Maze-solving, historic ice cream, and a very loud noise.
24th April 2023
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Hello!
A little diversion to Switzerland today: the military base where you can drive over the runway! It features what I'm fairly sure is the loudest sound I've ever been close to. (I do not know how it compares to the Sumburgh Head foghorn.)
A little diversion to Switzerland today: the military base where you can drive over the runway! It features what I'm fairly sure is the loudest sound I've ever been close to. (I do not know how it compares to the Sumburgh Head foghorn.)
And of course, there's a new
episode of Lateral! Joined by the Answer in Progress team again, this time with questions about crafty clocks, remunerative records and veiled video games. As ever with Melissa, Taha and Sabrina, it's a heck of an episode.
Elsewhere on YouTube, some videos that don't end in quite such a loud way:
- If you're looking for an AI explainer to send to folks who aren't always online: this piece
by 60 Minutes, an American news magazine, is a surprisingly good, professional overview. I say "surprisingly" because traditional news media often overdramatises or completely misunderstands new technologies, and while this is necessarily summarised for the lay audience, there's nothing in here I'd take issue with. This is, in short, the piece I'd send to family members who ask "what's this AI thing all about?".
- AlphaPhoenix shows how electricity (and later, water!) can solve mazes. There's a couple of really clever demonstrations in here, some good bits of scripting that "reveal" things to the audience, and his enthusiasm is infectious.
- From a couple of years ago, Pop Culture Detective talks about the tragedy of droids in Star Wars. But this isn't really about Star Wars: it leads into a much bigger discussion about "disposable" characters, and how science-fiction universes tend to fall apart when they keep getting expanded and
expanded.
- Max Miller from Tasting History continues his series of cooking interesting things from history, combining recipes with historical knowledge. This time, the US Navy's World War 2 ice cream, and why it was so important to morale.
And around the rest of the internet, away from video:
- One Canada Square was, for a long while, the tallest building in Britain. This week, some incredible photos of the "topping-off" resurfaced. They're interesting in themselves: but the story of how they're shot, and the picture facing back at the photographer, are also worth looking at.
- Criminals across the world bought "encrypted phones", confident they couldn't be tracked or tapped by the police. They were wrong.
- New personality test dropped: the food disgust test! "Christina Hartmann and Michael Siegrist at the Technical University of Zurich have discovered that people’s disgust concerning food can be broken into eight distinct scales." Not recommended to click while eating.
- For years, I've been grumbling about the UK's "Smart Motorways", and was happy to see that they'd finally been permanently cancelled... but it turns out that it's more complicated than that. This well-reasoned post makes it clear that, of all the options, this is probably the worst one for the British government to take. (Side note: roads.org.uk is a brilliant site, the sort of thing I can end up just clicking around for ages. Do have a look at their other articles.)
And finally, a brilliant diagram.
All the best,
— Tom
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