly splitting a state along its shortest dividing line while balancing population. It is offered as a neutral, algorithmic fix for gerrymandering.

Practical Engineering's explanation of the February 2021 Texas winter storm and the resulting power grid outage. It lays out the facts about ERCOT, the grid's isolation, and how generation across fuel types failed in the cold.

Practical Engineering explains why connecting solar and other inverter-based generation to the grid is hard. It covers grid stability, load balancing and the behind-the-scenes engineering challenges of renewables.

A Smarter Every Day episode from aboard a nuclear submarine on how the crew makes breathable air. It covers oxygen generation from seawater, oxygen candles and CO2 scrubbing with amine.

Kurzgesagt explains stellar engines such as the Shkadov thruster and Caplan thruster, which could move the Sun and solar system across the galaxy over millions of years to avoid hazards and reach new regions.

A re-upload of a video breaking down Eminem's rhyme schemes, showing multi-syllable and internal rhymes in songs such as Lose Yourself. It aims to show why he is considered a standout lyricist.

Technology Connections explains the difference between power (watts) and energy (watt-hours) and why confusing them leads to errors. It runs about 52 minutes and uses everyday examples.

Veritasium visits the US Navy's Crane facility to test top night vision goggles. It explains how image intensifier tubes and thermal or digital systems work and compares the generations of the technology.

Real Engineering looks at why nuclear power plants are expensive and how their economics compare with fossil and renewable alternatives. It is based on a video from the Illinois Energy Professors.

Tom Scott visits Cloudflare's San Francisco office to show the wall of lava lamps whose camera feed is used as a source of entropy for random number generation. It is a short explainer on how this helps secure internet encryption.

Isaac Arthur examines Dyson spheres and swarms, including common myths and misconceptions. He covers uses such as interstellar travel, black hole generation, and computing large enough to simulate universes.

A Kurzgesagt animation on longtermism, arguing that because the future could hold trillions of people, our actions' effect on future generations may be what matters most.

Matt Parker follows the community effort to speed up his slow Wordle-solving code, which ended up running hundreds of millions of times faster. He walks through the techniques contributors used.

Illumina's 3D animation of its sequencing-by-synthesis workflow, from sample preparation and cluster generation to sequencing on a flow cell and data analysis.

Two Minute Papers covers a paper on speeding up fluid and smoke simulation with convolutional networks. It contrasts the approach with earlier regression forest methods.

Dave Jones of EEVblog debunks the Solar Roadways project, which raised millions through Indiegogo and government funding. He works through the solar generation and LED power calculations to show the idea isn't viable.