Beset by triffids? Simply hide indoors and read this lot, possibly with the assistance of a screenreader 
Happy invoicing!
- Death of the Hiker - Leyton Cassidy went for a solo trek up a mountain in Slovenia. Things didn't go according to plan: ”There is a moment—an imperceptibly fast one—when a human’s relationship to the natural world changes. For some, it is the slipping of a rock underfoot, a flash of lightning, the loss of light, a rustle right behind one’s back, or the sudden realization that they do not actually know how to read a map.”
- The Ancient Order of Bali - ”In 1970s Bali, a sudden rice crisis prompted an unexpectedly far-reaching scientific discovery.” As usual, the crisis was caused by capitalists trying to make more money than anybody needs
- How the sun could wipe us out - You're probably aware that the nice aurorae over the weekend could have been accompanied by societal collapse, but this article on the subject from 2021 is worth a look if only because of the date it chooses for the coming of this hypothetical calamity: ”The world began to end on 12th May 2024, though another 309 years would pass before our species finally went extinct.”
- The Problem with Music - Steve Albini, who died last week, on the music industry: ”Imagine a trench filled with decaying tulip.”
- With no cameras allowed in French courtrooms, artists bring trials to life - ”France has banned cameras from courtrooms, so the visual record falls to courtroom illustrators, who find themselves midway between artists and journalists.” Nothing surprising here, except that French courtroom artists are, as you might expect, much better at it than the rest of the world.
- Thornbridge and Garrett Oliver Save the Famous Burton Unions - Good news for beer lovers: ”In January, Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company (CMBC) announced that they were getting rid one of the last remaining pieces of Burton-on-Trent’s brewing heritage… now it turns out that at least one of the Union ‘sets’ has been saved.”
- Development notes from xkcd's "Machine" - ”On April 5th, xkcd released Machine, the 15th annual April Fools project I’ve made with them. t’s a game we’d been dreaming of for years: a giant rube goldberg machine builder in the style of the classic Incredible Machine games, made of a patchwork of machines created by individual xkcd readers.” A good writeup of the development process
- Meet Me at the Workers' Club - ”An interactive reconstruction of Alexander Rodchenko's Workers' Club, originally exhibited at the 1925 World Expo in Paris. The virtual copy of the constructivist installation is accompanied by posters, photographs, and breezy texts tracing the historical context of workers' clubs in the Soviet Union, as well as personal musings about the role of the artist in a time of revolution.” You can take the tour in your browser, or download it for Windows and Mac
- Much Faster Cold Brew Through Cavitation - ”Some coffee snobs might call this sacrilege. Cold brew is supposed to take a long time — that’s part of how it gets its characteristic smoothness. But a group of engineers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) have figured out a way to cut the time down from several hours to a mere three minutes, using ultrasonic waves.” Full paper in the journal Ultrasonics Sonochemistry: Coffee brewing sonoreactor for reducing the time of cold brew from several hours to minutes while maintaining sensory attributes.
- In search of the locations for Lindsay Anderson’s If…. - ”We visit the town and college where Lindsay Anderson shot his revolutionary public school satire If.... to find how out how they look today.” I used to walk past this roundabout on my way to and from ClientCo during my sojourn in Cheltenham
Happy invoicing!
