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Deep Aphantasia: a visual brain with minimal influence from priors? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39951990] 105 points|negativelambda|3 months ago|114 comments

Aphantasia and hyperphantasia: exploring imagery vividness extremes [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39887661] 86 points|bookofjoe|3 months ago|89 comments

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Similarly, I purchased a copy of "Bosch Automotive Handbook" [1]. For $65 it will literally walk you through every component of a vehicle, from the metals required, the fuel, to the electronics. It's presence on my bookshelf is meant to be aspirational.

https://www.sae.org/publications/books/content/bosch10/


If you're looking to be inspired to take the plunge into car repair, check out M359 Restorations YouTube channel[0]. It's a one-man shop in Frankfurt that specializes in BMW restorations. It's a good look into what it takes to do projects like this well: the tools, the space, the knowledge of the secondary market and parts suppliers, and when/how to repair a component rather than buying a new one. He does use repair manuals for some things, especially engine rebuilds, but a lot of what he does is based on "what looks right" to a person doing this for the last 10-15 years.

As a beginner looking to start with minimal infrastructure, he does some of his restorations outside his shop, often in borrowed personal garages of subscribers. Project Salt Lake City is a good example [1]. For someone looking to do a more advanced repair (arguably the most advanced possible) there are some good engine rebuilding videos, especially with Project Frankfurt[2].

One thing I find surprising is that he still uses a lot of 3rd party services. AC dis/charging, wheel alignment, tire mounting and balancing, dynamo measurement, block reconditioning, head and supercharger refreshes, and even car detailing (which he seems to be actively trying to avoid doing despite his instincts because it is a huge time sink). He is a dynamic, adaptable node in a fascinating, specialized capital network.

0 - https://www.youtube.com/@M539Restorations

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a9rCI2zfPM&list=PLBcFoVFuPC...

2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyqZoNwKeOM&list=PLBcFoVFuPC...


M359 Restorations is an absolutely fantastic channel, arguably the best car restoration channel on YouTube.

I also recommend ChrisFix, especially for new DIY driveway mechanics as the videos tend to be more general tutorials using hand tools (e.g. "how to do an oil change", "how to replace brake discs + pads").

https://www.youtube.com/@chrisfix/videos


I’m a fan of Vice Grip Garage for the everyday person. He routinely arrives to a broken down vehicle, performs on-site diagnostics and repairs, and then attempts to drive the vehicle 600+ miles back to his workshop. He has a hilarious wit and is quite knowledgeable, and he doesn’t really use fancy tools, techniques, or terminology, so it’s quite approachable and understandable for non-experts.

https://www.youtube.com/@vicegripgarage


Another great book like that is Machinery's Handbook: https://books.industrialpress.com/machinery-handbook/


As someone who never owns a car and wants to learn about car. Do you think it's a good book?

I am still contemplating between buying book about car or buy pc games called Car Mechanic Simulator.


I really enjoyed John Muir pubs like How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step by Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot. They are available for a handful of vehicles (the Subaru one is a favorite of mine). Available at a used bookshop or new.

Great drawings, useful for non-motor-heads. The Sub version has info like resuscitating a drowned lizard :)

Avoid if You hate R. Crumb style drawings and hippies.

Try entering 1566913101 as the search in Amazon, currently USD23.00

Edit, adding: you don't need a specific one to gain great knowledge.


I had this book (and many many many VW's) it was a great help, I did my first valve adjustment with this book in hand.


Pretty sure my dad still has his. I still have memories of his working on our microbus at the time, back in the early '70s. Don't think I was even five, yet, but I remember lying underneath the thing with him, watching while he worked on the brakes(?). And another time, he and Mom working a couple of jacks to pull out the engine.

Yeah, that copy earned its keep. Think it still has some of the grime...


What about learning more about something you already own and use? It would give you an opportunity to have a more hands on, real world experience and if it does break you can fix it?


Very cool, thanks for the link


1,766-pages.

Wowzer.


Thanks! Looks like a great book, and it's on libgen (11E). However, the English is positively atrocious. The next edition would be wise to invest in a competent editor. Very first page:

The International Convention on Road Signs and Signals [1] defines a motor or power-driven vehicle as a self-propelled road vehicle. Rail-borne vehicles and country-specifically mopeds which are not treated as motorcycles are exceptions. A second definition in this convention limits the term motor vehicle to those vehicles which are used for carrying persons or goods or for drawing on the road vehicles used for the carriage or persons or goods.

"Country-specifically" -> "jurisdiction-specific definitions of mopeds".

"in this convention" -> "in the convention"

"the term motor vehicle" -> "the term 'motor vehicle'"

The final sentence makes no sense to me and is certainly missing a comma.


Perhaps this is better for you:

A second definition in this convention limits the term motor vehicle to those vehicles which are used for carrying persons or goods, or for drawing on-the-road vehicles used for the carriage of [not or] persons or goods.


This vs the and motor vehicle needing quotes are debatable. The last sentence doesn’t need a comma but probably should be reworded for clarity.

Seems about as difficult to parse as typical highly technical writing.


It's not technical, it's just bad.


