A bear selfie update! an otter! and music!
24th July 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 Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed.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!
Remember last week, when a bear stole my GoPro and dropped it in a pond? Well, to my surprise: not only did I get the GoPro back, but a bear had taken a selfie with it.
Remember last week, when a bear stole my GoPro and dropped it in a pond? Well, to my surprise: not only did I get the GoPro back, but a bear had taken a selfie with it.
The raw footage from that is on the Internet Archive and a separate YouTube video, because I'm pretty sure it's public domain. I can't copyright something I had no input into!
And of course, Lateral continues! This week, the team from Let's Learn Everything take on questions about diamond dealing, disorganised diners and dodgy documents.
Elsewhere on YouTube:
- The Incline is a disused, railroad track that climbs an enormous, steep
hill in a dead straight line. It's now a pilgrimage site for athletes, and the thirteen minutes of this documentary are absolutely worth your time; it's a great portrait of an accidental community.
- An architect breaks down why
American diners all look like that.
- I don't understand why people prefer physical film projection to digital: the flickering shutter and gate weave always distract me. But lots of people clearly prefer it, so maybe I'm just not seeing movies in the right cinemas! Here's how the Science Museum in London is splicing an IMAX film reel together for Oppenheimer, and lacing that giant, $40,000 film reel through the projector.
- Song parodies, I thought, were tired and played out. Changing lyrics is so easy and cheap these days. Unless you're Weird Al, and your comedic skills, performance and on-stage charisma are all top-notch, and you've got a great band to back you up, it's just a bit dull.
Well: somehow Sub-Radio have managed to make them work. Lots of people have tried to make Stacy's Dad before, but they've nailed it (pun absolutely intended). I Don't Wanna Dance With Nobody feels like it should get played out after one chorus, but they keep coming up with more gags. And it helps that not just the lead singer, but the whole band, have the charisma and musical skills to pull it off. Of course, now they're suffering from the same curse a lot of cover bands find: the parodies get far, far more hits than their original songs.
What about the rest of the internet?
Well, while researching this week, I've found:
- The Balkans' alternative postal system is a fascinating look into how delivery and
mail can work when the official infrastructure doesn't, in a culture that's so different to the one I know.
- Blob toy! This is a joyful little web toy; an intuitive, fun sandbox that rewards exploration without needing a manual.
- "841" is the surfboard-snatching sea otter vexing wildlife officials in California.
And finally, the best and worst cover I've heard for a long time. So much effort went into this; otamatones are really difficult to play well, and I know the original Evanescence song so well that I kept thinking I heard actual lyrics. Wait around at least for the fourth, shouting one.
All the best,
— Tom
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