1. Why do the early TV Cable billionaires own so much land?
    1. Ted Turner: 10% of the world’s bison population are under his care
    2. John Malone: As of the 2010s, Malone owned roughly 2.2 million acres of land across the U.S – an area about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined – spanning at least 13 states
  2. BYD's story and why they are so vertically integrated
    1. In 2020, at the height of COVID-19, BYD famously re-tooled a factory in a matter of weeks to produce face masks and medical supplies, becoming one of the world’s largest mask producers overnight.
    2. They also make their own chips!!
  3. How solar panels are made? Why is their learning curve so strong? Where are they made, who makes them, what does the supply chain look like?
    1. Overall, by mid-2020s Chinese companies account for roughly three-quarters or more of all solar polysilicon output. Notably, a significant portion of China’s polysilicon capacity is located in the Xinjiang region (estimated around 40% of global polysilicon comes from Xinjiang), leveraging low-cost electricity there (albeit with concerns about forced labor and trade restrictions in some markets).
    2. Ingot pulling and wafer slicing are almost entirely based in China as of 2025. China’s share of ingot and wafer production capacity was estimated at over 95% of the world’s total.
    3. Solar cell fabrication (turning wafers into cells) is also led by China, though a portion of cell manufacturing is distributed across other Asian countries. About 80% or more of cell production capacity is in China.
    4. Module assembly (laminating cells into final panels) is the most geographically dispersed stage, though China still is the single biggest player. China accounts for roughly 70–80% of module production, but because assembling modules is less capital-intensive and often last in the chain, many countries do some module assembly for local market needs or to avoid import tariffs.
  4. The U.S. Airline Travel Ecosystem: How Transactions and Money Flow
  5. Primitive/Barbaric Processes Enabling Modern Science
    1. Also: Our hearts belong to the horseshoe crab
  6. The Oldest Known Musical Composition
  7. who gives out 5 stars to hotels
  8. Embraer: A Comprehensive Deep Dive
  9. The Severity of Soil Erosion in North America
  10. Large-Scale Global Cosmetic Manufacturing: Skincare, Makeup & Haircare
  11. Palmer Luckey said something like "The best ideas were written down in government publications between 1950 and 1970 because that was the last time scientists and engineers were allowed to think openly without political correctness or corporate legal paranoia." So I asked O3 to find me a bunch of them!
    1. Moon bases: Project Horizon (1959) planned an outpost of ~12 astronauts with buried cylindrical habitats and on-site nuclear reactors for powerdocuments.theblackvault.com
    2. Project Orion (1958–63) pursued a nuclear-pulse spaceship: early Orion designs were 80 m tall with 40 m pusher platesntrs.nasa.gov. Historical summaries note Orion’s bold motto “Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970,” with an 80‑m ship carrying 150 people and thousands of tonnes of payloadntrs.nasa.gov
    3. In 1957–58 the USAF funded Avro Canada’s Project 1794, a supersonic VTOL “flying saucer” interceptor to shoot down Soviet bomberssecretsdeclassified.af.mil. (That saucer was to use ten jet engines facing downwards for lift and was to reach Mach 3+.)
    4. Project Pluto (USAF/Atomics, 1961–64) developed a nuclear-powered ramjet cruise missile (SLAM). The design was “as large and heavy as a steam locomotive,” flying at Mach 3–4 at low altitude, with global range and the ability to loiter for monthsfourmilab.ch. It would carry dozens of nuclear warheads to rain destruction on multiple targets. (Testing proved the reactor concept feasible before cancellation.)
    5. Exoatmospheric kill vehicles_: nuclear-armed interceptor missiles that would be lofted by rockets to explode near incoming ICBMs
    6. In 1960 NASA scientists Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline proposed the term “cyborg” in “Cyborgs in Space.” They suggested engineering human physiology (e.g. blood, respiration) to survive space vacuum and radiation, rather than relying solely on life-support gadgetsspace.com.
