I was planning a birthday party for my mother, but the idea got 2020’d.
We had a trip booked, but our plan was 2020’d eventually.
You and I and everybody else had pretty cool lives, but then we got 2020’d!
Could somebody petition the dictionary guys, or whoever it is that decides those “new word of the year” things??
On to this week’s finds!
Here’s one man who made good use of the lockdown. VR specialist Daniel Voshart used machine learning and historical descriptions (and some amount of artistic interpretation) to create realistic photographic images of ancient Roman emperors. Can you find Daniel Craig in there?
While on the subject of ancient Rome, check out this drone video of the ruins of Pompeii. Gave me goosebumps the first time I watched it. The height from which it’s shot really helps you understand what this 2000-year old city must have been like. The video is set to a Pink Floyd song, another plus, so keep the audio on!
Japan is reporting an unexpected impact of the pandemic - online shopping and credit card usage has risen to unprecedented levels. So much so, that the credit card companies are running out of 16-digit credit card numbers. As an ex-boss used to say, “That’s a good problem to have!”
Here’s a pretty surreal one from Beijing. In this city, Cold War-era atomic bomb shelters function as underground living and recreation areas for migrants and young people unable to manage the skyrocketing rents in the city.
An astonishingly detailed online archive of food history, started before Wikipedia and run for years by librarian Lynn Olver as a passion project, is in need of somebody to take it over and carry on the legacy. The Food Timeline is one of the most fascinating sites I’ve ever seen; I hope the family finds somebody to carry on Ms. Olver’s work.
I haven’t had an opportunity to get any reading done this week, work is crazy, so no recos for now. I’ll leave you with this video of NYC shot in 1911, upscaled now using machine learning algorithms.
Send in your favourite stories, food facts, and anything else you wish to share.
Till next time, keep the faith!
Love
Neha