Downhill on a sofa, and giant walking wind-powered robots.

25th April 2022

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Hello!

This week, I'm on the road in more ways than one: in Madeira, speeding down a hill on a wicker sofa!

Other interesting things on YouTube I've found while researching (or while slacking off) this week:

Stewart Hicks is an associate professor of architecture who's nailed the the YouTube video-essay format. It's lovely to see something like The Bewildering Architecture of Indoor Cities, presented by someone with the qualifications to back up their assertions. And it's worth looking at other videos on his channel.
Theo Jansen makes the Strandebeest, giant lightweight PVC pipe constructions that walk (and now fly) across the beaches of the Netherlands, powered by nothing but the wind. If you'd like more details, Adam Savage did a good short interview with Theo a few years back. (thanks to Jorrik for the suggestion!)

Keiichi Matsuda's Hyper-Reality is an incredible bit of design fiction. It's from 2016, and you can see the concerns and fads from then in the work: gamification, "nudge" advertising, and augmented reality. But there's a story hidden underneath the many, many layers of graphics too.
If this didn't come from the official AFP News Agency channel, I'd think it was a hoax: cremation urns being stored in a robot warehouse in Japan, for mourners to recall on demand. The small number of views, the bizarre subject, the disjointed generic editing, and the "stock footage" feel that never really establishes any location or narrative: they all combine to make this seem quite unreal to me.

And elsewhere around the web:

If you didn't see the story about the YouTuber who deliberately crashed his plane for views: the FAA has revoked his permission to fly. The full PDF, linked at the bottom of the article, is worth a read.
And finally: cake is free from sales tax in the UK. Biscuits are not. Which means that every few years, some judge will have to rule: is it cake? In 2022, the question is flapjacks, and the answer is no, they're too chewy. Here's the full judgment, which (aptly) is perhaps a bit too dry.

Over the next few weeks, there should be a lot of videos coming up from around Europe; it's good to be out on the road again.

All the best,

— Tom

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