Got pinged by the NHS app yesterday, informing me that I've been close to a diseased person. Pretty sure I haven't as I haven't been anywhere, but I'm off for a test in a few minutes anyway 
Happy invoicing!
- The Copenhagen Job - Not often we get a Danish heist, outside TV shows on BBC4: ”The driver removes several tall boxes from inside the van, stacks them on a hand truck, and wheels them into the storeroom. The camera follows the driver as he passes below and disappears inside. There are 20 or so boxes to unload. He has no idea he’s being watched… The cartons are filled with money: millions of Danish kroner and euros.”
- Animals Count and Use Zero. How Far Does Their Number Sense Go? - ”Researchers are uncovering increasingly more complex numerical abilities in their animal subjects. Many species have displayed a capacity for abstraction that extends to performing simple arithmetic… Experiments have shown that both monkeys and honeybees know how to treat zero as a numerosity, placing it on a mental number line much as they would numerosity one or two.”
- A Deep Math Dive into Why Some Infinities Are Bigger Than Others - But can the bees handle infinity? ”The size of certain infinite sets has been a mystery. Now, it turns out, each one is different than the next, and they can all be ordered by size.”
- What Slime Knows - Lacy M. Johnson on slime moulds: ”The dampness has darkened the flower bed, and from the black mulch has emerged what looks like a pile of snotty scrambled eggs in a shade of shocking, bilious yellow. As if someone sneezed on their way to the front door, but what came out was mustard and marshmallow. I recognize this curious specimen as the aethalial state of Fuligo septica, more commonly known as ‘dog vomit slime mold.’”
- Thousands of Rare Artifacts Discovered Beneath Tudor Manor’s Attic Floorboards - All kinds of oddities found at Roxburgh Hall, Norfolk: ”Workers had lifted the floorboards in the estate’s attic for the first time in centuries. Probing the recesses beneath the boards with gloved fingertips, Champion expected to find dirt, coins, bits of newspapers and detritus that had fallen through the cracks. Instead, he discovered a veritable treasure trove of more than 2,000 items dating as far back as the 15th century.”
- Why We Can’t Shake Ambergris - ”The odd, enduring appeal of a scarce commodity few people use and no one really needs.”
- An immense volcanic eruption in 1257 A.D. affected our entire planet. But which volcano exploded? - ”Until recently no one knew just which volcano on Earth had exploded. This had geologists scratching their heads until just a few years ago, when multiple lines of evidence pointed towards the literal smoking gun: The Samalas volcano on the island of Lombok in Indonesia.” This one caused famines around the world for several years
- The Time a Stiff Caught Fire - Billy Joel’s Piano Man was unsuccessful when first released. Keith Yates used whatever connections he could find in the West Coast music industry to revive it. ”Released in the fall of 1973, Piano Man, Billy Joel’s big-label debut, quietly sputtered and “stiffed.” After a few months Columbia Records execs summoned Billy and his producer to their New York office to announce that they were sorry, it was over, they would not be exercising their options for new releases … it was ‘time to go back to the day job.’ Forty-five years later, I emailed Billy a draft of my account of the behind-the-scenes frenzy in California’s farm belt that led to the album’s resurrection from the grave and ascent to the top of the Billboard charts nationally… So here it is, the true story of how Billy Joel’s stiff, Piano Man, finally caught fire.”
- The strange story of Nik Turner and a life lived on Planet Freakout - ”From the sci-fi sonics of Hawkwind to playing his flute on the Great Pyramid Of Giza, Nik Turner has always tripped through musical boundaries.” Great interview
- vermeer restoration uncovers a cupid hanging on the wall - ”the painting within a painting… will be shown for the first time as it left the artist’s studio after its restoration and more than two and a half centuries.” Not sure why this website eschews uppercase letters, but it’s an interesting story
Happy invoicing!
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