As our laughable PM will shortly be locking us all down in a desperate bid to divert our attention away from his illegal activities, we'll need plenty of reading matter to pass the time. You can start with this lot 
Happy invoicing!
- The Fearless Mother-Daughter Duo Who Tamed Lions to Save the Circus - ”When the Great War sent the men of Europe to the front lines and left a legendary family business on the brink of bankruptcy, two brave women stepped into the ring.” The story of Elizabeth and Priscilla Kayes, who made sure the show would go on.
- Grapefruit Is One of the Weirdest Fruits on the Planet - ”Right from the moment of its discovery, the grapefruit has been a true oddball. Its journey started in a place where it didn’t belong, and ended up in a lab in a place where it doesn’t grow. Hell, even the name doesn’t make any sense.” More than you thought there was to know about the hotel breakfast staple
- Thousands of Honeybees Stared Down Spain’s Cumbre Vieja Volcano. They Won - ”Five hives survived about 50 days covered in volcanic ash. To stay alive, they sealed their hives with bee glue and ate their honey stores.”
- Bros., Lecce: We Eat at The Worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever - A hilarious review of a place you might want to not bother going to: ”There is something to be said about a truly disastrous meal, a meal forever indelible in your memory because it’s so uniquely bad, it can only be deemed an achievement. The sort of meal where everyone involved was definitely trying to do something; it’s just not entirely clear what.”
- New Brain Maps Can Predict Behaviors - ”Rapid advances in large-scale connectomics are beginning to spotlight the importance of individual variations in the neural circuitry. They also highlight the limitations of “wiring diagrams” alone.” They aren't at the point of downloading people yet, but there's been good results working out what roundworms are up to
- Death of a Lobsterman - ”On a remote island in Maine, a group of friends thought they witnessed one man killing another with an ax. But no one was ever arrested. In a small town far out at sea, justice sometimes works a little differently.”
- It’s Hard Out Here—Way, Way, Way Out Here—for a Medic - The life of a medic in the Texas oil fields: ”The emergency alarm went off just before sundown. For the oil-field medics of Loving County, that sound means your world is about to get a shot of adrenaline.”
- 10 Things You Don’t Know ‘Bout Apple Scruffs - If you've seen The Beatles: Get Back you'll have seen the impromptu interview in part two with some of the Apple Scruffs, the (mostly female) fans who would hang around outside the Apple Corps offices and the recording studios the band worked in, often somehow knowing where the Fab Four were going to be before their staff did, and who were immortalised in a song by George Harrison on All Things Must Pass. Here, Sara Schmidt presents some details about the dedicated club: ”Many false facts about the dedicated group of Beatles fans that called themselves the Apple Scruffs are rampant on the Internet and in books. Those who were there are a very private group of people that don’t share a whole lot about what happened during those times on the steps of Savile Row… I’ve come closer to finding out the truth about these well-known Beatlemaniacs, including these 10 little-known facts.”
- Yamaha DX7 chip reverse-engineering, part 4: how algorithms are implemented - Ken Shirriff continues his analysis of the classic synth: ”Each note was implemented with one of 32 different patterns of modulation and summing, called algorithms. In this blog post, I look inside the sound chip and explain how the algorithms were implemented.”
- 2021 Hasselblad Masters - ”The Hasselblad Masters is one of the world’s most prestigious professional photographic competitions, giving acclaimed professionals, as well as aspiring newcomers, the chance to make their mark in the world of photography.” Loads of nice pics here; this one, called Bear With It, is by Alice Zilberberg.
Happy invoicing!
