Violet Berlin

Story, narrative, scriptwriting for interactive & immersive experiences.

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

My giant, gameboy-ified face on a screen is just one of the terrifying exhibits at the new (and free) War Games exhibition at #IWM - featuring playable #retrogames

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

@WingsScotland Wait... so did I!

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

@WingsScotland 🤣

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

Tycho’s first song/video with his new band myohmy.
I know I’m his mum, so I’m legally compromised, but come on. The most beautiful man since Adam Ant. https://t.co/HrpzkryH4T

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

The Story Behind The Sting-Sega Connection (That Wasn't) https://t.co/doOIltq1yZ via @YouTube

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

A newborn sperm whale can’t swim. It starts sinking the second it’s born. If nobody pushes it to the surface, it drowns in mile-deep water.

On July 8, 2023, a sperm whale named Rounder went into labor off the coast of Dominica. Researchers from Project CETI, a $33 million AI initiative out of MIT, Harvard, and Northeastern that’s trying to decode whale language, happened to be there doing routine fieldwork. They had drones in the air and underwater microphones running. What they captured over the next six hours just got published in two papers, one in Science and one in Scientific Reports.

Eleven whales gathered at the surface before Rounder even started delivering. Her mother, Lady Oracle, was there. So was her daughter Accra. Three generations in the water. But the wild part: half those whales belonged to a completely separate bloodline that normally keeps its distance from Rounder’s family. On a typical day, these two family lines split off to hunt in different areas and rarely cluster together. For the birth, they all converged before labor started. The unrelated family somehow knew it was coming.

The delivery took 34 minutes. Sperm whale calves come out tail-first with their flukes still folded from the womb. They haven’t developed the oil-filled organ in their heads that helps adult whales float, so the moment they’re born, they’re dead weight in the ocean. Every adult whale in the group, related and unrelated, started taking turns pushing the calf up to breathe. They kept this rotation going for three hours. When a pod of pilot whales (known to be aggressive toward sperm whales) and a large group of Fraser’s dolphins showed up during delivery, the adults formed a wall around the newborn until the threat passed.

The underwater audio is where it gets interesting. CETI’s microphones picked up the whales changing their vocal patterns during the birth. The click-based sounds they use to talk to each other shifted at specific moments, and vowel-like structures appeared in the recordings. This builds on what CETI found in 2024 when they ran machine learning on over 8,700 recorded whale calls and discovered sperm whale communication isn’t a basic 21-sound code. It’s a system of about 300 distinct sound combinations, with the whales adjusting rhythm and timing in real time, speeding up and slowing down the way a musician does mid-performance. A 2025 follow-up from UC Berkeley found these clicks also contain vowel patterns, something scientists had assumed only humans could produce.

Sperm whales carry the largest brain of any animal on the planet. About 9 kg. Roughly six times heavier than yours. The evolutionary analysis in the new Science paper suggests this kind of cooperative birthing goes back over 36 million years, to the common ancestor of all toothed whales. The calf was spotted a year later, swimming with its family.

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

@BertDalziel @catherine_zq Same!

[Restoring Your Faith in Humanity @HumanityChad]

A Polish dance group, Fair Play Crew, drew global attention by recreating on stage the stiff and synchronized movements of 1980s fighting video games, such as the classic International Karate.

I've seen this so many times, still cracks me up 😂

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

Fake open-world wisdom: follow the shiny side quest, call it purpose, ignore the actual game economy.

[Art of Life 🦋 @Art0fLife_]

He literally explains how to discover what you were born to do (in 2 mins)

[The DreamCode Prophet @TheDreamOracle]

Bayes’ theorem really just formalizes something simple: update what you believe when new evidence shows up.

Most people don’t do that. They pick a conclusion first, then ignore or reinterpret anything that challenges it. Bayes forces you to start with a probability, then adjust it honestly based on actual data.

It’s basically intellectual humility turned into math. You don’t assume you’re right. You assign confidence levels, and you let reality move those numbers up or down.

If more people thought that way, fewer arguments would be about defending identity, and more would be about refining truth.

[Iris Seraphina  @iris_seraphina]

GTA IRL - His body movements are so like the game!! #GrandTheftAuto

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

@wordspinster Loved the Wonderbra aside, I didn’t know “Hello Boys” didn’t boost sales. I’ve been equally baffled by the Sweeney jeans ads: they feel like women’s jeans marketed at men. Curious if you read them the same way. https://t.co/yP4hBafx90

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

Happy 53rd Birthday to video games!
My trip to the bar where Pong debuted now looks like I filmed it with the same pixels Bushnell used. History repeats in squares.
https://t.co/9p6uaYhhib

#Pong #RetroGaming #VHS #Atari #GamingHistory

[Jennifer Thetford-Kay @JenKteach]

On this day in 1972, Nolan Bushnell, co-founder of Atari, released Pong, the first commercially successful video game. Its massive success (quarters jammed the coin box) led Atari to mass-produce it, with the official commercial announcement and release on November 29, 1972.
Nolan Bushnell and Atari installed a Pong prototype at Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California, earlier in 1972, sources vary between August and September.

[MERICA MEMED @Mericamemed]

I’ve never seen a more accurate picture of real life

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

RIP my first (and last) Etsy shop.

(Shopfront photo: I typed “vintage” into iPhoto: it found me as Hedy Lamarr on 90s CiTV.)

I wasn’t trying to start a business.
Just pass something on – in a way that meant something.

Etsy: “Nope.”

#EtsyFail #HandmadeNotHandled

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

This necklace? 💚Found by mum in a 90s charity shop.

I wore it everywhere – clubs, telly, dates with boys who said: “Actually, Sega’s better." 🕹️

It felt right to pass it on.

So I listed it on Etsy.

🧵A thread about trying to move on, jewellery 💍and the cruelty of @Etsy 💔

[Violet Berlin @VioletBerlin]

To recap:

• Listed 2 sentimental items
• Got 1 buyer
• Etsy took £13
• Banned me
• Deleted my shop
• Blocked appeal
• Gave no reason
• Kept the money

All in fast succession.