Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCXCI

[NickFitz]

If Elon Musk wants to know what I've been doing, the answer is having too many meetings Anyway, finally found time to post this lot

• This Is What Happens When You Unleash 500 Singles on an IRL Date - ”Done with endless swiping on dating apps, more people are looking for love through in-person events. I traveled to one in the Alps with a group of rowdy singles in search of love.” Seems like a long way to go
• The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner - ”A new proof reveals the answer to the decades-old ‘moving sofa’ problem. It highlights how even the simplest optimization problems can have counterintuitive answers.” They had to take my new recliner apart in the hall then reassemble it in the flat. Take that, mathematicians!
• Transfagarasan: From a Bloody History to One of the Best Highways in the World - HT to Paddy for this one about a cool road: ”Even if you visit Romania for a day-long vacation, you should try to include the Transfagarasan on your itinerary. The road has been called by many drivers one of the best mountain passes in Eastern Europe - it is challenging, sometimes unpredictable but always amazing.”
• The Soviet-Romanian Clash over History, Identity and Dominion - HT to Paddy again, who seems to be taking a great interest in Romania this week: ”The following document collection sheds new light on Moscow’s view of the variety and importance of Soviet-Romanian differences during 1977-1980… A central theme running throughout the documents is the often explicit conflict over Romania’s non-class approach to historical studies. Moscow insisted that Romania edit the historical record to remove any references to the fact that most of the territory then comprising the Moldavian SSR had once been part of Romania, that ‘Moldavians’ had once been recognized as Romanians – even by Soviet authorities, and that the ‘Moldavian’ and Romanian languages were one in the same.”
• SS United States - The once-grand liner was towed away last week to be sunk as an artificial reef, but Matthew Christopher had a rare opportunity to photograph it: ”In 2008 I was at a barbecue with some friends who were former passengers. I met their suggestions that I photograph the derelict ocean liner with the dejected reply that I would love to but doubted I would ever be able to manage permission… Months passed and I nearly forgot about the discussion when I received a call from a state representative's office, asking when I would like to set up an appointment to photograph the ship.”
  
  
• Sea slug questions - From the long-running Sea Slug Forum: ”This is a page for general questions about what Sea Slugs are, what they eat, where they live etc.”
• Work at the Mill: Or, the Story of Digital Equipment Corporation - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this history of DEC, which started as a project at MIT: ”The school set the terms that he could hire approximately zero people and that he could have approximately zero space. Olsen considered these constraints seriously, but he then realized that these terms weren’t as rigid as one might assume. While he could hire no one, he could have people volunteer to help him, and while he couldn’t have space, he realized that hallways weren’t exactly counted as ‘space.’ He and three others setup in the hall outside of his office and put a few walls around it.”
• Designing Adult Mods for The Sims 4 - ”For the past eight years, TURBODRIVER, a modder known for creating the popular adult mod WickedWhims for the simulation game The Sims 4, has enabled players to engage their Sims characters in explicit sexual relationships, along with other adult-themed gameplay features, supported by additional animations from other modders.” We’ve come a long way since Pong
• Richard Pearse and his remarkable hybrid plane - HT to DoctorStrangelove again for pointing me to the story of this New Zealand pioneer of aviation: ”Debate still rages in some circles as to whether Aotearoa New Zealand's pioneer aviator Richard Pearse beat the Wright brothers to be the first to fly. But whatever the truth of the matter, there is no denying the incredible ingenuity and foresight displayed in Pearse's inventions such as the Utility Plane in MOTAT's collection, soon to go on display.”
• Seafire pictorial - Chris Sams on the seagoing Spitfire variant: ”I’ve written a lot over the last month or so and thought I would share some pictures of the Fleet Air Arm’s Supermarine Seafire which I’ve gathered from the IWM photo archive and curated.”
  
  

Happy invoicing!

[WTFH]

I started to read the last article and couldn't help think that the Spitfire was based on the S6, so you could argue that the Spitfire was the land version of a seaplane.