After the last few days, I think the whole country could do with just settling down and reading a bunch of stuff to take their minds off things. Like this lot, maybe 
Happy invoicing!
- Coming to America - ”Layan Albaz lost her legs in an Israeli air strike in Gaza. To learn how to walk again, she had to travel more than 6,000 miles from everything she knew.” The story of one girl helped by international efforts to assist victims of conflict.
- The Enigmatic Earthquake Hotspot in America’s Heartland - ”The Central U.S. is at risk for major shaking. But scientists don’t know why — or when — the next big one will strike.” Turns out you don't need to be near the boundary of tectonic plates.
- Kepler's 1607 pioneering sunspot sketches solve solar mysteries 400 years later - Old but good: ”Using modern techniques, researchers have re-examined Johannes Kepler's half-forgotten sunspot drawings and revealed previously hidden information about the solar cycles before the grand solar minimum.”
- What Lies Beneath - Using dogs to sniff out invasive aquatic plants: ”With their astounding sense of smell and ability to find what humans can’t see, dogs are quickly becoming some of conservationists’ best friends.”
- Jigsaw Planet - Free online jigsaw puzzles! ”In the past few years we have constantly evolved Jigsaw Planet and we are currently focused on improving it to meet users' satisfaction. There are millions of free jigsaw puzzles created by a large community. You can create, play, share jigsaw puzzles and compete with other users.”
- Trapped in Myanmar’s cyber-scam factories and Under siege in Myanmar’s cyber-scam capital - The collapse of law and order created new opportunities for scammers, until civil war arrived at their doorstep: ”Victims recount life inside a scam factory in Laukkai before the city's fall brought the scheme crashing down.”
- ‘Your favourite rappers are only alive because of our sacrifices’: the secret life of rap bodyguards - Guarding rappers is a dangerous business: ”From 2Pac in the 90s to XXXTentacion and more in recent years, murder is frequent in the US rap scene. The men trying to protect the artists explain the physical and psychological toll.” Imagine if the Beatles and the Stones had carried on like this in the Sixties
- Generating sudokus for fun and no profit - Tom Nick develops an algorithm for generating sudokus and rating their subjective difficulty: ”I decided to create a complete Sudoku application as my grandma wanted to play some Sudokus on her computer, and I wasn't satisfied with the free offers available… I went down the rabbit hole of generating Sudokus of a specified ‘human perceived’ difficulty and accidentally created a quite thorough analysis of it.”
- Reverse engineering the 59-pound printer onboard the Space Shuttle - Ken Shirriff boldly goes to examine a space printer: ”This printer is known as the Space Shuttle Interim Teleprinter System. As the name "Interim" suggests, this printer was intended as a stop-gap measure, operating for a few flights until a better printer was operational. However, the teleprinter proved to be more reliable than its replacement, so it remained in use as a backup for over 50 flights, often printing thousands of lines per flight. This didn't come cheap: with a Shuttle flight costing $27,000 per pound, putting the 59-pound teleprinter in space cost over $1.5 million per flight.”
- Arnaldo Putzu and His Fabulous Hand-Painted Covers for Look-In Magazine And Movie Posters - ”You might not know the name Arnaldo Putzu (1927 – 2012) but chances are that if you grew up in the 1960s and 1970s you’ve seen his work on movie posters and magazine covers.” If you’re of a certain age, you’ll recognise his style immediately
Happy invoicing!
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