Friday Links

• Will be interesting to see if that corner molding holds up over time. The cheap stuff is mostly air, the better stuff has more plastic content. If you do 3D printing you know what "fill" means..... look how the strap crushed the plastic corner molding in this photo. If it crushes/compresses it more over time.. the strap will be lose and the condenser will shake/possibly stress crack at it's base? [TMC]
• My hypothesis…. Tesla’s the original design of the LCC (Liquid Cooled Condenser) had a shorter “stack height” to begin with. They may have needed to add more “stack-height” for the Heat pump system to perform optimally. I think the add stack-height made the cantilever distance too far which created a longer moment arm filled with heavy fluid in the LCC. Tesla probably found leaks and/or failures (at the sealing face) during Validation and testing. THEN added the “Band-Aid.” [Jalopnik]
• We get 11 blocks down the road and this black Chevy Impala is ghosting us down the street, he’s kind of been in our shadow since block two or three He rolls his window down and starts asking us a bunch of questions. Why are we here, what are we doing, telling us we need to get the fuck out of here, asking us where our car is etc., we pretty much told him to get the fuck away from us because we didn’t know who he was. I finally asked him at one point, Who the fuck are you, man, you need to leave us alone, and he was like I’m the fucking police, bro, who are you? So he pulled his car over and he and his partner talked to us. He was one of the special programs guys, either with SWAT or SRT or whatever. He was the one that yelled at me not to reach, and tried to help us out. He said he knew that we’ve been pepper sprayed and we’re having trouble seeing, I kind of snapped at him, Like hey motherfucker, You’ve been watching this whole thing fucking unfold and you didn’t intervene at all or light the crowd up or something? He started laughing and he was like, Man, if I got out and tried to help you guys, my fucking car would be on fire right now, and I’d be running next to you. Bottom line: don’t go to an Antifa protest where you can put yourself in that situation. And if you find yourself in that situation, expect them to employ tactics that take away your situational awareness, and complicate the use of force continuum.” [American Partisan]
• Though still an emerging theory, the bradykinin hypothesis explains several other of Covid-19’s seemingly bizarre symptoms. Jacobson and his team speculate that leaky vasculature caused by bradykinin storms could be responsible for “Covid toes,” a condition involving swollen, bruised toes that some Covid-19 patients experience. [link]
• People of a certain age may remember the parlor game Mad Libs where each player is asked to provide random verbs, nouns, and adjectives that are later inserted into blanks in a partially completed story. See also the Chinese restaurant column A and column B method of naming a place. Panda Palace. Palace Garden. Jade Palace. Jade Garden. Panda Pagoda. Pagoda Garden. Jade Pagoda. Similarly heights, paired with a feature from nature, and a vague reference to something British will almost always congeal into the name of a housing development. Willow Glen Heights at Windsor III. The Oaks at Trafalgar Heights. Pinnacle Heights at Cotswold Meadows. [Granola Shotgun]
• In early 2018, Murphy was lunching with one of his regular “bid-gossip” contacts at Signor Sassi, a splashy Italian restaurant near Harrods, when Wirecard came up in conversation. “You know they will pay you good money to stop writing about them,” the market contact stated. Murphy smiled, dismissing the idea. “No, I’m serious, they will pay you proper money,” he insisted. “They will pay you $10m. Go and talk to Bill. He’ll help you.” [FT]
• New Trondheim was the most grandiose of the projects, an entirely new city for Germans that Hitler commissioned Albert Speer to design on the Trondheim Fjord, which was also the intended site of a vast new German naval base. Hitler imagined New Trondheim as the German cultural hub of the north, and thus “fabulously built,” as he told Joseph Goebbels, with a German art museum and opera house as well as other luxurious amenities. [Time]
• They also need to set up or shore up—now—communication channels that don’t rely on the media or Big Tech. Once the ruling class gives word that the narrative is “Trump lost,” all the president’s social media accounts will be suspended. The T.V. channels, with the likely exception of Fox News, will refuse to cover anything he says. Count on it. He’s going to need a way to talk to the American people and he has to find the means, now. [American Mind]
