The musician explains:
In 2018, I recorded and filmed a cover of "Yellow" by Coldplay under my former name, Lots Holloway. In 2026, I returned to the exact same place to film it again, this time as Dylan Holloway (Dylan And The Moon). What you're watching is both versions, woven together.
Lyrics at the band’s page: https://www.coldplay.com/song/yellow/
Watch on YouTube or ( stream it here )
The singer and the band are all on roller skates performing Bend Your Knees by Henry Mansfield & Digital Velvet! It’s an NPR Tiny Desk contest entry. Lyrics on bandcamp, video on YouTube or…
( Stream it Here )
Thanks to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clevermanka for sharing Fabulous, an absolute banger in both fashion and music from MEEK. Not work-safe since the chorus repeats “fucking” 42 times. Video on YouTube with accurate captions and lyrics in the description or …
( stream it here )
HGModernism, aka Hendry, offers a soothing yet informative 30 minutes on the theme
Hendry shows illustrations and video of the birds under discussion, sitting in a well-appointed room with fascinating wallpaper, all while holding a tea cup that's as big as a plant pot. They appear to have four white devil horns thanks to the impressive antler mounted behind Hendry’s head.
Hendry is clearly a firm believer in factual content: corrections appear in the first comment; citations are in the description as well as all the links in a Github Gist. They have 28 other YT videos on divers topics plus more on Patreon.
via “We’re Here,” John & Hank Green’s good-news-and-links for Nerdfighteria every Friday
More soothing video.
Rosie Heydenrych is a UK luthier who makes Turnstone guitars. Follow along as she makes an instrument for Martin Simpson—in prose and/or via YouTube video playlist, autocraptions). How does it sound? Guitar World reviews another Turnstone instrument with words as well as video (17:11" YouTube Link, more autocraptions). Zip to 13:27 to enjoy Clive Carroll making beautiful music on it.
(crossposted to Metafilter)
No embeds this time, just links.
CalamityKim1 is a 20-something woman who loves driving big rigs and fixing machinery and narrates as she goes, but autocraptions. In September 2025, she drives a tractor trailer through small-town Britain, carrying a piece of metal so large it requires a police escort—her typical length is 30 minutes. Moving traffic, but no flashing lights.
ExploreOceans features both livestreams and highlight reels. Super soothing is the 2025 Highlights of Pacific Walruses Hauling Out on a Beach—no narration or music, just surf on the beach and moaning walruses for 25 minutes. It’s part of the explore.org network, which I discovered via their delightful Fat Bear Week contest.
I love astronauticast’s 3-5 minute timelapse compilations from the International Space Station. They’re compiled by ISAA, the Italian Space and Astronautics Association. They travel at a steady rate over various parts of our globe, with a handy reference diagram in the upper left corner. Witness hundreds of thunderstorms from the west coast of Mexico all the way to Portugal. Admire auroras and airflows above North America. I shouldn’t have been surprised that deserts are readily visible because so few clouds. No words—pleasant classical-ish music.
Just found a great episode on 20,000 Hz, a favorite podcast of mine.
SUBTITLES ON: WHY IS MOVIE DIALOGUE SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?
Answer at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
access_fandom, a comm I co-mod where we talk about making sure the full fandom experience works for all of us, no matter how our bodyminds work. Like many DW comms, it hosts useful knowledge going back a while, and is always ready to be revived.
Open captions my brief audio description
Asian man faces camera, sitting at laptop with white earbuds and animated face. Another person's back enters the screen. "This motion" is him pointing to his ear then the laptop and nodding. The picture on his desk is just the words "food" and "healthcare"
Stream: ( right on here )
When you want to view a YouTube short in the classic YouTube screen (with the controls you're familiar with!) you replace the word "shorts" in the link with the word "watch"
I first saw this and the link was youtube.com/shorts/I908J9_u0WE
To use the classic horizontal player go to youtube.com/watch/I908J9_u0WE
Edited due to a strange Markdown bug: when I create a bare link with angle brackets, uppercase letters are transformed into lower case.
<https://youtube.com/watch/i908j9_u0we> becomes https://youtube.com/watch/i908j9_u0we (and the video ID string in the code example are I908J9_u0WE)
but when I create a Markdown link [youtube.com/watch/I908J9_u0WE](https://youtube.com/watch/I908J9_u0WE) the case remains as typed.
