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Bicycles are pretty amazing, although there's no way you could 'build one yourself'.
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Not sure this counts as "simple".
My dad still uses the family (his dad's) rice cooker from the mid 1950s, so they aren't that complicated, they're basically a heater and thermal cutoff PSA for anyone who doesn't: Wash your fucking rice
Even better: use no-wash rice. It's easier for you, and better for the environment:
> [...] believe it or not, the cloudy water consumers pour off when washing their rice has been identified as a significant source of water pollution in Japan. In the B.G. method [used to make no-wash rice], the bran comes out dry, so instead of going out with the wash water and ending up in rivers and streams, it can be diverted into fertilizer and animal feed.
and:
> It’s considered enough of a problem that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government urges residents to water plants with their togijiru [cloudy rice water] rather than sending it down the sewer. And Shiga Prefecture, in an effort to protect Lake Biwa, has asked its citizens to switch to no-wash rice.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/04/16/reference/no-wa...
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Fun fact -- 15,000+ aluminum cans are manufactured every second. Every. Second. Really hope Bill keeps putting out videos, but I understand how life gets and it's not his full time job.
is that right? That would be something like 5 per day per person on earth.
Bicycles are pretty amazing, although there's no way you could 'build one yourself'.
Well, you can certainly assemble a bike from a pile of components, a pair of wheels, and a frame (try and do that with a sedan...) And it's not beyond most people to learn how to weld or braze a frame together from tubing (or even glue up carbon fiber or bamboo into a frame, at room temp). But smelting the steel and aluminum at home to make the parts is admittedly not practical.
Well, it can be done. There's a guy who rebuilt a Tesla Model S from a pair of junked Teslas.
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My dad still uses the family (his dad's) rice cooker from the mid 1950s, so they aren't that complicated, they're basically a heater and thermal cutoff PSA for anyone who doesn't: Wash your fucking rice
> Wash your fucking rice Even better: use no-wash rice. It's easier for you, and better for the environment: > [...] believe it or not, the cloudy water consumers pour off when washing their rice has been identified as a significant source of water pollution in Japan. In the B.G. method [used to make no-wash rice], the bran comes out dry, so instead of going out with the wash water and ending up in rivers and streams…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun fact -- 15,000+ aluminum cans are manufactured every second. Every. Second. Really hope Bill keeps putting out videos, but I understand how life gets and it's not his full time job.
is that right? That would be something like 5 per day per person on earth.
...might have been invented before 1700 though.
Aluminum beverage cans are an engineering marvel: https://youtu.be/hUhisi2FBuw
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Bicycles may seem simple but took many decades to get it right. Your comment also reminded me of this gallery of drawings from people attempting to create a bicycle from memory which is pretty funny https://twistedsifter.com/2016/04/artist-asks-people-to-draw...
The most astounding thing about bicycles is that we did actually get it right. looking at the first ~100 years of iteration, you'd kind of assume that it was one of those things that would just keep evolving forever. But then they found the classic diamond frame design, and bikes have been fundamentally the same since then.