Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 10 Jun 2025Slow-cooked pinto beans and dense cast iron skillet cornbread
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1896The cook for a cattle drive, often called “cookie”, was usually a former cowboy himself, having aged out of the profession by 25. They’d wake up around 3:00 AM to get breakfast ready, then pack up and drive ahead about 15 miles to prepare supper.
These beans are very simple, and surprisingly delicious. Honestly, the garlic doesn’t do a whole lot (who only uses half a clove?), but they’re still very good. Feel free to use however hot a red pepper you like, and the beans are a perfect accompaniment to the Chuck Wagon Cornbread (below). Mighty fine, indeed.
FRIJOLES.
1 cup Mexican beans.
1/2 clove garlic.
1 long red pepper.
1 thin small slice bacon.
Soak beans over night; boil slowly until soft—from eight to ten hours. Add red pepper, garlic, and bacon, and bake.
— Manual for Army Cooks, 1896
November 17, 2025
What did Cowboys Eat on the Open Range?
October 16, 2025
The Mexican-American War 1846-48
Real Time History
Published 16 May 2025In the early 19th century, the United States and Mexico share a massive cross-continental border, but US settlement in Mexico, expansionist ideals and religious differences put the young republics on a collision course. As tensions boil over into bloodshed, the tiny, inexperienced US army marches to a war which will forge the modern United States.
Chapters:
00:00 Texas Republic
05:06 Declaration of War
07:03 The US Army
09:26 British Muskets in the Mexican Army
16:19 The Mexican Army
18:24 The Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma
21:38 California and New Mexico
25:11 US Volunteers
28:40 Battle of Monterrey
33:03 Expanding the War
36:59 The Pedregal Battles
40:18 Battles for Mexico City
43:42 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
45:14 Legacy
(more…)
August 31, 2025
Military-Issue Colt Model 1839 Paterson Revolving Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Apr 2025The first rifle made in Sam Colt’s Paterson NJ factory was the 1837 “ring lever” rifle. These were rather fragile and underpowered and while they were used successfully in the First Seminole War, they needed improvement. Colt set about doing this with his 1839 pattern, which was more robust and more powerful. It had six chambers of .525″, with much greater powder capacity than the first Colt revolving rifles. A total of about 950 were made before the Paterson company failed in 1842, and nearly 700 of those were military sales. The US War Department bought 360 (including this example), the Republic of Texas bought 300, and the State of Rhode Island bought 46 — the rest were sold to private companies or individuals. Despite its improvements, though, the 1839 revolving rifle was still not a mature design and was not successful enough to keep Colt in business.
Colt 1837 Ring-Lever Rifle: Sam Colt’s Paterson No1 Model Carbine
Colt 1847 Walker Revolver: 1847 Walker Revolver: the Texas Behemoth
(more…)
June 29, 2025
A parent reviews “Alpha School”
At Astral Codex Ten, an anonymous reviewer offers his views on a new “AI-powered” school that claims radically better results for children than traditional schooling methods:
Unbound Academy website screencap
In January 2025, the charter school application of “Unbound Academy“, a subsidiary of “2 Hour Learning, Inc“, lit up the education press: two hours of “AI-powered” academics, 2.6x learning velocity, and zero teachers. Sympathetic reporters repeated the slogans; union leaders reached for pitchforks; Reddit muttered “another rich-kid scam“. More sophisticated critics dismissed the pitch as “selective data from expensive private schools”.
But there is nowhere on the internet that provides a detailed, non-partisan, description of what the “2 hour learning” program actually is, let alone an objective third party analysis to back up its claims.
[…]
Unfortunately, the public evidence base on whether this is “real” is thin in both directions. Alpha’s own material is glossy and elliptical; mainstream coverage either repeats Alpha’s talking points, or attacks the premise that kids should even be allowed to learn faster than their peers. Until Raj Chetty installs himself in the hallway with a clipboard counting MAP percentiles it is hard to get real information on what exactly Alpha is doing, whether it is actually working beyond selection effects, and if there is anyway it could scale in a way that all the other education initiatives seemed to fail to do.
I first heard about Alpha in May 2024, and in the absence of randomized-controlled clarity, I did what any moderately obsessive parent with three elementary-aged kids and an itch for data would do: I moved the family across the country to Austin for a year and ran the experiment myself (unfortunately, despite trying my best we never managed to have identical twins, so I stopped short of running a proper control group. My wife was less disappointed than I was).
