The Shweeb, and that time I nearly violated the Geneva Convention.

6th February 2023

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 Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed.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, and kia ora! This week on my channel, I'm in New Zealand, because Google give the Shweeb $1,000,000 and I have absolutely no idea why. It's a fun thing to ride, though.

And over on this week's episode of Lateral, Karen 'Karen Puzzles' Kavett, Rebecca 'Dr Becky' Smethurst and Stuart 'Ashens' Ashen take on questions about political powercuts, red rectangles, and astonishing anvils.

And there are a lot of links this week! Starting with other good stuff I've found on YouTube:

Steve Mould investigates a microscope that uses touch.
A pleasing air traffic control visualisation of FedEx planes dodging severe storms and tornadoes.
Scott Savage recreates Q*Bert's voice from scratch. I'm not usually one for breakdowns of old hardware, but this charmed me.
I've never seen the Improvised Shakespeare Company before: an entire five-minute Shakespearean comedy from a single suggestion. I've no idea how someone could train their mind to be able to produce this on the spot, but I suspect the answer is lots and lots of practice. (Contains adult jokes, but then Shakespeare had plenty of those too.)

And away from video, some things I've found while researching and reading this week:

If you saw the news about the loss and recovery of that tiny radioactive source in Australia: here's the press release on how they tracked it down with a 360° gamma-ray camera.
My First Flame is from 1994: a long, pontificating New Yorker article that could be summed up as "someone was mean to me by e-mail". But reading it with nearly thirty years of hindsight, well: the past is a different country.
Fox Sports used the US' Emergency Alert System tones in a broadcast, and the penalty for that may end up being nearly half a million dollars. Don't mess with emergency broadcasts.
Which is tangentially-related to the fact that the Red Cross' symbols are protected by international law, and for good reason. The logo for the "Tom Scott plus" channel was originally going to be a bold, red + in my brand colour, until someone pointed out that would definitely break UK law, and arguably be a violation of the Geneva Convention. (If that last part isn't true, don't tell me, it's a good story.)
NASA's method for detecting hydrogen fires was once 'hold out a broom in front of you'. If it started to burn, there was a hydrogen fire. I'm pretty sure they have better methods these days. (Thank you to several people who've sent this in recently.)

And finally: Bad Lip Reading have made a 15-minute video dubbing over the US House of Representatives. It doesn't need to be 15 minutes, but fortunately, they've already cut the best 58 seconds for you.

All the best,

— Tom

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