A bus that becomes a train, and the food of the future.
20th March 2023
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Hello!
In this week's video, it's a bus that transforms into a train! That's right: there's a road-rail vehicle, out in the world, that the public can ride. The catch is that it's in a fairly remote part of Japan.
In this week's video, it's a bus that transforms into a train! That's right: there's a road-rail vehicle, out in the world, that the public can ride. The catch is that it's in a fairly remote part of Japan.
Over on Lateral, it's the return of Karen from Karen Puzzles, Ashens, and Dr Becky, with questions about medical methods, musical murders, and McDonald's marketing.
What else have I found on YouTube this week?
- The "Little Shop of Horrors" Tiny Desk Concert is magical: the current Broadway cast, along with composer Alan Menken providing the introductions and stepping in to solo "Somewhere That's Green". If you know the musical,
this is absolutely worth your time.
- There's finally a behind-the-scenes for Andrew Huang's "Spacetime"! Even if you didn't see the original, it's worth watching this, to see what a dedicated indie production team can pull off on a
budget these days. (And the title is a great bit of modern clickbait!)
- Evan Hadfield's Rare Earth continues to make heartfelt, deep videos: the coolest kid in the prison camp (occasional strong language) is a
meditation on the meaning and purpose of charity, as well as documentation of something that's out of sight of most of the world.
- Kasey Chambers covers Eminem's Lose Yourself (very strong language). I'd have thought that Lose Yourself was un-cover-able: too iconic, too well-known, and too tied to the movie it came from and the artist that performed it. The first two minutes of this video might fool you into thinking it's some earnest-but-cringeworthy, well-intentioned folk singer trying to be hip. But stick with it: it's worth it.
And from around the rest of the internet:
- How did we know space was a vacuum, centuries before anyone got there?
- I'd never heard of the Farmer's Diagram before this week. It's a way to represent catastrophe aversion: in short, how much danger is society willing to tolerate?
- Spun soy protein was the "food of the future", and this article about its development, growth, and popularity collapse is well worth reading. It's a portrait of one part of the space-age optimism of the 1960s, the Jetsons future, surely, just around the corner.
- Discord, or the Death of Lore (occasional strong language) is a polemic by online archivist Jason Scott that echoes and clarifies thoughts I've had for a long time: document your stuff properly.
And finally: Chuck E. Cheese still uses floppy disks in 2023, but not for long.
All the best,
— Tom
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