Had to change my password at ClientCo today because of security theatre. As we log in with smart cards and PINs, I had no idea what the current one was. After a couple of failed attempts with some old standards, I suddenly realised: yes, it was "Monday123", which the IT bods had set it to when I locked myself out last time around 
Happy invoicing!
- How a Champagne-Laden Steamship Ended Up in a Kansas Cornfield - As if the ships buried underneath San Francisco from the other week weren’t weird enough, it turns out there are ships buried beneath fields in Kansas, right in the centre of the continental USA: ”In 1988, Hawley and his crew uncovered the steamboat Great White Arabia, which sank in 1856 a few miles west of Kansas City. The discovery yielded an incredible collection of well-preserved, pre-Civil War artifacts… As the course of the river was altered decades later, the steamboat became preserved not under the muddy waters of the Missouri, but in a corn field.”
- The Case Against the Media, by the Media - "What keeps media people up at night when they’re thinking about what they do for a living? We began by asking ourselves and our peers what they think the media’s greatest faults are… In interviews with more than 40 journalists and media figures and in a survey of 113 of our peers, we heard much about deals cut with anonymous sources, the pressure for speed and easy hits that squeezes the nuance out of complicated stories, editors who knowingly simplified stories past the point of accuracy and publishers who spent resources on subjects they believed were trivial rather than those they felt were important.” A look from the inside at how and why the media are failing us.
- Beware the “corpse cupboard”: What happens when you die on an airplane - Apparently they’re not allowed to just open a door and chuck you out, but they don’t much like talking about what they do do: ”Of the airlines to which Quartz reached out, Qantas, LATAM, Air France-KLM, Avianca, Japan Airlines, Etihad and Cathay Pacific either declined to comment or didn’t respond to requests for comment on their procedures in the event of a death on board.”
- 7 grammar myths you learned in school - "Grammar can be tough. There are a lot of rules to follow, and a lot to wrap your head around. Some of the rules we learn in school, though, aren’t exactly accurate. While some function as helpful guidelines for style and form, other so-called ‘rules’ are inventions, or ‘superstitions,’ as the lexicographer Henry W. Fowler called them." The nice people at Oxford Dictionaries debunk various “rules”, such as not using a preposition to end a sentence with.
- This Smithsonian scientist’s death was a mystery; 150 years later, his skeleton helped solve it - "The last anyone heard of Robert Kennicott was his cheerful hum as he strolled into the Alaskan wilderness early on the morning of May 13, 1866… A search party was hastily mobilized; rescuers fanned out across the bleak, mountainous landscape. Soon two of them arrived at the Yukon River, just south of the fort, where their worst fears were confirmed. Kennicott lay on his back on the muddy beach, his arms across his chest, his hat fallen on his face, his body completely still. He was dead.” After his body was exhumed in 2001, it was finally possible for researchers to establish the likely cause of the scientist’s death.
- Trump: Tribune Of Poor White People - It’s easy to mock supporters of Donald Trump
so I willbut he clearly resonates with a large number of people. Rod Draher interviews J. D. Vance, a lawyer and author who was raised in poverty in Appalachia, to find out what Trump’s appeal is to people who feel marginalised by mainstream politics: ”What many don’t understand is how truly desperate these places are, and we’re not talking about small enclaves or a few towns–we’re talking about multiple states where a significant chunk of the white working class struggles to get by… The two political parties have offered essentially nothing to these people for a few decades. From the Left, they get some smug condescension, an exasperation that the white working class votes against their economic interests because of social issues… From the Right, they’ve gotten the basic Republican policy platform of tax cuts, free trade, deregulation, and paeans to the noble businessman and economic growth… these policies are culturally tone deaf: nobody from southern Ohio wants to hear about the nobility of the factory owner who just fired their brother.”
- What I learned playing Metacritic’s all-time worst-scoring PC games - Steven Strom suffers so you don’t have to: ”I dug up the five lowest-scoring PC games ever registered on Metacritic, which proved to be an interesting list. Interesting, as in the most terrifying growth you’ve ever seen on an elderly person's back. That kind of interesting."
- This is what Apple should tell you when you lose your iPhone - Joonas Kiminki on a clever phishing technique apparently used by iPhone thieves: ”Yesterday — eleven days after the phone was stolen — the most interesting thing happened: I got an SMS and an email notifying that the phone was found!… Digging deeper, I noticed that the email was actually not from Apple, but from {redacted}@gmail.com. The website is not registered to Apple, but some useless company in Nassau.”
- How MSG Got A Bad Rap: Flawed Science And Xenophobia - Anna Maria Barry-Jester explains why you shouldn’t be worried about at least one of the ingredients in your Chinese meal: "Like many people, I thought MSG — monosodium glutamate, a chemical compound used to enhance the flavor of food — was bad for me, and I was sure I felt terrible every time I ate it… Subsequent research has found that the vast majority of people, even those claiming a sensitivity to MSG, don’t have any reaction when they don’t know they are eating it.”
- Stylish Occult Posters Promoting Magicians From 1900s - "Aside from baffling audiences with smoke and mirrors and a well timed sleight of hand, magicians had to promote and market themselves heavily in order to bring the crowds in… Kellar was well-aware of the power of suggestion and ensured all of his promotional posters featured himself commanding or conjuring up devils and wicked imps. Buy a ticket to one of his shows and you too could have an audience with demonic and supernatural. So successful were the designs of the posters in promoting his show that when he retired his successor Howard Thurston continued to use the same elements.”
Happy invoicing!
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