Disappearing stars and electric cars!

11th December 2023

Heads up! This newsletter is more than a year old. Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed. Please handle with care.

Hello!

Before I even link to my own videos this week, here's something that I would absolutely have travelled to see if I'd known about it earlier. If you're in certain parts of southern Europe, Florida, or Mexico, one of the stars in Orion is going to disappear for seven seconds tonight as an asteroid passes in front of it. I wish I could see this! It sounds amazing! It's really rare! If you can, go and watch a bright, famous star blink out and come back tonight.

As for what I've been up to: well, in this week's video, a robot swaps out my electric car's battery. Why spend time charging when you can just swap for a fully-charged one instead? Well, there are reasons — and this isn't an advert, so I'm sure to talk them through — but it's still a cool piece of technology.

And over on Lateral, Evan & Katelyn and Emily Calandrelli face questions about growing gains, wrong watches and cat calamaties. It's the first appearance for all these players, and this whole episode was a joy.

Elsewhere on YouTube:

Many years ago, I made a video for a channel called Field Day about California City, the largest city never built. In her interview, the mayor mentioned "Wasteland Weekend", but we didn't use that in the end: while "Mad Max-themed festival in the desert" sounded fascinating, it wasn't relevant to the story.

Well, I'm happy to say that People Make Games turned up to Wasteland Weekend! (Strong language.) Crucially, they actually took part, joining in the spirit of it rather than just observing from a distance. This is joyful, because you can see and feel when they flip over from being documentarians to just being part of the whole event. It's a fun half-hour to watch, and there are lovely comments from people who they met out in the sorta-post-apocalyptic world.
Posy's video on "motion extraction" is a beautiful use of a very simple technique, pleasantly narrated and almost meditative. (Thanks to Basile for sending this over!)
I keep linking to Dime Store Adventures because it keeps being a really good channel: it's a guy telling you about the cool things he found in old newspapers, in a really engaging way. Here are 20 crazy things that happened to Bill White while he was buried alive. Who's Bill White? Why was he buried alive? All will be explained.
Try to ignore the obnoxious music on this highlight reel from the World Teqball Championships doubles final, because the athleticism and skill on display here are worth watching. What a game! Invented in 2012, a combination of table tennis and sepak takraw, using a regulation football: three touches to return the ball, no arms or hands, no using the same body part twice is a row, in doubles both players must touch before a return. It looks spectacular.

Around the rest of the web:

20 Words 20 Seconds (not for phones) is one of the best instant-gratification games I've seen in a long while. My high score after far too many attempts was 297, which is enough to beat the high score the game's creator claimed. That was the point I decided, yes, I'm done, that's good enough. I think actually getting 20 words is impossible. If you beat me, I do not want to hear about it.
Off the back of last week's advice for time travellers, thank you to Alistair for sending over how to survive in Ancient Greece. Best chapter title: "why you might want to consult an oracle".
A thread on copyright (please, please, if you're still posting on Twitter/X for some reason, also copy it to a blog!) — but anyway, a thread on copyright, and the happy fact that apparently, in UK and EU law, a plain photo of an out-of-copyright work no longer qualifies for new copyright. At last!

And finally: the world's oldest known wild bird, who's at least 72, has been spotted again!

All the best,

— Tom

« Previous

Index