I didn't know what I was talking about.
@etymologynerd on TikTok • etymology_nerd on YouTube (note underscore)
My first fandom is language. Let me enthuse about the Etymology Nerd Adam Aleksic. He's a short-form video presenter, essayist, and recently-published author. He started on Reddit, but attained fame on TikTok, and his YouTube is 90% shorts (but not every TikTok has made it to YouTube). It's important that his videos are accurately captioned, cause he speaks faster than an auctioneer on meth. No video description and his hand-held camera means flashing and shaking images. The videos reward multiple views.
( six links to short videos, accurately captioned without video description )
If you prefer prose, his Substack newsletter offers RSS at https://etymology.substack.com/feed or luck into one of his maybe-monthly essays here via ![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
etymologynerd_feed (DW feeds only go back two weeks).
Want more? My first internet #lingcomm crush interviewed Aleksic on Lingthusiasm podcast 105—both audio and transcript there, with insights into best practices in vertical video and why it feels different than old-style horizontals.
Any linguistic communicators making you happy?
Thanks to the YouTube algorithm actually paying attention, as well as petra, please enjoy this snappy video with on-screen handwritten captions:
Today LinusBoman talks about font theft. Back in the 1990s I worked in a desktop publishing service bureau. Font foundries were still using a pricing model based on industrial customers with several blocks worth of printing presses and thousands of books. Font piracy was so widespread as to be fundamental. Good times—Linus brings it all back with an excellent news hook: how the unavoidable you wouldn’t steal a car message that scolded at the start of every VHS or DVD used a pirated font. Pro captions, silent title cards subdivide the video into eight sections.
Watch on YouTube
( or stream 21 minutes here )
Linus Boman is so my type of design nerd. More about him at TimesNewBoman.com
( stream six minutes of amazing here )
Audio is instrumental music. I invite you to write image descriptions; here are the first three:
Watch Kevin on all the platforms: https://lnk.bio/kevinbparry/
Anthony Howe of HoweARTdotNET sculpts stainless steel into "kinetic sculpture," installed outside and set in motion by the wind. Most comprise a circular metal structure atop a 10 to 20 feet curved column. The circle supports four to eight rings that rotate perpendicular to the circle. Each of these rings is decorated with assorted shapes, including discs, commas, sticks, flaps, and blades. The rings are staggered so that the motion seems infinitely various; the shiny stainless steel creates cascading light and sparkles as it moves, along with the illusion of interlocking gears moving forward and backward at the same time.
If you’re at all photosensitive, scroll on by — do not open this "details" arrow
Many static pictures to admire at https://www.howeart.net
NetflixIsAJoke offers Comedian Fern Brady, discussing whether neurodivergence is truly a superpower, with accurate open captions
( stream here )
taylortomlinsoncomedy Taylor Tomlinson workshops her jokes with her therapist, good onscreen captions
( stream here )
Keith-Schacht spotlights nifty gizmos and thingamabobs, like this tractor magnet which creates stable levitation. I find the one-word-at-a-time captions are just this side of annoying flashing lights.
( stream here )
Thanks, minoanmiss, for introducing me to a channel of very funny cooking videos. Much of bignibbles humor is visual: for example, he uses rubber hands and feet to stroke the ingredients, and an SD card to pry open cans. In this case, the final Clitheroe open-faced sandwich is a dead ringer for a vulva, with the lips sculpted from layers of ham, an olive for a clitoris, and cream cheese for the healthy secretions. On-screen accurate captions with those annoying backlights.
https://youtube.com/shorts/jt_akkdz_dg
( stream here )
LettersLive features UK celebrities reading strange letters which somehow raises money. Here’s Benedict Cumberbatch reading a complaint letter about a gent who’s deploying a blow dryer to remove the moisture from his generative undercarriage. Autocraptions maybe 90% accurate.
( stream here )
ElleCordova is back with another hilarious and carefully written skit between and among groups not known for their speaking skills. Last time it was fonts; now it’s punctuation marks! On-screen perfect captions.
https://youtube.com/shorts/ky0yoo7_y0o
( stream here )
Ugh I’ve got a chest cold which could mean endless coughing. The good news is I have a recliner for sleeping mostly upright, and copious amounts of guaifenesin-pills-and-water, and the right sort of social network.
