I’m off work this week, so you can expect the somewhat gloomier weather to continue for a bit longer 
Happy invoicing!
- Strays - ”A homeless man, a lost cat, and a 3600 mile journey.” Michael King rescued a lost cat, which travelled around the USA with him for nearly a year before he found out where it lived and took it home
- This is the world’s most advanced robotic servicing satellite—that we know about - ”A spacecraft fitted with two flexible robotic arms is on the way to geosynchronous orbit… The Mission Robotic Vehicle, owned and built by Northrop Grumman, rocketed into orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday. Three small propulsion pods, each functioning as standalone spacecraft, accompanied the MRV aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.” Like the RAC in space
- A cosmic first: separated sibling stars reunited by supernovae - ”We've never witnessed a system of binary stars both go supernova before. A once-hidden source of gamma rays just revealed the first one.” More details in the full paper: Shared cloud interactions unveil a candidate binary-system supernova pair with no known analogue
- Ingested asbestos in filtered beer, in addition to occupational exposure, as a causative factor in oesophageal adenocarcinoma - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this paper, which posits that an increase in oesophageal cancer could be due to the (former, I hope) use of asbestos to filter beer: ”The patient acknowledged that he was exposed to asbestos in his occupation as a publican (landlord/manager of a British public house (‘pub’) or bar). He explained that it was common practice to take the ‘slops’ (the beer that had splashed into a bucket below the hand pump used for serving draught beer in a typical British pub) at the end of the day, add a slurry of asbestos and then run them through a filter – he made a circular swishing gesture with his hand to show how this was done.”
- Inside Ukraine’s Kill Zone - ”It’s a new kind of war. In the ‘kill zone’ of Ukraine, surveillance and attack drones swarm the skies, hunting anything that moves.” A graphical exploration of the deadly conditions faced by both sides around the front lines in Ukraine
- The Scandal of the Stanford White Murder That Shook New York - Rich people behaving badly: ”Love, jealousy, and revenge collided at the turn of the century with the murder of Stanford White.”
- Tube Sound Quiz - Guess the London Underground Line - ”Each London Underground line has its own distinctive sound. Can you tell them apart?” I didn’t do very well, but I don’t live in London
- Department M - Cool interactive James Bond map thing: ”Department M catalogs real-world James Bond filming locations from Dr. No (1962) through No Time to Die (2021) — plus speculative reconnaissance on where Bond 26 might shoot next.”
- Fullerphone - HT to DoctorStrangelove again for this detailed look at a comms device that started in the trenches of WWI and continued in development through WWII: ”For many years I have been intrigued by the Fullerphone. Over the last 30 years I have gathered information of its history, operation and practical use. On this and next web pages I compiled some basic historical and technical information about this nowadays relatively unknown, but very remarkable DC Morse telegraph.”
- Greetings from the past: A look back at postcards serving as snapshots of history - ”How much can holiday missives from decades past tell us about the world? Volumes, says this postcard collector and author.” Tom Jackson, curator of the popular Postcard from the Past social media accounts, on the joy of postcards. This one was sent from Mallorca to Wakefield in 1968, with the message ”It’s four o’clock and you’ll all be working. Just think of me lying in bed groaning with a hangover and being serenaded by 3 concrete mixers and a crane. Luv Jill”
Happy invoicing!
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