[HN Gopher] Primitive Technology: Iron Bacteria Cement [video]
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Primitive Technology: Iron Bacteria Cement [video]
Author : GavCo
Score : 297 points
Date : 2023-03-02 22:07 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| iammjm wrote:
| I very much appreciate this dude. The amount of time and energy
| he puts into making these is amazing.
| neom wrote:
| Totally unrelated to this video, just related to the subject
| matter on YouTube. Interesting how some of these style videos are
| totally bs.
|
| https://youtu.be/Hvk63LADbFc
|
| https://youtu.be/_0-uLF9PtNo
|
| Again just to be clear, I believe this channel is legit. Just the
| genre on YouTube has some disingenuous stuff.
| pawelduda wrote:
| Primitive Technology is the first channel of this kind. These
| bullshit channels are just leeching off its success.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Yep. He's the OG. I started watching him in something like
| 2016 or so.
| MrFoof wrote:
| For a while he didn't produce videos because he was
| contracted for some television shows in Australia due to
| his meteoric rise in popularity, but he thankfully was able
| to return to YouTube last year. I assume his contractual
| obligations had been met and no longer was bound by any
| exclusivity terms with the broadcast network anymore.
|
| His book is extremely detailed and pragmatic as well.
| masklinn wrote:
| Apparently the TV deal fell through: https://www.reddit.c
| om/r/PrimitiveTechnology/comments/lfsq04...
|
| > Another post on February 8, 2021, explained that Plant
| shot a pilot episode for the project but the network
| wanted to change the format, and that Plant could not
| share any more information.
|
| The /r/primitivetechnology mod had previously reached out
| to Plant after worry related to the hiatus: https://www.r
| eddit.com/r/PrimitiveTechnology/comments/gscvv8...
| jjk166 wrote:
| I was under the impression the hiatus was because he
| couldn't go to his filming location for an extended
| period of time for covid-related reasons. He's certainly
| had to start over/rebuild many of his projects.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| He owns the land, so I doubt that's the (main) reason.
|
| But of course covid would have effect on everything.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| I believe he bought another plot at some point
| Quequau wrote:
| For those who are hearing, there are subtitles that you should
| turn on.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| If you're new to Primitive Technology then it's worth starting
| from the oldest videos and working forward. These aren't just
| random tasks he sets himself. He starts by going into the
| Australian jungle with absolutely nothing except cargo shorts
| (not even shoes) and then proceeds to build himself a series of
| shacks and houses, starting with nothing more than a sharp stone
| and various plants. Then he starts building kilns and firing clay
| he digs out of the river bank (with a stick) making pots, bricks
| and roof tiles. Then he starts making charcoal and building a
| forge, so he can turn the iron bacteria in the creek into actual
| forged iron objects. He's been at it for years initially as a
| hobby and now he earns enough to make it his "job". He doesn't
| attempt to recreate the paths taken by ancient people - he's
| willing to use modern scientific knowledge - but he does appear
| to live by his rule of not taking anything with him and just
| using only the natural resources around him.
| beardog wrote:
| It is also very helpful to enable captions. He does not speak
| in his videos but he adds detailed captioning to describe what
| he is doing.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I probably went six months in watching his videos before I
| realized that. It was a treat to re-watch with a deeper
| perspective!
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I am a huge fan of Primitive Technology. This guy would not
| surprise me if he built a PC XT out of mud, slime and wood one
| day.
| kbenson wrote:
| It would be kind of cool is for April fools day he found
| "redstone" and each successive year on that day he built on
| that to eventually make a CPU. It would take some clever
| (practical) special effects to do well though.
| philo23 wrote:
| Also if you turn on subtitles you'll get a bit more information
| on what he's actually doing and why.
| [deleted]
| deaddodo wrote:
| > He doesn't attempt to recreate the paths taken by ancient
| people - he's willing to use modern scientific knowledge
|
| I would argue that he definitely does. Most of his
| developmental lineage follows a similar path the the most
| commonly understood ancient societies. He augments that with
| modern knowledge, certainly, but is doing most things in a
| manner "of the time". He uses tools/technologies from previous
| videos to build upon the next versus bringing in outside/modern
| assistance, usually (there have been cases where it's not
| completely feasible).
| jiggawatts wrote:
| His videos are also blessedly free of unnecessary music and
| shouted all-caps voice overs like many similar productions,
| whether on TV or YouTube.
