I have a week off! Makes a nice change 
Happy invoicing!
- Half-Safe - In 1950, Ben and Elinore Carlin set out to circumnavigate the globe by sea and land in an army surplus amphibious jeep. This may not have been a good idea: ”The GPW amphibious jeeps were designed to putter through shallow streams for a few minutes at a time and usually failed even at that; they had proved so useless in the field that the Army canceled production… Helpless and lost in the middle of 41 million square miles of open water, Ben and Elinore realized that their comic little adventure was quickly becoming a suicide mission.”
- These Cells Spark Electricity in the Brain. They’re Not Neurons. - ”For decades, researchers have debated whether brain cells called astrocytes can signal like neurons. Researchers recently published the best evidence yet that some astrocytes are part of the electrical conversation.” The AI people will have to start building astrocyte networks, which sound much cooler anyway
- Top of the World: The Secret Nazi Weather Station - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this bit of WWII history: ”Did you know that Nazi German forces once set foot within Canada? On the rugged coast of northern Labrador, they hid a weather monitoring station that they hoped would be a useful advantage in their U-boat attacks on military and supply ships in the North Atlantic.”
- USB-C head-to-head teardown - Is a cable just a cable? Apparently not: ”Does Apple’s Thunderbolt 4 cable really warrant its $129 price tag? Or does a $5 cable get the job done just as well? We’ve used our Neptune industrial X-ray CT scanner to uncover the hidden engineering differences between them.”
- Commercially Available Chairs in Star Trek - ”Countless off-the-shelf office chairs, lounge chairs or car seats appeared in Star Trek productions. Here is a list of the models that we found, among them many design classics. Currently identified: 163.” Keep an eye out at car boot sales - some Trek fan might offer a premium for the chair from Tasha Yar's quarters
- Winging It with the New Backcountry Barnstormers - ”Throughout the lower 48, recreational bush pilots are using their nimble planes and social media influence to spread the word about bold frontiers in flight: touching down on remote federal lands, flocking to little-used runways in designated wilderness, and drag racing one another for pure sport.” Expensive hobby, but the scenery is nice.
- Vesuvius Challenge - An open contest to decipher papyri from Herculaneum: ”In Herculaneum, twenty meters of hot mud and ash bury an enormous villa once owned by the father-in-law of Julius Caesar. Inside, there is a vast library of papyrus scrolls. The scrolls are carbonized by the heat of the volcanic debris. But they are also preserved. For centuries, as virtually every ancient text exposed to the air decays and disappears, the library of the Villa of the Papyri waits underground, intact.” Contestant Luke Farritor recently won $40K for deciphering the first complete word; his code is on GitHub: https://github.com/lukeboi/scroll-first-letters
- From High Life Hackers to National Menace: The Rise and Fall of Digital Bandits 'ACG' - ”Hackers 'ACG' popped champagne and bought sports cars. Then the group and its associates ushered in a bold new era of crime where anything is possible.” Unfortunately, the FBI ushered in a bold new era of catching them
- The Good Pie Guide - A labour of love by pie aficionado Martin Tarbuck: ”We love pies and our mission is to celebrate them in print and digital form!… We want to celebrate our great nation of independent, traditional butchers and bakers alongside the more modern artisan, innovative pie makers.”
- A Monograph of the Trochilidæ, or Family of Humming-Birds - ”Published between 1849 and 1887, English ornithologist John Gould’s monumental work depicts and describes all the known species of hummingbirds at the time—comprising 418 lithographic plates and information on 537 species.” And here it all is! This is Eupetomena hirundo, aka the Western Swallow-tail
Happy invoicing!
.
Comment