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The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
Word Stories
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Straight from a Practical Engineering YouTube video on 'Stopping the Unstoppable', where Grady uses a dashpot to show how a hydraulically damped train buffer might gently slow an overrunning train at the end of its track.
A minor plot point in William Gibson's novel 'Zero History' centres around the deep rabbit-hole of vintage-style Japanese denim in the form of 'slubby' jeans - the semi-deliberate imperfections in yarn weight making them unique and more desirable then perfect mass-made denim.
I had a slight obsession with learning the tin whistle, and one of the things that you'll come across when learning Scottish/Irish tin whistle repertoire is a bunch of hornpipes! Not sure what qualifies a tune as a hornpipe, but they all seem to end with the same 'da da DA!'
In Iain Banks's novel 'Espedair Street', Scottish main character Dan Weir names his record company 'Full Ashet Records', not realising that the word 'ashet' (a serving platter or tray) isn't known outside Scotland, and thus being the recipient of many funny looks.
One of several acceptable ways to end a piece of music: by slowing down to a big grand TADA! In this case, straight off the jazz drumming score that I'd been reading a couple of hours before.
The RS-232 serial port found on early PCs, and still found on many pieces of industrial equipment, is famously connected via a D-sub connector. The sub stands for subminiature, and the D comes from the characteristic shape of the metal connector shell/shield.
My little terraced house is built in a row with a vennel between every two houses leading to the gardens. This led to a very confused property lawyer asking, "Why has your house got more space on the top floor than the bottom?" - because the top floor overhangs the vennel!
Railways are fascinating, as are the processes that grew up around them. How do you avoid the mail train having to slow down to drop off and pick up mail? By throwing one mailsack out of the train, then having the train hook another mailsack off a post, while the train steams on!
A student rocketry club are setting up a rocket test stand near me, and I was clearly excited about it that day! I also love watching videos of people making rockets - turns out rocket science is actually quite hard.🔥
I've always wanted to learn to work with metal: to take something we regard as fixed, and make it malleable. So I watch a bunch of machining and welding YouTube, and hardfacing is one of the processes I learned about! 🔥
The Citroën DS was the first production car equipped with Citroën's famously comfortable but complicated hydropneumatic suspension. I remember being astonished by seeing my uncle's Citroën XM's suspension gently rise by several inches when he turned it on.
