A final video! an ejector seat! and puns.
1st January 2024
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Heads up! This newsletter is more than four months old. Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed. Please handle with care.
Hello!
That's it. That's ten years. I started publishing the series that was then called Things You Might Not Know on January 1st, 2014. And while the final video looks like it might be an eight-minute monologue... it's a little bit more than that. After ten years, it's time to stop making videos.
That's it. That's ten years. I started publishing the series that was then called Things You Might Not Know on January 1st, 2014. And while the final video looks like it might be an eight-minute monologue... it's a little bit more than that. After ten years, it's time to stop making videos.
But other projects still continue! First of all, this
newsletter will just be "good stuff on the internet" for a while, along with regular links to anywhere else I might pop up in the meantime. For example, over on Lateral this week, it's a question-writers' special, as Daniel Peake, Lizzy Skrzypiec and Bill Sunderland face questions about shoe safes, safety signs and sinuous streets.
Around the rest of YouTube this week:
- You may already have seen Ivan Miranda building a marble clock, because it seemed to get recommended everywhere this week — at least, it did for me. It's a really pleasing bit of design!
- How Grosjean's Accident Happened is an accessible deep-dive into how a terrifying Formula 1 crash unfolded. You don't need to know anything about racing to understand this: I'm not an F1 fan but I still found the explanation fascinating. If you didn't see this in the news, then just as a warning, the first time you see the actual crash, it will seem like it's unsurvivable... until the
driver climbs out. Formula 1 car design is incredible.
- I was reminded of the Gregory Brothers' "Millennials Are Killing Everything" this week. It's five years old, a catchy track and music video based around a song they improvised
on a livestream... but somehow it seems like a time capsule of news stories past. Things have changed in five years, and I was surprised just how old this felt to me. (There's also some brilliant visual and audio jokes in here: the phone gag, and the drum fill that's just someone impersonating drums, still made me smile.)
- Tyler Bell builds an actual working James-Bond-style ejector seat for this car!
And away from video:
- Since 1995, every day,
NASA has published an Astronomy Picture of the Day on a web site that has barely changed its design. Last Monday's, by photographer Valerio Minato, was spectacular: the sort of picture that requires so much planning and so much luck.
- Thanks to this man, airplanes don't crash into mountains any more.
- Renowned security researcher Bruce Schneier talks about AI and lossy bottlenecks: sci-fi speculation that is simultaneously interesting and a little bit scary.
And finally: the word play hotel. (Thanks Eva for sending this over!)
With that: I'm finally off on sabbatical. I'm looking forward to it.
All the best,
— Tom
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