|
| They're very relaxing to watch after a long frustrating day at
| work.
| albatrosstrophy wrote:
| Well these days they call it ASMR. But you're right he's one
| of the first to strip away all unnecessary sounds. Makes for
| a very therapeutic video.
| mda wrote:
| Well, depends on the person I guess. Personally I can not
| stand all those Asmr videos, (restoration, bladesmithing
| stuff)
| nmz wrote:
| No audio effects != ASMR.
| constGard wrote:
| True, though his videos often fit the criteria of
| including "tactile" or "natural" sounds and he seems
| careful not to add anything that would get in the way.
| nmz wrote:
| It doesn't fit the criteria, because being outside is not
| ASMR either.
| kragen wrote:
| i would be really surprised to hear that anyone had
| experienced the asmr from watching the videos on this
| channel
| i2ksbu2b wrote:
| I wouldn't. One of the main asmr triggers is watching
| someone focus and work on something.
| [deleted]
| holoduke wrote:
| A couple of years ago i tried to get some clay from a nearby
| creek, but i found it extremely difficult to replicate his way
| of making things from clay. Apparently the region he is doing
| his stuff got some perfect clay everywhere.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Before the sedimentation pit video he just spent a lot of
| time manually extracting sticks and rocks from his mined
| clay. The videos often compress the work of a month into
| about 10 minutes, so it definitely ends up looking easier
| than it really is. Usually though it's obvious how much time
| is invested, simply because he shows the failures as well as
| the successes and when time skips ahead it's clear how much
| repetitive work he must have done.
| kragen wrote:
| most soils contain some clay; if the problem is that all your
| clay is impure, you can mix it into a slurry and 'decant' it
| (let it settle, then pour off the water) and let it mostly
| dry
|
| the clay is far finer than the sand and silt, so it will
| settle most slowly, and the topmost layer will be mostly clay
|
| some soils deflocculate the clay, so you may need to add a
| flocculant to get it to decant properly
|
| if your clay is very expansive you may need to add a lot of
| temper to keep your work from cracking while drying; the good
| news is that very expansive clays like bentonite are also
| highly plastic and so can tolerate a higher temper fraction.
| you probably want the shrinkage on drying (from the fully
| plastic state to the bone-dry state, though leather-hard is
| usually a good enough approximation) to be about 1/8 . if
| you have a lot of kaolin you may be able to go lower than
| that but if it's much more than that you're going to have a
| really hard time with cracks during the final stage of drying
| (from leather hard to bone dry)
|
| making things from clay requires a lot of knowledge but
| fortunately the humans have been doing it for twelve thousand
| years and so have accumulated that knowledge already
| shellfishgene wrote:
| He actually also has a video on decanting his clay on the
| channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2RKtUh6m3Q
| cshimmin wrote:
| Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of clay?
| kragen wrote:
| i'm mostly just repeating what i've been told in pottery
| classes, digitalfire.com, pottery groups on fecebutt, and
| classes and workshops i've attended on adobe construction
|
| i guess i've also spent a few hundred hours reading about
| clay (archaeology papers, composite materials papers,
| textbooks on functional fillers for plastics) and playing
| with clay, but what i wrote above goes well beyond what i
| can justify from my own direct observations
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Thank you for your input!
|
| (also I think it was a reference to Monty Python:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtHZn5X5bXM)
| kerpotgh wrote:
| [dead]
| jrumbut wrote:
| I had that experience over and over as a kid reading about
| early human development, going out and trying to find my
| area's equivalent of some material and ending up with nothing
| but a mess.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| In Art History class they mentioned off hand that the
| people who knew where to find random rare stuff were very
| valued in early societies. No citation was given though.
|
| I imagine in a pre tech world people would develop a sharp
| eye for "that looks unusual, let's take some of that and
| mess with it and see if it's useful somehow".
