Tattoos, magic, and a very interesting roof.
5th September 2022
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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 Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed.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!
This week, I've recorded a lot of episodes of an upcoming podcast! Which means I've mostly been sat in a studio being very stressed and holding a show together. (That channel that I said was a "new project" a few weeks ago? It'll be getting updated at some point soon...)
This week, I've recorded a lot of episodes of an upcoming podcast! Which means I've mostly been sat in a studio being very stressed and holding a show together. (That channel that I said was a "new project" a few weeks ago? It'll be getting updated at some point soon...)
But away from that: on Plus this week, I gave my producer an actual tattoo — and on the old channel, I visited the most interesting roof in London, which was surprisingly terrifying in places. Well, in one particular place.
Elsewhere on YouTube:
- Magician Ben Seidman reviews and demonstrates TV and movie magic tricks. This is a joy to watch not just for the craft on
display, but for the delighted reactions of the crew. There's an art, in videos like this, to letting the viewer see or hear occasional "behind-the-scenes" moments that take off the polish just a little: the editor here absolutely nailed the balance.
- "Seeing Through Commercials" is an educational film from 1976, teaching kids about marketing techniques. I'd love to see something like this adapted for the kids of the '20s.
- A really good talk from this year's Electromagnetic Field festival: a security expert and former container ship engineer talks about how to hack cruise ships.
Other interesting links I've found this week:
- One of the first popular videos I made, many years ago, was at a
home-made, human-powered theme park. I'm delighted to provide an update: Atlas Obscura has a new interview with Bruno, the engineer who designed it, and it includes just how popular the park is these days. (I'm not claiming credit for that: I was part of the first modern wave of vloggers arriving, but the park was
already getting well-known outside its area!)
- A story of a heist — or rather, a betting coup — from when communications were a lot easier to disrupt. (Thanks to PJ for sending this over!) These days, people use drones to get information instead.
- This is a fascinating long-read about how a Russian spy charmed her way into NATO circles, but the most surprising thing for me was how she was found: "for nearly a decade, Russia’s military intelligence agency had furnished their spies with consecutively numbered passports".
And finally: a list of things that people blamed on jazz.
All the best,
— Tom
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