Plastic Love
How Youtube’s algorithm turned an obscure 1980s Japanese song into a hit. Mariya Takeuchi, the singer behind it.
Microplastics have been found in human blood.
History Lessons
The PowerPoint slide that killed seven people (Mefi).
How Janet Sobel was written out of art history.
Dismayed to learn that the late William Hurt was another wrong ’un? Philosophy might help.
Eighteenth-century paintings of mushroom clouds.
What David Graeber left behind.
Why commercials are coming to the biggest streamers. We’ve reached peak subscription.
Charlie Brooker’s How TV Ruined Your Life, episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
How to become remarkably successful. Worth a shot.
What Has Been Lost
The Tongan resort destroyed for the third time.
The con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency.
The a-ha moment that drove electric car sales in Norway.
Using an ecological model to estimate the number of lost mediaeval manuscripts.
Cheese Myths
A cheeky kea steals a GoPro and films its escape.
AI colorizer. I tried it on some old black-and-white photos and got mixed results, but a few were convincing.
How did life emerge under a dimmer Sun?
Analysing past societal collapse using big data. A mega-drought 4,200 years ago toppled empires.
Ten books for thinking clearly about statistics. We need a standard unit of measure for risk.
Toto’s “Africa” played on instruments in Majora’s Mask.
The New York Times hasn’t made Wordle’s words harder.
The fourteen biggest cheese myths.
Three weeks of disruption in Ottawa come to an end, but what comes next? They brought their own cranes with them. Their Facebook activity was an endless rabbit hole of astroturfed groups and pages. Two brought a full package of firestarter bricks into a residential lobby. Interference from Trump pointed to convoy campaign manipulation.
Blood Tests
Could microclots help explain long Covid?
A virus likely triggers almost all multiple sclerosis, and mRNA vaccines could prevent it.
Thingu in HD. The blood test scene from Frozen.
Teenage sarcasm is a sign of intelligence.
Brexiters now worry about the judgment of history. The Brexit mug.
Cassetteboy on Boris Johnson’s latest woes. Led By Donkeys on same. What happened to non-Boris-Johnsons who broke lockdown rules. Most have no idea about the set-up of 10 Downing St. Let’s assume he’s going. What then?
Britain’s Defence Secretary on Russia and Ukraine.
The Federal President of Germany (PDF in English) on The Conference: “Bureaucratic and political structures can only resist their misuse as long as there is a stable, democratic constitution that keeps an equally stable government from slipping over the edge into the ideological abyss.”
New Year, Old Links
Happy new year (we hope). The theme this year is chains, as befitting this restricted time, from a set of photos of a giant rusty chain that I took in Shetland and hadn’t found a use for yet. Tune in every month for a new lump of iron.