Since last autumn I’ve collected the sort of on-the-ground detail that doesn’t surface in press releases, or is available anywhere online: long chats with founders, curriculum leads, “guides” (not teachers), Brazilian Zoom coaches, sceptical parents, ecstatic parents, and the kids who live inside the Alpha dashboard – including my own. I hope this seven-part review can help share what the program actually is and that this review is more open minded than the critics, but is something that would never get past an Alpha public relations gatekeeper:
- Starting Point: My Assumptions: how my views on elite private schools, tutoring and acceleration shaped the experiment (and this essay). WHAT is the existing education environment.
- A Short History of Alpha: from billionaire-funded microschool to charter aspirations. HOW Alpha came to be.
- How Alpha Works Part 1: Under the Hood: What does “2-hour learning” actually look like – what is the product and the science behind the product? HOW is Alpha getting kids to learn faster (Spoiler: “Two hour learning AI learning” closer to three hours, with a 5:1 teacher:student ratio and zero “generative AI”).
- How Alpha Works Part 2: Incentives & Motivation: The secret sauce that doesn’t get mentioned in the PR copy, but I have discovered is at least as important as the fancy technology. The “other HOW” that no one is talking about.
- How Alpha is Measured: Effectiveness: The science says it should work, but how do you measure if it is working? How is the vaunted “2.6x” number calculated? WHAT data is Alpha using to make its claims and what does that data actually say?
- Why this time might be different: Most promising educational initiatives fail to have impact when expanded beyond their initial studies. Bryan Caplan might argue this is because most education education is just signaling anyway (“The Case Against Education“). He also argues that most parental interventions have no impact (“Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids“) – He claims that how kids turn out is a combination of genetics and non-shared environment (randomness; nothing to do with parenting choices). How can we reconcile Caplan’s buttoned-up data with the idea that the “parenting choice” to educate your kids differently (like with Alpha) might result in different outcomes than would be expected from genetics alone? WHY could Alpha work?
- What Comes Next? The Scaling Problem: The Alpha founders have a vision of completely re-inventing the way the world serves education. But even if Alpha works, it is up against a history of education programs that were never able to scale. It is also going to face resistance for being “weird”. WHAT comes next?
After twelve months I’m persuaded that Alpha is doing something remarkable — but that almost everyone, including Alpha’s own copywriting team, is describing it wrong:
- It isn’t genuine two-hour learning: most kids start school at 8:30am, start working on the “two-hour platform” sometime between 9am-930am and are occupied with academics until noon-1230pm. They also blend in “surges” from time to time to squeeze in more hours on the platform.
- It isn’t AI in the way we have been thinking about it since the “Attention is all you need” paper. There is no “generative AI” powered by OpenAI, Gemini or Claude in the platform the kids use – it is closer to “turbocharged spreadsheet checklist with a spaced-repetition algorithm”
- It definitely isn’t teacher-free: Teachers have been rebranded “guides”, and while their workload is different than a traditional school, they are very important – and both the quantity and quality are much higher than traditional schools.
- The bundle matters: it’s not just the learning platform on its own. A big part of the product’s success is how the school has set up student incentives and the culture they have built to make everything work together
… Yet the core claim survives: Since they started in October my children have been marching through and mastering material roughly three times faster than their age-matched peers (and their own speed prior to the program). I am NOT convinced that an Alpha-like program would work for every child, but I expect, for roughly 30-70% of children it could radically change how fast they learn, and dramatically change their lives and potential.
March 4, 2025
“Rare metals” are not really rare at all
On the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, John Ringo explains why the US doesn’t exploit its own vast reserves of “rare metals”:
I love every single time someone goes ‘CHINA HAS A LOCK ON RARE METALS! WE NEED TO ALLY WITH COUNTRY X TO GET RARE METALS! WE NEED RARE METALS!’
The US has huge deposits of pretty much everything we need. Lithium? Got it. Neodymium? Got it. Silver? Spades. Montana’s practically made of it.
The reason we don’t mine it here is the stupid ways our laws are written and allowing the Chinese to play us.
There’s an area in TX that has as much neodymium as the Chinese deposits that supply 98% of the world’s neodymium. (Critical material in rare earth magnets which are in turn critical in … so many things. Drones. Electric cars. Etc.)
There’s even a registered mine. Which was open.
Why is it closed?