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Well that and they were literally just the same as we are
| now.
|
| Imagine if you had 80 years to live and nothing but rocks
| to play with. You'd get pretty good with rocks and you
| would be pretty desperate to find something new and
| interesting to play with.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| But like you see in the videos, in nature there are a
| whole lot of other things to play with than rocks and
| combine it. Wood, soil, bacteria, fire ...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| There are many copycat channels now.
| ramboldio wrote:
| could this be used for 3D-printing?
| jaquer_1 wrote:
| [dead]
| martythemaniak wrote:
| I present to you the best Hacker News comment I've ever read (it
| was in response to another Primitive Technology video):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32697419
| nielsbot wrote:
| If I get stranded in ancient times, I hope to God kragen is
| there with me.
| kragen wrote:
| from most people's point of view, this will have been ancient
| times right here
|
| they will marvel at how stupid we've been and what obvious
| opportunities we've been wasting
|
| my efforts at improving the situation:
|
| http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano
|
| http://canonical.org/~kragen/derctuo
|
| http://canonical.org/~kragen/dernocua
| adrianN wrote:
| If you liked that comment you might also like
| https://simplifier.neocities.org/
| scns wrote:
| Great stuff, thank you very much.
| thunderbong wrote:
| Man, that entire comment thread is like mind blowing! So many
| things were possible but didn't happen. Made me wonder about
| the number of things that are possible now but isn't!
| kragen wrote:
| thank you, i'm flattered you liked it; see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35017711 for my thoughts
| on the things that are possible now but not happening
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| No doubt there are many things we could do today, with
| available materials, but we just don't know how to do it yet.
| There might be a catalyst that can efficiently combine CO2
| with H2O to rip carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and
| create fuel. There might be a combination of materials and
| processes that we already know about which would enable grid
| scale nuclear fusion. There might be a way to use existing
| materials to create ultrafast photonic circuits.
|
| So many technologies are actually pretty simple when you look
| at their components - a lot of genetic engineering is "just"
| plastic, metal, and heated water baths.
| [deleted]
| tunesmith wrote:
| That's extraordinary. If kragen is around, I've always been
| curious what, if any, of our technological discovery history
| has really been time-gated rather than just dependency-gated.
| Like, are there certain technological advancements that simply
| would have been impossible before the year X, when Y happened?
| kragen wrote:
| it's a really interesting question, and i don't really have a
| good answer
|
| plant has made a reasonably good demonstration here that if
| you have the knowledge and a fair bit of free time ( _i.e._ ,
| you aren't working 60 hours a week just so you aren't
| arrested by the king's men, don't starve to death, and don't
| get eaten by lions) you can get from banging rocks together
| to casting tools from smelted iron within a single human
| decade; in historical human terms this took from pre-pottery
| neolithic ([?]10'000 bce) to the warring states period
| ([?]500 bce)
|
| so it seems that human innovation was purely 'dependency-
| gated' or maybe 'knowledge-gated' at least during that
| period; but could we have acquired the knowledge faster?
| russo's book claims that the main reason we didn't was that
| we didn't have the hypothetico-deductive method until the
| hellenistic period, and then it was forgotten again after the
| roman conquests, until being rediscovered in the 18th and
| 19th centuries. but even today most places are not advancing
| rapidly or really at all; life expectancy may be improving in
| chuuk, bangalore, and montevideo, and they certainly know
| about the hypothetico-deductive method, but world-changing
| innovation isn't happening there, and there are worrisome
| signs it is endangered even in the places it's previously
| been abundant
|
| so i don't think there were, like, volcanic eruptions or
| eclipses or population explosions or something that needed to
| happen before technological advancement could continue, if
| that's what you're asking
| tunesmith wrote:
| Yeah, that's what I was asking. If any of our technology
| history can be attributed to external physical natural
| phenomena that hadn't existed before then, or something
| along those lines. Mostly because it's incredibly humbling
| to think of how all our technology today could have existed
| thousands of years ago if the right social conditions were
| in place along the way.
|
| It's also interesting to think of what "pause points" we're
| stuck in now. Technology we know we could have but just
| aren't driving on right now. I guess one arguably obvious
| one recently was rocket technology.
| kragen wrote:
| well, i suppose certain natural resources are pretty
| scarce on earth; meteoric iron, for example, and
| platinum-group metals
|
| current cases of 'tech we know we could have but aren't
| reaching for' includes molecular nanotechnology, human
| germline editing, decentralized software, provably secure
| operating systems, simple web browsers (we had them 20
| years ago), gem-gum systems, space elevators, supergun-
| based orbital launch, lithium 'fusion' power, undersea
| cities, atmospheric carbon capture, orion-style nuclear
| rockets, terraforming, personal rapid transit,
| sustainable agriculture (arguably), human space travel
| (leo isn't travel), suborbital commuter rockets (45
| minutes to anywhere on earth), universal access to
| implanted automatic defibrillators, asteroid mining,
| solar power plants in solar orbit, all kinds of drugs,
| implanted perceptual prostheses (with a narrow exception
| for making people 'normal' if they are disabled relative
| to social expectations), personal airbags to prevent
| death from falls, wheelchairs that can climb stairs,
| cruise airships, etc.
