Back to work for me this week. Oh well, soon be Christmas 
Happy invoicing!
- 70 years ago, a Colorado man plotted to kill his mother. How he carried it out shocked the nation. - Talk about overkill: ”The bomb plot that brought down the United Mainliner over Weld Counry killed 44, showed planes could be targets and changed laws. Witnesses recall the scene as officials prepare to dedicate a memorial to victims on Nov. 1.”
- Experiment Reveals What Is Truly Burrowing Beneath Mars's Dunes Each Spring - ”Strange, sinuous gullies etched into the dunes of Mars are finally giving up their secrets.” Another attempt to prove that there are no rabbits on Mars
- The Diversity of Ring-Tailed Lemur Ears - Should you find yourself living among ring-tailed lemurs, this handy guide to telling them apart will help you avoid any social faux pas: ”Often, external cues help distinguish our residents, like radio collars and tail shaves. But some species exhibit a striking amount of individual difference, if you know what to look for!”
- The Tyranny of the Wagon Equation: Pre-Gunpowder Military Logistics and the Minimum Donkey Rate - ”This article is concerned with the physics of feeding a large mass of hungry human beings (an army) at some large distance from a food source (a base). Basically, food transport logistics before railroads.” A mathematical exploration of the problems involved in hauling supplies by donkey, and how they relate to space exploration.
- The Highland bothy that tells the story of an abandoned place and its people - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this interesting piece about an abandoned village: ”Amid the ruins of this Highland settlement by the sea, where a line of cottages crumbles and slowly disappears from view, there is one bothy that stands firm.” Should you fancy paying it a visit, the good Doctor also has just the link you need: Peanmeanach village and beach
- Wordspan - Yet another word game to distract you from all that important stuff you should be doing; basically Wordle but with extra constraints on the letters available in each position: ”< means the left letter comes before the right letter alphabetically, > means the left letter comes after the right letter alphabetically.”
- I Torment My Husband By EyeBombing All His Stuff - Handy relationship tips: ”Someone once told me that the key to any lasting marriage is honesty, which is maybe true for, like, the Pilgrims, or any other archaic religious group that doesn’t believe in the real secret to marriage: passive aggressiveness. Also spite. Having a shared interest or hobby helps, too.”
- The Sky Is Falling, The Web Is Dead - As "AI" brings another round of predictions of the demise of the WWW, consider the track record of those prognosticators: ”In looking for examples of people calling the Web dead, I learned that, apparently, you can say the Web is dying for 30 years and get away with it.”
- Solving the NYTimes Pips puzzle with a constraint solver - In what experts are calling "a turn-up for the books", Ken Shirriff turns his attention to software: ”The New York Times recently introduced a new daily puzzle called Pips. You place a set of dominoes on a grid, satisfying various conditions… I figured that solving Pips with a constraint solver would be a good way to learn more about these solvers.”
- 2025 Photomicrography Competition | Nikon Small World - The winners' gallery from Nikon's annual competition: ”Nikon Small World is the world’s preeminent photographic competition for images TAKEN THROUGH THE MICROSCOPE.” I like this 7th place entry from Stella Whittaker, showing "iPSC-derived sensory neurons labelled to show tubulin and actin"
Happy invoicing!
