Submarines! road signs! and good directing.

7th October 2024

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Hello!

First up this week: a few announcements from me! It felt very strange to actually upload and publish something on YouTube after all these months away, but: the Technical Difficulties have returned with the first of four new episodes! We're going back to our old Reverse Trivia format, so prepare for oar-powered ships, Bikelangelo, and a new advertising slogan for submarines.

Meanwhile, over on Lateral: the team from Let's Learn Everything return, facing questions about creative credits, baffling borders and racing research.

Also: a few last-minute tickets for this Saturday's Lateral live recording have just been put on sale! There's a small number of general admission tickets available for the stalls and circle, plus a few for the upper circle. The recording is this Saturday at the Clapham Grand: doors open at 12:30 for a show at 1:30.

I also spent most of last week recording the next batch of Lateral episodes. For those who watch the video highlights, I'm happy to report that the dodgy lighting and occasional stuttering on my camera feed from the last recording block is fixed. These new episodes should start to appear soon!

Right! Let's do the links to good videos:

Jack Howard answers a question I'd never thought about: what is "good directing"? This isn't a long-winded video essay, no-one's droning slowly for an hour over unrelated movie clips: Jack's talking to camera, using only the necessary footage to prove his point. There's a brevity and directness in his style that I really appreciate. Plus, I learned something.
On TikTok, Wisdom Kaye creates outfits inspired by fonts. I know, that sounds ridiculous, I was expecting to scroll away: but after the first one, not only did I think "huh, that guy looks good", but also, "huh, I guess that outfit does look like Calibri". I did look to see if Wisdom has a YouTube channel, but no: TikTok and Instagram only. Apparently that's all he needs. (If that link doesn't work, try this one; TikTok's interface for those without an account is dire.)
Calum has finished his trilogy on giant, trackless, overland trains by visiting Whitehorse, the capital of Canada's Yukon territory. I visited Whitehorse once, and had no idea this was there!

And around the rest of the web:

The Netherlands has a map of the country's street signs. All of them. Every single one. Zoom in. It's incredible. I don't think this is going to be useful to anyone reading this, it's just really impressive open data.
A headline ripped from science fiction: Montana breeder of illegal, giant sheep hybrid clones gets 6 months in prison. Illegal, giant sheep hybrid clones.
I'm a little late to Bop Spotter, but it's an interesting project that crosses both 'weird surveillance art' and 'really cool project': a solar-powered phone hidden somewhere in San Francisco's Mission District, connecting to the Shazam service around the clock and telling the world: what's the city listening to? I assume that, by next week, someone will have driven round the Mission with Rick Astley playing in order to triangulate the listening phone and create Bop Spotter Spotter.

And finally: remind me later.

All the best,

— Tom

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