A ludicrous car! stations of despair! and stop motion.

20th January 2025

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 Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed.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!

By the time this newsletter goes out, every studio episode of Lateral should have a full video available on Spotify, along with the regular audio version that's available everywhere! On this week's show: Julian O’Shea, Dani Siller and Bill Sunderland face questions about fallen food, accidental advertising and cricketing circumstances.

Thanks to everyone who's sent in newsletter suggestions this week! Here's the good videos I've found on the internet, often with a little help from you all:

It's been a while since I've stared at a video in disbelief. One of the most dangerous jobs of the 1980s: driving a souped-up Citreon, which has been converted to a flatbed truck, at ridiculous speed along the motorways of Europe to deliver newspapers. I had to do some basic fact-checking on this before putting it in here, because I could barely believe it. This is a short video, just footage with voiceover, and normally I wouldn't link to a video like that — but the story is so ridiculous, the narration so efficient, and the story revealed so well, that I have to. Plus, read the top comments! They include people who had this dangerous job, as well as other commercial drivers who remember these cars outpacing them. (Thanks to Paul for sending this over.)
After many years away, and nineteen years after the famous treadmills, OK Go have a new music video, for "A Stone Only Rolls Downhill". It doesn't quite have the physicality of some of their older videos, but it makes up for that in sheer mindblowing complexity. It seems like this was done "for real", although I do wonder if there's a little compositing involved as the viewer goes 'in' and 'out' of the phone screens. Either way, it's staggering. (Thank you to the many people who sent this in!)

Side note: OK Go have been reposting also old music videos as vertical clips, with the spare space used for 'pop-up video' behind-the-scenes notes.
For the very first time, a meteorite has been captured falling to earth, in both sound and vision! Scroll down for the video, but do read the article for context.
Kevin Parry animates a stop-motion chair. That title massively undersells the video: the animation itself is a joy to watch and has so many little details, and it's followed by an explainer of how it was all made.

And, as usual, articles from the rest of the web:

Japan has "stations of despair": stations at the end of lines that also have major urban hubs and entertainment districts. If you ever fall asleep after a night out and miss your stop on the last train, here's what to do if while stuck at the end of Tokyo’s Chuo Rapid Line.
Some UK government online services are only available between 7am and 8pm. Here's why.

And finally: in more than 60 years of the PBA bowling championships, a 7-10 split has only been knocked down four times. Here are those times.

All the best,

— Tom

« Previous

Index