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Disease

What goes wrong, and what a society decides to do about it.

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10:23

Pasteurization

Louis Pasteur · 1864

Pasteurization is a calibrated thermal intervention that stops microbial spoilage in liquids by killing vegetative bacteria and deactivating enzymes — without sterilising. It works because Pasteur proved microbes cause spoilage, not oxidation or time. Its limits are strict: spores survive, and efficacy depends on uniform heat delivery to every particle. It changed food safety from craft tradition to measurable process — but only where temperature can be controlled, verified, and sustained.

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9:37

Crucial

Crucial was the brand under which Micron Technology sold its consumer memory and storage products, until the brand was discontinued in 2026.
8:44

Personal computer

A personal computer is a computer designed for personal use and operated directly by its user, rather than shared through time-sharing on a mainframe or minicomputer.
9:10

Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt is a hardware interface, developed by Intel with Apple, that carries PCI Express, DisplayPort and power over a single cable to connect external peripherals to a computer.
9:46

Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics · 1981

Silicon Graphics built the first practical hardware-accelerated 3D graphics systems. Its Geometry Engine — designed at Stanford under ARPA — delivered ~6 million geometry operations per second. It pioneered scalable cc-NUMA architectures in the mid-1990s. But its reliance on proprietary MIPS and failed transitions to Itanium and Xeon eroded its position as PC graphics commoditised. It filed for bankruptcy in 2009.