note-taking

A short Vox video on Barcelona's superblocks, an urban design approach that closes interior streets to through traffic to return space to pedestrians.

Vsauce asks whether music will ever run out of new melodies. It counts the possible note combinations and discusses how common chord progressions and remixing affect originality.

The first episode of a Cities: Skylines series on urban politics and planning, focused on parking. It uses the game to show how parking minimums shape cities, drawing on Donald Shoup's book The High Cost of Free Parking.

CGP Grey's six-minute explainer of the relationships the UK could have with the EU, based on Barnier's slide, shown as orbits of different closeness. It explains why the UK's red lines ruled out the closer options.

A visual scale comparison of stars and cosmic objects, from planets up to some of the largest known stars, set to music. It is meant to convey the vastness of the universe.

PBS Space Time explains the quantum eraser experiment, in which erasing which-path information appears to reverse causality in a double-slit setup. It discusses what this means for quantum mechanics.

NASA's animated explanation of the Curiosity rover's Mars landing, which relied on a complex automated sequence taking about seven minutes. It features NASA engineers discussing the risks before the 2012 landing.

A minutephysics video explaining why a piano cannot be perfectly tuned, comparing equal temperament with just intonation and the math of harmonics.

Practical Engineering explains Mechanically Stabilized Earth, where layers of reinforcement make soil strong enough to hold heavy loads, shown with a sand structure supporting a car. It notes that MSE walls are everywhere in infrastructure.

Tom Scott explains why Britain historically has separate hot and cold taps rather than mixer taps, tracing it to how water was stored in tanks. He notes why the hot tap is not safe to drink from.

A short Globe and Mail animated explainer on why renting can leave you as well off as buying a home. It walks through a rent-versus-buy comparison using Toronto numbers and the opportunity cost of a down payment. The video notes it dates from 2015 and the housing market has changed since.

A School of Life video arguing that everyone marries someone who is somewhat wrong for them, and that this is unavoidable. It is a four-minute version of an essay by Alain de Botton.

A video essay on how the editors of Star Wars: A New Hope recut and rearranged the footage to rescue the film. It walks through specific changes that improved pacing and drama.

A short TED-Ed animated lesson by Anita Collins on what happens in the brain when people play a musical instrument. It argues that playing engages many brain areas at once, like a full-body workout, with long-term benefits.

Numberphile with Tim Browning on the sum-of-three-cubes problem and why 33 was the lowest unsolved case. The description notes a later solution for 33.