Monday Links from the Lockdown vol. DCII

[NickFitz]

Apparently the sport has all finished now, so you won't have any distractions from these distractions

• The Clairvoyant - ”When word spreads about a 17-year-old in rural Tuscany reputed to have clairvoyant powers, she must withstand followers seeking her wisdom and officials hellbent on tearing her down.” You don't mess with the Roman Catholic church in 19th century Tuscany
• Cold-case files: Archaeologists discover 3,000-year-old victim of shark attack - Makes him sound like he was that old when attacked, but no: ”While examining the skeletal remains of a prehistoric hunter-gatherer cemetery in Japan dating back some 3,000 years, University of Oxford archaeologists found distinctive evidence that one such skeleton had been the victim of a fatal shark attack.”
• NASA Is Quietly Funding a Hunt for Alien Megastructures - ”Detecting 'technosignatures' such as hypothetical Dyson spheres in space could lead us to extraterrestrial life, and now NASA is funding the search.” The truth is out there
• Finally, the truth behind the ‘haunted’ Dybbuk Box can be revealed - ”The story goes that he purchased an old wine cabinet from the granddaughter of a recently deceased Holocaust survivor named Havela… The seller purportedly told Mannis it was never to be opened, and if it was, bad things would happen. He did not heed her warning.” Could it be a hoax? It could, couldn't it
• Take a Tour of Hollywood Movie Ranches - ”If you’ve ever wondered where your favorite Western was filmed, or wanted to visit the set location for shows like Little House on the Prairie or Dukes of Hazzard, Aaron Gilbreath has researched the most prominent Hollywood movie ranches and mapped their locations.” Handy
• The Tragic End of Polish Movie Star — and Nazi Resistance Fighter — Witold Zacharewicz - ”In the years before World War II, Zacharewicz shined at Cannes and was wooed by Samuel Goldwyn but when the Nazis occupied Poland, he was sent to Auschwitz for defending his Jewish countrymen.” Another headline that doesn't sound quite right: he resisted Nazis, he wasn't in some Nazi Resistance.
• And Then We Were Twelve - ”Rob believed that a path could be found on high peaks that would lead through internal sufferings to a place of pure light, peace, calm, love and absolute truth. He hadn't climbed any mountains yet… The young men chose to start with the South Face of Mt. Robson, another route pioneered by Conrad Kain in 1924: nine thousand, five hundred feet of complicated route finding, including a hundred yards of jogging under a murderous wall of aquamarine seracs to enter the labyrinth of crevasses and icefalls of The Roof, a hanging glacier that looks like a steeply pitched thatch woven from chalk-white grass.” Probably a good idea to start with something a little easier
• Inside the FBI, Russia, and Ukraine’s failed cybercrime investigation - ”Russia and Ukraine promised to cooperate and help catch the world’s most successful hackers. But things didn’t quite go to plan.” What a surprise
• Inside a 20-Watt Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier from Apollo - Ken Shirriff digs up yet another bit of Apollo hardware: ”How did the Apollo astronauts communicate on their trip to the Moon, 240,000 miles back to Earth? They used a 32-pound amplifier, built around a special kind of vacuum tube called a traveling-wave tube. In this blog post, I look inside this amplifier and explain how the traveling-wave tube works.”
• Goomics - Manu Cornet has recently left Google after fourteen years, where he gained renown internally for his cartoons on their corporate culture. Apparently management liked them, though I do wonder why as they don't exactly make them look good
  
  

Happy invoicing!

[DoctorStrangelove]

Gosh. TWTs. Slow wave structures. High voltages. Electron guns. Yeah! bitch! Magnets!

What's not to like?

I think I'll give mountain climbing in the Canadian Rockies a bit of a miss, on 2nd thoughts.

Tabby's Star.

[OwlHoot]

Apparently the sport has all finished now, so you won't have any distractions from these distractions

NASA Is Quietly Funding a Hunt for Alien Megastructures - ”Detecting 'technosignatures' such as hypothetical Dyson spheres in space could lead us to extraterrestrial life, and now NASA is funding the search.” The truth is out there ...

Sounds pretty futile (although still worth doing just in case, like the search for dark matter), because I reckon it's almost inevitable that advanced alien societies would be nomadic. If they stuck around all together in the same solar system for too long, it's inevitable their societies would stagnate and decline, just as ours eventually will over the coming centuries and millennia if we don't one day all get on our bikes as a species and leave in separate groups and directions for pastures new

But I suppose it's possible some automated giant fixed structure could be set up to concentrate and refine a vast amount of energy for future use by a passing party, rather like a resupply stash in the middle of the desert. An example would be a shedload of antimatter in giant magnetic bottles (if there's some way to shield it from cosmic particles).

Also, it seems highly unlikely to me that we'll ever intercept a deliberate and unambiguous radio signal from an advanced civilisation, because again surely it is inevitable that their comms is highly efficient, and that means directed with pin sharp accuracy at the intended recipients with minimal leakage, and compressed so efficiently that it is indistinguishable from noise!

[OwlHoot]

2021-07-15 Strategies and Advice for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence