partial state

Veritasium explains how investigators caught the Golden State Killer using forensic genealogy, matching crime scene DNA to distant relatives in public genealogy databases. It also covers the privacy implications of DNA databases.

2swap explains how he solved the Klotski sliding-block puzzle by mapping its full state space as a graph and visualizing it. The video includes footage of the Guinness world-record solve and links to an interactive graph.

Technology Connections takes apart the step-by-step electromechanical logic of a 1970s pinball machine. He shows how relays, steppers and switches track state and score without electronics.

CGP Grey explains what it means that a third of the United States is federally owned land. It describes the agencies that manage it and why so much of it is in the western states.

A short CGP Grey explainer about how countries are defined, why recognition by others matters, and the oddities of places like Taiwan and Vatican City. It shows that statehood is partly a matter of diplomacy rather than fact.

A Vox Borders explainer on Hong Kong's housing crisis, the least affordable market in the world, and the tiny cage homes and subdivided flats people squeeze into. It looks at why prices keep climbing and how land policy contributes.

Stated Clearly explains the RNA world hypothesis, which resolves the chicken-or-egg problem of genes versus enzymes by proposing that RNA once did both jobs. It outlines how evolution could begin with RNA chains alone.

An illustrated 23-minute summary of David Friedman's talk based on The Machinery of Freedom. It describes how law, police and courts could work as market services in a stateless society, covering private law, polycentric law and objections.

Ben Felix explains how to compare renting and buying a home by looking at unrecoverable costs, and distills it into the 5% rule of thumb. It is framed for a Canadian audience but broadly applicable.

A mini-documentary by a Canadian living in Japan explaining how an average family can afford a new detached house in Tokyo. It covers how houses are treated as depreciating assets and how Japanese zoning and building practices keep prices low.

PolyMatter explains China's housing bubble and why around 50 million homes sit empty. It covers cultural and economic reasons behind the overbuilding and the government's bind.

Joseph Everett compares the food environment of the US, with roughly 30% obesity, to Japan's, around 3.5%. He argues that what is available and normal to eat explains much of the gap.

John Green explains why the US spends far more on health care than other countries, going through insurers, drug companies, hospitals and lawyers. He argues the causes are complicated rather than a simple blame game.

CGP Grey breaks down what the British Royal Family costs the UK versus what it brings in, including income from royal-owned land. He concludes the government nets a profit from the arrangement.

CGP Grey explains why European diseases devastated the Americas while few deadly diseases traveled the other way. He ties it to livestock domestication, dense cities, and the ideas of Guns, Germs and Steel.

Together Louisiana asks why Louisiana stays poor despite its natural resources and industry, focusing on industrial tax exemptions and corporate welfare.

Kurzgesagt makes a selfish case for improving the world, arguing that helping people far away raises prosperity and innovation for everyone, including yourself. The animated video frames this as egoistic altruism and positive-sum cooperation.

CGP Grey argues that aging and death are a problem worth defeating, using a short animated essay. It is part of a pair with a follow-up from Kurzgesagt.

Not Just Bikes argues that people in walkable, bikeable Dutch cities stay healthy because exercise is built into daily life, which he calls the gym of life. It contrasts this with car-dependent cities that require deliberate workouts.

CGP Grey explains why "Indian" is often preferred over "Native American" in the United States, especially near reservations, and how many tribes exist in the US. He draws on conversations with people who identify as Indian.

A short CGP Grey animation showing how the US electoral college lets a candidate win the presidency with as little as about 22 percent of the popular vote. It lays out the arithmetic of winning states by narrow margins.

Kraut traces centuries of political development, from Mongol rule and the Orthodox church to Muscovite autocracy, that shaped Russia's authoritarian state. It uses countryball animation and compares Russia with Europe and China.

Military History Visualized charts ship production by the United States and Japan from December 1941 to September 1945. The growing numbers show why Japan, despite a stronger starting navy, could not win a long war.

3Blue1Brown, in collaboration with minutephysics, introduces the math of superposition and quantum states using polarized light. It builds up the quantum behavior of photons as a simple counting and probability problem.

A Vox explainer from the 2020 election series on why American public transit is so poor. It traces the effect of the interstate highway system on cities and the resulting car dependence.

An Asianometry explainer on why the Soviet Union, once a leading computing power, fell far behind the US in computers by the 1980s. It traces the gap from the 1960s onward despite strong state support for science.

An animated map showing the borders and populations of European countries for every year since 400 BC. Vassal states and colonies are excluded from population counts.

A short explainer from 2swap on the chaotic behavior of double pendulums. It examines how predictable the system is for some starting conditions and whether closed-form solutions exist.

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.