A good dam, a wheel-of-wheels, and a trumpet sniper.

• Animagraffs has a wonderful animated Hoover Dam deep-dive. It starts with a clear declaration: Jake, the video creator, "researched, scripted, 3D modelled, animated and scored this project" himself. This is the exact opposite of the morass of low-effort animated-engineering AI-voiced slop content that YouTube is swamped by, and it's absolutely worth your time. There's even a behind-the-scenes video here! (Thanks to several newsletter readers for the suggestion!)
   
• Posted just in time to make this newsletter, just a few hours ago as this is sent out by email: Joseph's Machines recreates the famous Wallace and Gromit breakfast machine. I remember meeting Joseph months ago and hearing him talk about his plans for this: so this is a huge amount of effort cut down to less than ten minutes. Whole sub-contraptions, like electronics timers and sleeve-put-on-thingys, are just handwaved away -- presumably to go in some future behind-the-scenes post! (Thanks Zachary for sending this over!)
   
• And from The Stock Pot: "Kmart lied to me, so I hacked their lamp". Concise, clear explanations; a good story; and a really nice improvement to a frustrating problem. And the best part: "for those wanting to replicate this at home, I'll include a wiring diagram in the post on my website." A+. (And thanks to Ash for this suggestion!)

• A statistic that sounds too good to be true: London's low emission zones reduced sick leave by 18.5%, along with a host of other benefits?! It seems to be a a thorough study, from a skim through the numbers all make sense... it's just, wow, 18.5% is a big number in this context.
   
• Why is the emergency-stop button on a nuclear reactor called SCRAM?
   
• "Phones have been ringing since 1953 ... students who sit there have been answering any question asked of them—or at least tried their best."

And finally: trumpet sniper.

All the best,

— Tom