Clean air, lunar time, and robots falling over.
30th January 2023
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Hello!
In this week's video, the tour down under continues, taking in both Victoria and Tasmania as I find out why Australia bottles up its air.
In this week's video, the tour down under continues, taking in both Victoria and Tasmania as I find out why Australia bottles up its air.
And this week's
Lateral features SuperSaf, Ali Spagnola and Mehdi from ElectroBOOM, who are facing questions about scientific statues, slashed screens, and a silly sequence.
Oh, and for anyone who's been frustrated with the adverts in Lateral: so was I and the rest of the team! We've moved to a new (and, hopefully, better) host and ad provider.
If all goes well, it'll be seamless to listeners, but if your podcast app suddenly tries to re-download a couple of episodes, that's why.
What else is going on around YouTube this week? I've been on the road so much I've barely had time to do any research, but I did enjoy these two videos:
- Step here, launch 20 feet. Tyler Bell reinvents air rams from scratch, and tries to be a stunt performer at home. I'm always in awe of people with the skills to make big physical stuff like this, and to make it (relatively) safely.
- A fascinating short documentary on cochineal: the cactus bugs that make up a $35 billion industry, and the people who farm them.
- After Boston Dynamics' impressive video of their robot throwing and catching objects: here are the outtakes of a robot repeatedly falling over.
- And related, from a while back: the Corridor Crew explain why those Boston Dynamics videos can't be faked with CGI.
And away from video this week, interesting articles
and posts:
- What time is it on the moon? With countries and companies planning lunar missions, it's time to develop a Coordinated Lunar Time. For once, we might be able to define a time
standard by deliberation, rather than historical accident.
- How airports catch illicit radioactive cargo (and, specifically, one particularly bit of cargo that went through London Heathrow recently).
- "Crunch" is a great read on how growers are breeding new and better varieties of apple. Apples in the 2020s are obviously, qualitatively better than they were when I was a kid, and that's down to a combination of science and market forces.
And finally, why do we all need subtitles now?
All the best,
— Tom
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