(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kitchen Table Kibitzing 1/21/2025: Tech Support [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2025-01-21 Charlotte Piepenhagen: Forest Pond in the Evening Sun (undated) Good evening, Kibitzers! I hope everyone is okay so far, at least for some values of “okay”. We only ended up with four or five inches of snow in my neighborhood, but it’s pretty and it will be around all week, so that’s better than we’ve done in a while. It’s really cold, though — nothing above freezing until Sunday, according to the current forecast. Ryan Hall shows a tweet video: snowball fight on Bourbon St in New Orleans Meanwhile, though, a different storm system is bringing both snow/ice to southern states that aren’t well equipped for it and new Santa Ana winds to California, creating more fire risk. I’m writing Monday night and will be looking out for updates during the day on Tuesday. (Tuesday: seeing snow on the beach in Galveston, 8” on the ground in Lafayette, LA, and total gridlock in Houston. It’s possible the Weather Gods have some thoughts about the name “Gulf of America”. Nothing about California yet.) In my ceaseless efforts to find something to distract us all with, I was led to the invaluable Wired YouTube channel. The Wired website is indeed a mixed bag of interesting material and clickbait, but they apparently love to make videos, and they curate a variety of video series. The one I got interested in for today is called Tech Support, and in it, experts in all sorts of areas spend ten or twenty minutes answering questions solicited for them via X. Some of the questions are just astoundingly ignorant, and some are not, but either way is okay because it gives the subject-matter expert a chance to talk about their field. There’s a playlist where you can root through the whole series; there are currently 233 of them, some featuring famous people like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Yo-Yo Ma. For this diary, I favored the non-celebrities. It was really hard to narrow it down. but that’s nothing new. This diary has several hours of video in it, and you surely don’t have to watch it all! I am hoping you find some things that will entertain you, maybe over longer than just this evening. They are certainly not the usual 3-minute-song-length. Archaeologist Dr. Ed Barnhart answers questions about the ancient Mayan civilization. [23:17] Jonna Mendez, former CIA Chief of Disguise, answers spy questions. [17:57] Marine biologist Dr. Kory Evans answers fish questions. [17:49] Professional pyrotechnician Patrick Cyrana answers fireworks questions. (I was really interested to learn how the stars are packed into the skytockets.) [16:39] Immunologist Dr. Shruti Naik answers questions about the immune system. [12:59] Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver answers beer questions. [17:45] Paleoanthropologist Dr. Steven E. Churchill answers questions about cavemen and early human evolution. [17:38] Professor of English and Medieval Literature Dr. Dorsey Armstrong answers questions about the Middle Ages. [19:11] Entomologist Dr. Sammy Ramsey answers insect questions. Warning: live bugs! Do not watch if they will freak you out. [11:00] Naturalist Joey Santore is possibly the most intenet-well-known person I’ve included here — he has a YouTube channel called Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t, which I periodically start a diary about before I despair of picking only a few videos. So, here he is answering plant questions. He’s… unusual. [26:13] Biomedical scientist Dr. Andrea Love answers questions about pseudosciences and false health claims. This is interesting but actually pretty worrisome. [22:08] Chef Meherwan Irani answers Indian food questions. [14:43] Paleontologist Dr. Hans Sues answers dinosaur questions. [15:52] [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/1/21/2297896/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-1-21-2025-Tech-Support Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/