The Chinese drop the prices below production cost (dumping) every time they open. Then jack the price and play political games with it when it closes.
There’s a silver mine in Montana (critical in modern solar) which has been trying to open for FIFTEEN YEARS.
Why can’t it open?
Tied up in environmental lawsuits because Congress won’t amend the EPA act that allows anyone to sue for any reason whatsoever and damn having mining or manufacturing WE DON’T NEED THAT WE NEED TO SAVE THE WORLD!
AND SLAVA UKRAINE YOU MAGA BASTARDS! TRUMP IS PUTIN’S COCK HOLSTER! WE NEED TO MANUFACTURE MORE WEAPONS TO SEND TO UKRAINE BUT ONLY IN A PERFECTLY ENVIRONMENTAL FASHION!
‘Environmental’ emphasis on the ‘mental’.
Autarchy is the idea of a country neither importing nor exporting. Just keep everything in the country. Ourselves alone.
A few have tried it from time to time. India did at one point.
Nobody can do it. There’s ‘something’ that you need from outside.
Except the US. We more or less need some tropical stuff. Like coffee, tea, sugar. Palm oil. (Super important in soap.)
But we can, in reality, even dispense with tree rubber. We can make it all from artificial.
Which comes from oil.
And we have enough oil. Thank a fracker. We’ve got enough oil in Southwest Texas to supply the WORLD for a thousand years.
(Touch expensive compared to Persian Gulf. But the price is constantly coming down.)
All we need to do is change laws, and we can almost go it without any other country. Without import or export.
I’m not suggesting we do.
But I am suggesting we dedicate some serious attention to things like China manipulating trade to ensure they have a lock on rare metals.
That we prioritize internal production.
That we decouple critical issues from other countries.
Cause the way the world is going, we’re reaching a point we’re gonna have to go it alone and if we have allies and trade partners, I’d suggest they be in the Western Hemisphere.
Cause those fuckers cross the pond be crazy.
Fifteen years ago, Tim Worstall explained why China’s rare earth monopoly won’t stand up in the long run.
May 31, 2024
How To Install a Pipeline Under a Railroad
Practical Engineering
Published Feb 20, 2024I’m on location to document the installation of a water transmission line below two railroad tracks.
Huge thanks to our project partners!
Owner: Crystal Clear Special Utility District
General Contractor: ACP
(more…)
February 5, 2024
Sitzkrieg on the southern border
Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds on the stand-off between Texas governor Greg Abbot and President Joe Biden over the flood of illegal immigrants coming across the US-Mexican border:
So the war over the border between Texas and the Biden Administration is now in the “Sitzkrieg” stage. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has essentially declared war on illegal immigration. He invoked Article I Section 10 of the United States Constitution, which forbids states from declaring war except when “actually invaded” (or in such imminent danger as to admit of no delay) and, by implication, allows them to declare war when that happens. He also invoked the Guarantee Clause of Article IV, which requires the federal government to protect the states against invasion.
Abbott’s legal argument is that since he’s being invaded, he’s entitled to respond, and since the federal government is defaulting on its obligations it has no business – it’s basically stopped from – complaining. There was a lot of huffing and puffing at the time, with members of Congress calling on President Biden to federalize the Texas National Guard and the like, but basically, nothing happened. The Supreme Court vacated an injunction forbidding the Border Patrol from cutting the barbed wire that Texas had installed along the border, but – contrary to many media reports – didn’t rule that what Texas had done was illegal, or order Texas to stop policing the border.
Now not much is going on. The big complaints about immigration are mostly coming from outside Texas, places like New York City where illegal immigrants beat police with impunity, being released without bail after being arrested. (The usual endgame for this sort of thing in other societies has been death squads, organized either by police or by police-adjacent groups, taking out those whom the legal system cannot or will not control; we’ll see what happens in New York City.)
But next month Texas’s law allowing the state to apprehend and effectively deport illegals will go into effect, and that’s when the sitzkrieg is likely to end. Following are my (very) preliminary thoughts.
To me what’s astonishing is how unpopular with everyone the immigration policies of the Administration – and a good chunk of the GOP – are. Open borders are unpopular with blacks, whites, rural and urban voters, and, really, just a vast bipartisan majority. But like “climate change”, another priority of the ruling class without matching popular support, the borders stay open.