    7. General Electric’s Hardiman (1965–71) was a famously audacious powered exoskeleton developed for the Army. It used hydraulics and electronics so that a wearer could lift hundreds of kilos with ease – one source noted “250 lb felt like 10” to the operatorimse.iastate.edu. In reality Hardiman itself weighed ~1500 lb and was notoriously uncontrollable: any attempt to actually operate the full suit “resulted in uncontrolled violent motion”imse.iastate.edu, so it never functioned as intended.
    8. Other HMI experiments included precise master–slave manipulators for nuclear work, early cockpit head-up displays (even helmet‑mounted sights), and rough telepathic/computer interfaces (some DARPA memos speculated on brain-pattern recognition). The army funded laboratory studies of “augmented soldiers” with implants or biosensors.
    9. NASA/AEC’s Project ROVER/NERVA (1955–73) built hydrogen-fueled reactor engines; by 1969 the NRX-A6 reactor ran at 1.1 gigawatts for over an hourntrs.nasa.gov. This proved that fission rockets could conceivably send astronauts to Mars.
    10. Project Plowshare (late 1950s–60s) even proposed using hydrogen bombs for civil engineering – e.g. carving a harbor with nuclear blasts.
    11. Project Chariot plan of 1962 aimed to blast radioactive bombs in Alaska to create a seaport.
    12. MIT’s Lincoln Lab (for the USAF) flew Project West Ford in 1961–63: they orbited ~480 million tiny copper needles (0.7″ long each) around Earth, creating a reflective “ring” antenna beltthecrimson.com. This artificial ionosphere was meant to carry jam-proof, failure-proof global radio links in case terrestrial channels failed. (It worked briefly, but became obsolete with real satellites.)
    13. RAND’s Paul Baran modeled how to network computers by “packets” and switches. His 1964 reports introduced a “Distributed Adaptive Message Block Network” and showed that such a large-scale digital network would be both feasible and highly survivable under attackwalden-family.com
    14. Project A119 – Nuke the Moon (1958-59): Detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon, which would help in answering some of the mysteries in planetary astronomy and astrogeology. If the explosive device detonated on the surface, and not in a lunar crater, the flash of explosive light would have been faintly visible to people on Earth with their naked eye. This was meant as a show of force resulting in a possible boosting of domestic morale in the capabilities of the United States
    15. Project Orion – 4,000-ton nuclear-pulse starship (1958-64): Would ride successive A-bomb blasts off a giant steel “pusher plate”; early models could haul 150 t to Mars in 125 days.
    16. NB-36H / X-6 – nuclear-powered bomber (1955-61): Testbed B-36 with a live 1 MW reactor in the bay; 47 flights proved crews could be shielded.
    17. Project Iceworm – nukes under Greenland (1959-67): 3,000 mi of rail tunnels in moving ice to hide 600 Minuteman missiles.
    18. Project Carryall – 22 nukes to cut I-40 & Santa Fe rail pass (1963-70): Save excavation costs in California’s Bristol Mts.
    19. Panatomic Canal – 200 bombs for a sea-level Panama alt-canal (1964 study): Detonate multi-megaton devices through the Darién.
    20. Project Mohole – drill to Earth’s mantle from a ship (1958-66): Oceanic rival to the Space Race. Phase-1 worked, then costs ballooned to >$120 M.
    21. Buckminster Fuller’s Dome Over Manhattan (1959): 3 km geodesic shell over Midtown to cut NYC energy use by 80 %.
    22. Army High-Dose Food Irradiation (1953-70s): Sterilize steaks with γ-rays so C-rations stay edible for years.
    23. “Food-from-Oil” Single-Cell Protein (mid-’60s): Grow yeast on petroleum n-paraffins; press it into animal/human feed.
    24. NASA / DoD CELSS hydroponic farms (1960s proofs): Closed-loop algae & crop bioreactors for Mars ships and moon bases.
