Monday Links from the Bank Holiday Deckchair vol. DCXLII

[NickFitz]

It's a nice day out. Are we sure this is a Bank Holiday?

• A day in the life of (almost) every vending machine in the world - ”I’d had an idea to try to capture 24 hours in the life of vending machines. These weird, conspicuous objects! With their backs against the wall of everyday existence, they tempt out such a peculiar range of emotions, from relief to frustration, condescension to childish glee.” HT to ladymuck for this fascinating exploration of the world of vending machines
• What ancient DNA reveals about migration in Africa - ”Every person alive on the planet today is descended from people who lived as hunter-gatherers in Africa… Research tends to focus on when our species, Homo sapiens, spread out to other landmasses 80,000-60,000 years ago. But what happened in Africa after that, and why don’t we know more about the people who remained?”
• When Did Satan Go From Inmate to Warden? - Lifting the lid on the Prince of Darkness: ”To hear pop culture tell it, Satan—or the devil, if we are being formal—is the ruler of hell… You might be surprised to learn, therefore, that in the Bible there’s no reference to Satan lording it over the damned. On the contrary, if the devil is in hell, it is only because he is being punished himself.”
• I’m A Scientist And I’m Going To Break Down The Physics Of That Crazy Tesla Jump - Stephen Granade considers the physics underlying the video that circulated recently on social media of an imbecile wrecking a Tesla: ”As the Model S reaches the top it takes flight like a hurled brick, clearing the hill’s peak and falling down the other side until the car’s nose plows into the ground in a hail of sparks… Why did the driver think this was a good idea? Did they regret their life choices when the rented Tesla smashed up a dude’s Subaru Forester so bad the AWD wagon got its own GoFundMe? Will the Tesla pilot ever be able to rent a car again?”
• Contra Chrome - Scott McCloud revisits Google’s browser: ”Back in 2008 I created a comic book for Google explaining the inner workings of their soon-to-be-released new browser, Chrome… You think you are browsing the web, when in reality, Google and others are browsing you - extracting your experiences without your awareness, your knowledge, or your consent.” Edited to add: this is actually by Leah Elliott, made by rearranging Scott McCloud's original Chrome comic.
• This Bench Does Not Exist - Another HT to ladymuck for this project by Terence Eden: ”We forced an AI to look at thousands of photos of memorial benches. Just because.”
• Where wolf? - ”On a spring day in 1691, in what is now the town of Cēsis in Latvia, a group of local men waited to give testimony in a provincial courtroom… When an old man called Mātiss took the stand, the judges noticed that the local innkeeper, who had already been questioned, was smiling. Asked why, he replied that he was amused to see ‘Old Thiess’, his neighbour and tenant, swearing on the Bible, since ‘everyone knows he goes around with the Devil and was a werewolf.’” John Gallagher with a fascinating overview of the werewolves of Livonia, which are covered in a new book by Carlo Ginzburg and Bruce Lincoln.
• U+237C ⍼ RIGHT ANGLE WITH DOWNWARDS ZIGZAG ARROW - ”Known as right angle with downwards zigzag arrow, angle with down zig-zag arrow, \rangledownzigzagarrow, and ⍼, no one knows what ⍼ is meant to represent or where it originated from.” Jonathan Chan investigates a mystery in Unicode.
• Library of Juggling - As it’s a Bank Holiday, why not take up a new hobby? ”The Library of Juggling is an attempt to list all of the popular (and perhaps not so popular) juggling tricks in one organized place. Despite the growing popularity of juggling, few websites are dedicated to collecting and archiving the various patterns that are being performed… The goal of this website is to guarantee that the tricks currently circulating around the internet and at juggling conventions are found, animated, and catalogued for the world to see. It is a daunting task, but for the sake of jugglers everywhere it must be done.”
• The Perimeter - ”The Perimeter is a photography project by Quintin Lake based on walking 11,000km around the coast of Britain in sections. The journey started on 17th April 2015 and was completed on 15th September 2020. All photos will be edited by the end of 2022.” This is the South Esk Viaduct, Montrose, on the 14th October 2019, being Day 353 of his journey
  

Happy invoicing!

[GJABS]

What would have happened if they put wings on it? (the Tesla)

[ladymuck]

• I’m A Scientist And I’m Going To Break Down The Physics Of That Crazy Tesla Jump - Stephen Granade considers the physics underlying the video that circulated recently on social media of an imbecile wrecking a Tesla: ”As the Model S reaches the top it takes flight like a hurled brick, clearing the hill’s peak and falling down the other side until the car’s nose plows into the ground in a hail of sparks… Why did the driver think this was a good idea? Did they regret their life choices when the rented Tesla smashed up a dude’s Subaru Forester so bad the AWD wagon got its own GoFundMe? Will the Tesla pilot ever be able to rent a car again?”

The TL;DR for the likes of me is:
Phew! That was a lot of math to say “physics says the Tesla should have done what it did, even if the driver shouldn’t have done what he did.”