Train design! manic science! and a good pigeon.

• Why Are Slovak Trains a Design Disaster? asks Dalibor Itze. I'll be honest, from the title, this sounded like one of those video-essays where someone unqualified rambles over stock footage. But it's not! Dalibor has a wham line in the first section: "this video is actually a summary of my bachelor thesis"! He doesn't just run through the history: he finds original documents, references an actual interview he's done, and then shows off 3D models and design documents that he's put together on a beautiful interactive site! (Click and drag to rotate the view.) In terms of effort per minute of video, this is very much on the high end, and it's worth a watch. Also, apparently you can just sit down to film between train tracks in Slovakia and no-one will mind. (Thanks to Wolfe for sending this over!)
   
• Music videos have moved past imitating the 90s VHS aesthetic; they're now on the 2000s digicam aesthetic and uploaded in 480p. Apart from being a good song, this self-directed video by Rosé for "number one girl" is interesting from a production perspective, because there are clearly two cameras. The video is mastered at 30 frames per second, and the shots that look like they're on a genuine camcorder match that 30fps — they don't seem to have been deinterlaced, but then it might be a fancy-but-genuine camcorder. But the shots with a lot of low-light detail, that are a bit less starkly graded? Those are 24fps, and I suspect that's a modern camera graded and fuzzed to look old: a backup just in case the actual-camcorder footage looked too rough. That is just a guess, though!
   
• SuperfastMatt went too fast. Joining midway through a series here, but the excellent dry-humoured narration sold me on the project and the channel.
   
• One for Star Trek fans, here: I initially thought that 765874 - Unification was an extremely elaborate fan film. Technically, I guess it is? But then I saw the credits: hundreds of union cast and crew. A "digital prosthetics" team. Approved by Paramount and the license holders. Working with the Roddenberry Archive. Executive-produced by William Shatner and Susan Bay Nimoy, the widow of Leonard Nimoy. Score by Michael Giacchino, recorded at Abbey Road studios. Post audio by Skywalker Sound. Cameos from characters throughout the franchise's 60-year history. This must have cost millions of dollars, and it'll likely be high-budget nonsense to anyone who didn't grow up watching the show. But for those who know the Star Trek universe well, it's quite a coda to a story that, perhaps, didn't end as well as it could have. (Side note: the Oral History of the Battle of Wolf 359 is also an incredible bit of fan work, filled with references and nerdy details that not only tell a good story, but attempt to fix a lot of plot holes in the story of the Borg.)
   

• Norwegian fishermen snagged a US nuclear attack submarine. (More details in Norwegian; automated translation.)
   
• The most surprising thing for me about the secret plan to charge London's drivers by the mile is not that it apparently nearly happened. London has always been ahead of the curve for things like this, and road charging is all-but inevitable at some point. No, what surprised me is that Transport for London planned to do it with a smartphone app that tracked drivers' every move?! Even in the surveillance-filled UK, even if it could somehow be done in a privacy-preserving way, I can't see that passing public muster.
   
• The 1600s were a watershed for swear words. (Very strong language. Obviously.)
   

And finally, over on TikTok, please enjoy this man showing off a pigeon. (Alternate link.)

All the best,

— Tom