|
| i've written about some of these at some length in the
| notes linked from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35017711
|
| but basically 'why don't we have atmospheric carbon
| capture yet' is the same problem as 'why don't we have
| world peace yet' or 'why is sci-hub illegal in most
| countries'; the problem is power structures, incentive
| structures, human motivation, and the result, people
| working at cross purposes
| [deleted]
| akkartik wrote:
| I tend to think of it as not dependency gated but social-
| technology gated. As you say, the critical resource was
| leisure, sufficiently widely distributed as to lead to
| humans playing status games like, "who can polish the
| shiniest mirror." And that requires a fairly sophisticated
| society in terms of number of classes, the way they depend
| on each other, possibilities of social mobility, resilience
| to sudden resource constraints, etc., etc.
| kragen wrote:
| i don't think the critical resource was leisure; hunter-
| gatherers have plenty of leisure time, and the leisure
| time of chinese emperors and the roman elite was so
| notorious that it toppled a number of dynasties. john
| plant has had less leisure time in his life than almost
| any individual noble, scribe, sadhu, or other monk, in
| most civilized societies throughout most of history
|
| and i don't think that we have good evidence that the
| wildly innovative hellenistic society was noticeably more
| sophisticated in these ways than the imperial society
| that ground the intellectual face of mediterranean
| society under its boot for the following 16 centuries,
| ceding leadership in math, science, and technology to
| india and china until the renaissance
|
| i think it's a mistake to think of intellectual and
| technological progress as something that will inevitably
| happen at the fastest rate allowed by some critical
| resource; historically progress was the exception, not
| the rule, and that remains true worldwide today. it
| requires a delicate constellation of favorable conditions
| Retric wrote:
| The Spinning wheel could arguably have been a Neolithic
| invention but instead only shows up fairly recently. What
| makes it notable is it probably saved more labor than any
| other device in history, and in many ways set the stage for
| the Industrial revolution.
|
| In terms of discovery, trade with the America across the
| Bering Strait could have occurred vastly earlier and
| dramatically changed history. It's likely people where
| crossing fairly regularly without realizing anything unusual
| was going on.
| kragen wrote:
| the spinning wheel is a wonderful example, and i wish i'd
| thought of it
|
| arguably agriculture, the needle, the bow, the boat, and
| fire 'saved more labor' than the spinning wheel, but it
| isn't clear that in their case those even apply
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| I think Y tends to be a combination of factors like enough
| wealth within a society combined with enough people and
| communication and a culture of exploration and
| experimentation free from overly despotic government. Those
| circumstances have been quite rare in history as far as we
| know.
| kragen wrote:
| wow, that's really flattering! thank you!
| [deleted]
| calibas wrote:
| I believe this is Leptothrix bacteria, it creates an iridescent
| sheen on top of stagnant water, often mistaken for oil. It's
| quite common once you know what you're looking for.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| There were videos circulating from Ohio of people disturbing
| water and then seeing this iridescent sheen appear alongside
| conspiracy bs. Fascinating!
| markdown wrote:
| I don't think you see this bacteria in the Ohio climate.
| calibas wrote:
| They've found Leptothrix in Antarctica, it has no problem
| surviving in Ohio.
| gruez wrote:
| Maybe not this specific kind of bacteria, but AFAIK it was
| something similar (ie. biofilm created by bacteria).
| jalk wrote:
| Learned a new fact and word today: iron bacteria have
| cementitious properties
| antibasilisk wrote:
| i've always found iron bacteria fascinating, is it possible to
| cultivate and farm it?
| jjk166 wrote:
| It is, but the bacteria live off iron already in the water,
| increasing the amount of bacteria won't extract more iron.
|
| More generally though, there is an entire field of
| bioleaching[0] which does use bacteria to either mine material
| or more often recover extra minerals from mine waste products.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioleaching
| tomrod wrote:
| This one was cool.
|
| Could you also extract iron from the bacteria?
