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Could not play NYTimes video, but here is a Gemini AI Summary with related youtube videos at the bottom. Japan avoided a major disaster after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit Kumamoto Prefecture due to its stringent national seismic codes, aggressive building retrofitting programs, and community emergency readiness. Following a devastating earthquake a decade prior, local governments aggressively subsidized reinforcement projects. By 2024, approximately 90 percent of buildings in Kumamoto met official earthquake-resistance standards, allowing the vast majority of structures to withstand the violent tremors. [1, 2, 3]

Key Engineering and Safety Measures

According to reporting from The New York Times, several critical factors kept modern infrastructure intact:

• Steel-Anchored Concrete Foundations: Modern structures feature deeply anchored bases to absorb shock.
• Heavy-Duty Metal Connectors: Essential locking mechanisms keep building frames securely together during intense shaking.
• Lightweight Structural Upgrades: Subsidies helped residents replace heavy ceramic roof tiles with lighter materials and reinforce wooden supports.
• Code Compliance: Rigorous building codes meant structures behaved well even when built on highly unstable soil. [2]

The "Double Disaster" Challenge

While the physical infrastructure successfully averted high casualties, the region faced a severe secondary crisis. Because the quake struck during the height of the blistering summer months, local officials designated it a "double disaster" due to extreme heat. Rescuers and displaced citizens battled 100-degree temperatures in shelters with limited air conditioning, leading to dozens of hospitalizations for heatstroke. [1, 2, 4, 5] If you want to look closer at Japan's engineering, I can provide more details on how national building codes have evolved or explain the specific differences between seismic resistance, damping, and base isolation systems. Which would you like to explore? [6]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com [2] https://www.nytimes.com [3] https://www.wsoctv.com [4] https://www.pressreader.com [5] https://www.nytimes.com [6] https://housingjapan.com ##Related YouTube videos: Related to Tue Jul 28, 2026 Japan earthquake

use Google lens on iPhone. What is the app and how do I use it to identify a plant using the camera? (or translate a sign)

Google Lens is not a standalone app on iPhone it is part ot the Google app and it can also be invoked from Google Photos. Note the developer for both apps is Google. You can access them for free without installing anything else— download the Google app from the App Store if you don't already have it. Google Photos is also available there.

Magnets. No compressor, no gases, fewer moving parts. The effect was observed 150 years earlier but could not be implemented. Hope it is adopted immediately into Tesla production lines. might even provide heat where needed assuming method is reversible.

A team of physicists at the Institute of Physics, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, has built a revolutionary new cooling machine that could make the conventional refrigerator obsolete. This solid-state magnetic refrigerator uses no compressor, no chemical refrigerant gases, and almost no moving parts. Instead, it relies on the magnetocaloric effect—a phenomenon first observed in 1881 where certain metals heat up when exposed to a magnetic field and cool down when the field is removed. By layering magnetic alloys directly against a highly heat-conductive solid material, the Chinese team eliminated the fluid bottleneck that held back magnetic refrigeration for decades. Their hybrid magnetic regenerator, described in a paper published in the journal The Innovation in May 2024 by researchers Yuan Lin, Jing Wang, and Baogen Shen, moves heat instantly from solid to solid with no water, no pipes, and no pumps.

The implications extend far beyond the kitchen. Current vapor compression refrigeration, invented in the 1800s and unchanged for nearly a century, relies on compressors that wear out and refrigerant gases like R-134a, which has a global warming potential 1,430 times that of carbon dioxide according to the Rocky Mountain Institute. The new solid-state cooling technology could replace noisy, gas-leaking compressors in kitchen fridges, air conditioners, and car cooling systems. It could also serve as a precision heat scalpel for cooling tiny hot spots on smartphone chips, electric vehicle batteries, and massive data center servers. While the Beijing lab prototype, which uses rare earth metals like gadolinium and powerful specialized magnets, still faces hurdles in cost, manufacturing scalability, and energy efficiency before reaching store shelves, it represents a genuine breakthrough that could spark the biggest quiet revolution in home appliances in a century.

This video corrects historical misconceptions surrounding Apache marriage customs by contrasting ethnographic records with their inaccurate portrayal in Hollywood Westerns. The creator argues that these films intentionally erased the empowerment of Apache women to create a false narrative of "savagery."

Key themes and truths discussed:

• Matrilocality & Ownership: Apache society was matrilocal, meaning husbands moved to the wife’s camp (17:00). Women owned the home, the food gathered, and could dissolve a marriage simply by placing the husband's belongings outside the wikiup (18:00-19:30).
• Divorce & Protection: Apache women enjoyed rights to divorce and child custody that far predated similar legal protections for women in American society (20:00-21:30).
• Social Structure: Marriages were viewed as contracts between extended families rather than just individual romantic unions (6:00). Customs like the sororate and levirate ensured family stability and the welfare of children (9:00-10:20).
• Sacred Rites: The na ih es (Sunrise Ceremony) was a vital, spiritually central event for young girls, which the government and missionaries attempted to suppress (14:20-15:30).
• The "Hollywood Erase": The video contends that captivity narratives and discriminatory policies systematically dismantled the memory of these complex, protective social structures to align with colonial biases (22:50-24:00).

A lawsuit filed by The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation challenges Donald Trump's Truth Social's "Truth API" plan, which would charge up to $100,000 monthly for early access to his posts.

Critics allege this scheme violates the First Amendment by infringing on equal access to government information and constitutes self-enrichment, potentially amounting to extortion and an abuse of presidential power. The lawsuit argues that allowing the president to profit from public statements undermines democratic principles.