High tides, the Best Tom, and unauthorised crosswalks.

28th November 2022

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Hello!

I've published three new things this week!

In this week's video on the Tom Scott channel, why has no-one built a power station here yet?
Over on Plus, it's Tom Scott vs TomSka in a battle to find the Best Tom. This is one of my favourite videos from the channel this year, there's no danger and no pain but I just had a really great time.
And there's a new episode of Lateral at lateralcast.com, with the return of Dani Siller, Bill Sunderland, and Matt Parker for a second show!

What else has been going on in the world of video? Well:

Dime Store Adventures is a great up-and-coming channel that uses exhaustive research, thorough excerpts from historical sources, and on-location visits to tell great stories. Start with this great tale about the Block Island Wreckers: the enthusiasm shines through, there's a lot of due caution about how accurate sources are, and there's a deserved twist at the end. If that seems too long, though, perhaps watch the story of five strange duels.
Looking Glass Universe does the double-slit experiment at home, and it's a great demonstration: something that I sort-of knew about became something that I think I understand.
Steven Bridges is back with the second season of his card-counting diaries! This is a vlog ⁠— don't expect heavy drama yet in the first episode ⁠— but I find the tales of wins, losses, and hidden-camera footage of being "backed off" by casino employees to be fascinating.
Kids Invent Stuff is a family-oriented channel that makes children's inventions real, even if they're utterly impractical... like a giant flying vacuum-cleaning drone.

And away from video, around the rest of the internet, here's some good stuff that I've found:

Twitter account Threatening Music Notation posts innocent-looking sheet music of "Let It Snow", and asks musicians to sing it as written. The replies are joyful.
A one-person oral history of Geocities HTML Chat. This tickled some vague nostalgic memory in the back of my head: I don't think I was ever regularly there, but I'm almost certain I visited there once or twice, way back in the early days of the web.
Why are there so many Thai restaurants in America (and around the world)? Because the Thai government has a special program to establish them.
There's an AI that can play Diplomacy now. Including freeform conversations with human players. This feels to me like it should be bigger news than it is.

And finally: there are people painting unauthorised crosswalks in LA, and also in Seattle! And the cities are removing them instead of replacing or standardising them, which may well be the only legal option for all I know, but it certainly doesn't look great.

Right, that's it for now. Coming up this week: the Technical Difficulties are back! Our first video in a new run of four will go live 4pm Thursday at youtube.com/techdif — and I think this season might be the best stuff we've ever made.

All the best,

— Tom

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