Why? Because our ruling class seeks, in Bertolt Brecht’s famous phrase, “to dissolve the populace and elect another”. As Elon Musk tweeted:
Musk’s comments met with the usual outrage, but Democrats have pretty much touted this as the plan for years. Indeed, it goes back to Ruy Teixeira’s “Emerging Democratic Majority” strategy, though it’s been accelerated in recent years. (And Teixeira himself has retreated from that plan). Sure, naturalization takes years – though they may speed that up, as it’s just a matter of statute – and there have also been some moves to allow non-citizens to vote anyway. Think that’s unlikely? Maybe, but how many things are happening these days that seemed impossibly unlikely a few years ago? And it’s a long game; a bunch of Democratic voters in 5 or 6 years will suit them fine.
January 27, 2024
Flashpoint: Texas
Theophilus Chilton wonders if you’re ready for a full-blown Constitutional crisis:
I’m sure that by now, we’re all aware of what is continuing to take place down in Texas. Far from backing down in his standoff with FedGov over the seizure of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass and subsequent expulsion of federal agents, Gov. Abbott has directed the state’s National Guard to continue interdicting illegal immigrants. Indeed, in response to the recent SCOTUS decision allowing the Feds to dismantle the razor wire Texas installed, they’ve simply installed more, in direct defiance of the wishes of the Regime. The Regime has now responded by giving Abbott and Texas an ultimatum — restore control of the park to the Federal government by the afternoon of January 26, or … well … something. Whether the governor ultimately continues to tell the Feds to get bent remains to be seen, but so far the trend is looking pretty good.
Of course, it helps that — for once — Republicans across the country have actually found a little courage to support doing what’s right. As of writing this, the Republican governors of 25 other states have all issued statements of support for Texas’ position. Hence, there are now an outright majority of states whose executives (who control their various National and State Guards) are publicly backing Texan efforts to secure our border. Many of these governors have explicitly cited the Biden administration’s continued abandonment of the federal government’s constitutional duty to protect the several states from invasion and the constitutional right of the states to act in their own defence as sovereign entities in their own right.
Needless to say, this is a constitutional crisis that would not have been conceivable even twenty years ago (well, except for this one movie that seems to have been amazingly prescient). Since 1865, the doctrine of absolute federal supremacy has been in force and the balance of power between the state and national governments has inexorably trended in Washington, DC’s favour. Occasional spurts of opposition to the contrary, most of the previous incipient talk by states about “reining in the federal government” generally proved to be all words and no action. On a few things (e.g. marijuana legalisation), the Regime allowed states to “oppose” federal policy if these were policies that the Regime wanted to change anywise but couldn’t “officially” at the federal level. But on anything that was a true Regime priority, FedGov brooked no dissent. So it is now, but the calculus has changed. What would have been impossible in 2003 is now on the verge of happening in 2023.
This all highlights the fundamental illegitimacy of our current federal government. There is no moral or legal case to be made to justify the actions of the Biden administration. The federal Constitution both enjoins the federal government to protect the states from foreign invasion (which being overrun with millions of foreigners breaking our laws most certainly counts as) and also grants the states the right to protect their own borders and sovereignty. Instead of doing this, the Biden administration has been purposefully inviting hordes of migrants to enter this country. Indeed, this is being encouraged in contravention to statutory federal law as well. Further, if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is correct (and he almost assuredly is), the administration has even been partnering with criminal cartels to smuggle illegals into this country. All in all, there is absolutely no justification to be credibly made for the Regime’s actions and anyone who supports them are in opposition to the Constitution, the laws, and the people of this land.
Despite the fevered ravings of various progressive “Christians” on social media, the moral argument for allowing the Regime to throw the gates open is nonsense. Indeed, the whole attempt to craft a “biblical” argument for open borders is simple-minded and ignorant of the relevant scriptural and historical context. Simply put, the Bible’s approach to “the stranger” falls into line with common ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean modes of hospitality that were meant to “tame” the foreigner and integrate him into a society, thus preventing him from causing disruption to that society. If that couldn’t be accomplished, then the “inhospitable foreigner” was either to be expelled or eliminated. Needless to say, this applied only to individuals or small family groups — large masses of foreigners attempting to enter an ancient country would have been rightly recognised as an invasion and dealt with accordingly.
However, the illegitimacy of the current Regime and its actions alone can’t explain why the Republicans have closed ranks so precipitously. After all, Republican politicians are not exactly known for their intestinal fortitude when faced with opposition of any kind. Yet, even Northeastern moderate squishes like New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu have signed onto supporting Texas in this. Something changed that has caused the GOP, almost as a whole, to support this, either openly or tacitly.
