Grid blackouts, engineering durability, and blankies
Lux Recommends #465
The real blame Spain’s blackout, why we like our blankies, and what’s a game without a story? Plus my interview with Yoni Appelbaum on “Stuck.”
From Lux Capital
Lux portfolio company Varda Space Industries is trying to improve the process of pharmaceutical development by going all the way to space. It’s capsules are shot into low orbit, where components of medications can be formed in microgravity. And now, back on Earth, it has raised $187 million more in capital to do that.
Another of our companies, Mendarea, just received FDA approval for its handheld robotic system, Focalist, which helps doctors better place needles for biopsies, placing central and arterial lines, sedation, and more.
Finally, the film Total Pixel Space just won this month’s AI Film Festival, which is hosted by Runway, another Lux company. Runway has hosted the festival for the last two years to highlight movies made with AI. Total Pixel Space used AI to explore art, math and the limitless possibilities of artificial intelligence.
From around the web
1. Watt really happened
Initial analysis of Spain’s April blackout heaped the blame on renewables, especially wind and solar, because of their intermittency. But it’s worth checking out this post Laurence found from that shows why renewables weren’t really the problem.
Renewables put pressure on systems to be more flexible and resilient, but the tradeoff is access to the most unlimited, cheapest, and cleanest form of energy we have today. Spain’s recent blackout wasn't caused by renewables—it was a grid management failure. Meanwhile, smart countries like China are building flexible grids alongside massive amount of renewables and nuclear.
2. Cover story
It has been sweltering in New York, but I bet you still slept under a blanket last night—even if your window a/c doesn’t quite cool the room. Over at Atlas Obscura, takes on the question of how blankets became so ubiquitous. H/t editor Katie Salam.
By the Early Modern period in Europe, which followed the Middle Ages, production had increased enough so that more middle-class people could afford bedding, though not easily. “The bed, throughout Western Europe at this time, was the most expensive item in the house,” says Roger Ekirch, a historian at Virginia Tech who has written extensively about sleep. “It was the first major item that a newly married couple, if they had the wherewithal, would invest in.” The bed and bedding could make up about a third of the total value of an entire household’s possessions, which explains why bedsheets frequently showed up in wills.
3. Built to last?
Scientist-in-residence Sam Arbesman recommends a pair of reexaminations of whether appliances and clothes are really less durable than they used to be. In Wirecutter, Rachel Wharton finds that appliances aren’t — not significantly. In Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok says the same of clothes:
As with clothing, another reason for reduced durability is that many consumers don’t want durable appliances–instead consumers want the latest model with all the whizz-bang features. (Sure, I don’t want this and you don’t want it but heh, they sell!) In other words, appliances and their colors, features and styles have become items of fashion… If many customers don’t want to keep appliances for more than 10 years then it doesn’t pay to make them last more than 10 years.
4. Why we quest
Does chess have a story line? And what is Grand Theft auto without it? For that matter, what is Riskgaming without it? Laurence liked ’s discussion of the value and purpose of narratives in games in Play Dumb.
All video games also do this, although more successfully: first-person shooters are really just clicking objects on your screen really fast. Rocket League is just soccer but they’re cars. (ReMatch is just Rocket League but it’s people.) I’m working on a game based on the Battle of Midway, and actually coding it lays bare what’s really happening: you have planes (ovals) that shoot bullets (circles), all launched by aircraft carriers (rectangles.) I could just have it play as a series of CollisionShape2D nodes, and then it would look even more ass than it already does.
5. Undead family
Finally, Sam suggests you close out your Friday with Don McHoull’s video on “the weird zombie existence” of the Family Circus, a comic that keeps chugging along after 63 years.
