Flying balls! twitching curtains! and 2000s trance.

• Ruth Aisling investigates why Olympic curling stones cost so much. Quite a few places have covered this story before — but as far as I know, no-one has actually traveled with the granite harvesters to the one single remote Scottish island where it comes from, on their first trip there since 2013! Over weeks, Ruth gets to see the preparation, the harvest, the big slicing and cutting, the shaping, and finally some stones actually in use. There's a huge amount of effort gone into this, and Ruth tells a great story. (Thanks to John for sending this over.)
   
• My little piece of privacy is a maker project from 2010, and I'm linking to it for two reasons. First, because it's a really fun project and I smiled watching it! And second, because it shows just how much YouTube maker-culture, has changed in those years. In 2024, this would be a half-hour piece with a build montage, details of the components used, shots of failures along the way, and constant narration. Maybe there'd be some cutaway jokes. And I get why that's the style now! But this is from 2010, so it has three minutes of entertainment and a link to a project write-up. I'm not saying either option is objectively better, but I do appreciate this much more efficient style.
   
• Anthony Vella's paramotor crash almost ended his life. (Extremely justified strong language.) This is not clickbait, and the content warnings at the start are no joke. I found this distressing to watch. The video length is also not padding: the desperate waits for the 911 call to be answered and transferred, and for first responders to arrive, cause more emotional affect than any dramatisation could.
   

• US pizza chain Domino's used to have a guarantee: they'd deliver your pizza in 30 minutes, or it was free. The resulting car crashes and lawsuits meant the guarantee didn't last long.
   
• There's a particular font that anyone in Britain older than 30 will know: it's used on mid-20th-century municipal buildings and in old BBC broadcasts, and is a shorthand for 'the seventies'. It's called "Festive", and this is a dive into its history.
   
• A photographer, with an enormous amount of effort, managed to take a picture of a bird flying in front of the solar eclipse.
   

And finally: when Queen Margarethe II abdicated at the start of the year, Danish national broadcaster DR1 threw her a big 'thank you' party. I'd like to think she enjoyed Safri Duo performing their 2000 trance hit Played-A-Live (The Bongo Song) with the Danish military drum corps.

All the best,

— Tom