It may be a little cooler, but that’s no reason to bother venturing outside rather than settling in a comfy chair to read this stuff 
Happy invoicing!
- Tunnel 13 - ”A botched train robbery in Oregon’s Siskiyou Mountains left four men dead, led to an international manhunt, and helped usher forensic science into the modern age.” A cunning plan won't help you if you leave your name at the scene of the crime
- How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really? - ”Plausible answers range from 17 to — in all seriousness — 995.5.” I thought science was supposed to explain the Universe, not make it sound ridiculous
- Blue Streak – Success, Failure and … Extraterrestrials? - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this look at the cancelled British rocket programme, plus a visit from an alien: ”First designed as a ballistic missile, then adapted to launch satellites, Blue Streak was Britain’s contribution to the Space Race. First launched in 1964 at the Woomera test site in South Australia, Blue Streak performed as planned for eleven successful launches… Blue Streak had a comparable success rate to the famous Saturn V rocket. Yet Blue Streak never became such a household name.”
- Are Crows Really Our Friends? - ”Many people form sustained personal connections with their local crows. Those who do often consider the attention of these charismatic corvids a privilege and a source of joy… What’s harder to determine, though, is whether the crows return the feeling.” I prefer the magpies round here; they manage to get along with everyone for the most part, while at least one of the crows is often a total dick
- Every Homo naledi we know of is female, and the implications are fascinating - ”In 2013, a team of anthropologists led by Lee Berger unearthed the remains of more than 20 small-bodied hominins (ancient relatives of humans), all 335,000 to 236,000 years old, from the Rising Star Cave System in South Africa… Now there’s a plot twist that may speak to how the remains got there: All of the hominins in Rising Star are female, at least according to the proteins in their dental enamel.” Were protohumans TERFs?
- They Moved From US to UK—Now They’re Struggling in ‘Unforgiving’ Climate - HT to DoctorStrangelove again for this piece about immigrants from the USA struggling with our recent weather: ”Americans are weak and don’t know real heat” said one
- Soviet fleet on the Thames (Part 1) and Capitalist hydrofoils strike back! (Part 2) - ”What do Russian hydrofoils, the Thames, the CIA, a secret city in the Soviet Union, and the Caspian Sea Monster have in common? Two mavericks on either side of the Iron Curtain, who made it come together. In London.” The history of various unusual methods of public transport on the Thames, from hovercraft to ekranoplans and just about everything else
- Antidepressants or Tolkien - ”Can you guess if the word is an antidepressants drug or a Tolkien's character?” A surprisingly tricky game - various drugs sound very much like residents of Middle Earth, and vice versa
- Examining circuit boards from the Space Shuttle's I/O Processor - Ken Shirriff's back on the space tech: ”The Space Shuttle's five general-purpose computers played a critical role in each flight: controlling the engines, monitoring thousands of sensors, displaying data to the astronauts, and navigating the Shuttle… I obtained two circuit cards from the I/O Processor, each a 9"×3" rectangle packed with tiny chips and other components.”
- Star Forts, Mines, and Other Maastricht Subterranea - Geoff Manaugh in the Netherlands: ”I went specifically to Maastricht, however, because it’s home to an astonishing number of subterranean sites, from 800-year-old limestone mines and 17th-century star fortifications to NATO defense bunkers. I basically checked into my hotel then disappeared underground for the rest of the visit.” These picture frames commemorate the use of one of the underground chambers by the Nazis to store Rembrandts and the like.
Happy invoicing!
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