Language! rings! and cats!

6th November 2023

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Hello!

This week, it's finally time for the Languages Files to take on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: does the language you speak change how you think?

And over on Lateral, it's time for world-famous battery packs, as Caroline Roper, Ella Hubber and Tom Lum from 'Let's Learn Everything!' face questions about eccentric earrings, dawdling deliveries and cattle calculations. It's always a joy to have these three back on the show.

What other good stuff have I seen in the world of video this week?

Joe Scott (no relation) commissions some beautiful animation and precise fact-checking to answer the question: what if Earth had rings? I hate that he has to watermark all the animations, but I understand why. (Side note: right now I've got about fifty DMCA requests pending at TikTok targeting people who rip off my channel wholesale. TikTok frequently takes weeks to respond, if they do at all.)
Andrew Dixon, Beatles historian, does a deep-dive into the joke that "Ringo wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles". This is the sort of exhaustive research that I love, particularly the references to just how much old British comedy he had to watch!
Simone Giertz easily wins the award for "worst YouTube title that doesn't get demonetized": want to eat hair? This pasta machine is for you.

And what about away from video?

An interesting article about how Transport for London uses cell phone data — but what stood out for me is that I recognized not just that the header image was created by AI, but specifically which AI it was. It's clearly DALL-E 3. Yes, there are obvious AI glitches, like the text and the twin skyscrapers, but before I noticed any of those I noticed the art style. It felt familiar, in the same way I might recognize a human artist's work. Which means it'll probably be passé in about a month's time... but also means that apparently AI can have styles now.
Years of tracking the steadily crack and slip of a road that crosses the San Andreas fault. (Thanks to Nick for sending this over!)
A thorough history of cats in medieval manuscripts. (Strong language.)
Photos of this year's annual mundane Hallowe'en costume contest in Japan! Costumes such as "that girl in the My Neighbor Totoro poster who doesn’t appear anywhere in the film". There's a link to previous years' contests in the article too.

And finally, here's an absolutely stunning drone shot of the Shenzhou-17 rocket taking off. (Sourcing on this is tricky. If it turns out to be CG, I won't be surprised, but I can't see anything that'd indicate that; it matches other shots, so I think this one's real.)

All the best,

— Tom

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