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Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCLXIX

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    Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCLXIX

    Just got to make it through to COB Thursday and I'll be back on the bench! In the meantime, here's some light reading to be getting on with
    • The $30 Million Lottery Scam - ”Twice a day since 1981, the Michigan Lottery has drawn four numbered Ping-Pong balls from a plastic tank and paid up to $5,000 to any player with the same four digits on their pink ticket. But Gjonaj did not have one winning ticket. He had 500.” How did real estate agent Viktor Gjonaj become so successful at a game of chance?
    • How to keep your jack-o’-lantern from turning into moldy, maggoty mush before Halloween - The science of preventing Hallowe'en decay (though really, decay seems quite appropriate for the occasion) by Matt Kasson: ”As a plant pathologist, gardener and self-described pumpkin fanatic, I have both boldly succeeded and miserably failed at growing, properly carving and keeping these iconic winter squash in their prime through the end of October. Here are some tips that can help your epic carving outlast the Day of the Dead.”
    • Honeybees Can Count and Order Numbers Left to Right - ”Scientists discovered that honeybees trained with sugar water can differentiate numbers and instinctively order them from left to right. Perhaps tellingly, the study took place during the pandemic, when many of us worked from home. We’re sure the researcher’s families appreciated them getting out of the house, even if it was to train bees and see if they can count in the backyard.” I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords
    • 'Helpful' Money Saving Tips Are Mostly Bulltulip - ”Boil water for pasta in a kettle. Put tinfoil behind radiators. Being cold is good for you. When will it end?” Excellent riposte to those insisting that the collapse of the nation's economy is easily combated at a household level.
    • HOTorNOT shaped the social web as we know it - Blast from the past: ”Before MySpace, before Facebook, before Twitter, before YouTube, before Instagram, before Tinder — there was HOTorNOT. Created on a lark in 2000, HOTorNOT became what we’d now call an overnight viral hit by letting people upload pictures of themselves to the internet so total strangers could rate their attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10.”
    • Pylons in London - diamond geezer investigates the important question of pylons in England's capital city: ”They're not common in the capital, even round the edges. Most suburban skylines are entirely pylon-free in all directions. And yet in a few places pylons are an intrinsic part of the landscape, like here along the edge of the Royal Docks. These pylons were added when this was a commercial zone and the Thames was a great place to hide unwanted infrastructure, but now they stride through housing estates. So where exactly are the rest?”
    • The Sky Was There and I Could Read It - ”What was perhaps my most prized childhood online artifact is still online. It even looks the same as it did back then, which is doubly rare on our Modern Internet: a green dot on a map of North Carolina. The dot exists because one day in 2006, I called a phone number on a little laminated card thumbtacked to a bulletin board in my bedroom. The phone number was for the severe weather hotline of the Raleigh National Weather Service. At the time, I was authorized to call it. I was eleven years old.” Kate Wagner on the pleasure of being a government storm-watcher as a child.
    • David Renwick looks back on his comedy writing career - Excellent interview with the creator of such popular favourites as One Foot in the Grave and Jonathan Creek: ”In this first part of our epic interview… we chat about his early days in comedy, writing for The Two Ronnies, being wined and dined by Spike Milligan and coming up with calamitous catastrophes to befall Victor Meldrew in One Foot In The Grave.” (Part two is there too - link at the end.)
    • The Commodordion - Cool project by Linus Akesson: ”The Commodordion is an 8-bit accordion primarily made of C64s, floppy disks, and gaffer tape.” And yes, it makes its sounds using the C64's SID chips
    • Gerüste der Republik Übersicht - Which Google Translate reckons is "Scaffolding of the Republic Overview" but this is actually a site that started by mapping out playground climbing frames of the former East Germany, then expanded to other regions: ”Was für eine Vielfalt! Am Anfang der Sammlung von Klettergerüsten aus Beständen der ehemaligen DDR konnte ich mir das noch gar nicht vorstellen. Der Pilz oder der Bogen, ja die kannte ich, aber solche Schönheiten, wie die Tierklettergerüste hatte ich noch nicht gesehen. Mittlerweile kommen auch Spielgeräte aus ganz Deutschland, den Niederlanden und dem ehemaligen Ostblock hinzu.”, i.e. ”What a variety! At the beginning of the collection of climbing frames from stocks of the former GDR, I could not have imagined that. The mushroom or the arch, yes I knew them, but I had never seen such beauties as the animal climbing frames. In the meantime, playground equipment from all over Germany, the Netherlands and the former Eastern Bloc has also been added.” This family of elephants lives in Sofia, Bulgaria, though for some reason the map link keeps taking me to Gdansk; but with a bit of hunting around on Street View, I found them in a playground in Sofia's Yuzhen Park (which means South Park)


    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    I read that lottery "scam" story, but didn't really understand how it was a lottery "scam".
    First Law of Contracting: Only the strong survive

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by _V_ View Post
      I read that lottery "scam" story, but didn't really understand how it was a lottery "scam".
      Me neither. Just looked like a standard story of a degenerate gambler. Starts off good, ends in the crap. Massive figures though so something must have worked at one point. Good read though. Enjoyed that one.
      'CUK forum personality of 2011 - Winner - Yes really!!!!

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by _V_ View Post
        I read that lottery "scam" story, but didn't really understand how it was a lottery "scam".
        Yes, the headline is rather misleading - it was a real estate scam perpetrated to raise money to play the lottery.

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