Monday Links from the Bench vol. DCXXXIV

[NickFitz]

Will Her Majesty make it through Covid? If not, there'll be nowt on the telly for ages so you'll want something to read

• The Hare Krishnas of Coal Country - Those saffron robes get everywhere: ”It didn’t take us long to discover the FBI raid, the sex scandals, the murder conspiracies. We were titillated. But weeks later, I was still reading, trying to reconcile the living, breathing community I had visited with the stories I had found on my phone… How did a radical, communal movement of the ’60s, dismissed as a cult and lampooned by everyone from Kermit the Frog to Cheech and Chong, manage to survive, let alone on this ruined patch of Appalachia?”
• The Mysterious Forces Inside the Nucleus Grow a Little Less Strange - ”The strong force holds protons and neutrons together, but the theory behind it is largely inscrutable. Two new approaches show how it works.” I remember when they weren't even sure if quarks actually existed
• Part I: A cold case heats up after 3 decades. But the DNA delivers a surprise., Part II: 'I must have had sex with her.' Doubts creep in as a detective springs his trap., Part III: 'They are not going to get away with this.' A widow's quest delivers a dramatic courtroom twist. - ”The murder of Claire Penelope Hough was the kind of mystery that keeps homicide detectives awake at night, pulling at loose threads. For almost 30 years, they’d tugged and tugged and couldn’t unravel it. Now they wanted to try again.” But their efforts led to tragedy, and exposed the problems that can arise when old evidence meets new scientific techniques.
• How They Make Fake Snow for Movies - ”Weather, like all parts of production design, is a critical part of cinematic worldbuilding… But, as far as replicating the weather is concerned, one meteorological system seems to be especially tricky to pull off: snow.” I happen to know that the scene of the snowy wedding at the start of Bridget Jones' Diary was filmed at the height of summer; an entire Cotswold village was covered in fake snow for several days while it was shot
• Sending you in circles - Finally, the definitive guide to the (usually terrible) signage within motorway service stations: ”The problem is that managing traffic, especially the very high volumes of traffic you can find at a service station, is a highly specialised skill that is in short supply. Service stations are retailers with interests such as corporate branding, selling food and saving money. With the best will in the world, no retailer is going to be an expert in managing traffic… Service stations will work with third parties to receive advice on the subject, but that doesn't guarantee it will be good advice.”
• The Road to Wigan Pier - ”George Orwell's diary from his journey to Wigan, 1936.” He set off on 31 January, so I'm linking to that date as, having been republished as a blog, the posts are in reverse order on the home page.
• Francis Ford Coppola’s $100 Million Bet - ”Fifty years after he gave us The Godfather, the iconic director is chasing his grandest project yet—and putting up over $100 million of his own money to prove his best work is still ahead of him.” Interesting interview with the film director.
• 2D macro-XRF to reveal redacted sections of French queen Marie-Antoinette secret correspondence with Swedish count Axel von Fersen - ”During the French Revolution, Marie-Antoinette, queen of France and wife of Louis XVI, maintained a highly secret correspondence with the Swedish count Axel von Fersen, her close friend and rumored lover. An unidentified censor later redacted certain sections of the exchanged letters. This presumably sensitive content has been puzzling historians for almost 150 years. We report on the methodology that successfully unraveled this historical mystery.” Interesting paper on applying non-destructive techniques of ink composition analysis to reveal what the French queen said to her bit on the side, and who went to great lengths to conceal it.
• Digital Museum of Plugs and Sockets - ”Displaying an amazing collection of modern and classic domestic plugs and sockets from all over the world.” This is, I'm certain, exactly the kind of thing Tim Berners-Lee had in mind for his invention
• 2022 Winners - Underwater Photographer of the Year - ”Restriction on travel over the last year may have stopped many photographers visiting their favourite waters, but it hasn’t stifled their creativity as you can see from the stunning photos on this page. UPY aims to celebrate underwater photography in all its forms and we are delighted that this year’s awarded images represent many genres and are produced by photographers from around the world.” This is "Bear Bridge" by Alex Dawson, taken in an abandoned mine at Långban in Sweden.
  
  

Happy invoicing!

[DoctorStrangelove]

Ah, dear dead days beyond recall, when turning up to fix a telly only to find the house is wired with Wylex sockets so you can't plug the soldering iron in.

https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Wylex1.html

https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Unusual.html

That German hook plug thing looks odd, incidentally, back in the day, a lot of stuff from Germany had the earth conductor coloured red. <- what happened to you if you thought it was the live.

https://www.homeownershub.com/uk-diy...es-290073-.htm

Al ist klar?

The crime lab thing is grim.

Does the Marie Antoinette thing have any reference in it to her jewels, the Money Pit & Oak Island? We should be told.

[NickFitz]

Ah, dear dead days beyond recall, when turning up to fix a telly only to find the house is wired with Wylex sockets so you can't plug the soldering iron in.

https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Wylex1.html

Ah, they look familiar - many years ago I lived in a house that still had sockets like that in some rooms, though it also had the modern variety. No idea if those old ones were still connected to the mains…

[OwlHoot]

..Francis Ford Coppola’s $100 Million Bet - ”Fifty years after he gave us The Godfather, the iconic director is chasing his grandest project yet—and putting up over $100 million of his own money to prove his best work is still ahead of him.” Interesting interview with the film director. ..

Interesting aside from Coppola "I was always alone as a kid.", which reinforces my view that solitude, especially on one's early years, is a big contributor to originality, perhaps the main one, later in life.

So the Blair creature's initiative for all pre-school kids to attend nurseries from some ridiculously young age, two I think, is yet another way he blighted the UK's future. More of those kids will now grow up as servile conformists without an original thought in their heads. So much for British inventiveness.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Ah, they look familiar - many years ago I lived in a house that still had sockets like that in some rooms, though it also had the modern variety. No idea if those old ones were still connected to the mains…

I have extremely vague recollections (it's nearly half a century after all) of making an adaptor so I could plug the soldering iron in. It sounds like the sort of thing I might have. done.

I still recall, with some horror, the house with the "professionally installed" mains socket that was wired up with bell wire and had a switched neutral to make sure it killed you.