I visited a brilliant bit of old technology, and launched a second channel.

12th July 2021

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 Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed.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

Hello! Both to those who've been part of the newsletter testing period over the last few months, and to those who subscribed after the callout on Friday. If this goes out successfully, then I think I can consider the newsletter properly launched!

In this week's video, I visit the last aerial ropeway in the UK: it uses no power, moves 300 tonnes a day, and will be gone by 2036.

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

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