chain react

A demo of the Cubli, a 15 cm cube that uses reaction wheels to jump up onto a corner, balance there and fall in a controlled way to move. The video shows these three abilities chained into locomotion.

A short clip of the audience at Valve's 2017 announcement of Artifact, a Dota 2 card game, reacting with visible disappointment. The footage captures the awkward silence and the logo reveal.

A short BBC Earth clip from David Attenborough's Life of Birds showing a lyrebird imitating sounds, including a chainsaw and camera shutter, so accurately it is hard to tell from the real thing.

A short clip of 1980s news coverage in which people react angrily to new drunk driving laws, with some calling them communist.

A short Bloomberg clip from the 2018 UN General Assembly. Trump warns that Germany will become dependent on Russian energy, and German delegates are shown reacting with laughter.

A two-minute clip in which Milton Friedman uses a humble pencil to show how thousands of strangers across many countries cooperate, without central direction, to make a simple product. It is a short visual version of the 'I, Pencil' essay's argument about free markets and dispersed knowledge.

A one-minute clip from a cat cafe in Japan where sleeping cats wake and look around just before an earthquake begins shaking the room.

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 one-minute Steve Summers clip of Willy Wonka saying no, don't, stop. It is a reaction meme.

A two-minute clip of Andreas Antonopoulos explaining why a 51% attack on Bitcoin would not destroy it and what such an attack would cost. It is a succinct take on mining security.

A three-minute excerpt from Milton Friedman's Free to Choose in which he uses a pencil to show that no single person knows how to make it. He argues that the free market coordinates countless strangers peacefully.

A man spends six months and $1500 making a chicken sandwich entirely from scratch: growing vegetables, making salt from seawater, milking a cow for cheese, grinding wheat, collecting honey and killing a chicken.

Honda's 2003 'Cog' commercial for the Accord, a two-minute Rube Goldberg chain reaction of car parts. It was filmed practically rather than with CGI.

Sony CSL's Daddy's Car is a pop song composed with AI in the style of the Beatles, with lead sheets generated by software from Beatles-style training material. Humans produced, arranged and performed it.

A one-minute clip from Mad Men season 5 in which Don Draper tells Michael Ginsberg in an elevator that he doesn't think about him at all.

A short BBC clip in which David Attenborough shows a lyrebird imitating sounds, including camera shutters, car alarms and chainsaws. It comes from the BBC natural history series Life on Earth.

A short excerpt from Frans de Waal's TED talk showing a capuchin monkey fairness experiment in which two monkeys are paid unequally, one with cucumber and one with grapes. The shortchanged monkey reacts angrily.

A three-minute clip in which Douglas Crockford explains why he allowed the JSLint reference implementation to be used for evil. It recounts the license clause and how corporate lawyers reacted.

Arthur Ganson's kinetic sculpture chains twelve 1:50 worm gear reductions so the final gear, embedded in concrete, would take over two trillion years to turn once.

The earliest existing concert video of Kraftwerk, from a 1970 performance shortly after the band formed. It shows the band in its original setup and the audience's reactions.

A short scene from Malcolm in the Middle in which Hal tries to fix a light bulb and is pulled into a growing chain of side repairs.

Randall Munroe of xkcd answers what would happen if you swam in a spent nuclear fuel pool, and how much radiation you would receive at the surface versus at depth.

A short Boeing piece on the retirement of the voice behind the F/A-18 Super Hornet cockpit warning system, nicknamed Bitchin' Betty. It touches on why the stern voice alerts are used.

A one-minute clip from Frans de Waal's TED talk showing two capuchin monkeys given unequal rewards (cucumber versus grape) for the same task. The monkey receiving the lesser reward reacts with protest.

A very short clip of Carl Sagan saying that to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe. It illustrates how everything depends on a chain of prior things.

A two-minute clip of Elon Musk becoming emotional in an interview, reportedly about harsh criticism of SpaceX from astronauts.

A short clip of Hillary Clinton reacting to news of Muammar Gaddafi's death with 'We came, we saw, he died', as reposted by a news channel.

A one-minute clip of Osho making a remark about people, posted with a long description explaining who he is. It is mostly a meme clip.

A clip from the film Up in the Air in which George Clooney's character fires a man and urges him to return to the dreams of his youth. The movie features real people reacting to being laid off.

A two-minute clip of Steve Ballmer laughing at the $500 price of the newly announced iPhone and dismissing its lack of a keyboard. It captures a famously wrong early reaction from an industry executive.

A one-minute clip of Miss Teen USA 2007 contestant Miss South Carolina giving a rambling, incoherent answer to a pageant question. It became a widely shared internet meme.

Jamie Oliver shows school kids how chicken nuggets are made by blending skin and mechanically reclaimed meat, as part of his school lunch campaign. The kids react with disgust.

Dashcam footage of a Tesla Model S on adaptive cruise control hitting a stopped van, with the driver listing the safety systems that failed to react. The uploader still calls the Model S the best car in the world.

A KUKA commercial staging a table tennis match between German star Timo Boll and a KUKA KR AGILUS industrial robot. It is a polished showcase of robot speed and precision.