When I woke up early, I commanded Siri #4 to narrate amaruuk’s sweet Rosie & Johnlock series Paternity
Got a phone call from kestrell
Hopped on here, and tozka linked me to an excellent concert from Cathy Fink, Marcie Marxer and Chao Tian, hosted by the Smithsonian. Fink & Marxer were role models when I was a "movement musician" between 1976-1981, and I love how closely Chinese yangqin (hammered dulcimer) and Appalachian banjo music can intertwine
Today’s prettygoodword was the wonderful campanulate
minoanmiss shared strategies for smuggling the good bacteria past TSA
My public library’s Kanopy subscription provided two profound films, both under nine minutes:
CODA is an animated short from 2015. This Irish masterpiece follows a lost soul’s encounter with death. Pro captions, no audio description, no gore. Watch on YouTube or ( stream here )
Bacon & God’s Wrath meditates on loss of faith when Razie Brownstone, at age 92, tries bacon for the first time. CONTAINS: Very lifelike animated dead pig’s head, racist autocomplete results, emesis mentioned. Watch on YouTube without captions or ( stream here )
Patrice Jetter is a force of nature. She’s joyous in her clothes and her hobbies (sewing, painting, model railroading) and her confidence in small acts of kindness. She found love with Garry Wickham and they want to marry. They can’t afford to because they’re both disabled. Marriage would end their access to US Federal health insurance and income support.
Grady Hillhouse, PE is a civil engineer who’s expanded that professional credential into a media empire:
I look forward to his 20-minute videos twice a month at PracticalEngineeringChannel. He explains crucial infrastructure—water and sewage systems, power distribution grids, transportation—with luscious stock footage and homey see-through models he cobbles together in his garage.
I strongly recommend his Valentine’s Day contribution: An Engineer’s Love Letter to Cable-Stayed Bridges
( stream here with autocraptions (Grady's voice matches Google’s autocraption algorithms) )
I agree that cable-stayed bridges are exquisitely beautiful—they bring the gracious sweep of sailboats back to our bodies of water. Their simple central towers hold a fan of cables to suspend the roadway. As Grady explains, they’re faster and cheaper to build as well as easier to maintain.
Grady doesn’t go into the history, which begins centuries ago and accelerates in the past 50 years. Thanks to excellent PR, I assumed they were originated by Spanish architect-engineer Santiago Calatrava. Close to home, he used similar technology on the 2001 extension to the Milwaukee Art Museum. This STRUCTURE magazine article explains how wrong I was--they cite 1615 for the first cable-stayed bridge!
Have you seen a cable-stayed bridge? Is there another infrastructural design that makes you grin?
And if you’re wondering what he’s talking from 0:17 to 0:30? 5 other geeky YouTubers
Destin = SmarterEveryDay
Grey = CGPGrey
Matt = numberphile
Vi was @vihart.youtube but the content is offline
Alec = TechnologyConnections
Help Me Host a Watch Part for Your Fat Friend
I loved this excellent documentary about Aubrey Gordon, fatness, family, the complexities of change, and the messy feelings we hold about our bodies. Over six years, director Jeanie Finlay follows Gordon from anonymous blogger yrfatfriend in 2016 to bestselling 2020 writer of What We Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Fat and beloved Maintenance Phase podcaster with an audience of millions.
Aubrey Gordon urges a paradigm shift in how we view fat people and the fat on our own bodies. I cheered and cried while watching the movie, as it shows Gordon’s strength (and love of her body in water) while also demonstrating her family’s ambiguous support and documenting the abuse she experiences daily, both online and off. It’s got pro captions and audio description (but no AD in the trailer).
Trailer on YouTube https://youtu.be/lodyin_6x3c
( stream it here )
I want to host a free online watch party, but I’ve never done this. I’m willing to subsidize the license fee. Are you the tech whiz who can help make this happen?
The tasks I imagine:
If you have experience organizing asynchronous, time-limited, online movie showings, and are willing to help spread Aubrey Gordon’s message, please let me know — here or via DW’s direct messaging.
