There are so few gaps between Teams meetings today that I'm not sure I'll have time for lunch now I've got this lot sorted out 
Happy invoicing!
- The Donald Trump I Saw on The Apprentice - Bill Pruitt was a producer on the show that created much of Trump's image as a successful entrepreneur. His non-disclosure agreement has just expired. ”No one involved in The Apprentice—from the production company or the network, to the cast and crew—was involved in a con with malicious intent. It was a TV show, and it was made for entertainment. I still believe that. But we played fast and loose with the facts, particularly regarding Trump, and if you were one of the 28 million who tuned in, chances are you were conned.”
- Expanding the Brain. Literally. - New research uncovers genes which help explain how humans came to have larger brains than the other great apes. The full paper is De novo genes with an lncRNA origin encode unique human brain developmental functionality
- How Viking-Age Hunters Took Down the Biggest Animal on Earth - ”New research suggests that medieval Icelanders were scavenging and likely even hunting blue whales long before industrial whaling technology.” Frowned upon nowadays, of course.
- Economics 101 - Worth remembering, amidst these electoral campaigns, that much of what economists say doesn't survive contact with reality: ”Students learned about the virtues of markets, deduced from a few seemingly simple assumptions. Economists and their graduate students, meanwhile, catalogued more and more ways those assumptions could go wrong.”
- How the Army Handled D-Day Communications - A look at how comms were handled on such a scale, long before most of the stuff we take for granted nowadays: ”The Allied invasion of continental Europe 80 years ago was a logistical tour de force. Its success hinged on an operative communications network unifying the invading armies and their support systems… That meant two-way voice circuits to keep decision-makers in touch and high-speed channels to exchange reconnaissance photos and situation maps evaluating the impact of aerial and ship-launched ordnance.”
- eDoB Online - The extended Defence of Britain database catalogues WWII defence infrastructure, such as pillboxes and anti aircraft batteries: ”Online viewer for the Extended Defence of Britain Database as maintained by Steve Thompson. View the interactive map, or search through the database for a particular record.”
- The Long-Lost Tarzan Atari Game, Preserved - An unreleased Atari 2600 game has been saved: ”Tarzan was initially announced for as a 1983 ColecoVision release at the 1983 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas, with a 2600 port announced later that year during the summer CES for a November release. These dates slipped, with the ColecoVision Tarzan finally shipping in August, and the 2600 game announced as a second quarter release before being quietly canceled… The 2600 version faded into obscurity, considered just another project canceled due to the 1983 North American market collapse and its yearslong aftermath.”
- These are things that exist - This list by Rate Your Music user dividesbyzero contains all kinds of strange things: ”this is where I keep a record of the various musical artifacts I find who's very existence just baffles me”
- The Misfit Who Built the IBM PC - More early computer history from Gareth Edwards: ”Don Estridge broke all of Big Blue's rules to create the home computer. The company would never forgive him for it.”
- ZIGSAM - THE AUSTRIAN CIGARETTE COLLECTION - Excellent museum of cigarette packs, which may or may not be as big as the previously-featured collection of Igor Sergeev: ”My collection lists the producer and the trade mark owner for each pack. Please don't take these informations too serious - since globalization makes things quite complicate. I can often only guess or depend on informations I found on other internet sites.” These Ukrainian ones from 2002 have the highest nicotine content
Happy invoicing!
