Not much time left to waste in this year, but this lot should help you get through what there is 
Happy invoicing!
- The Cornerman - ”In this four-part true crime investigation, the Cable unmasks one of Britain’s most elusive crime bosses - the Cornerman, so-called for taking a corner out of every crooked deal that came his way and hurting those who don’t pay up.” Makes a nice change to have some British crooks in the long-thing-about-criminals section
- Quanta Magazine: 2019 In Review - In other words, several lists of already-published stuff so the editors can take the festive season off. But there's lots of good articles from the past year in here covering physics, biology, maths, and computer science
- What Did We Get Stuck in Our Rectums Last Year? - ”America continues to lead—and to innovate.” Barry Petchesky's traditional end-of-year roundup of the things Americans have been inserting into inappropriate orifices. At least ”CAPSULE THAT EXPANDS INTO A FOAM DINOSAUR” was only stuck in the patient's throat
- Frode Weierud’s CryptoCellar - ”I am a retired electronics engineer previously employed at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. I have had a lifelong interest in cryptology and its history, with special emphasis on WW2 cryptology and codebreaking. The history of the Enigma is one of my pet projects.” But there's lots of other interesting stuff on Frode's site and in his blog. If you're not too hungover, why not spend New Year trying to crack the transposition cipher used in radioteletype communications between Biafra and Portugal during the Nigerian civil war of the late 1960s.
- National Geographic: Best of 2019 - Always a bunch of good stuff in NatGeo's roundup of the year, such as this photo by Michael Melford: ”An enormous iceberg, broken from a glacier and blown by strong winds into the beach at Lago Grey, dwarfs a backpacker in Patagonia’s Torres del Paine National Park.”
- Are Humans Fit for Space? A ‘Herculean’ Study Says Maybe Not - ”Scientists around the world compared the genomes and health changes of twins Mark and Scott Kelly. One stayed on Earth, the other flew in the International Space Station for a year.” The effects of long-term exposure to space revealed by the study suggest it might not be practical to make extended journeys away from our home planet. That would at least explain why nobody's been to visit us
- Vampire archaeology: How scientists identified a 200-year-old vampire - Not Transylvania, but New England: ”The community of Griswold, CT had forgotten about the old burying ground used by the Walton family in the 19th century until children playing near a gravel mine in 1990 found a couple of skulls… When archaeologists unearthed the fourth grave [they] found that the skull and thigh bones had been arranged into a skull and crossbones design on top of the rest of the remains. After running through theories for this sinister skeletal design, the research team agreed that this grave belonged to a ‘vampire’ who had its bones repositioned post-mortem.”
- The Navy Installed Touch-screen Steering Systems To Save Money. Ten Sailors Paid With Their Lives. - ”When the USS John S. McCain crashed in the Pacific, the Navy blamed the destroyer’s crew for the loss of 10 sailors. The truth is the Navy’s flawed technology set the McCain up for disaster.” ProPublica have reconstructed a version of the ship’s navigation system using public records, which shows that the ship crashed because of poor user interface design.
- My Business Card Runs Linux - A hardware project for the New Year: ”I have seen electronic business cards before, with various fun features including emulating USB flash drives, blinkenlights, or even wireless transceivers. I have never seen one running Linux, however. So I built one.” The cards cost under $3 each; be sure to check out the internal links at the foot this page, covering embedded Linux and the design process for this particular project.
- 27 Snapshots of Manchester In The 1960s - Manchester was a little-known Northern backwater until this year’s CUK Christmas Meetup put it on the map. But the city actually has a long history dating back to at least the 1960s, as these photographs show. This is a typical Northern scene of the 1960s, and I remember many similar pubs standing alone in the area running inland from Liverpool’s Dock Road in those days: ”The George Inn on the junction of Radnor Street and Pinder Street, Hulme, left isolated by the demolition of surrounding houses and shops.”
Happy invoicing!
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