A tiny hovercraft, the history of pie throwing, and more bird news.
10th April 2023
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Heads up! This newsletter is more than a year old. Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed. Please handle with care.
Hello!
It's the last video from Japan this week! Join me as I track down the tiny hovercraft that went viral, meet the inventor, and have a go at flying it myself.
And over on Lateral, Xyla Foxlin, Jordan Harrod and Becky Stern face questions about cheapo chicken, problematic passwords and bountiful bananas. This episode was a joy to film, and hopefully that comes across in the finished show!
It's the last video from Japan this week! Join me as I track down the tiny hovercraft that went viral, meet the inventor, and have a go at flying it myself.
And over on Lateral, Xyla Foxlin, Jordan Harrod and Becky Stern face questions about cheapo chicken, problematic passwords and bountiful bananas. This episode was a joy to film, and hopefully that comes across in the finished show!
What else have I found on YouTube this week?
- I never
made it to film SOFIA, NASA's flying observatory, before it retired. But Active Galactic, who made a guest video for my channel a few years back, have made a better video than I ever could about SOFIA: talking about its achievements, and whether "observatory on board a 747" was actually a good idea.
- I've discovered "Like A Version", Australian radio station Triple J's series of covers. Teenage Dads' faithful cover of the Video Killed The Radio Star; Sofi Tukker's beautiful duet of Chasing Cars, adding synth melodies to produce what almost feels like a whole new song; Tove Lo's emotional, acoustic piano cover of Dancing On My Own. There's a long, long history of
covers here, and there's a lot worth listening to.
- Joel Creates makes a Nerf dart that fires itself, which is exactly the right kind of ridiculous to just stay on the "monetised" side of YouTube.
Other interesting links I've found this week:
- Remember the ridiculous 200-foot "railway" that existed purely to exploit a legal loophole? Well, alas, the story is over: it's been dismantled, although the operator did manage to avoid $350 million in fines.
- I'm sharing this next one with the caveat that this is a pre-print paper, and so you should treat it with the skepticism of
"random blog post with good references" rather than an actual scientific paper: but it turns out a common factor of many people who live to an extremely long age is "being born in a place with poor records management", or "being born on the first of the month". Or in other words: sometimes, it might be pension fraud.
- I've been enjoying Doug Mack's Snack Stack, a blog about the history of snack foods around the world: maybe start with pizza rolls and the meaning of midcentury food, or this wonderfully-researched piece on the history of pie throwing.
- How tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India: a clever bit of technology for a use-case that I'd never considered.
And finally: you know how there are those web sites that track live lightning strikes around the world? Well, to continue this newsletter's theme of occasional BIRD NEWS: live photos of birds landing on bird feeders, from across America.
Next week: something not from Japan.
All the best,
— Tom
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