This Adam Savage Video
The YouTube algorithm has decided that what I really want to watch are Adam Savage videos, and it turns out the robots are occasionally right? So, I’d like to draw your attention to this vid where Adam answers some user questions: Were Any Myths Deemed Too Simple to Test on MythBusters?
It quickly veers moderately off-topic, and gets into a the weeds on what kinds of topics MythBusters tackled and why. You should go watch it, but the upshot is that MythBusters never wanted to invite someone on just to make them look bad or do a gotcha, so there was a whole class of “debunking” topics they didn’t have a way in on; the example Adam cites is dowsing, because there’s no way to do an episode busting dowsing without having a dowser on to debunk.
And this instantly made clear to me why I loved MythBusters but couldn’t stand Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!. The P&T Show was pretty much an extended exercise in “Look at this Asshole”, and was usually happy to stop there. MythBusters was never interested in looking at assholes.
And, speaking of Adam Savage, did I ever link to the new Bobby Fingers?
This is relevant because it’s a collaboration with Adam Savage, and the Slow Mo Guys, who also posted their own videos on the topic:
Shooting Ballistic Gel Birds at Silicone Fabio with @bobbyfingers and @theslowmoguys!
75mph Bird to the Face with Adam Savage (@tested) and @bobbyfingers - The Slow Mo Guys
It’s like a youtube channel Rashomon, it’s great.
(late) Friday Linkblog, cool-projects-by-cool-people edition
Doctor Who is back!. Absolutely delightful amuse-bouche to Davies & Tennant’s return. It’s perfect that the new run is starting with a Children in Need sketch, which is both very silly and is done with way more effort & care than required. You’ve got Tennant in his sweet spot of doing very silly things with complete seriousness. You’ve got a perfect example of Who’s whimsical attitude to it’s on continuity (“Did this really happen?” “Well, would it be more fun if it did? Then yes.”) And you have a gorgeous shot at the start of the Tardis approaching Skaro with bombs going off in the atmosphere, which is far too cool (and expensive) a visual to “waste” on a comedy sketch for a charity telethon, and yet there it is.
A great sign of things to come.
James Burke’s Connections is back!. The original was a core formative experience for me as a kid, still one of my favorite documentaries of all time, of any kind. There was a stretch in my approximation of a “career” where I was giving a lot of talks and presentations; doing one in the style of an episode of Connections was the White Whale I never caught.
I’m pleased as punch to report that Shirt.woot apparently still exists?!!? And, at some point they switched to print-on-demand, so the entire back catalog is available? I vaguely feel like I must have known this, but it was a pleasant surprise to discover. Shirt.woot was a regular destination in the late 00s, and I still wear this shirt on a pretty regular basis. Even better, the raven shirt is still the all-time bestseller, all these years later. Guess I should finally buy one? It feels like there so little of the Heroic Age of the web left, rediscovering part that still exists is such a delight.
I haven’t had a chance to watch the movie yet, but I very much enjoyed Max Read’s piece David Fincher's new movie 'The Killer' is sigma cinema. The pull quote is “…throughout his career Fincher has been in dialogue with the concerns of 4chan and the rest of Loser Internet…” I have a lot of time for Fincher’s non-website movies, but never once did I think any of his main characters were supposed to be asperational. Fincher’s whole oeuvre is pointing at a deeply damaged person and going “look at this sad weirdo.”
Holy crap, Aliens and the Abyss are (finally) coming out on 4k. For the Abyss, this is also the first release on Blu-Ray. I guess Jim Cameron finally had the time to lock down the 4k masters; True Lies and the two Avatar movies are coming too. Thats gonna be a hell of a movie marathon weekend.
And finally, Bobby fingers has a new video. I don’t know how to set this up beyond saying he turned Jeff Bezos into a rowboat. And previously, he made a diorama out of the time Steven Segal got choked out, and the time Michael Jackson caught on fire. It’s 20-something minutes, trust me, click it. (See also Andy Baio’s piece from back in May The Unhinged Miniature World of Bobby Fingers, which I apparently completely failed to link to at the time.)