Notes.
I'm looking for book recommendations! Ideally something that has a bit of emotional content, i.e. isn't an extended thinkpiece. Holler!
Planning & Strategy.
- Airbus took a significant equity stake in the Bombardier CSeries program - a lifeline to Bombardier. "Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said the company wasn’t investing upfront for its majority stake in the venture, which he said would allow sales to U.S. airlines without the 300% tariff proposed for CSeries imports by American trade authorities."
- 99% Invisible on the US's partial conversion to the metric system. What I *don't* get is startups who build on Imperial/US Customary units; from experience, the cost of starting out metric is totally reasonable.
- NYC's public-facing pitch for Amazon's second headquarters.
Making & Manufacturing.
- An open source utility for dialing in SLA print parameters.
- A tour of the Swiss Army factory.
- A video on the Taiwanese white label bike manufacturing ecosystem, and the difference between product development companies on one hand and "brands" on the other.
- Nicola Twilley on artificial silk.
- A good looking nail gun fitted with wooden nails, which rely on friction welding of lignin. Note: "a tensile strength similar to aluminum nails" is a lot less than what galvanized steel nails (commonly used in US light-frame construction) offer.
Maintenance, Repair & Operations.
Distribution & Logistics.
- A three day hackathon for developing innovative solutions for waste reduction in NYC.
- "If you put a series of out of phase metronomes on a movable surface, you will get a Kuramoto model synchronization."
Inspection & Testing.
- Plain text emails get higher open & click through rates, and are much friendlier to email clients. Want The Prepared in plain text? Holler and I'll put you on a sub-list to experiment on :)
- Lego's new "Women of NASA" set.
Tangents.
- A rather disturbing article on the state of the affiliate marketing industry, vis a vis the online mattress industry.
- A very good video of a cable actuated robot flipping a tennis ball around.
- An update on Tillerson's State Department.
The Golden Gate Bridge's lane zipper.
Thanks as always to our recurring donors for supporting The Prepared. Credit also to Jordan, Severin, Gabe, Alex, Neil, Andreas, and Xavier for sending links.
Love, Spencer.
p.s. - We should be better friends. Send me a note - coffee's on me :)
p.p.s - We care about inclusivity. Here's what we're doing about it.
