shepard tone

A five-minute demonstration of the Shepard tone, an audio illusion made from octave-separated tones that makes pitch seem to rise endlessly without ever getting higher.

Guitarist Jim Lill methodically tests what in an electric guitar affects its tone, swapping parts on a partscaster and even trying a 2x4 body. He finds that wood and construction matter far less than people assume.

Soup Emporium's deep dive argues that Yellowstone is not a ticking timebomb. It goes through uplift and subsidence, earthquakes and what the caldera really is, to rebut supervolcano doom claims.

A showcase of the author's fifth-generation quad-core computer built entirely from Minecraft redstone, after two years of development. It features cache, a hardware stack, a GPU driving a 15x15 display, and serial I/O ports.

A short walkthrough of a hack that tricks a Brother laser printer into accepting third-party toner by working around its genuine-toner check. It notes this may void the warranty.

The official music video for Tommy Tutone's 1981 hit 867-5309/Jenny. The chorus is built around a phone number.

Daniel Stone, a longtime X and Wayland developer, explains at linux.conf.au 2013 why X11's design became untenable and what motivated Wayland. The talk walks through X's history and accumulated cruft.

Database pioneer Michael Stonebraker argues that 'big data' is really at least four different problems: big volumes with small analytics, big analytics, velocity, and variety. He comments on where each market is heading.

A beginner-focused tutorial on freehand knife sharpening with a single stone, aiming for a shaving-sharp edge in about five minutes.

Turing Award winner Michael Stonebraker gives the 2018 Donald B. Gillies Memorial Lecture at Illinois. He discusses the gap between academic research and industry problems, publishing incentives, and the influence of large industry users on research.

Guitarist Jim Lill spends a year testing where guitar amplifier tone comes from, swapping tubes, rectifiers and bias types. He finds that much of it can be reproduced with EQ and distortion in different orders.

The Primitive Technology channel shows the making of a stone axe (celt) using only primitive tools and materials, from shaping and polishing a basalt head to making the wooden handle and hafting it.

A Key & Peele sketch in which two friends keep misreading the tone of each other's text messages while making plans.

A short recording of a 1565 organ in Mantua tuned in quarter-comma meantone, showing split sharps in use. The extra keys provide separate D-sharp and A-flat for more tonalities.

Footage of the failed Mercury-Redstone 1 launch, where the engine cut off almost immediately after liftoff. The escape tower and parachutes then deployed because the rocket thought the flight was over.

Top Gear segment in which Richard Hammond drives a Renault R25 Formula 1 car around Silverstone for two laps. He struggles with the car's demands.

A fan-made video of the Simpsons Stonecutters Song, in which a secret society takes credit for controlling world affairs, with lyrics and stills from the show.

Chris Ford builds up from a single sine wave through layered abstractions to a Bach canon, using Clojure and the Overtone audio environment. The talk shows music theory as a natural fit for functional programming.

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.

Andrew Huang explains the harmonic series, which he calls the foundation of almost all music. He builds the idea up step by step, with demonstrations of overtones and how harmonies derive from them.

Peter Rizun and Andrew Stone present results of tests running 1 GB blocks on a Bitcoin test network at Scaling Bitcoin Stanford. The talk argues for big-block scaling and discusses its consequences.

Classical guitarist Brandon Acker shows how guitars with tied-on gut frets, as used 300 years ago, can play more in tune than modern fixed metal frets. He demonstrates microtonal and meantone tunings on a guitar with movable frets.

Tom Scott visits Penistone to explain the Scunthorpe problem, showing why naive web and profanity filters block innocent words.

A short video of a man moving a 20 ton stone block by himself using wood and levers. It is part of a pyramid-mysteries channel.

Alan Watson Featherstone, founder of Trees for Life, describes nearly 30 years of work restoring the ancient Caledonian Forest in the Scottish Highlands, illustrated with his photography.

A short clip from Monty Python's Life of Brian in which an old man is about to be stoned for saying the word Jehovah. It features John Cleese and Graham Chapman in the film's well-known blasphemy trial scene.

X.Org developer Daniel Stone explains the history and technical limits of the X Window System and why Wayland was created, debunking myths from forum comments. He covers topics such as network transparency and blocking calls.

Primitive Technology shows building a cord drill from scratch and then upgrading it to a pump drill, using only primitive materials like a stone flywheel and cord.

A short narrated video describing how reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone triggered a trophic cascade that changed wildlife, vegetation and even river courses. This is a remastered HD version of George Monbiot's viral piece.

Red Bull and the Dutch Drone Gods follow Max Verstappen's RB20 F1 car around Silverstone in a single FPV shot using a custom drone that accelerates to 300 km/h in about four seconds. The video also covers the year of development behind the drone.

The stoning scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian, where a man is condemned for blasphemy after saying 'Jehovah' over a halibut supper.

Computer History Museum oral history of Steve Naroff, an engineer at Stepstone, NeXT and Apple who worked on Objective-C. This first session covers his childhood, music background and early career.

12tone tells the story of pitch inflation and how concert A came to be standardized at 440 Hz, including attempts at legal standards. It is a short music history explainer.

A short, nearly wordless demonstration of making sourdough pizza at home using a cast iron pan and the oven. It shows a Neapolitan-style result without a pizza steel or stone.

A two-minute sine tone sweeping exponentially from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, covering the human hearing range at constant acoustic pressure.

A 1978 documentary hosted by Leonard Nimoy about the coming ice age, reposted with a framing that contrasts it with today's climate science.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains how close nuclear fusion really is to break-even, and why headlines about ITER and lab milestones are misleading. She distinguishes plasma gain (Q plasma) from whole-system gain (Q total) and shows the latter is still far below one.

ContraPoints' 35-minute video essay on incels, examining the community, its worldview and how people get radicalized. It is delivered with theatrical style and an empathetic tone.

The original trailer for Threads, the 1984 British TV film depicting the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Sheffield. The trailer hints at the film's bleak tone.

Bill Hammack of engineerguy explains how medieval engineers designed stone cathedrals using rules of thumb, with no science, mathematics or literacy. He uses it to define the engineering method.