The best livestream so far this year? A corpse flower slowly blooming

When you think of livestreaming, if indeed you reflect on it at all, you probably imagine a gamer screaming about shooting the final boss. Or a conspiracy influencer “just asking questions” about why aliens are running Parliament. It is all very loud, with lots of gifs and sound effects. And yet the best livestream so far this year was quite the opposite: it was three weeks of round-the-clock video of a flower slowly growing at Milk Barn Farm, in a town called Boring in Oregon.

This was no ordinary flower. Former web designer Derek Powazek has…