January 5, 2024
Qatar’s Aggies
In The Free Press, Eli Lake discusses the deal between Texas A&M and the Qatari government that gives the Qatar Foundation — run by the Qatari royal family — full ownership of any intellectual property developed at the Qatari campus of the university:
Texas A&M’s Nuclear Engineering and Science Center in College Station, Texas.
Photo via Texas A&M
What does Qatar get for its investment in U.S. universities? The answer may surprise you. In addition to the prestige and the influence of affiliating one’s national philanthropy with elite schools, Qatar is also accumulating the kind of technical research that was once the prize of American universities.
Consider Texas A&M University, one of the best places in the country to study nuclear engineering. Last month, The Free Press obtained exclusive access to a copy of the latest contract between Texas A&M and the Qatar Foundation that shows all of the intellectual property developed at the university’s campus in Doha belongs to the Qatar Foundation, a national philanthropy owned by the country’s royal family.
“The Qatar Foundation shall own the entire right, title, and interest in all Technology and Intellectual Property developed at (Texas A&M University Qatar) or under the auspices of its Research Program, other than those developed by non-TAMUQ employees and without financial support from the Qatar Foundation or any of its affiliates,” says the contract, dated May 25, 2021.
This kind of arrangement is common for large research universities in America. But TAMUQ is not your ordinary university. It is entirely funded by the Qatar Foundation. Kelly Brown, a spokeswoman for Texas A&M, told me that Qatar “pays for all faculty and staff salaries” as well as the physical campus, labs and equipment, housing, transportation, and travel allowances for professors.
It’s no small matter. The intellectual property generated by Texas A&M University in Qatar, or TAMUQ, includes highly sensitive research in a variety of fields ranging from computer science to bioengineering. Last year, TAMUQ inked an agreement to develop projects with a subsidiary of Barzan Holdings, Qatar’s largest arms manufacturer.
Andre Conradie, the CEO of the joint venture between Barzan and Germany’s Rheinmetall, said at the time, “This partnership will encourage the development of technological and operational capabilities to enhance military protection.”
As one of the country’s premier schools in nuclear engineering, Texas A&M has access to two nuclear reactors in Texas not affiliated with the U.S. government. In December, the National Nuclear Security Administration renewed a contract for the university, along with the University of California and Battelle Memorial Institute, to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which involves oversight of teams who design and maintain nuclear weapons for the U.S. government.
October 25, 2023
1847 Walker Revolver: the Texas Behemoth
Forgotten Weapons
Published 18 Nov 2015The Colt 1847 Walker revolver was a massive 4 1/2 pound handgun made for Samuel Walker of the US Mounted Rifles (he also served with the Texas Rangers) as a way to equip mounted troops with greater firepower than single-shot carbines. The Walker was the first true martial handgun made by Colt, and despite its problems (nearly a third of the guns procured by the military would be returned to Colt for repairs, and more than a few literally blew up) it would save Colt from bankruptcy after the commercial failure of his Paterson revolver of 1836.
Only 1100 of these guns were made, 1000 for the military and a further 100 for commercial sale. The military ones were issued to five companied of Mounted Rifles, and can be identified by their factory unit marks for Companies A through E (this particular gun is a Company A one). Roughly half of them were delivered in time to see active use in the Mexican-American War, but all of them would see use for many years later in the hands of the US military, the Texas Rangers, the Confederate military, and in civilian hands. The design would evolve into the Colt Dragoon revolvers and ultimately lead to the 1851 Navy and 1860 Army designs — arguably the most iconic muzzle loading revolvers ever made.
May 17, 2023
Texas Chili & The Chili Queens of San Antonio
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 16 May 2023
(more…)
September 7, 2022
Tamale Pie: What did WW2 Food Ration Stamps Look Like?
YesterKitchen
Published 3 Nov 2019I hope you enjoy this special trip back in food history!! WW2 brought food rationing to America and American housewives needed recipes to accommodate the scarcity. Never fear, warm, hearty dishes such as this were created to feed the nation. This Tamale Pie is classic war ration cooking and is just YUM!
(more…)
May 29, 2022
We’ve evolved to the point that you don’t even need to turn the page for Gell-Mann Amnesia to kick in
Chris Bray has an almost unbelievable example of Gell-Mann Amnesia … literally on the same page of the site, two stories show how un-self-aware — and reflexively critical of non-progressives — the media can be:
Take exactly the same argument about exactly the same event and wedge it into two very different frames. Watch the result.
