Monday Links from the Bench vol. CDL

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Monday Links from the Bench vol. CDL

Nice and grey here today. Not that it matters what it's like outside when the Internet is filled with innumerable delights

Inside the Very Big, Very Controversial Business of Dog Cloning - "Barbra Streisand is not alone. At a South Korean laboratory, a once-disgraced doctor is replicating hundreds of deceased pets for the rich and famous. It’s made for more than a few questions of bioethics." If only there were some easy, natural method for rich people to get more dogs
Scroll Back: The Theory and Practice of Cameras in Side-Scrollers - An exceptionally thorough appraisal of the various techniques for tracking the point of interest in sideways-scrolling games: "I decided to start a journey through the history of 2D gaming, documenting their challenges, approaches and how the evolution of their solutions. Also, since there’s a lack of proper terminology for the many different solutions, I started gathering and categorizing them into groups, providing my own glossary… So let’s start our journey back to the 1980s, when designers were inventing completely new design schemes while overcoming technical limitations that are hard to imagine 30 years later." (Having been a 1980s games programmer, I can confirm that sideways scrolling was usually a pig to get working due to hardware limitations.)
Star-Swallowing Black Holes Reveal Secrets in Exotic Light Shows - How to spot black things in infinite darkness: "Black holes occasionally reveal themselves when passing stars get ripped apart by their gravity. These tidal disruption events have created a new way for astronomers to map the hidden cosmos."
Ancient Androids: Even Before Electricity, Robots Freaked People Out - "The term “robot” was coined in the 1920s, so it’s tempting to think of the robot as a relatively recent phenomenon, less than 100 years old. After all, how could we bring metal men to life before we could harness electricity and program computers? But the truth is, robots are thousands of years old." An interesting look at automata through the ages and around the world. This jacquemart is in Leuven, Belgium.
Killers that sux - "If you’ve been injected with succinylcholine (also known as suxamethonium chloride or simple ‘sux’) you’re most likely in a hospital, undergoing intubation with accompanying respiratory support… If you’re hit with sux without sedation, you’ll spend those minutes before death in a state of waking terror, realizing there is nothing you can do. It is a horrible way to die. For a time, it was a clever way to kill someone." A number of almost undetectable murders were committed using a paralysing drug
The Scandalous Decision To Pickle Admiral Horatio Nelson In Brandy - "In the middle of the Napoleonic War, Britain’s most famous naval hero is struck by a fatal musket ball at the very moment of his greatest strategic triumph. Rather than bury his body at sea, a quick-thinking Irish surgeon preserves it in a cask of brandy lashed to the deck of the ship. A hurricane is on the horizon and the mast has been shot off; there is no way to hang the sails that would get ship (and body) to England quickly."
Meet Sphinx: The 30-Year-Old Soviet Smart Home Concept - A cool home computing hub from the last days of the Soviet state: "It was envisioned to be a sleek and highly flexible home automation complex, with the ultimate goal of replacing all kinds of “boxes” in the home environment (tape recorders, television sets, watches, phones), and plans to include advanced features such as a home control system, information services and even medical diagnostics."
Strong whistler mode waves observed in the vicinity of Jupiter’s moons - "Understanding of wave environments is critical for the understanding of how particles are accelerated and lost in space. This study shows that in the vicinity of Europa and Ganymede, that respectively have induced and internal magnetic fields, chorus wave power is significantly increased." If I'm understanding this paper from Nature correctly, they've found the Clangers TLDR version: Europa Is Whistling. Finding The Cause May Solve A Magnetic Mystery
The khipu code: the knotty mystery of the Inkas’ 3D records - "The Inka Empire (1400-1532 CE) is one of few ancient civilisations that speaks to us in multiple dimensions. Instead of words or pictograms, the Inkas used khipus – knotted string devices – to communicate extraordinarily complex mathematical and narrative information. But, after more than a century of study, we remain unable to fully crack the code of the khipus."
Modernism in Metroland: Cinemas - Lots of nice old cinemas around London. This one in Burnt Oak became London's first bingo hall.