Christmas, Danger, Prime, Garfield, Accident
12 Days Of Christmas, But Every Verse Gets More Modern
Nahre Sol | YouTube | 16th December 2021
The first verse is in the style of Bach, the second in the style of Mozart, the third Beethoven, et cetera...The further it gets, the more interesting the variations; the Satie version brings out an unexpected melancholy, while the Ligeti version turns the song's annoyingly repetitive structure into a maddening whirlwind of dissonance (4m 33s)
The Dangerous Type
Tipper Newton | Vimeo | 12th December 2021
A lot of modern film and television try to capture the ''80s feel." This is one of the few pastiches that succeeds. The plot is simple enough (restless car mechanic yearns to escape nowheresville), but aesthetically it's so subtly accurate—the stilted acting, the polarized lighting, the fake cigarettes—that one almost wonders if it was an actual 1987 short film discovered in a time capsule (11m 36s)
The Most Wanted Prime Number
Numberphile | YouTube | 15th December 2021
12345678910987654321 is a prime number. The next number of that kind—where you "count up" to a specific digit and back—has a midpoint of 2446. Quite a lot larger; but they will indeed keep going forever. Amateur mathematicians are also looking for a prime of the form 12345, where it doesn't go back down, but that has yet to be discovered (and they have already gone quite high!) (8m 34s)
What The Internet Did To Garfield
Super Eyepatch Wolf | YouTube | 12th December 2021
The internet's strangest fandom has turned the innocent Garfield comic strip into a vast, Lovecraftian cosmic horror universe. It started with "Garfield Minus Garfield," a webcomic that removed Garfield from the images, revealing Jon's deep-seated depression. Soon it morphed into something much, much more horrifying, resulting in "the greatest piece of fanart" of all time (1h 19m 29s)
Weird Video Of The Week
An ad for a telecom company that doubles as a hilarious short film about everyday annoyances
Browser Video Of The Week: Jim Fruchterman
Jim Fruchterman is an engineer and social entrepreneur. He was the founder and CEO of Benetech, a nonprofit tech company, and a MacArthur Fellow. In this interview, he talks to The Browser’s Baiqu Gonkar about using technology for social good, tackling climate change, data colonialism, and how technology lets you listen to people at an unprecedented scale (32m 41s)
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