This week: the Lateral live show! A time loop! And beans.

• A band's "rider" is the technical document they send to a venue before they arrive for a tour, and Offshore Audio breaks down how pro sound engineers create tech riders for bands. This is intended as advice for small bands touring, but as someone outside the industry, I still found it an interesting look into that world.
   
• I Think James Is In A Time Loop is a student-thesis short film that the YouTube algorithm has decided to shine upon. (Note: strong language and suicide, sort of.) It's by no means perfect, as you'd expect from a student film, but I found it charming. And it's really interesting to see a Groundhog Day-esque story from the perspective of someone outside the time loop. 
   
• Austin, from The View from the Clouds, talks about the "Impossible Fire": the Rakovalkea, the Swedish gap fire. Despite the outdoors mostly being a foreign land for me, I found this fascinating -- well narrated, well explained. The video's occasionally a little rough around the edges, as you'd expect from a much smaller channel, but the presenting style is professional, and I think the result's well worth a watch. Also, it contains an adorable dog.

• Bird news! The "grue jay", the rare hybrid offspring of a blue jay and a green jay: the "first observed vertebrate that’s hybridized as a result of two species both expanding their ranges", at least in part due to the changing climate. The mixed plumage is remarkable.
   
• Language news! Japan is changing its romanisation rules, the process by which words in the Japanese language are transliterated into the Roman alphabet. (Thankfully, it won't affect proper nouns that are currently in use.)
   
• And a web toy! The dogspinner is a simple, fun and impeccably-designed interactive animation. There's something very pleasing about the inertia that's built into it.

And finally: beans.mp4. (Thanks to Purr for the suggestion.)

All the best,

— Tom