Take a break from eating all the chocolates in your Advent Calendar and read this lot before you make yourself puke 
Happy invoicing!
- ‘I knew in my head we were dying’: the last voyage of the Scandies Rose - ”When a fishing boat left port in Alaska in December 2019 with an experienced crew, an icy storm was brewing. What happened to them shows why deep sea fishing is one of the most dangerous professions in the world.” Spare a thought for those in peril on the sea next time you’re in the chip shop
- Orgasms Trigger Colors in People with Sexual Synesthesia - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this one: ”Scientists are just beginning to document sexual synesthesia, a phenomenon that can bring consciousness-altering washes of color and fantastical scenes at the moment of orgasm.” SciAm now only seems to allow free access to one article a month; the good Doctor sent me the link a couple of weeks ago, but I had to wait until the 1st to see it! If you’ve already used up your one view for December, you’ll have to come back next year
- Particle Physicists Detect ‘Magic’ at the Large Hadron Collider - ”The supercollider is now being used to explore quantum phenomena, including a ‘magic’ form of quantum entanglement.” Maybe they’re about to find the alternative universe that’ll swallow up our reality that we were promised when they first turned it on
- Secret behind Temple of Venus's resilient construction uncovered - ”The material used to build the Temple of Venus in Naples has remarkably endured even as Earth's surface around it sank from volcanic activity, and researchers were curious to know how… The results showed that the engineers were quite knowledgeable about the geology beneath their structures and deliberately chose materials that could help withstand the land's geological activity.” More details in the paper Innovative Roman Building: Geomaterials, Construction Technology and Architecture of the Roman Temple of Venus (Phlegraean Fields, Italy)
- Saskatoon police identify century-old remains of 'woman in the well' found in 2006 - ”The remains of an unknown female were discovered in a well shaft in Saskatoon's Sutherland neighbourhood in 2006. Now, almost 20 years later, she has been identified as Alice Spence (nee Burke), a woman of Irish ancestry who was about 35 years old at the time of her death.” Genealogists have been able to track down her direct descendants.
- What Lies Beneath the Gravestone of a Fictional It Girl? - The strange business of the grave of a character in a novel : ”In the historic Trinity Churchyard in lower Manhattan, just off Wall Street, lies the grave of a woman who never existed. But two centuries ago, any American in the habit of reading novels would have known the name engraved on the slab: Charlotte Temple.”
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Learning from Stoppard - Tom Stoppard worked, often uncredited or under a pen name, on many of your favourite films of the last forty years or so. Here, Mike Fitzgerald looks at the huge improvements he made to an Indiana Jones film: ”Whole sections of the Boam draft were reimagined, major set pieces were added, and the pacing and tone were markedly transformed… There was the uncredited script polish by Barry Watson – you know, the Barry Watson? Never heard of him? Perhaps if we peek under his pseudonym… ah, yes: Sir Tom Stoppard.” (The link at the end to his more detailed analysis is sadly defunct, and not even the Wayback Machine has it, probably because Wix used too much JavaScript and not enough HTML.)
- The hidden chemical attack that forced the Northern line’s extraordinary repair - A fascinating story from the London Underground: ”Thirty years ago, an entire section of the Northern line had to be replaced because it was under attack from acid, and all the work was done without the public ever noticing. Even today, it’s a little-known feat of very clever engineering that was needed to fix a problem that had been set in motion some 50 million years ago.”
- The Unexpected Joys Of Hacking An Old Kindle - ”I noticed a forlorn Kindle that had a piece of paper taped to it. The hand-written note explained that the device was in shambles — not only was its e-ink display visibly broken, but the reader was stuck in some kind of endless boot loop… Truth is, the last thing I needed was another Kindle. My family has already managed to build up a collection of the things. But taking a broken one apart and attempting to figure out what was wrong with it did seem like it would be kind of fun.” Maybe wait until you’ve got a new one for Christmas before following in Tom Nardi’s footsteps
- 漂流乳業 - 配達所に帰れなかった、昭和の牛乳瓶とその周辺 - Or ”Drifting Dairy - Showa-era milk bottles and their surroundings that could not return to their delivery point” if Google Translate is to be believed: the website of a Japanese person who collects milk bottles. Apparently apple milk was popular in the 1930s to 1940s, which explains this bottle bearing images of a cow and an apple, from an Osaka dairy
Happy invoicing!