Wow I loved this doc! Is there anybody out there?, 87 minutes, UK, 2023. Directed by Ella Glendining, in English with precise captions and audio description.
Blurb:
Born with a rare disability, filmmaker Ella Glendining wonders if there is anyone who can share the experience of living in a body like hers. This simple question—one which non disabled people take for granted, leads to a journey to not only others who live like her—but to the realization that meeting them changes how she views herself in the world, as well as many surprises along the way.
Glendining includes archival footage of her own childhood (older videotapes with flashing lights across the bottom of the screen) as well as horrifying evidence of rank bigotry that disabled kids in the UK. She talks about loving bodies, her own and others’. She documents accepting parenting from her own youth and with her own child, as well as the challenges of wanting to have a "perfect birth" (no drugs, no knives). She demonstrates access intimacy and cross-disability solidarity, interacts with one great doctor and one surgeon-on-a-mission to normalize kids through massive pain, and finally answers the title question yes! meeting three people with bodies similar to hers. I got bi vibes from the doc but I don’t remember her explicitly coming out. In this extensive interview at Diva Magazine, she does explore her bisexuality: https://diva-magazine.com/2023/11/13/ella-glendining-is-there-anybody-out-there/.
I want every parent of a kid with orthopedic impairments to watch this film today, before they ponder any more "treatments." It would also be a great discussion starter for a classroom or activist group.
I was delighted to learn that I wasn’t imagining a new trend in car paint. Hank Green hankschannel also wondered why more and more cars look like clay and demonstrated how to find out the reason (at his typically fast pace and high volume, with B+ autocraptions).
Nardo Gray is the original case—a dark gray that's contrasty enough to use for large but not regular-size print. Audi tests its cars at the Nardò, Italy racetrack. That’s where they debuted this doubly cool color. (Not only is it soothing, it's got blue undertones, unlike the brown undertones that create warm grays.. Much more detail at nardo-grey.com.
What makes these colors unusual is the lack of metallic paint (no little flecks of reflective metal, what I called "candy flake" when I was assembling model cars growing up.) So now I find myself hollering Nardo! whenever I catch sight of these mellow colors. Do you roll with nardo or do you prefer shiny candy flake?
erinptah collates amusing and horrifying examples of large language models ("AI") spewing nonsense after they steal the hard work of artists like herself:
https://erinptah.dreamwidth.org/tag/artificial+unintelligence
ysabetwordsmith posted eighteen subtle and beautiful eclipse shots at the "share your photos" community common_nature
https://common-nature.dreamwidth.org/253608.html
jenroses’s Fork Theory is a most excellent complement to spoon theory
http://jenrose.com/fork-theory/
You know the phrase, “Stick a fork in me, I’m done,” right?
Well, Fork Theory is that one has a Fork Limit, that is, you can probably cope okay with one fork stuck in you, maybe two or three, but at some point you will lose your shit if one more fork happens.
A fork could range from being hungry or having to pee to getting a new bill or a new diagnosis of illness. There are lots of different sizes of forks, and volume vs. quantity means that the fork limit is not absolute. I might be able to deal with 20 tiny little escargot fork annoyances, such as a hangnail or slightly suboptimal pants, but not even one “you poked my trigger on purpose because you think it’s fun to see me melt down” pitchfork.
Finally, this pro-captioned video summarizes the findings from an Hungarian research paper published last month in Cell. It supports that dogs make mental representations of human words.
stream on YouTube or … ( stream here )
Boros, Magyari et al. (2024) Neural evidence for referential understanding of object words in dogs https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.029
...is an appropriate holiday entry, I reckon.
Hello world! I’ve been noodling along, counting down the days until the Winter Solstice and the return of more light, doing a whole lot of nothing.
Happily, a pal turned me on to Elle Cordova, a musician, filker, rapper, and very funny person (formerly known as Reina Del Cid).
No transcript, but beautifully open-captioned:
( Seasons Greetings from our little multinational empire )
Much more at:
and damn geeky aside about user heads
I'm finally used to Dreamwidth's @-sign userheads, and the socials go and change their URLs so that including the @ generates a 404, thusly: ElleCordova
branchandroot