|
| EDIT: be sure to watch with the captions on, as the videographer
| explains what he is doing.
| rjbwork wrote:
| You can. He has some other videos where he actually does
| extract the iron and ~~makes a knife out of it.~~ makes a
| forgeable chunk.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZGAYzItazw
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPIUMpiV0IY
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOj4L9yp7Mc
| lapama wrote:
| In the first link, I understood better many things about
| human history... Still the guy does not sweat in front of a
| furnace. Obviously irrelevant, but strange!
| stevehawk wrote:
| hot, dry air has a tendency to evaporate water.
| sn0wf1re wrote:
| As someone who has fought wildfire before, I personally
| found that sweat does not accumulate in front of a source
| of heat. You start to feel damp or wet after you walk away
| from the heat. Perhaps it is the same with a hot furnace.
| slackdog wrote:
| I think he's probably sweating, but the sweat evaporates
| faster than it can bead up. Or maybe he's dehydrated.. I
| have wondered what the "behind the scenes" of his videos
| looks like; when he goes out into the woods does he bring
| modern water bottles and pack a lunch?
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| He does have a video about using "cane" to make a water
| filter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG-rNHgFxhs
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > when he goes out into the woods does he bring modern
| water bottles and pack a lunch?
|
| The wilderness he films these in is a 15 minute walk from
| his house: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dq0zec/
| im_john_plant_...
|
| so he doesn't really bring anything with him https://www.
| reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dq0zec/im_john_plant_...
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Not sure why this is here - I enjoy primitive tech's videos
| (often imitated, never duplicated - too many imitation channels
| have poorly-covered excavator tracks and chainsaw chips when the
| work crew and camera crew come in between cuts).
|
| But before watching, be sure to enable subtitles for a
| description of what he's doing!
| isbjorn16 wrote:
| or, conversely, turn them off before it starts and try to
| figure out what he's doing and why. then when it's done, turn
| the captions on and watch it again!
|
| our living room turns into bedlam when we do this. everyone
| shouting what is about to happen or why it's happening and
| we're almost always wrong. it's great!
| pangolinja wrote:
| I like going into t mobile stores and changing the loud TV
| channels to primitive technology. it's beautiful to see the
| whole place calm down.
| [deleted]
| tomcam wrote:
| I wish I had as much energy as you
| pangolinja wrote:
| I like going into t mobile stores and changing the loud TV
| channels to primitive technology. it's beautiful to see the
| whole place calm the fuck down.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| So... Maybe in the way back of my brain I knew there were
| subtitles, but there is a good chance I'm _just now_ learning
| about this.
|
| I think I've been watching these randomly since the beginning
| just trying to figure out what he's doing. I thought that was
| the game here!
| skeaker wrote:
| It's been a long time since I've seen anything from his
| channel, but I recall that he would put out blog posts
| explaining the processes shown in the videos too.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| I think the blog is dead:
| https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com
|
| The video descriptions and the pinned comment are also
| really information dense though.
|
| And John Plant, the guy running Primitive Technology, has
| published a book, which I've not read but could be of
| interest to people who like this kind of content and
| would like more of it in the text form.
| mlambie wrote:
| My 10yr old son enjoys the book a lot!
| kbenson wrote:
| Not entirely sure why you appear to be shadowbanned
| (nothing looked egregious in a quick scan of past
| comments), so I vouched for this comment so it shows for
| people that don't have showdead on.
|
| Maybe it's that most your comments are very short and
| single sentences and it's triggering some automated
| system looking spam as a false positive? Maybe it's worth
| being slightly more verbose in replies for a while, in
| case that's it. I assume if you get enough people
| vouching for comments the ban reverses itself, but I
| don't really know. You could also email hn and ask why.
| ArcticCelt wrote:
| So many people learn that there is subtitles through the
| comments section after many years of watching all his
| videos, probably because the videos are so enjoyable even
| without the explanations.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| That's interesting, but would those pots be as sturdy as fired
| clay pots? If you drop them, will the break more, or less easily,
| I mean, than fired clay pots?
|
| I'm asking because they look a little too loose to me, and btw,
| the material seems less easy to mold than clay.
|
| In any case this is a very interesting piece of information from
| a scientific point of view, but for practical reasons I think
| fired clay is much more practical (because much faster to make
| stuff with).
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
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