Speedysnail

Two Hundred Eyes

The scale of death and destruction caused by last week’s earthquakes in Turkey and Syria is unthinkably awful, so here are some links about just one location. The earthquake has wiped out Antakya, known in ancient times as Antioch. Antakya has been reduced to ruins. Saray Street in Antakya before and after the earthquake. A rescue operation in Antakya. A three-year old who escaped from the rubble is reunited with her father in Antakya.

Wind turbine blades are now fully recyclable. Solar’s journey from lab curiosity to global juggernaut. How Nepal regenerated its forests.

Why are people pretending Covid didn’t happen?

Bird flu is back.

Read more…

19 February 2023

Gripping Websteads

“Most of these books have been too long. Not one of them has been too short.”

Cory Doctorow on Tiktok’s trajectory.

Britain’s unproductive obsession with growth.

We are all playing Covid roulette.

Japan is stuck.

Anglish without the outlandish bits. Nobody tell Jacob Rees-Mogg, or this will be his next Brexit goalwork.

2 February 2023

Tiny Shapes

Britain’s winter of discontent. The UK government is tearing up our freedoms.

Why Covid gaslighting by politicians is so dangerous. Nature on Long Covid. Covid is pro-thrombotic. How to make a DIY air filter with a box fan.

Exxon knew.

Lost knowledge.

Asking five-year-olds for AI art prompts. Possibly the worst ever ChatGPT answer. “Writing a good song … is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past.”

Why write a novel, why read a novel, and why now?

22 January 2023

Duvet Burrito

How pop lost interest in the key change. Is TikTok killing off the bridge?

Science fiction is a Luddite literature.

Jodorowsky’s Tron.

What topological magic is this?

Magee’s Pensées.

The super rich are inevitable.

Covid overwhelmed China’s hospitals within weeks.

A cure for cancer.

28 December 2022

Old News

The lost art of having a chat. The nostalgia memes that help explain Britain today.

English is a lot more French than we thought.

Life in the slow lane.

I’m a decade late to this story, but it’s still awful: a Mayan pyramid was bulldozed by a road construction firm.

Trench warfare, 2022.

Who goes Nazi?

3 December 2022

Toast of the Toun

Colonial America is a myth.

Voter ID in Britain is “far worse than any US state”. How the U.K. became one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.

After the Halloween horror in Korea, here are ten tips for surviving a crowd crush.

How Ukraine won the battle for Kyiv. There’s a harrowing 90-minute documentary on Mariupol: The People’s Story on iPlayer at the moment. It’s devastating to see the human impact, and to have the story of its destruction laid out all at once.

Doctors using AI catch breast cancer more often than either does alone.

The icy village where you must remove your appendix.

I binged on Fern Brady’s stuff on iPlayer last year, before she became the breakout star of the latest series of Taskmaster. Fern Brady Goes Viral has sadly dropped out of view for the time being, but there are excerpts on YouTube. Here’s a podcast featuring Brady on autistic meltdowns, understanding emotions and being the black sheep.

All 125 times a professor said “beef” in one lecture.

Crumbs. “A prankster spun a web of deception about the inventor of the electric toaster … one Scottish primary school organised a day of activities in his memory” [via Mefi]. Our kids have been at Scottish primary schools during the timespan of this hoax. This is all too close to home (appliances).

20 November 2022

Moai on Fire

Treat your to-do list like a river.

The king of reloading.

The man who doodled his abode.

The most visited website in every country.

The end of the DSLR.

The endlessness of Spotify.

Growing old online.

Sorry, we wrecked the economy.

Read more…

24 October 2022

Smooth Criminals

How to nurture a personal library.

How catchy, disposable songs came to dominate the music industry.

How do good conversations work?

How bout dat moonwalk?

Read more…

2 October 2022

Eat a Dinner, Mattress Wayne

When “Z” meant joy.

Wish you weren’t here.

Britain from afar. The party’s over. Liz Truss will make Johnson seem a political genius. We have to stop normalising the absurd.

The Queue is a triumph of Britishness. A rolling thread about the Queue. An interim solution to the Queue. We queue in this country.

9/11 in 3:44.

The tipping points the world is failing to heed.

How the CIA destroyed the socialist internet.

Read more…

17 September 2022

Humus Remains

Statistical analysis has laid to rest the Covid-19 lab-leak theory.

A reevaluation of key passages of the New Testament with profound implications.

Life as the deepfake Tom Cruise.

Insane in the Great Plains.

Humus remains.

Read more…

16 August 2022