Here’s Politico, today, attending the NRA convention in Texas in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a school …
… and finding that NRA members are still gun-addled idiots who deflect concerns about guns by inventing a stupid fantasy argument — a conspiracy theory! — about mental illness:
Here, amid acres of guns and tactical gear inside a cavernous convention hall, the proximate cause of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was not a rifle, but mental illness, shadowy forces of evil or, as one man in a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt put it, the “destruction of our children” by the teachings of the left.
These idiots, can you believe that? They were actually dumb enough to argue that the rifle didn’t cause the shooting, and instead they blamed — wait for it, because OMFG — mental illness. What morons! Imagine being so caught up in stupid far-right conspiracy theories that you’d blame a school shooting on mental illness.
Okay, now. Watch this.
On the very same day, Politico posted this story, right underneath the NRA story on the front page:
And this is what Politico says those professors found:
POLITICO: Can you take us through the profile of mass shooters that emerged from your research?
Peterson: There’s this really consistent pathway. Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. That turns into a really identifiable crisis point where they’re acting differently. Sometimes they have previous suicide attempts.
The professors go on to say that the start of the solution to the crisis of school shootings is to improve the quality of childhood mental health services: “We need to build teams to investigate when kids are in crisis and then link those kids to mental health services. The problem is that in a lot of places, those services are not there. There’s no community mental health and no school-based mental health.”
Same publication, same day, same page.
February 28, 2022
The History of Pecan Pie
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 16 Nov 2021Support the Channel with Patreon ► https://www.patreon.com/tastinghistory
Merch ► crowdmade.com/collections/tastinghistory
Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/tastinghist…
Twitter ► https://twitter.com/TastingHistory1
Tiktok ► TastingHistory
Reddit ► r/TastingHistory
Discord ► https://discord.gg/d7nbEpy
Amazon Wish List ► https://amzn.to/3i0mwGtSend mail to:
Tasting History
PO Box 766
Burbank, CA 91503SOURCES**
The Pecan: A History of America’s Native Nut by James McWilliams: https://amzn.to/3mQ2JxJ
Antoine of Oak Alley by Katy Morlas Shannon: https://amzn.to/3kf6sTG**Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Tasting History will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Each purchase made from these links will help to support this channel with no additional cost to you. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available.
Subtitles: Jose Mendoza | IG @ worldagainstjose | @Ketchup with Max and Jose
PHOTO CREDITS
Dickey’s BBQ Pecan Pie: Willis Lam, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…, via Wikimedia Commons
Pecan Tree: By Bruce Marlin – Own work: http://www.cirrusimage.com/tree_pecan…, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index…
Oak Alley Plantation: Michael McCarthy via flickr, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…#tastinghistory #pecanpie #thanksgiving
February 14, 2022
Why SpaceX Cares About Dirt
Practical Engineering
Published 2 Nov 2021Why do structures big and small sink into the ground, and what can we do to stop it?
Before the so-called Starbase supported crazy test launches of the Starship spaceflight program, it was just a pile of dirt. After nearly two years, they hauled most of that soil back off the site for disposal. It might seem like a curious way to start a construction project, but foundations are critically important. Building that giant dirt pile was a clever way to prevent these facilities from sinking into the ground over time.
Practical Engineering is a YouTube channel about infrastructure and the human-made world around us. It is hosted, written, and produced by Grady Hillhouse. We have new videos posted regularly, so please subscribe for updates. If you enjoyed the video, hit that ‘like’ button, give us a comment, or watch another of our videos!
CONNECT WITH ME
____________________________________
Website: http://practical.engineering
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HillhouseGrady
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/practicalen…
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PracticalEng…
Patreon: http://patreon.com/PracticalEngineeringSPONSORSHIP INQUIRIES
____________________________________
Please email my agent at practicalengineering@standard.tvDISCLAIMER
____________________________________
This is not engineering advice. Everything here is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Contact an engineer licensed to practice in your area if you need professional advice or services. All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes.SPECIAL THANKS
____________________________________
This video is sponsored by Morning Brew.
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Shutterstock, and Videoblocks.
Tonic and Energy by Elexive is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6fBP…
Producer/Writer/Host: Grady Hillhouse
Assistant Producer: Wesley Crump
