Four Neat Things
Friday, September 05, 2025
A Friday Hodgepodge
1. Beneath Tokyo is a vast flood control structure resembling a gargantuan concrete cathedral. From a Hacker News comment on a BBC story:
[I]t was like standing in NY Grand Central station, except it was felt bigger, empty, damp & illuminated by floodlights from all sides. It is probably one and half football fields in length & scales high as much as a five storied building. Uploaded three pics to show the scale of this megalith. (The base of the pillars here are taller than average height of person to give a rough scale. The stairs come down from the ground level)...I haven't been to this, but I have been to the closest thing to an ancient Roman equivalent: the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul.
The chamber is the buffer zone between the rivers, not a storage tank ultimately. I was told by the civil engineer of this plant they could pump out as much as a jumbo jet's volume per minute in its storm surge channel/drain to manage flooding. You can walk up to the turbine room at the end of this room, and see its massive blades at an arm length. All with earthquake protection in place as well. Honestly mind-blowing piece of engineering.
2. My favorite computer company, Framework, has added a desktop to its product line, and a power user concludes a lengthy review with:
Framework did good with this one. AMD really blew it out of the water with the 395+. We're spoiled to have such incredible hardware available for Linux at such appealing discounts over similar stuff from Cupertino. What a great time to love open source software and tinker-friendly hardware!Fellow Linux users will be glad to know that it runs Linux very well out of the box.
3. With astronomers discovering exoplanets seemingly on a daily basis, I once wondered, which one is most similar to Earth? The answer appears to be Kepler-452b.
4. I haven't tried anything from there yet, but the LibreVox website offers free public domain audiobooks.
A quick look unearths some gems. For example, English versions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables are available.
-- CAV
2 comments:
I want to strongly second the LibriVox website! In my younger days I spent a lot of time picking fossils out of sediment, which meant days looking through a microscope, one bit of sand at a time. I listened to G. K. Chesterton's nonfiction work through that website while doing that, which was a delightful introduction to a major thinker (and someone I've constantly referred to since). I also listened to the Conan stories through them, and a few others.
One word of caution: The readers are very much hit-and-miss. Some are absolutely fantastic, others....not so much. They're volunteers, so they run the gamut from professional voice actors practicing their craft, to folks who read for pleasure and choose to record it. You sometimes have to dig a bit to find a reader that you like.
On a more philosophical level, I think this is one of those things that people miss about free enterprise. Everyone thinks capitalism is focused only on making a profit; the reality is, it's focused on people advancing their values. Sure, that often means making money! But sometimes it also means creating free resources for people, merely because you think it's worth doing.
Dinwar,
Thanks for chiming in (and apologies for forgetting to post and reply to this last week).
I have availed myself of other volunteer reading and am not surprised that the readers are hit-and-miss. Memorably, I'd wanted to listen to a Mark Twain story, and just couldn't get past the reader grating on my nerves.
But, as you indicate, riches are there to be had.
Agreed on your framing this within capitalism. It's easy to forget what a wonder things like this are. People who like to read or want to record a book for any other reason can do so, and make it widely available for any reason, be it to make beer money, promote a good work, share it with others, or build a portfolio for potential voice work.
It's win-win, even if the trade is rarely monetary.
Gus
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