Jeff TK

And that creativity was impressive.

It's such a simple solution, but very effective and so different from how everyone else handled this problem.

Their short-term impact was producing the materials for 500M masks, but I hope their long-term impact is much larger.

Showing that in an emergency, ordinary people thinking creatively about their specific situation can find solutions no one else would come up with for them.

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This does stretch it a little.

While this is the only case I could find for a factory, there were several utilities that did things along these lines.

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This article was narrated by Type 3 Audio for Less Wrong.

It was published on February 27, 2026.

Images are included in the podcast episode description.