A radio telescope, and a Twitch stream from 1986.
23rd January 2023
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Heads up! This newsletter is more than two years old. Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed. Please handle with care.
Hello!
In this week's video, I'm still in New South Wales, with a video that was originally planned to film in April 2020. Needless to say, that didn't happen, so almost three years later: I took a ride on a moving radio telescope.
In this week's video, I'm still in New South Wales, with a video that was originally planned to film in April 2020. Needless to say, that didn't happen, so almost three years later: I took a ride on a moving radio telescope.
And it's a cracker of a Lateral episode this week, as Taha, Melissa and Sabrina from Answer in Progress take on questions about baffling bans, Australian emblems and stamp sales.
Other things I've found while researching (and while slacking off) this week:
- Linus Boman makes really interesting videos on graphic design. To start, I'd recommend his video King Charles III's new cypher is a design classic, but there's a lot of other options on his channel if that's not your sort of thing.
- Rollie Williams continues to absolutely knock it out of the park: in his words, it's time to let coal die. It's a bold choice to make jokes about mining massacres, but somehow (I think!) he's able to pull it off.
- And a friend pointed me to this clip of Children's BBC
continuity from 1986 and asked: "doesn't this look a bit like a Twitch stream"? To explain for those who didn't grow up in the UK in that area: 1986 was the very early days of the "broom cupboard". The children's presenter didn't have a studio, just a repurposed continuity announcer voiceover booth. And just like a Twitch stream, in this clip you'll see:
- someone whose job is to be friendly and fill in time
- with an in-vision microphone, and equipment they're controlling themselves
- in-jokes that have built up over time
- a studio that's steadily being populated with things sent in by viewers. Plus ça
change.
- Bonus related clip: a behind-the-scenes tour of the "broom cupboard", showing things from the presenter's view!
What about the
rest of the internet? It's been a good week for interesting articles:
- "That girl is going to get herself killed" (some strong language) is a memoir of working at Glacier
National Park. I was hooked from the opening paragraphs, if only for the line "statistically, one of you will die this summer".
- A history of the Simpsons "monorail" episode,
which is now thirty years old, as told by the lead writer, Conan O'Brien.
- The newsletter Vittles continues to have great stories: this time, the radical design of PizzaExpress, about how one chain restaurant changed how Britain eats out.
And finally, I was reminded this week of one of the greatest comedy sketches I've ever seen: Shaun Micallef's wine cellar. Don't read the comments first, don't even look at any related video suggestions first, just let it play: yes, it's a trick that's been done before, but rarely for comedy.
Next week: a lot of wind.
All the best,
— Tom
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