Even if you haven't just returned from Spain, there's no good reason to go outside when you can waste your time perfectly well inside, reading stuff like this 
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- Marmalade: A Very British Obsession - Livvy Potts considers the citrus preserve: ”Marmalade holds a central role in British life and British culture. It appears in the diaries of Samuel Pepys; James Bond and Paddington Bear eat it. Officers that served in British wars received jars of marmalade to remind them of their home country. Captain Scott took jars to the Antarctic with him, and Edmund Hillary took one up Everest. Marmalade is part of our national myth. I want to know why.”
- The Math of Social Distancing Is a Lesson in Geometry - ”How to safely reopen offices, schools and other public spaces while keeping people six feet apart comes down to a question mathematicians have been studying for centuries.” Patrick Honner on circle and sphere packing, which is suddenly relevant to the mundane business of office planning.
- The real science behind SETI’s hunt for intelligent aliens - ”Throughout SETI’s 60-year history, a stalwart group of astronomers has managed to keep the search alive. Today, this cohort is stronger than ever, though they are mostly ignored by the research community, largely unfunded by NASA, and dismissed by some astronomers as a campy fringe pursuit. After decades of interest and funding dedicated toward the search for biological life, there are tentative signs that SETI is making a resurgence.” The truth is out there
- Scientists Unveil First Ever Pictures of Multiple Planets around a Sunlike Star - ”For the first time ever, scientists have managed to capture images of multiple planets twirling about another sunlike star. Yet despite its stellar host’s resemblance to our own, the snapshots of this planetary system reveal it to be no place like home.” And this must be where they live
- Proteus is an underwater habitat with a greenhouse designed by Yves Behar - ”Swiss designer Yves Behar has unveiled his design for French ocean conservationist Fabien Cousteau's underwater pressurised research station that will be ‘the ocean's equivalent to the International Space Station’.”
- A.I. Helped Uncover Chinese Boats Hiding in North Korean Waters - ”Huge fleets of Chinese fishing boats have been caught stealthily operating in North Korean waters—while having their tracking systems turned off. The potentially illegal fishing operation was revealed through a combination of artificial intelligence, radar, and satellite data.” Makes a change from just using AI to put cartoon ears on people
- Underworld - ”Why do we even have coal mines? That question is what led Jeanne Marie Laskas to spend a few weeks 500 feet underground, getting to know the men behind the invisible economy this country couldn't live without.” In the case of this article, “this country” is the USA and since the piece was written in 2007 things haven’t gone quite so well for the industry over there.
- I Was a Teenage Conspiracy Theorist - Ellen Cushing on the joy of believing: ”The government was lying; the elites were consolidating power; the game was rigged; the paranoia was warranted. I knew things were bad, and I knew they were bad in a way that was murky and still emerging. The idea that everything confusing or unfair or suspicious could be the result of an actual conspiracy, and not anything more abstract or complicated, felt appealing to me… I walked home from school, ate a bowl of Goldfish crackers while watching Oprah, and casually informed my family about the New World Order over dinner.”
- Another Night to Remember - ”When the Costa Concordia, a floating pleasure palace carrying 4,200 people, hit a rock off the Italian coast on January 13, it became the largest passenger ship ever wrecked, supplanting the Titanic in maritime history. From the moments when the captain made the first in a series of incredible blunders, through a harrowing night of mindless panic and deadly peril, in which rescuers and passengers improvised a massive evacuation and ordinary men emerged as heroes, Bryan Burrough reconstructs an epic fight for survival—in which all too many would perish.”
- Pictorial railway maps - ”In the mid-20th century pictorial maps in cartoonish styles were a popular way of promoting travel and tourism. In contrast to objective, realistic maps they appeal to emotions such as romance, fantasy and humor. They are used to tell anecdotes about a region's history, culture and landscape in a way attractive to old and young. These illustrated maps are meant to inspire, not to provide travel information.” Arjan den Boer presents a selection of such maps, all zoomable, from across Europe (and one from the USA)
Happy invoicing!
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