Olympic Recycling | Prime Palm | Immortal Leaf - The Convo Kit #8

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Olympic Recycling

Recent Olympians competed for the eternal glory of recycled phones. Tokyo's Olympic committee collected small electronic devices from 2017-2019 to be melted into the most meta medal metal.

• 78,985 tons of recycled devices

• 70 lbs of gold, 7,716 lbs of silver, 4,850 lbs of bronze

• Global electronic waste per year: 53 million tons

Can’t wait to wear my old phone around my neck and tell everyone I’m actually Michael Phelps. Though we may not actually be Olympic athletes, yet, we can take a page from the “2020” Olympics and responsibly recycle our electronics.

Interesting Engineering has images of a pile of pre-Olympic metal.

Keys, Phone, Hand

Amazon wants a hand, and it's willing to pay $10 per unit. Some Whole Foods & Amazon One stores offer the ability to pay by scanning your palm. The technology links your biometrics to payment info and can be deleted upon request.

• Scans palm lines and vein patterns

• Amazon Go locations: 25+

• Your identity < 1 month of Amazon Prime ($12.99)

At first glance this seems like a great way to avoid misusing the wide variety of checkout technologies. Then again, you can’t change your palm like you can a credit card. Even this comically-low offer is far more than what Amazon actually values your privacy at in the event of a data breach.

More details over on Tech Crunch.

Tweeblaarkanniedood

The Welwitschia plant can live for thousands of years, in a desert. Native to the Namib desert, its remarkable resilience is thought to have stemmed from a genome duplication 86 million years ago.

• Survives on less than 2” of rainfall per year

• Its two leaves grow continuously 

• Aka Tweeblaarkanniedood = Afrikaans for “two leaves that cannot die”

Doubling your genome can lead to a lot of junk DNA. Scientists suspect DNA methylation occurred over one million years ago and removed massive amounts of that junk. We hope to translate this now-efficient genome into more resilient agriculture on our increasingly warmer planet.

Pics of the octopus-like plant available on Indian Express.

A Plane Called QueSST

NASA and Lockheed Martin’s X-59 supersonic jet uses Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) to dampen sound when flying over populated areas. Think “boom” instead of “BOOM”.

• Top speed: 925 mph (Boeing 747 cruising: 614 mph)

• Speed of sound: 767 mph

• 94' long, 29.5' wide

We haven't had a commercial supersonic flight since 2003 when the Concorde flew from New York to London in under 3 hours. X-59 only has room for a pilot, but NASA plans to bring QueSST to commercial and military aircraft. 

Timelapse video of the partial X-59 assembly.

eJet Azul

Brazilian airline Azul hopes to use Lilium electric planes by 2025. Each eJet will cost ~$4.5 million, or $1.5 million more than a similar traditional plane.

• 155 mile range

• Cruising Speed: 175 mph

• Seats seven

Azul is Portuguese for blue. Not so coincidentally, Azul was founded by the same guy that started JetBlue. David Neeleman knows how to grow an airline and has started at least 5. I could write about eVTOLs every week, but when an airline industry vet hops on board, we know it’s serious.

Check out a rendering of Lilium’s eVtol over Brazil.

Related Listen: Azul/Jet Blue founder’s interesting career path on How I Built This.

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