A big milestone, transatlantic nostalgia, and a sitar!
9th September 2024
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Hello!
First up on this week's newsletter: it's the 100th episode of Lateral this week! And it's a good one: for the first time, we're joined by four players, as the entire team from podcast 'No Such Thing As a Fish' face questions about farcical facials, rapid rides and steep smiles.
First up on this week's newsletter: it's the 100th episode of Lateral this week! And it's a good one: for the first time, we're joined by four players, as the entire team from podcast 'No Such Thing As a Fish' face questions about farcical facials, rapid rides and steep smiles.
A couple of other things from friends of the show: first, if you're a patron of Gretchen McCulloch's Lingthusiasm podcast, the Language Files team got together for the first time ever for a retrospective as a Patreon-only bonus
episode!
And if you're waiting patiently for new Technical Difficulties — well, not yet, but Gary has gone and driven an Intercity 125 over on his own channel!
There's been a rush of good videos from YouTube that I've found this week:
- Stephen J Reid investigates a poisoned lake in Ireland. This is engaging, well edited, thorough, and features a perfectly-timed vault over a five-bar gate. Normally Stephen makes videos about adventure travel and the outdoors, so this is a departure for him: he's switched genre very well. (Thanks to Diarmuid for the suggestion!)
- Matt Parker has been filming maths videos on location, using real-world props and locations: recently, he's filmed a YouTube video on actual 35mm film to explain the mathematics of film ratios. Staggeringly expensive commitment to the bit here, and also a perfect demonstration of why 16mm and 35mm "feel" different.
- Emily the Engineer has 3D printed a boat and tried to sail it. And not just any boat: a full-size version of the tiny Benchy standard 3D printer test print.
Other interesting links I've found this week:
- I reread Greg Egan's Bit Players, a short science fiction story about... well, that would be a spoiler.
Egan's work can be relentlessly mathematical at times, and there's certainly a bit of that here, but stick with it: the story is worth it. (Strong language; other stories there have heavy adult themes.)
- Every single Radio Shack
catalog provides instant technology nostalgia for anyone over the age of 30. (Or, if you'd like the same feeling but British, here's the archive of Argos catalogues I linked to a while back!)
- No Vehicles in the Park is an interesting text-based game, the point of which is... actually, that would be a spoiler as well! But it does also link to Staying Alive, a three-question philosophy game that's decades old at this point, and is also worth your time.
And finally: I've listened to Ronobir Lahiri's wonderful sitar cover of the Postal Service's Such Great Heights several times this week, and it feels like exactly the sort of thing that
YouTube was intended for. Homemade with family, but by a professional musician; there was just no outlet for performances like this twenty years ago, let alone one that easily cleared all the music and sync rights.
All the best,
— Tom
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