Far too busy today. It's as if clients expect something for their money 
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- My Adolescent Jackassery Can Be Summed Up in Two Words: Tree Riding - Jim Beaugez fondly recalls his misspent youth: ”Only a place steeped in adolescent boredom could produce a sport so maddeningly stupid as tree riding. And when I say tree riding, I’m not talking about riding a bicycle through some woods. I mean actually using a tree as a thing to ride… One of the guys would shimmy up the tree while another went to work with a saw. As the tree slowly went down, the rider would balance his legs on the trunk until he could let go and stand up for the couple of seconds it took to reach the ground and jump off. Then we’d laugh and open another beer.”
- Why Were Tyrannosaur Arms So Ridiculously Puny? - Science is all about asking the important questions: ”The arms are simply too short. They can't touch each other, they can't reach the mouth, and their mobility is so limited that they can't stretch very far, either forward or upward. And none of the hypotheses explain why the arms would get smaller—the best they could do is explain why they would maintain the small size.”
- How Kate Warne, America’s First Woman Detective, Foiled a Plot to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln - How the first female Pinkerton agent came to guard the president: ”She could infiltrate places easily, as no one would expect a woman to be an undercover detective, and befriend the wives and girlfriends of suspected criminals… In addition to making history as the first woman detective in the United States, Warne likely saved Abraham Lincoln’s life by helping to uncover—and thwart—a plot to assassinate him ahead of his March 1861 inauguration.”
- Astronomers See a Bizarre Space Circle in Unprecedented Detail - ”Researchers have sighted only a handful of these odd radio circles, and are trying to pin down what causes them.” I'm pretty sure this was in Star Trek TOS, never mind TNG. Might have been orange rather than green though
- The Past and Future of Flag Emoji - ”Flag emoji have always been subject to special criteria due to their open-ended nature, infrequent use, and burden on implementations.” Spoiler: the future is that they don't have one, because global politics are just too messy
- VIP prisoners of the SS - ”It was a distinguished company that was assembled early May 1945 in Hotel Pragser Wildsee, built in chalet style, in southern Tirol, Italy. The group consisted of nearly 140 persons of 17 different nationalities. There were secretaries, high ranking clergy, generals and princes. Two Churchills were also present… For many of them, it was the first time in months or even years they had slept in a normal bed without having to worry about tomorrow’s day.” Originally held as hostages, they were liberated by the Wehrmacht, who were trying to keep in the Allies' good books once all was lost.
- The phones of Ukrainian president Zelensky - You may remember this site's analysis of Donald Trump's phones. The Ukrainian president doesn't seem to have bothered with a special button for summoning a Diet Coke: ”The old white phones each connect to a separate network with only a select number of subscribers. They are a distinct feature of the Russian bureaucracy, but they can also be seen in the presidential offices of other countries that had been part of the former Soviet Union… The eye-catcher in the office of the Ukrainian president is also an extremely large telephone, which is ivory-colored and has a rather small display, indicating that it may be over 20 years old.”
- Online shopping in the middle of the ocean - ”E-commerce giants don’t reliably deliver to the remote islands of French Polynesia, so locals made their own online shopping service.” The Tahiti-based delivery service was started by a former French riot policeman who takes orders on Facebook Messenger
- Lviv Interactive - This map app from the Lviv Center for Urban History allows you to explore the streets and buildings of the Ukrainian city: ”The map seeks to present the contemporary, living city in its historical dimension rather than reproducing a static picture of the past… One may search through buildings, streets, monuments or all featured objects, or browse the map by region (see, for example, Center, Bohomoltsya Street, Citadel, Sykhiv), or follow the history of the city through our themes (see Sacred City, Lemberg Secession and Fin de siècle City).”
- The Realmonte Salt Mine in Sicily - ”In the southern cost of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, lies the town of Realmonte where there is a huge underground salt mine with tunnels that goes on for 25 km some 100 meters below the ground… In addition to its natural wonder, the Realmonte Salt Mine also contains a church embedded deep in the salt mine complete with altar, steps, frescos and crucifix all painstakingly carved out of the salt face by the mine workers. The church is able to accommodate up to 800 people.” Photos by Giuseppe Fallica.
Happy invoicing!
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