Also, I've
launched a second channel! There's not much there yet, but hopefully there will be soon.
First of all, some good parts of YouTube I've found.
(For those joining the newsletter this week: please don't just leave comments like "here from Tom Scott" or similar! They're not helpful to the person receiving them. Instead, if you're going to leave a comment, please leave something kind that's relevant to the video!)
- Alexis Dahl is a science writer and YouTuber from Michigan, and she visited the Toxic Sand Vacuum that's lying rusted on a lake in the Upper Peninsula. (There are quite a few good videos on
her channel!)
- Danny Gonzalez's video "Can I Give A Tesla To A Stranger Without Ruining Their Life?" is a 40-minute comic deep-dive into all the questionable "I gave away a car" videos that seem to appeal to unquestioning kids. The editing style is very Modern YouTube, but I still ended up watching the whole
thing. (Side note: in the UK, prizes from competitions, lotteries, and giveaways like this are tax-free, which makes it a bit easier...)
- Why Evolution Hasn't Gotten Rid of Allergies is a great explainer video from the channel Real Science, answering a question I'd never thought to ask.
And then, from the rest of the internet!
- AI can produce art from text descriptions now. "Alien Dreams" is a great written summary of the story so far, but perhaps a better summary is Janelle Shane's thread on Twitter, which includes instructions on how to make your own. Or you could just go to the account Images Generated By AI Machines: maybe start with "brutalist amusement park", which sits exactly on the border of "I want to go there" and "that is a literal nightmare".
- Occasionally, I get emailed suggesting I go to "the pyramid at the end of the world" in North Dakota. I don't think I can: because that article is so definitive and so well-written that I couldn't possibly do it justice.
- And finally, with a content warning for body horror and cosmic horror: the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park is an excellent bit of worldbuilding through information design. It's the story of a thankfully-fictional doomed US National Park inside the body of a city-sized, dormant, subterranean creature —
told through meticulously-designed emphemera. Not for the faint of stomach, but I'd recommend it.
That's it for the first Big Newsletter! Hopefully this all worked. Oh, and a bit of behind-the-scenes info on the new channel: I've had so many suggestions, and replied to so many people, that I've actually hit Gmail's limit on what I can send from my own account. If you're waiting for a reply, it might be a few days...!
Thanks, as ever, for helping me get around The Algorithms. Here's to new projects!
All the best,
— Tom