Cryonics! trains! and a frustrating game!
31st July 2023
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Hello!
Turns out I've
written a newsletter with a lot of references to death this week. It wasn't deliberate! I wasn't trying to! It just turned out that way! I'll try and put some lighter links in here as well.
This week's video is a strange one: I visited an actual cryonics facility. There's nothing gruesome in here, but it is a video about death! And I wonder whether this will bring a large curious audience, or whether people won't want to click it because it's... well, it's about death.
This week's video is a strange one: I visited an actual cryonics facility. There's nothing gruesome in here, but it is a video about death! And I wonder whether this will bring a large curious audience, or whether people won't want to click it because it's... well, it's about death.
If you'd prefer something lighter, then Lateral this week is about big concrete balls! Annie Rauwerda from 'Depths of Wikipedia', J. Draper and Geoff Marshall face questions about rumbling roads, sacred snacks and keyboard quirks.
What else have I found in the world of video this week? Well:
- I rewatched this Secret Base documentary on "Section 1". Even if you don't like sports, it is
absolutely worth the 42 minutes: as with much of Secret Base's work, it's a masterpiece of storytelling and animation. "The Steelers must humiliate the Colts on the field today. If they do not, people are going to die."
- Over on
TikTok, Rosie Grant makes the recipes that are inscribed on gravestones, and then takes them to the grave. It's a sign of just how much my brain is in YouTube-work-mode right now that I can't help thinking: make this long-form, put it on YouTube, you could get something longer-term out of this project. Perhaps, though, that isn't the
point.
- I have mixed feelings about Tunnel Vision: An Unauthorised BART Ride. Someone stuck an action camera on the front of a San Francisco rapid transit vehicle, and got a front view of the whole route. Turning that into an art
piece, complete with music, voiceover and audio interviews, manages to be simultaneously interesting and very, very pretentious. It's a cool project! But that filming was without permission: and another camera was lost somewhere along the ride. A lost GoPro is unlikely to derail a train... it still feels like an unnecessary risk, though.
- DownieLive rides the world's longest model train track! The drone shots here really show off the massive-yet-miniature scale.
And what else is going on around the internet?
- Would you like to be really frustrated by a game? Kern Type asks you to figure out what how letters should be spaced, and I can almost guarantee that any time it says you're wrong, you'll disagree. I got to the fourth question and rage-quit.
- The University of Glasgow Library has a fascinating post on how they preserve the beer bottles and cans that sit in their archives. Includes fascinating microscope photos.
- The national park that was stolen to death.
Next week: a video that's not about death, I promise. After
all that, I've got to end with something light-hearted and fun. So here you go: a Queen cover with incredible vocal harmonies.
All the best,
— Tom
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