Not quite as hectic with meetings today though I still haven't had lunch, as getting your afternoon reading sorted out is clearly of much greater importance 
Happy invoicing!
- The Case of the Missing Chacmools - Weird hippy tulip: ”Soon after New Age icon and bestselling author Carlos Castaneda died in 1998, a group of his most loyal followers vanished, and many believed they’d made a suicide pact. Geoffrey Gray investigates the writer’s bizarre cult and finds himself entangled in a web of murky financial dealings, sex, possible foul play—and one death-defying supernatural being.”
- His radiant formula - ”This was an equation to die for. That became clear when I turned up at Stephen Hawking’s 60th birthday celebrations in Cambridge in 2002. Reminded of his mortality by a hip-cracking collision with a wall in his motorised wheelchair a few days earlier, ‘aged 59.97’, he declared in his well-known synthesised voice: ‘I would like this simple formula to be on my tombstone.’” Roger Highfield marks the fiftieth anniversary of Hawking's equation for the radiation given off by a black hole.
- How Animals See - A new technique for understanding how animals perceive the world: ”Hanley and Vasas teamed up with a dozen colleagues to build something that had never been attempted successfully before—a digital video camera that could be pointed at a complex, dynamic scene and that would instantaneously relay back that same view as though seen through the eyes of a mammal, bird, or insect.”
- Silent Saviour: How Marcel Marceau Used Mime to Save Lives in WWII - A little-known aspect of the mime artist's life: ”He would lead groups of Jewish children across the border into neutral Switzerland. In the forests and on the treacherous paths, the children’s survival depended on their ability to remain unseen and unheard. Marceau’s silent performances turned into lifesaving acts, captivating the children and helping them forget their fear.”
- Unearthing Gems in a Massive Archive of Rock Star Interviews - Journalist Larry Katz spent decades interviewing musicians: ”There are thousands of years of musical experience on the tapes Katz recorded over a three-decade career as a music reporter and critic in Boston media… If you find something cool in the collection, Katz says, he would love to hear about it.” The archive is at Northeastern University: Larry Katz interviews.
- Remembering Antarctica’s nuclear past with ‘Nukey Poo’ - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this account of nuclear experiments at the bottom of the world: ”Between 1961 and 1972 McMurdo Station was home to Antarctica’s first and only portable nuclear reactor, known as PM-3A… The little-known story of Nukey Poo offers a useful lens through which to examine two ways of valuing the far south: as a place to develop, or a place to protect.” And if you're wondering whether they also tried to mess up the Arctic, the good Doctor has the answer: A nuclear reactor at the North Pole: Why it went so wrong.
- I Tried to use AI to Read an AI Book - Dan McKinley plays with an LLM: ”I recently read Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick. It was good! You should read it. I want to say this up front, since after some preamble I’m going to describe a Rube-Goldbergian attempt to poke petty holes in it.”
- Reversing UK mobile rail tickets - London-based programmer eta digs into railway ticket barcodes: ”What data is inside the barcode of a mobile ticket, and how do they work? Could people who aren’t ticket inspectors get the data out of them? It turns out that the answer is a bit more interesting than I initially expected!”
- Inside the tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets - More ticketing shenanigans with Ken Shirriff: ”To use the Montreal subway (the Métro), you tap a paper ticket against the turnstile and it opens. The ticket works through a system called NFC, but what's happening internally? How does the ticket work without a battery? How does it communicate with the turnstile? And how can it be so cheap that you can throw the ticket away after one use? To answer these questions, I opened up a ticket and examined the tiny chip inside.”
- Big Picture 2024 Competition Winners - ”What on Earth have you photographed? The annual BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition encourages photographers from around the world to contribute their work to this photo competition that will both celebrate and illustrate the rich diversity of life on Earth and inspire action to protect and conserve it through the power of imagery.” This incredible shot of northern gannets in the Shetland Islands was taken by Franco Banfi
Happy invoicing!
.
Comment