Some recent good YouTubes

Psst, hey, you gotta watch these. They're all my favorite YouTube videos of the past few months:

DIY backyard wave pool?!

The multi-time world champion of surfing, Kelly Slater, is famous for being the first guy to build a world-class artificial wave pool that rivaled the best natural waves in the world. He did it to prove it was possible, and probably to someday incorporate it into competitions like the Olympics.

Slater's wave pool started a revolution, but also required $30M and his whole company to build. Over the past few years, a bunch of pro-level wave pools have started opening up all over the world. They're expensive, high tech, and require massive amounts of energy to run them. I've heard typical rates at smaller pools start at hundreds of dollars per hour and go up to several thousand dollars per hour. Kelly Slater's pool charges about $250 per wave you ride!

So I thought it was incredible when I saw the two videos here uploaded by surfers I follow. They found two engineers who had a few acres in Arizona and wanted to replicate Kelly Slater's ideas but on a much cheaper scale. So they grabbed off-the-shelf parts made for nuclear cooling tower systems and wired up some computers to control everything and now they create custom waves in their own pool for about $20,000, all-in. If you watch the videos you can see surfers as they help the builders develop it into a perfect spot for barrels and air time.

The truth about EV towing

I love this car nerd engineer guy and have followed him for years, but this video is like a whole episode of Mythbusters with how much information it packs in. He tests out a bunch of myths, hunches, and thoughts he had about towing with a gas truck versus an electric truck and what blew me away was how much wind resistance plays into EV efficiency when I thought weight was way more important.

Every Pacific Electric Railway station left in Los Angeles

This one broke my heart a little bit. From the late 1800s to the early 1950s, Southern California had the largest rail system in the world and it stretched in every direction with over 1,000 miles of track. My mom was young when they finally closed it all up but she would tell me stories of how they'd take the train from Pasadena to other parts of SoCal when she was little. This video unearths a few dozen stations still left standing as well has shows archival shots of what once was.

Lots has been written about the conspiracy theories of why the red lines went way (many say it was the car companies or tire companies) but ultimately I think it was a money-losing operation for the private electric company behind it. Still, I can't help but wonder, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, why the state of California didn't step in and keep it running as an area metro system.

Everyone in my family that ever got to ride the red lines loved it and I think the city, the state, and frankly, the entire country would be a very different looking place today if this system remained and continued to let everyone in Southern California to get around easily and cheaply without a car.

Disneyland's color story

I love Disneyland for the experience design of it all, and the Hey Brickey! channel consistently puts out unique videos about all the thoughtful touches at the parks. This one seemed too simple and obvious at first: sure, each land has a color scheme, that's obvious. But he breaks down all the ways Disney uses that framework to design elements in every sector and you realize how it's effective at setting the mood and how you feel in each space in the park. I always come away from these videos knowing a lot more thought that went into the design of Disneyland than I ever expected.

An ebike/motorcycle rider visits China

I follow a lot of mountain bike and ebike YouTubers and this one caught my eye because it's a guy from San Diego flying to China to check out a new "ebike" (more like motorcycle). I've heard a lot of people describe big cities in China as living 20 years in the future and being Blade Runner-esque, but Chongqing's multi-tier layout and dense population really does seem like it's from a far-off time.

I honestly don't dig the electric motorcycles this guy rides (people who say they hate ebikes often mean these kinds of "bikes" and I don't totally disagree even though I love more normal, pedal-assist ebikes) but seeing how a high tech city in China looks from his perspective was a fascinating journey.

20 (mostly 3D printed) upgrades for your desk

Fun video from the guy who designed the amazing iPhone bedside clock dock on all the ways to hide complexity in a "minimal" work desk setup. Mostly it's about 3D printing custom brackets to hide things under your desk, but it's surprisingly pleasant to watch all the clever ways he figures out how to minimize cords and chargers.

The best World Series in decades summed up

Whether you love the Dodgers or think they're ruining baseball, this year's World Series was one for the ages. This recap video comes closest to telling the whole wild story of the seven game series. As a Dodgers fan I'm still quite surprised they won as they got extremely lucky half a dozen times when the whole series could have been over with a single hit. I was happy to see the Blue Jays in the final games as I thought they were great all year but I also think the Dodgers barely squeaked out a win, showing that both teams were well-matched.

If you're hungry for even more baseball, The Insane Logistics of Baseball is a fascinating look at the mind-boggling complex mental gymnastics required to get 100 people and all their sports equipment off to 5-10 different cities in the baseball postseason. Everyone needs plane tickets and wants to stay in 5 star hotels, plus you don't know what the exact dates of any game will be until days before they're actually played. Hint: it requires dozens and dozens of hotel block reservations teams will likely have to cancel.