Sutton Hoo, May 2021

This week’s Five Things…

1. Brian Eno talks music with Rick Rubin on the Broken Record podcast.

2. And another podcast featuring Brian Eno but this time with the neuroscientist and author David Eagleman252. They cover a lot of ground but all centred around the plasticity and interconnectedness of our brains. A fascinating (or mind-blowing?) conversation.

3. Music writer Ted Gioia on parenting. Lots of great advice for those working with young people too.

4. Explore the deep sea right from your web browser.

5. “This morning I learned that spiders are able to produce parachutes with their silk threads that they use to sail up into the air and which allow them to travel high above the earth in the jet streams for more than 25 days.”

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Deal, June 2021

This week’s Five Things…

1. I sincerely hope this Giant 3D cat doesn’t cause someone to have a heart attack. Very cool display though!

2. A twitter thread of amazing football pitch locations. 1,2,5 and 9 are my favourites.

3. What a great idea: Portal: Lithuania and Poland build a window connecting two cities

4. Hay fever seems to be pretty bad this year. The Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast dives into the science behind why that might be the case.

5. If you’ve watched a post-match interview with a footballer you’ll probably enjoy this and this!

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Deal, June 2021

This week’s Five Things…

1. The ongoing saga of the Ever Given. An interesting long read on what happened to cause it to get stuck in the Suez Canal and what has happened since.

2. Franz Ferdinand’s song Take Me Out is about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I did not know that!

3. I find cities and architecture fascinating. So this piece, The 5 coolest trends in urbanism … in Europe, was right up my alley.

4. Where’s Wally but emoji style.

5. “In 1715, a significant chunk of Rembrandt’s masterpiece The Night Watch, including a 2-foot-wide swath from the left side of the painting, was lopped off in order to fit the painting in a smaller space.” Absolute madness! Fortunately, AI has come to the rescue so we can now see what it looks like without its side lopped off.

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Margate, June 2021

This week’s Five Things…

1. One for the musicians and music students. Ploop is a handy tool to help get your head around polyrhythms. It also has a very silly name!

2. The restoration of what looks like a very old watch. Very satisfying to watch!

3. Kurzgesagt’s minute by minute guide to the day the dinosaurs died.

4. I could happily watch this for a very long time!

5. A great twitter thread of random trivia. Twitter at its best.

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Margate, June 2021

This week’s Five Things…

1. Space without the space.

2. I’m really enjoying Dr Jen Gunter’s new podcast, Body Stuff. Episode 1 takes on the “8 glasses of water a day” myth.

3. A nice breakdown from The Verge on all the biggest features announced at Apple’s WWDC conference that will be coming to iPhones, iPads and Macs later this year. I’m particularly looking forward to homescreen widgets on iPads and offline Siri.

4. One of my favourite podcasts, More or Less, is back with a new series.

5. The People of 1381 is a project investigating and tweeting the events of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Very cool!

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