Remember me to Leicester Fields

In the continuing War of the Algorithms, I've really been needing palate-cleansers. 

This latest war is with YouTube. It's creepy enough when ads for something I've recently ordered online stalk me throughout a video I'm watching. 

However, in the past few months, it seems that the content I'm sent is narrowing alarmingly.  Even accidental pauses while scrolling though suggestions count as indications I might be interested, when I'm really not.

 

Last week, I encountered a time-lapse video, which picked a Paris intersection, and ran through possible sights seen from this vantage point from Before the Common Era to the present. Foolishly I decided to suppress my distaste for AI, and watch. It was fairly interesting, although I suspect a factor in my enjoyment might have been my not-so-detailed grasp of French history. 

I counted it as a guilty pleasure. 

Predictably, a couple of days ago, a similar video appeared in my "recommended" list -- this one showing a time-lapse view of London from someone hovering a bit back from the south bank of the Thames, looking towards Westminster starting just before the Roman occupation, and gradually, the palace of Westminster appeared (some time in the eleventh century), followed by the other familiar landmarks.

Just before the Westminster bridge began spanning the Thames in the mid-1700s, my first flash of irritation came, when the creator of this thing decided that the Great Fire of London of 1666 was not nearly interesting enough, and set Lambeth ablaze as well.

During the glimpse of the Blitz in the 1940, a bomber crashed nose-down on Westminster Bridge, something I'm reasonably sure didn't happen, as devastating as the Blitz was.

Then, instead of stopping with the present-day, the time-line veered into the 2030's and beyond, with a horrific mushroom cloud appearing in the western horizon, followed by the Elizabeth Tower, containing Big Ben, hurtling over the bridge to crush the fleeing pedestrians.

That'll teach me, I guess.

It occurred to me that, as Demeter entered her final descent last summer, I had watched fewer of my favourite YouTube channels, which would have a hand in making my algorithm go a bit awry.  Yesterday, I spent quite a bit of time retrieving a collection of videos giving me quite a bit of pleasure last spring.  They're not flashy, but they're well-crafted, and well-researched.  This one helped me pinpoint the location of an inn that one of my great-great-great-great-great-uncles ran in the early 1790s:

  

This is the work of Scott Hatton, whose Underground Map Project is to record walks between the stations, each video with a helping of local history.  They're rather like watching some of the better presentations of the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa. 

Furthermore, his blog The Underground Map has assisted me in pinpointing other London locations.  It features detailed local history and a rather wonderful layered map, where you can see your chosen location on maps as early as 1700.

All mercifully free of AI slop.  I've subscribed to Hatton's YouTube channel, and bookmarked the blog, which I should have done last spring, before Demeter started fading away. 

I'll be watching my algorithm carefully.

And reading more books.