Monday Links from the Lockdown vol. DLXXVII

[NickFitz]

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co129947/swan-necked-retort-clear-glass-european-19th-ce-retorts

The page URL isn't the image URL…

[Scruff]

[NickFitz]

I thought this was familiar then remembered I read about it on Ars Technica:
Yukon gold miner unearths a mummified Ice Age wolf pup | Ars Technica

Had to quickly check, but I haven't already posted that version. Phew!

[ladymuck]

[*]57,000 year-old wolf puppy found frozen in Yukon permafrost - Only just noticed that this is also by Riley Black, making her a rare and maybe even unique double-linker: ”In the summer of 2016, a gold miner in Canada’s Yukon Territory found an unexpected treasure. While blasting a wall of permafrost with a water cannon to release whatever riches might be found inside, Neil Loveless saw something melting out of the ice. It wasn’t a precious mineral, but the oldest and most complete wolf mummy ever discovered.”

I thought this was familiar then remembered I read about it on Ars Technica:
Yukon gold miner unearths a mummified Ice Age wolf pup | Ars Technica

[ladymuck]

I ended up with:
Ore-furnace slag, showing shots of regulus, Haford Made: 1848

[Uncle Albert]

"Never Been Seen" could become quite addictive. I was shown this:

Ointment introducer, uterine(?), steel, 19th century

[NickFitz]

If you repost these to your ClientCo's online chat system, it'll keep them all so distracted they won't notice you're also spending the afternoon reading them instead of working

• The Deadliest Marksman’s Cold, Brave Stand - In the Winter War of 1939-40, Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä of Finland is said to have killed between 200 and 500 Russians: ”In addition to the camouflage, Häyhä hid his position from the Russians by pouring water over the snow where he rested the muzzle of his rifle. The snow would then freeze… When Häyhä fired his Pystykorva, there would be no puff of snow for the Russians to see. Häyhä also put snow in his mouth, keeping his breath cold enough to eradicate the condensation cloud that would otherwise appear.”
  
  
• In 774 AD, the Sun blasted Earth with the biggest storm in 10,000 years - ”A mix of high-energy light and hugely accelerated subatomic particles, when this wave impacted Earth it changed our atmospheric chemistry enough to be measured centuries later… It was first discovered by an analysis of tree rings, of all things.” A reminder that our technological society could come to abrupt end should the sun happen to sneeze in our direction
  
  
• A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon - HT to cojak for this interesting perspective on the Q conspiracy theories: ”When I saw QAnon, I knew exactly what it was and what it was doing. I had seen it before. I had almost built it before. It was gaming’s evil twin. A game that plays people… Here apophenia is the point of everything. There are no scripted plots. There are no puzzles to solve created by game designers. There are no solutions. QAnon grows on the wild misinterpretation of random data, presented in a suggestive fashion in a milieu designed to help the users come to the intended misunderstanding.”
  
  
• Trap-Feeding: a New Creative Feeding Method and Salish Sea Killer Whales Have a Surprising New Way of Hunting - You wait ages for a story about whales developing new ways of feeding, then two come along at once: ”Quickly the team recognized this was a new feeding strategy and when they observed the behaviour in more individuals, they realized that the whales were learning from one another.”
  
  
• Never Been Seen - This clever idea from the Science Museum uses server logs to identify pages in their vast online collection that have never been seen by anyone else: ”Almost a quarter of the remarkable objects we care for (24.9% or 105,715 objects to be exact) have a photograph online, with hundreds of new photographs added each month as we digitise our vast collection… Never Been Seen shows objects from the Science Museum Group Collection that have never been seen online before. Each time you refresh this webpage an object with zero views is shown, making you the very first person to see it.” I got "0.2 inch composition punches for Figures (typeface series number: F839, F842, F843 and F844)" from the Type Archive of the Monotype Corporation
  
  
  
  
  
• Earth’s Biodiversity Bursts Do Not Follow Expected Pattern - The traditional view of mass extinctions followed by explosive spread of new species doesn't always hold, as Riley Black explains: ”Some of the greatest evolutionary radiations of all time happened without a mass extinction to spark them, and not every disaster opened space for new life.”
  
  
• 57,000 year-old wolf puppy found frozen in Yukon permafrost - Only just noticed that this is also by Riley Black, making her a rare and maybe even unique double-linker: ”In the summer of 2016, a gold miner in Canada’s Yukon Territory found an unexpected treasure. While blasting a wall of permafrost with a water cannon to release whatever riches might be found inside, Neil Loveless saw something melting out of the ice. It wasn’t a precious mineral, but the oldest and most complete wolf mummy ever discovered.”
  
  
  
  
  
• Russian Navy Commander Stole Two 13-Ton Bronze Propellers From His Own Destroyer - Go big or go home: ”The Russian Navy says that a former commander of the now-decommissioned Sovremenny class destroyer Bespokoynyy conspired with others and stole the ship's two bronze propellers while it was in dry dock being converted into a floating museum. The alleged caper sounds like it was ripped straight from the plot of a comedic Hollywood heist movie, with the thieves reportedly swapping out the pair of screws, each weighing approximately 13 tons, for ones made out of a cheaper metal.”
  
  
• Randomness 101: LavaRand in Production and LavaRand in Production: The Nitty-Gritty Technical Details - ”As some of you may know, there's a wall of lava lamps in the lobby of our San Francisco office that we use for cryptography.” It might sound typically Californian, but it's a clever idea for getting truly random numbers
  
  
• Neil Burnell - ”Neil is a multi-award winning photographer from Devon in the South-West of England.” Many beautiful photos in this portfolio
  
  
  

Happy invoicing!