It likely being a German translation, I'm not surprised.


I personally believe there's something to this, but sadly this one is "in mice".



Was expecting many things, like a listicle, but it's actually titled like a Jeopardy! question



In rats


Which is great, animal models for viral diseases are easy to prove out (if they get the virus you get some information testing antibodies in them).

The antibody itself was identified from a sample taken from a human and looks like an interesting target for a vaccine or monoclonal antibody therapy (there's lot of RSV candidates in the pipeline https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147330992... ).


At this point, unless the title explicitly states a new breakthrough has been seen in humans, I immediately assume they're talking about mice or a test tube.


I’m always initially deceived by these posts from “nature.com”

“Nature Research Highlights” is the biomedical equivalent of “MIT News”, they’d lead one to think the cure for cancer and unlimited battery storage are around the corner.


Samin Nosrat's "Salt Fat Acid Heat" [0] really helped me understand cooking with salt (and balancing it with fats and acids). Also this LifeHacker article [1]!

[0] https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/ [1] https://lifehacker.com/season-your-chicken-even-more-you-cow...


Funny, Meta just went through the same trouble with the name 'Meta'.


I still just call them Facebook, just like most people still just call Google Google (instead of Alphabet)


Well technically Google still exists; it’s a subsidiary of Alphabet, and people who work at Google are employed by “Google LLC” (and not Alphabet). (In fact I think I remember there was some training that explicitly told us to NOT say that we were employees of Alphabet.)

The company “Facebook” no longer exists, though.


Yup they rebranded for different reasons.

Therefore to frustrate the marketing efforts of both you should call them Facebook and Alphabet (even when actually referring to the current Google).


Who or what is a meta. Everyone knows what facebook is though.


I thought this was the idea. The public stopped trusting Facebook so they needed to obfuscate.

It's scary when you open Instagram and it says "from Facebook" but meh when it says "from Meta."

Same as reading "business X acquired by Facebook" versus "acquired by Meta."

It's a form of reputation separation. Same thing Google did with Alphabet.


Honestly why have the “From whatever” at all?


I thought it's to transmit good reputation to Meta

E.g. when people trust WhatsApp, and then see it's from Meta, they may trust Meta more too


As a former employee with a decade in the shop and as much inside baseball as anyone could expect:

I have no fucking idea what the Meta name change was about.


> I have no fucking idea what the Meta name change was about.

Forget about the metaverse, it seems like it was a good change to me, just to not be named Facebook.

I can tell Meta has a much more positive association in my mind than Facebook (the company). Probably because I associate it with Instagram as strongly as I do with Facebook, and "insta" is still considered kinda cool.

People are having fun on Threads, and somehow zuck seems to be considered cool there. I never would have expected it. I see Instagram mentioned there, I see zuck mentioned there, sometimes I see Meta mentioned there, and I don't know if I've ever seen Facebook mentioned there.

The branding seems to have allowed Threads to have mostly its own branding with strong association with Instagram given the slick onboarding and graph copying, and no real association with Facebook.


Lets them sell the Meta Oculus instead of the Facebook Oculus, and so on.


Same thing as Google -> Alphabet

Lack of regulation leads to a giant megacorp buying up corporations to grow even bigger.

They used to call it trust busting.


It's a master class in obfuscation:

"What even is Meta?"

"It's... meta"

It tickles my dad funny bone, but not sure it will throw anti-trust regulators off the scent.


Meta is a nameless holding company that stands for nothing. Facebook is a dieing platform that GenX & boomers may still use. At least they seem to have the clue that hitching your company name to a dead platform is a bad business strategy.


It's not growing but I would not say it's dying. People are definitely sti using it and they are making profits. Many young people at least have an account, and many are caught up in the web of Messenger.


Who or what is an alphabet. Everyone knows what google is though.


Just like everyone knows Google but never heard of Alphabet


That's the goal. This way headlines will read "meta/alphabet fined $X million for selling user data to cartels/illuminati" and nobody will know WTF this is about because they'd need to read the article to learn it's the parent company of Facebook/Google.


If you're wondering like me:

>Titan Arums have a fairly long and unpredictable flowering cycle, and they can take up to a decade before they flower for the first time. Even mature plants can go years between blooms

Both are in California (one is nearly finished blooming), and the plant isn't native to the US


Another one had just bloomed 10 days ago in Washington state.

https://www.koin.com/news/washington/get-a-whiff-of-this-cor...


There must be several at each exhibition so there's a bloom every 1-2 years.


Most botanical gardens have a dozen or so, but they only bring out one that’s blooming when they think it’s a good year to fundraise. While it may be true that any given one only blooms every 20 years or whatever, in practice they’ll bring one out when the stock market is at its peak, or at a big anniversary year or whatever.


Is this your first hand knowledge or are you just assuming your worldview applies to this situation?


Second hand knowledge. I have a friend who worked at one of the biggest botanical gardens in the United States.


It's ~7 years give or take a few. I used to go see blooms at Foster botanical garden in Honolulu whenever they had one which was about annually, never experienced an extra fundraising drive. I don't really get why you'd choose to spitball on the topic.


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