• Best theory on what happened in Vegas. Paddock was arms dealer entrapped by Feds. Agreed to help set up unknown buyer in exchange for deal. Preliminary meeting at Mandalay Bay—guns arranged showroom style, skeleton crew Fed team. Buyers figure out it's a setup or try to rob him. Buyers shoot Paddock. Feds hear what's going on, try to intervene. Buyers grab guns, shoot through the door. Feds outgunned, pull back. Thinking they're facing a bigger force, buyers shoot into crowd to create chaos. Realizing there's no resistance, buyers flee down side-stairs. With huge fuck-up, Feds destroy all record of the operation. Paddock's brother threatened into silence with CP charges. Vegas PD doesn't want full investigation into incident b/c of their sluggish response. Mandalay Bay owners on the hook for lawsuits, destroy any other evidence. Everyone who knows the full story (buyers, agents on the ground) has probably been killed. There will never be a serious inquiry into the shooting because too many important people would lose their jobs. [Mystery Grove]
• Minard is best known for his cartographic depiction of numerical data on a map of Napoleon's disastrous losses suffered during the Russian campaign of 1812. The illustration depicts Napoleon's army departing the Polish-Russian border. A thick band illustrates the size of his army at specific geographic points during their advance and retreat. It displays six types of data in two dimensions: the number of Napoleon's troops; the distance traveled; temperature; latitude and longitude; direction of travel; and location relative to specific dates without making mention of Napoleon; Minard's interest lay with the travails and sacrifices of the soldiers. [Wiki]
• "Even though Building 7 didn't get much attention in the media immediately, within the structural engineering community, it's considered to be much more important to understand," said William F. Baker, a partner in charge of structural engineering at the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. "They say, 'We know what happened at 1 and 2, but why did 7 come down?'" [NY Times]
• SJ seems like an archetype of what I'm starting to call "Extrovert Who Doesn't Read". Another example would be Donald Trump. These people only know what they hear from their social circle, and they decide who is correct if the opinions differ largely based on the social status of the different advocates. They don't assemble their own body of knowledge by reading primary sources and weighing the arguments the way introverts do. One situation where these people get in a lot of trouble is if they have a serious disease. SJ's fad diets are an indication that he didn't know anything about chemistry or biology. On re-reading the bio, the conversations with engineers when he's in the room are about aesthetics. SJ did not seem to be a big part of the technical conversations, at least in Isaacson's telling. It would be interesting to know more about this. Was he sidelined by the Apple professional management during the Lisa era because of a lack of technical chops, or for being difficult to work with, or both? [CBS]
• Last year I reviewed economist Art De Vany's New Evolution Diet book, which is a 5/5 with good thoughts on paleo, low-carb, and power law effort distribution, and has his choice quote, "bread is the ultimate poverty food – it exists only because grain is cheap, easy to grow and is less perishable than other foods." Remember the key takeaway from De Vany was that early humans would have been exposed to practically no foods capable of triggering a massive insulin release, and each insulin spike puts wear on the body, and also lessens the insulin sensitivity of adipose tissue, which sets up an unpleasant positive feedback loop of metabolic syndrome. [CBS]
• From the moment I first drove one at the Mid-Ohio school in 2017, I knew I needed an S2000. Its gearbox is among the best ever built, its steering fast and precise. It scoots its way out of corners, your butt pulled along for the ride thanks to the above-the-rear-axle seating. Mostly, though, it's just about the engine. When the car crosses into VTEC territory, the rate of acceleration massively picks up, the S2000 bursting into life and screaming toward its 9000-rpm redline. It will do this all day, demanding that you beat the absolute snot out of it if you want any performance. It is uninterested in noncommittal driving; wring the life out of it or get dusted by minivans. You simply have to work for it. [Road and Track]
• Mafia, not sting: The theory that Epstein routinely blackmailed the businessmen and celebs who visited his sin sites always seemed implausible: Did he really sit down with each of his marks and surprise them with the news that he could now blackmail them? Without one of these titans blowing the whistle on him (or figuring out some other way to, um, cancel him). All while continuing to attract more marks who somehow hadn't heard the news? But what if (and I’m stealing this theory from a friend) the marks willingly volunteered to be compromised? Joining Epstein's sex club would be more like joining the mafia -- you give them some power over you, but you'd get something (including potential protection and support, as well as potential sex) in return. No need for Epstein to sit you down after an orgiastic encounter and burst your bliss. (That's a lot of work!) The implicit deal would be understood from the start. [Kaus]