Arsenal Get Battered.

With football increasingly overrun by oil-baron billions, prawn sandwiches, half-and-half scarves, and princess-like players, Aaron Ramsdale represents an anachronistic throwback to a glorious bygone era: the era of sh*thousery. Obviously, all goalkeepers are mental, that’s why they choose to play in goal, but Ramsdale actually seems fairly polite and mild-mannered off the pitch. On it, however, is a different story. His upper echelon level of sh*thousery was arguably best portrayed by a now famous moment in which he joined in with the heckles of the Leicester fans behind his goal. Arsenal sent Ramsdale down to the legendary Chip Inn Fish Bar on Holloway Road to lend his support to a local business, with a building ‘ooo’ of the other customers resulting in the crescendo of ‘your chips, ahhh’. Oh, and David Seaman turns up too, for some reason. Is it just me, or does Seaman always look just delighted to be wherever it is he happens to be? He could be in a queue at the bank and would still be beaming.

Arti-fish-al.

Brace yourselves for this one: scientists have created fish using human hearts. Yikes, reckon I’ll follow Seaman’s lead and get a saveloy next time. As part of a joint venture between Harvard and Emory Universities, the ‘Biohybrid Fish’ are made from real human cardiac muscle cells and are able to swim by flipping their tails from side to side, mimicking the muscle contractions of a beating heart. The long-term goal is to use this technology to build a fully-functioning artificial heart that can be used in transplants – which, apparently, would not be fish-shaped. Perhaps more than anything, though, this is a demonstration of the extent to which music can influence the feel of a film. The track they’ve opted for in this instance gives off Ibiza on the beach at 5am as the sun’s rising vibes. Put ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ on in the background and this army of fish made from human hearts becomes something very different.

Going Underground.

Much like squabbling spouses, archaeologists love digging up shit from the past. However, instead of resulting in a toaster being thrown out a window, archaeological digs can sometimes lead to remarkable discoveries. One such instance took place in Southwark this week, with the unearthing of the largest Roman mosaic to be found in over 50 years. The site is believed to have been a venue for high-ranking officials to lounge in while being served food and drink, and it has been described as a “once-in-a-lifetime find” by site supervisor Antonietta Lerz from The Museum of London Archaeology. 50 years would be tragically short lifetime, but she was obviously excited. And you can see why: ain’t it pretty? It does look a little like a Wetherspoons carpet though, which is itself equally a place for poets and scholars to indulge and imbibe, so that’s actually rather fitting.

Divorced, Beheaded, Revived.

I’m starting to realise that I may just be a sucker for anything that says AI – whether that be AI-written poetry, AI-painted pictures, or, in this instance, AI-generated historical faces. This week, an artist named Hidreley Diao has achieved that sacred virality we all so desperately crave thanks to his AI image transformations, which show us what historical figures and cartoon characters would look like if they were about in the modern day. Using a combination of photoshop and three mobile apps – FaceApp, Gradiente and Remini – Diao has recreated faces such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Mona Lisa, Napoleon and Leonardo da Vinci. The most striking by far, though, is the modern-day Henry VIII, who I’m pretty sure tried to sell me gear in the Dog & Duck last week.

Had a Blinder.

We know that we generally ought to expect something rousing and vaguely inspirational when it comes to Paralympics promo content. This makes sense, given that the athletes competing in the games are themselves so inspirational, having often overcome adversity that most people are fortunate enough to not even be able to properly conceptualize. This lack of first-hand understanding is relevant here, since we often appreciate the struggle of Paralympians on an intellectual level, yet, quite naturally, fail to fully grasp what an insane journey many of them have had to go through in order to get to the games. 4Creative took a slightly different approach for this promo, moving away from the Rocky-esque montages we may have seen in the past by showing us a quite plainly shocking recreation of what Paralympic GB alpine skier Millie Knight sees as she flies down a mountain at 110km/h with just 5% vision. That’s enough to make your stomach go a bit. She is scared of glitter though, so don’t let off any confetti when she wins. Unless she meant Gary.

EuniceTube.

Storm Eunice wasn’t much fun, was she? Assuming Eunice is a she, which we probably oughtn’t do. Plus, if we’re going to all the trouble of anthropomorphising these storms with human names, you would have thought they’d go for something more intimidating than Eunice. Anyway, while Eunice principally tooketh away (mainly in the form of bins and fence panels), she also gave us a brief, nationwide, utterly and quintessentially British pastime: watching planes try to come into land at Heathrow. Doesn’t sound that exciting, but BIG JET TV was something else. You’ve probably already heard about this, or you may even have been watching live, as over 200,000 people were tuned in at one point. To put that into perspective, that’s about 2.5x more viewers than GB news typically gets. Andrew Neil will be even more red than usual. What made for such captivating viewing, though, was the commentary of Jerry Dyers, who has become an overnight national treasure. So, as we relieved as we no doubt are that Eunice has now moved along, how can we just go back to a world without BIG JET TV? When’s Franklin due..?