All good things must come to an end, and I'm finally back on the bench after my stint with what was Her Majesty's Government when I started but His Majesty's by the time I finished 
Happy invoicing!
- Murder to Middle School - ”I was 13 when my father was killed right before my eyes. Two weeks later, while everyone in our small town obsessed over his grizzly death, I embarked on a new horror: 8th grade.”
- Brightest-Ever Space Explosion Reveals Possible Hints of Dark Matter - Exciting times for astrophysicists: ”A recent gamma-ray burst known as the BOAT — “brightest of all time” — appears to have produced a high-energy particle that shouldn’t exist. For some, dark matter provides the explanation.”
- The mummy’s curse - ”It came from an Egyptian tomb… Well no, actually, it didn’t. But once a myth lurches into life, there’s no stopping it.” Jo Marchant explains the recent origins of the supposed curses of the ancient Egyptians.
- Just Like Us, Jurassic Mammals Cared for Their Young - ”Clues from bones reveal multituberculates looked after their offspring for lengthy periods during the Age of Dinosaurs.”
- The Crypto Story - Bloomberg's Matt Levine presents the definitive guide to cryptocurrencies: ”If you’re a disciple, this new dimension is the future. If you’re a skeptic, this upside-down world is just a modern Ponzi scheme that’s going to end badly… What follows is his brilliant explanation of what this maddening, often absurd, and always fascinating technology means, and where it might go.”
- A great horror film from every year, from 1922 to now - Unsure what Hallowe'en entertainment to watch? The BFI has you covered: ”Why year by year? Because it’s a better way to plumb the dark corners of horror’s cinematic history than a straightforward top 100… By travelling through the history of horror a year at a time, we can get a sense of the evolution of the genre – the strange, contorting, lycanthropic process by which we arrive at the fertile market we’re living in today.”
- What Happens to Babies Born on Planes - ”It wasn’t long after take-off that the twinges started, which soon turned into contractions. Owen knew her baby wasn’t due until Christmas, seven weeks later: She’d even visited her doctor for a check-up before the flight, and had a letter deeming her safe to travel. Still, it was clear that her second child was planning an early arrival.” As you can imagine, this leads to complications when it comes to such things as "place of birth" in official documents
- An Oral History of Home Depot’s 12-Foot Skeleton - You're probably aware from social media of the enormous Hallowe'en decoration's popularity in the USA, and this is its story: ”National media outlets announce when it’s back in stock and offer strategies for getting one before it sells out again… The Skellys have been such a hit that they’ve spawned a whole line of oversized Home Depot Halloween decor, including a 12-foot levitating witch, a 15-foot phantom, and a 9.5-foot werewolf.”
- How to date a recording using background electrical noise - If you enjoyed the Hummingbird Clock a couple of weeks ago, then you'll like this detailed explanation of how to analyse mains hum: ”ENF matching answers the question ‘here’s a recording, when was it was (probably) taken?’ It’s a lively field of academic research but little has been written about it outside of paywalled papers, so in this post I’m going to describe the technical details for the interested layperson. I’ve also put up a readable, well-commented example implementation on Github.”
- Scans from the Animal Fair - These scans are from London stationers Present & Correct, taken from Alice and Martin Provensen’s 1952 book. Maria Popova has also written about it: ”Along the lively journey to the farmyard, zoo, and forest, we also find humorous semi-useful advice, like ‘how to sleep through the winter’ and ‘how to recognize a wolf in the forest.’”
Happy invoicing!
