History Channel documentary, South Park style

Our meat suits can seem really frustrating at times.

The behaviour of other people’s meat suits can apparently collapse Europe into another pre-war economic superstorm that has a tendency to give rise to violent dictators.

Too often our silly little monkey brains can get tripped up with conflated words or prejudices even when the comparatively simple answer is staring us in the face.

No one wants to foot the bill and that means we all end up much, much worse off.

Even our best attempts at providing guidance and inspiration in life only just on balance turn out to be more positive than negative as this sentiment analysis of the Bible shows.

Why is this so?

Well, for a lot of reasons. If we were to group them all together we could say this is down to a persistent overestimation of our own abilities and the impact this has on the world around us.

We think we are in the driving seat but our meat suits betray us. Even if you manage to drop some weight off it your meat suit will release a chemical soup that forces you to regain it again. It also can’t tell the difference between reality and metaphor and is tricked by heavier clipboards. This leads to all manner of unhelpful thought patterns such as the erroneous continuity of personal belief.

But, but… even with all these limitations it’s important to remember that we are luminous beings on a wondrous collective journey … a journey that in a very brief space of time went from wizards performing blood transfusions on dogs to the bold promise of conceivably having your own dinosaur built right now.

Despite their obvious limitations, our meat suits can do some pretty amazing things. And yet we spend so much of our time wearing them wondering about the most useless of things, like a whale falling through the sky, that we run the risk of missing a trick. The trick:

If your brain can’t tell the difference between reality and hallucination -and it absolutely can’t- then use that to your advantage.

• Simple formulae underpin a probabilistic universe.
• Quantum observation experiments prove your consciousness interfaces with the universe in a way that changes it.
• So create some interconnected goals (interconnected rather than sequential), identify a robofish and get shoaling.

What I love about London is that it is a near-perfect theatrum mundi. What happens to London happens to the world. Perhaps it’s a failing in me -something internally deficient that means I need more obvious, brutal, continually reminders of the miraculous complexity and wonder that we are capable of? I need reminding that our world is fucking awesome and that we are participating in its awesomeness. London gives me this.

Other people seem to be able to hold this idea much more securely. I forget it instantly if I’m not constantly reminded. (I put it to you that the practice of magic is a similar deficiency brought about by a lack of trust in the miraculousness of the universe that afflicts a small minority.)

If you need similar reminding then behold this rather lovely collection of tales about London:

The book opens with a snarl, a denouncement of the metropolis from someone who lived here and had to get out. We’re then above the clouds with a commercial airline pilot who describes the ‘almost angelic’ views of the city from above. Then it’s back down to earth with a bump, as our third voice describes his time living on the streets amid the punch-ups, pigeons and smells of stale cider.

So it continues. The illegal immigrant, the female bouncer, the currency trader, the dominatrix, the crematorium technician, the eyewitness to a gory suicide. All life and death is in here, from the extraordinary aspects of everyday professions to the everyday moments of extraordinary people. No previous book has come so close to answering the question with 7 million answers: What makes this great city tick?

And because you’ve been so good in getting to the end of this experimental link round-up, here’s a brilliant video of Londoners shot entirely from London buses.

The people in this video -like you- can build dinosaurs.