First week on new project: the meetings are fewer, but they seem to expect me to do a lot more during the gaps so you'll have to read this lot for me 
Happy invoicing!
- City on Fire - ”It was November 25, 1864, a clear, cool Friday just after Thanksgiving, and New York City was thick with crowds of people … The jovial mood shifted sharply as the sounds of alarms erupted in the streets of Manhattan.” How a Confederate spy cell set out to cause panic in New York.
- Mathematicians discover new class of shape seen throughout nature - ”‘Soft cells’ — shapes with rounded corners and pointed tips that fit together on a plane — feature in onions, molluscs and more.”
- The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology - What do bees and eels have in common? ”Invisibly to us, insects and other tiny creatures use static electricity to travel, avoid predators, collect pollen and more. New experiments explore how evolution may have influenced this phenomenon.”
- An undulating thrill - ”Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What happened?” How everybody's favourite soft drink ingredient earned a bad rep.
- Revolution in the air: how laughing gas changed the world - And while we're on the subject of mind bending chemicals: ”Since its discovery in the 18th century, nitrous oxide has gone from vaudeville gimmick to pioneering anaesthetic to modern party drug.”
- Voynich Manuscript scans reveal early decoding attempt - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this discovery, hidden on the Voynich Manuscript itself: ”Multispectral imaging has uncovered that the baffling symbols in the 15th-century document—dubbed the world’s most mysterious manuscript—were scrutinised by its owner, a Prague doctor.”
- What is this thing? I bought this in a German flea market. It’s quite heavy for its size and once the lid is screwed on you can’t fit anything in it because of the black rod on the lid. - HT to DoctorStrangelove again for this enquiry by a Redditor, who found out what it was and triggered a full scale evacuation of his apartment building in the process: TIFU Random Flee Market Item Turns out to be Radioactive
- Field work – the physics of sheep, from phase transitions to collective motion - Sheep as boids: ”Philip Ball delves into the dynamics of how flocks of sheep move together and the surprising physics behind the collective motion of animals.”
- How an Eccentric Doctor Began His Quest For Utopia in Weimar Berlin - Berlin was a strange place after the Great War: ”Abbott Kahler Tells a Story of Alternative Medicine and Emotional Manipulation on the Eve of Nazi Takeover.”
- Heavy Metal: West Midlands Industry In the Late 1970s - Photographs by Janine Wiedel: ”I remember one woman saying to me, ‘Couldn’t you have got him to wear a suit?’ In those days, you might be photographed at your wedding and that was about it. Women didn’t know what their men looked like at work because they’d never been inside the forge or down the pit.”
Happy invoicing!
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