The rain's stopped; presumably it's saving itself for next week's Bank Holiday
Happy invoicing!
- Empire of the Air: The Imperial Airship Service - Marking last week’s maiden flight of Airlander 10 at Cardington, this is a fascinating look back at the history of airships in the UK: ”[At Cardington] two massive airship sheds still stand. Today they play host to a new British airship, the Airlander 10. They were assembled, however, for an even grander scheme to connect London to its Dominions – the Imperial Airship Service, which promised not just to cut ocean crossing times by a half to a third, but also to do so with a degree of grace and ease that few steamships could match.”
- How Do You Drive A Car That’s On Fire? - Zaron Burnett III on his misadventure with a different form of inflammable transport: ”We go through our days blissfully ignorant of potential catastrophes. We forget disaster can strike at any moment. To make matters worse, I’m naturally over-confident, which means I’m totally unprepared when my world goes wrong… Before the fire started I noticed a funny smell. Being a guy, I thought, “Yeah, I really need to clean my car.” A few miles later, I noticed smoke rising from the clothing piled on my front seat. I shoved the clothes off and bright flames leapt up.”
- Ex-Top Undercover Drugs Cop Forfeits Anonymity To Fight AGAINST The War On Drugs - "Neil Woods insists nothing good came of his 14 years as one of the UK’s most successful undercover cops, fighting the war on drugs. His painstaking, months-long investigations put people guilty of sickening violence in prison for a combined total of more than a 1,000 years, so, surely, there must be something he is proud of? “No. No. I did not good at all, absolutely no good at all,” he says with disdain. “I did nothing of any benefit whatsoever, I only caused harm.”"
- F*** You, Talking Smoothies - ”There are two kinds of companies in this world. Heartless multinationals who leave you on hold in India for 5 hours and fleece you with hidden charges, and hippy capitalists who make smoothies that say things like: ‘Hi, I’m made of goji berries and pinecones, please hug me.’ Well, I know which I hate more.” Lucy Sweet isn’t fooled by the friendly face of capitalism.
- Space and booze, an anecdotal history - "From Buzz's holy wine to vetting sherry, alcohol and space mix despite NASA policy." Unsurprisingly, the Russian portion of the ISS supposedly has more relaxed rules about drinking
- NIST’s new password rules – what you need to know - ”The United States National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) is formulating new guidelines for password policies to be used in the whole of the US government (the public sector). Why is this important? Because the policies are sensible and a great template for all of us to use within our own organizations and application development programs." And they’ve finally pointed out many totally obvious facts, such as that forcing people to change their passwords on a schedule is not just a waste of everybody’s time but is likely to actually weaken security.
- Jihadis Don’t Walk - Former British Army intelligence officer Matt Perriss explains why terrorists are not going to try to get into the UK by pretending to be refugees: ”The premise that Jihadists would walk to the UK from Syria is preposterous and gives support to my long held belief that many people slept through geography at school… It can’t be done, and the Jihadists would be stupid to try. And they are not stupid.”
- We’re all different in our DNA. We’re finally starting to understand when those differences matter - "I know it sounds strange, but I feel very grateful to a database. It saved me from a lifelong fear of dropping dead because my heart will give out." Carl Zimmer explains how a huge increase in the size of online databases of genetic variation is making it easier to determine just what a specific gene might be responsible for.
- Scenes From the Terrifying, Already Forgotten JFK Airport Shooting That Wasn’t - Last week, mass panic caused JFK airport to close down. David Wallace-Wells was there: ”It started, apparently, with a group of passengers awaiting departure in John F. Kennedy Airport Terminal 8 cheering Usain Bolt’s superhuman 100-meter dash. The applause sounded like gunfire, somehow, or to someone; really, it only takes one. According to some reports, one woman screamed that she saw a gun… There was a second stampede, I heard some time later, in Terminal 4. I was caught up in two separate ones, genuine stampedes, both in Terminal 1… Within minutes, the whole apparatus of the airport and its crowd-control mechanisms had collapsed into total disarray. When the thousands of us who had been racing away from shooters finally managed to catch our breath, long after midnight, the idea that the airport could ever manage a crowd, let alone a hysterical one, looked ridiculous.” Another account, from flight attendant Olivia: Running for my life at JFK mass panic
- The Surreal Art of Alchemical Diagrams - "As well as reams of text, the ins and outs of the alchemist’s task, steeped as it is in a dizzyingly complex symbology, has given birth to a whole host of strange and wondrous imagery over the centuries. Here we pick out some favourites, many found on Wellcome Images and the brilliant Manly Palmer Hall collection at the Internet Archive."
Happy invoicing!
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