repl-driven development

Not Just Bikes explains how an electric bakfiets (Dutch cargo bike) replaced the family car after a move back to Canada, saving thousands of dollars. It shows how much it can carry, including kids and groceries.

Not Just Bikes contrasts traditional and suburban development in North America. It looks at the financials behind each pattern and argues that suburban development leaves cities unable to pay for their own infrastructure.

Hans Rosling uses augmented-reality animation to show 200 countries over 200 years in four minutes, built from 120,000 data points. It tracks life expectancy and income to show the world's development.

Veritasium explains why a large share of published research findings may be false, covering p-values, p-hacking, publication bias and low replication rates. It draws on John Ioannidis's well-known paper and describes reforms such as preregistration.

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.

Geoff Cumming uses a simulation to show how wildly the p value varies from one replication to the next because of sampling variability. He argues for estimation and confidence intervals over null hypothesis significance testing.

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.

CodeParade's short devlog on how spherical geometry looks in 2D and 3D and why it feels so unusual, part of the Hyperbolica series on a non-Euclidean game.

An episode of Coding Secrets by Jon Burton on retro copy protection, in particular physically damaging a disk with a laser so copies fail. It explains how this defeated hackers and pirates.

Paul Irish explains how pointerpointer.com works. It uses a hidden canvas of colored Voronoi regions to look up which photo matches the cursor position.

Veritasium examines the role of luck in success, with simulations and examples showing how small advantages and chance can compound. It argues that top outcomes are disproportionately luck-driven while still crediting effort.

A video explaining why Japanese cities look the way they do, through Japan's national tiered zoning system that permits mixed use and flexible development. It compares this approach with more restrictive zoning elsewhere.

Everyday Astronaut's Tim Dodd runs an hour-long, data-driven analysis of what rockets actually emit and how that compares with airliners and other industries. It breaks down exhaust by propellant type, per-passenger and total emissions, and ways launches could be cleaner.

CGP Grey explains how ideas spread like germs, and why content that triggers outrage spreads fastest, using a study on what makes online content viral. He argues that opposing outrage-driven memes feed each other.

Matt Parker analyzes the Minecraft speedrunning controversy in which Dream was accused of cheating via improbably lucky drops. He walks through the probability and the statistical arguments in the original accusation and the reply.

An older 3Blue1Brown video on why topology matters, built around the inscribed rectangle problem. It walks through how tori and Mobius strips appear in the solution. The channel later replaced it with an updated version.

A short video on the US Sprint anti-ballistic missile, which accelerated to around Mach 10 in seconds under extreme g-forces and heat. It includes striking launch footage and a brief development history.

Veritasium tells the history of how imaginary numbers arose from the quest for a general solution to the cubic equation, including the duels and secrecy among Renaissance mathematicians. It argues math had to give up the requirement that it mirror reality.

Breaking Taps explains how the cryogenic mirror actuators on the James Webb Space Telescope achieve nanometer precision using flexures. It shows a 3D-printed replica and how one motor handles both coarse and fine motion.

Jen Simmons explains the difference between CSS Flexbox and CSS Grid, and when to use each. She makes the case that Grid does not replace Flexbox and most sites use both.

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.

A Computerphile video in which Rob Miles warns against assuming a general AI will think like a human. He uses the thought experiment of a stamp-collecting AI to show how a goal-driven system could pursue its aim with dangerous results.

Tom Scott explains phatic expressions such as hello, thank you and how are you, which carry social meaning rather than information, and why replies like no problem can seem rude to some people.

Engineering Explained compares the lifecycle emissions of keeping an old car with those of buying a new, more efficient one. It weighs manufacturing emissions against emissions from driving, and covers gas versus electric cars.

Thunderf00t presents high-speed camera footage of alkali metals such as sodium and NaK reacting with water. The footage shows that the explosion is not caused by hydrogen ignition, as the usual explanation says. It is a Coulomb explosion driven by electrons leaving the metal.

A short Coding Secrets episode explaining why hitting a Sonic 3D cartridge triggers a hidden level select. The cause was a custom crash handler that redirected CPU error interrupts to the level select screen.

Strong Towns explains the Growth Ponzi Scheme, in which post-war suburban growth takes on infrastructure costs that new development must keep funding. It describes why municipal finances become insolvent.

A PBS Space Time episode on fuzzballs, the string-theory proposal for black holes that replaces the singularity with a tangle of strings. It explains why black holes seem to both have to exist and break known physics.

A video arguing that exercise matters for the brain as much as the body, linking movement, the nervous system and BDNF to learning and memory. It draws on research connecting complex movement to brain development.

BigClive explains why microwave oven transformer projects are extremely dangerous, since the high voltage and high current can kill. He contrasts them with spot welder builds where the secondary is replaced by low-voltage heavy wire.

A Wendover Productions video on how the art market works, arguing that prices are driven by wealth, storage and tax mechanics rather than artistic value.

CityNerd explains why traffic congestion grows nonlinearly as more cars use a road network, and why adding road capacity tends not to fix it. It covers the consequences for drivers, bus riders, cyclists and pedestrians, and discusses alternatives such as true bus rapid transit.