Monday Links from the Bench vol. DV

[OwlHoot]

The Black Hole conundrum doesn't seem all that baffling, because obviously two smaller black holes each within the allowed size range could have met and merged.

[PhiltheGreek]

[*]Despots Aloft - Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin take to the skies, including the time Mussolini was allowed to pilot Hitler’s plane: ”The SS must have thought of it as an attempt to murder the Führer. Not knowing what to do, they stared blankly at Himmler, who kept silent. When the time came to land, Hitler’s pilot…told the Duce landing was not such a good idea. Mussolini turned and saw the convulsed faces of the passengers, who having so far avoided death at the hands of the Soviets did not want to die because of an Italian, however famous he may have been.”

Excellent, saved for later.



[*]Pharmaceutical Advertising - Nice archive from the Museum of Design Zurich; use the Advanced Search to explore other categories from their collection. This graphic from c. 1950 is for an antirheumatic and analgesic.

[/LIST]

Why did they think an illustration of NLyUK at work would help sell analgesic?

[NickFitz]

Starting to tend towards the autumnal outside now. You remember outside don't you? Before the Internet? No need to bother with it now

• Welcome to Palmerston Island, Population 35 - ”When our 38-foot sloop approached Palmerston at dawn one September morning, more than 200 miles from the nearest speck of land, we’d been staring down squalls on the South Pacific for five days and nights. We hadn’t seen a soul since departing from Bora Bora 800 miles ago, but we knew we were close when we noticed the phrase ‘Kiss My Arse Rock’ on the chart plotter.” Alison Van Houten visits a tiny community in the Cook Islands.
  
  
• Image from Trump tweet identified as imagery by USA 224, a classified KH-11 ENHANCED CRYSTAL satellite - Analysis of a photo tweeted by the Idiot in Chief last week reveals details of the USA’s spy satellite capabilities: ”These are high resolution optical satellites that resemble the Hubble Space Telescope, but look down to Earth instead to the heavens. It is known that the optics of these satellites are 2.4-meter diameter mirrors. Theoretically, from the perigee of their orbits this would yield a resolution of just under 10 cm.”
  
  
• Possible Detection of a Black Hole So Big It ‘Should Not Exist’ - ”Black hole physicists have been excitedly discussing reports that the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors recently picked up the signal of an unexpectedly enormous black hole, one with a mass that was thought to be physically impossible.”
  
  
• Odd Traffic Signs - The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Centre for Urban Transportation Studies collects pictures of traffic signs from around the world: ”They may be understood by people who live there, but to outsiders they are confusing or just ‘odd’. Here is a collection of some.” This one suggests China could give Swindon a run for its money:
  
  
  
  
  
• Unix at 50: How the OS that powered smartphones started from failure - ”Unix, the operating system that in one derivative or another powers nearly all smartphones sold worldwide, was born 50 years ago from the failure of an ambitious project that involved titans like Bell Labs, GE, and MIT. Largely the brainchild of a few programmers at Bell Labs, the unlikely story of Unix begins with a meeting on the top floor of an otherwise unremarkable annex at the sprawling Bell Labs complex in Murray Hill, New Jersey.” And now your phone runs it, as do loads of other things you own
  
  
• Despots Aloft - Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin take to the skies, including the time Mussolini was allowed to pilot Hitler’s plane: ”The SS must have thought of it as an attempt to murder the Führer. Not knowing what to do, they stared blankly at Himmler, who kept silent. When the time came to land, Hitler’s pilot…told the Duce landing was not such a good idea. Mussolini turned and saw the convulsed faces of the passengers, who having so far avoided death at the hands of the Soviets did not want to die because of an Italian, however famous he may have been.”
  
  
• Red rock tones - The sounds of natural stone arches in the Utah desert, sped up many times so you can hear them. From the “about” page: ”Rock arches are relatively simple mechanical structures with measurable resonant frequencies and mode shapes… We measure resonant frequencies from records of ambient motion using ultra-sensitive broadband seismometers.”
  
  
  
  
  
• YouTube Decade - ”Watch the biggest YouTube videos posted on this day ten years ago.” This project from Bennett Feely does just that: show the most-viewed videos from exactly ten yers ago.
  
  
• Building ages in the Netherlands - Beautiful interactive 3D map: ”All 10 million or so buildings in the Netherlands. Building heights and date of construction from 3D BAG (Basisregistratie Adressen en Gebouwen) data.”
  
  
• Pharmaceutical Advertising - Nice archive from the Museum of Design Zurich; use the Advanced Search to explore other categories from their collection. This graphic from c. 1950 is for an antirheumatic and analgesic.
  
  
  

Happy invoicing!