monetary system

A Kurzgesagt animation of how the immune system responds to a bacterial infection, depicting immune cells as an army defending the body.

A short film in which friends build the first true-to-scale model of the solar system, with full planetary orbits, on a Nevada dry lakebed. It conveys the real distances and sizes involved.

The first lecture in Martin Kleppmann's 8-lecture distributed systems series from the University of Cambridge undergraduate course. It introduces the subject, and accompanying lecture notes are available.

A Kurzgesagt animation giving a big-picture tour of the human immune system, its organs, transport network, and the cells it produces every day. It accompanies their IMMUNE book.

Richard Cook's short Velocity 2013 talk on resilience in complex adaptive systems, arguing systems operate near the edge of failure and that the surprise is how rarely they fail. He presents a model of how pressures push systems toward failure boundaries.

CGP Grey explains Mixed-Member Proportional representation, the system used in New Zealand where voters get two votes. It covers how it differs from first-past-the-post.

A short edited excerpt of Terence McKenna arguing that culture acts as an operating system for the mind, set to imagery and music. It touches on psychedelics and how they change thinking.

Primer uses simulations to compare voting systems such as first-past-the-post, approval, ranked choice and others. It shows how each system behaves and can be manipulated, with links to further voting theory resources.

CGP Grey explains first-past-the-post voting and why it pushes elections toward two dominant parties. It is the first in his series on electoral systems.

CGP Grey explains the Single Transferable Vote, a proportional ranked-ballot system, and why politicians have little incentive to adopt it. It is a short animated explainer of how multi-winner ranked voting works.

A mashup that plays a Miles Davis improvisation video alongside an LCD Soundsystem clip with no editing, so the two seem to perform together. It also became known for an affectionate mouse cursor moving along.

A 1994 talk by systems thinker Russ Ackoff, who knew W. Edwards Deming, on continuous versus discontinuous improvement. It ends with an unexpected lesson.

A Kurzgesagt animation about how the immune system constantly detects and kills cells that are turning cancerous. It explains what cancer cells are and why stopping them is so hard.

A clip from George Carlin's "You Are All Diseased" special in which he riffs on germs, the immune system and white blood cells. It argues that modern obsession with cleanliness is misplaced.

Researchers from the Artificial Life Lab Graz introduce the Primordial Particle System, where a simple motion law for self-propelled particles produces cell-like structures that self-reproduce and show life cycles.

A short clip from an ACM and Computer History Museum interview in which Leslie Lamport discusses writing his paper on time, clocks and the ordering of events. He explains its link to special relativity.

A VICE News piece on China's Social Credit System, including a neighbor-watch pilot where paid watchers record behavior. It covers rewards for high scores and public shaming or restrictions for low ones.

Jiahao Chen's JuliaCon 2017 talk argues that vector transposes should be taken seriously in type systems and linear algebra libraries. It explains why treating vectors as matrices causes trouble in languages.

Yuta explains what Japan's 99% conviction rate actually means, noting that prosecutors drop cases unless confidence is very high. He argues that the number is widely misunderstood and cites his sources.

A 2014 talk by Geo Carncross (geocar) demonstrating kOS, a minimalist operating system and programming environment built around the k language, with early screenshots.

A comedy song by onedeadtroll, from the Windows XP and OS X 10.3 era, lamenting that every operating system is bad. It features Wes Borg and Chris Smith.

A short screencast tour of JSPM, SystemJS and ES6 features, building a small app with the then-new JavaScript module and package tooling. It shows how JSPM works as a package manager, bundler and loader.

Adam Neely tests the claims for tuning to A=432 Hz by trying the unusual tuning systems that its proponents' numerology requires. He compares how they sound against standard tuning and temperaments.

Musician Adam Neely examines whether certain keys sound sadder than others, looking at the history of tuning systems and temperaments and at how instrument timbre shapes the emotional character we hear. It draws on historical aesthetics writing and audio examples.

Kurzgesagt's animated explainer on the human immune system, describing the body as an ecosystem and how immune defenses cope with the variety of invaders. It promotes their book Immune.

Historia Civilis explains the origins and governing system of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy. It covers the Great Law and the league's surprisingly intricate legal and political structure.

Wendover Productions explains how the US military moves people and materiel worldwide, including prepositioned equipment, sealift and airlift. It shows the scale of the logistics system behind US force projection.

Part one of Technology Connections' account of the VHS versus Betamax format war. It argues Sony was caught off guard by JVC's cheaper, more practical VHS system.

Jake Thackray performs the folk song Molly Metcalfe, which opens with an explanation of the traditional northern English sheep-counting system (yan, tan, tethera). It is a short, witty piece of British folk songwriting.

A six-minute explainer from Undefined Behavior on range (score) voting. It follows an earlier video on Arrow's Theorem and shows how range voting seems to satisfy the criteria Arrow's Theorem says no ranked system can.

Andreas Antonopoulos argues that money has a fourth function beyond store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account, which is as a system of control. He covers the history of money and why it does not flow freely.

A Rare Earth explainer on Japan's criminal justice system and its extremely high conviction rate. It outlines the system's idiosyncrasies and how suspects are treated.

Excerpts from W. Edwards Deming's Red Bead Experiment, where workers draw beads from a bowl and are judged on red ones that are largely down to chance. It shows how system variation, not individual effort, drives results.

Munro Live's team breaks down the thermal management system of the Ford Mustang Mach-E and compares it with the Tesla Model Y. They look at parts count, coolant loops and heating approaches.

LGR reviews the Danmere Backer16, a 1996 backup system that stored a PC's data on ordinary VHS tapes through a VCR. He shows the hardware and software on Windows 3.1 and 95.

Kurzgesagt examines what individuals can do about climate change, covering lesser-known carbon sources and why systemic and political change matter more than personal footprints.

A short CGP Grey explainer on the alternative vote (instant runoff voting) versus first past the post, made around the 2011 UK referendum. It shows how ranked ballots are tallied and why they avoid spoiler effects.

Symbolics developer Kalman Reti gives a short introductory demo of a Symbolics Lisp Machine running Genera in an emulator. It shows the context-aware command line, typed on-screen objects, and the live-editable system, including swapping in a C-compiled JPEG decoder.

An animated simulation comparing single-winner voting methods such as plurality, instant runoff and STAR. Colored regions show which candidate wins as a randomized electorate shifts across a two-dimensional political space, building on Ka-Ping Yee's earlier diagrams.

George Monbiot narrates how reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone after about 70 years set off a trophic cascade. The wolves changed deer behavior, vegetation recovered, and rivers changed course.