Radiolab
• WNYC Studios
“New FBI data shows that both violent crime and property crime are at their lowest level since the 1960s” but the media disproportionately covers crime, so most Americans aren’t aware of the decrease.
From the Phonograph podcast, a look at the early days of 99% Invisible (as that podcast’s 15th anniversary approaches).
Lilly Yokoi was an acrobat who specialized in performing on a bicycle. During her career, she toured around the world and appeared on the Ed Sullivan show three times. In this performance from 1965, Yokoi does some seriously before-their-time tricks on her Golden Bicycle, including a no-hands handlebar spin, a no-hands wheelie, a handstand over the handlebars, and several other tricks…all in chunky high heels, mind you.
Here’s an even earlier performance, from 1961. See also some bike tricks filmed by Thomas Edison in 1899.
[This is a vintage post originally from Nov 2014.]
Tags: cycling · Lilly Yokoi · timeless posts · video
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to OpenAI's headquarters for a "preview event", for which I had to sign both an NDA and a video release waiver. I suspected it might relate to either GPT-5 or the OpenAI open weight models... and GPT-5 it was!
OpenAI had invited five developers: Claire Vo, Theo Browne, Ben Hylak, Shawn @swyx Wang, and myself. We were all given early access to the new models and asked to spend a couple of hours (of paid time) experimenting with them, while being filmed by a professional camera crew.
The resulting video is now up on YouTube. Unsurprisingly most of my edits related to SVGs of pelicans.
Tags: youtube, gpt-5, generative-ai, openai, pelican-riding-a-bicycle, ai, llms
Emily Wilson’s current project is translating The Odyssey (again). “I am doing a fully revised re-retranslation, to align my Odyssey translation more closely with my Iliad.”