    25. Project STORMFURY – NOAA/USAF plan (1962-71) to seed hurricanes with silver-iodide and spin them down. Early flights looked promising; later data proved the storms were doing that reshuffle on their own, so Congress pulled the plug in ’83.
    26. “Nuke the hurricane” schemes – After the 1954–61 H-bomb tests, Weather-Bureau chief Francis Riechelderfer mused about dropping a megaton warhead in the eye of a storm; Sandia’s Jack Reed even drew up sub-launched strike math. Fallout, treaties, and math killed it.
    27. NAWAPA – Army Corps/Parsons (1964) continental plumbing plan: dam Alaska, send 75 M acre-ft south, excavate canals with “peaceful” nukes. Environmentalists, Canada, and $100 B price tag said nope.
    28. Qattara Depression blast-canal – German consultant Friedrich Bassler’s 1960s idea to drop 213 × 1.5 Mt devices, gouge a 60 m-deep trench from Med to Egypt’s below-sea-level desert, run a perpetual hydro plant. Cairo balked at radioactive trenching.
    29. TACV hovertrain – DOT’s 1965-75 Tracked Air-Cushion Vehicle program (300 mph LIM hover-sleds). After three prototypes and 22 mi of Pueblo test track, funding evaporated; maglev and noise issues finished it.
    30. Lockheed CL-1201 – Late-1960s study for a 6 000-ton, nuclear-powered “flying aircraft carrier” with a 1 120 ft span, 41-day endurance, and 22 parasite fighters. DoD never bit; reactor shielding alone weighed more than a C-5.
    31. Project PACER – Los Alamos (1970-75) vision of dropping two 50-kt H-bombs a day into a salt cavern to boil water for a 2 GW power plant. Economics of making thousands of warheads per year (and, y’know, public reaction) killed it fast.
    32. Ford Nucleon (1957) – Detroit thought daily-driver hot-swappable mini-reactors were coming. Real physics said 5 ft of shielding → a car heavier than a semi; accidents would paint the interstate with fission fragments. Killed in the styling studio.
    33. Project HARP (1962-67) – 16-inch space-gun that lobbed payloads to 180 km. Vietnam-era budget cuts + NASA preferring rockets = funding yanked; the Barbados gun is still rusting on the cliff.
    34. Molten-Salt Breeder Reactor (ORNL, 1965-76) – Thorium-fed, walk-away-safe reactor hit every milestone, but the AEC chose sodium fast-breeders that sprinkled money across more congressional districts; MSR line shut down in ’76.
    35. 1918 Kettering Bug – the disposable wooden drone: 530-lb biplane “aerial torpedo” with punch-card autopilot; 40-mile range
    36. 1904→1970s Vactrain: Goddard → RAND: mag-lev capsules in hard-vac tubes, L.A.–NY in 1 h
    37. 1920s Monkey-gland rejuvenation: Surgeon Serge Voronoff grafted chimp testicle slices into rich dudes
    38. 1945 Nazi “Sun-Gun” space mirror 9-km orbiting reflector to fry cities with focused sunlight
    39. 1968-80 Space-based Solar Power Satellites: 5 GW microwave-beaming platforms, 50 000t each
    40. 1971 Project Cyclops: 1-2 k steerable 100 m dishes to scan 1000 ly for ET
    41. Empire State Building Airship Dock (NYC, 1930): The Empire State Building (completed 1931) was famously designed with a 200‑ft mooring mast at the spire for dirigiblessmithsonianmag.com. Owner Alfred E. Smith and investors envisioned luxurious airships docking atop the tower so passengers could disembark via a gangplanksmithsonianmag.com.
    42. Wardenclyffe Tower (1901–1917): Nikola Tesla’s laboratory at Wardenclyffe, Long Island, housed a 187‑ft wireless transmission towerteslasciencecenter.org. Tesla intended it as the prototype of a global, wireless communication and power system: a “huge brain” sending news, stock updates and even electricity worldwideteslasciencecenter.org.