The diabolical ironclad beetle defies logic. It is so tough that if you run one over with a car, it just walks away. After years of puzzling over it, scientists just discovered the insect's super-strength secret wired.trib.al/eTAvqpr

Learned about perovskite solar cells today. Interesting technology with a lot of potential. Sounds like a long road to manufacturing them at scale though. youtube.com/watch?v=KJsaQQ…

It’s a vicious circle - especially if combined with vast areas of single family housing

Great thread about my favorite candy

Finally got a chance to check out the abandoned Mississippi River model in Jackson, Miss. Built by German POWs, the 200-acre model was used to test levees and other river control structures before computer modeling made the whole thing obsolete. Let's take a stroll...(thread)

This is cool

At a water plant in Poland, there are eight clams with sensors attached to their shells. If the clams close because they don’t like the taste of the water, the city’s supply is automatically shut off. boredpanda.com/clams-measure-…

In the final part of the Crossover Project, I asked what we can learn from traditional engineering. To my surprise, the teaching goes both ways: there are some things we software engineers do that could revolutionize the more mature fields. hillelwayne.com/post/crossover…

phys.org/news/2021-03-h…

Excel Lambda xkcd.com/2453/ m.xkcd.com/2453/

Could not resist making a version for structural engineering papers.

I don’t know about you but this is the future I want for my kids – totally doable, proven by the fact that it’s already happening just a couple of hundred miles away. AND it just happens to fight the climate crisis too. #nobrainer

Overheard date in Brooklyn last night Him: "I work on such big data sets I had to get a new computer so Excel could keep up." Her: "If it fits in Excel, it's not a big data set."

Just learned mathematician and architect Christopher Alexander passed away last night. His theory and built work will remain an inspiration.