Monday Links from the Lockdown vol. DLXXXVII

[DoctorStrangelove]

Gosh. Tim Hunkin is now taller than his hair.

[ladymuck]

• Cookie Consent Speedrun - How fast can you block the cookies? ”Since GDPR came into our lives, we've all had to struggle with obtaining our basic privacy rights. With each cookie banner we have all been honing our skills, learning to navigate ambiguous options and distrust obvious buttons… This game uses all the text and tricks of normal cookie consent pop-ups and banners, so don't blame me if it's too hard.”

29.78 seconds (on my second attempt)

[OwlHoot]

An Incredible Move: The Indiana Bell Telephone Building - A remarkable feat of engineering: [I]”The headquarters of Indiana Bell, a subsidiary of AT&T serving the US state of Indiana, was housed inside an 8-story, 11,000-ton building built in 1907. In 1929, the phone company decided they needed a larger building, but they couldn’t just demolish the old building because it was providing an essential service to the city… In the end it was decided that the old building will be moved to the back of the plot to make room for the new building.” ..

As far as I know, the first recorded person to move a whole large house on rollers was Thomas Cromwell, one of Henry VIII's sidekicks, in the 1530s. It appears he moved a neighbour's house over 20 feet further into the neighbour's garden, to enlarge Cromwell's house or garden (not sure which) :

2020-06-20 Austin Friars: Thomas Cromwell'c city powerhouse

Thanks to John Stow and his Survey of London, we are even treated to a snippet of controversy, which clearly raged around the building of those gardens. John Stow’s father was unfortunate enough to own property adjacent to the burgeoning Cromwell family home. Stow leaves us a record of what happened next:

.. My father had a garden there, and a house standing close to his south pale; this house they loosed from the ground, and bare upon rollers into my father’s garden twenty-two feet, ere my father heard thereof; no warning was given him, nor other answer, when he spake to the surveyors of that work, but that their master Sir Thomas commanded them so to do; no man durst go to argue the matter.’ ..

[NickFitz]

• The Audacious Tabloid Couple Who Scammed Their Way Into New York’s High Society - Long before fake heiress Anna Delvey, there was Andre Riela and Antoinette De Lila: ”As the massive ship docked, a scandalous family drama was about to unfold onshore… It’s unclear who the players by the port were, but it seems they were indeed players, there to act the part of a diplomat and his family distraught by the prodigal son’s return with his mature wife. They could have been actors, or even a real family — but not that of a diplomat, and their name was not Riela. Also not named Riela? Andre.”
• An Incredible Move: The Indiana Bell Telephone Building - A remarkable feat of engineering: ”The headquarters of Indiana Bell, a subsidiary of AT&T serving the US state of Indiana, was housed inside an 8-story, 11,000-ton building built in 1907. In 1929, the phone company decided they needed a larger building, but they couldn’t just demolish the old building because it was providing an essential service to the city… In the end it was decided that the old building will be moved to the back of the plot to make room for the new building.”
• Sprawling 5,000-year-old cemetery and fortress discovered in Poland - ”A gigantic, 5,000-year-old complex of long barrows and stone-lined tombs has been unearthed in Poland… Archaeologists began to excavate the rural site near the town of Dębiany, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northeast of Kraków, more than two years ago. They've now unearthed seven Neolithic tombs, as well as the remains of an early medieval fortress and a Bronze Age burial of two horses.”
• Papercraft Models - ”Construct the computer from your childhood or build an entire computer museum at home with these paper models, free to download and share. Print, Cut, Score, Fold and Glue.” Atari ST? BBC Micro? Now you can have the 1980s computer of your dreams, thanks to Rocky Bergen
  
  
• Inside The Extraterrestrial Tale Of The 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter - ”On August 21, 1955, the Kelly-Hopkinsville UFO incident terrified the people of western Kentucky and introduced the world to ‘little green men.’” An odd tale from Kentucky; originally the little green men were little silver men, but it seems journalists decided “green” sounded better
• A Blight on Soviet Science - ”Nikolai Vavilov dedicated his life to improving Soviet agriculture and eradicating famine, but his allegiance to science would ultimately lead to his downfall.”It seems that proving Stalin wrong could be bad for your health
• The Secret Life of Machines Remastered - Tim Hunkin has remastered his 1980s TV series ”Remastered and upscaled by Norman Margolus from a 1987 PAL tape made directly from the 16mm print, using machine learning software from Topaz labs. Commentary added in Feb 2021.” More on the series at his website, and you should also follow his new playlist, The Secret Life of Components, covering such things as hinges and switches
  
  
• The Dogs That Grew Wool and the People Who Love Them - A little-known aspect of the life of indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest: ”There was a time when the Indigenous women of the Pacific Northwest’s coastal regions paddled their canoes to small, rocky islands once a day or so to care for packs of small white-furred dogs… Once or twice a year, the women arrived as usual with a supply of food, but also brought mussel-shell knives. The dogs knew the routine: settle down and relax so that the women could cut away their white tresses, shearing the dogs as closely as shearers do sheep.”
• Cookie Consent Speedrun - How fast can you block the cookies? ”Since GDPR came into our lives, we've all had to struggle with obtaining our basic privacy rights. With each cookie banner we have all been honing our skills, learning to navigate ambiguous options and distrust obvious buttons… This game uses all the text and tricks of normal cookie consent pop-ups and banners, so don't blame me if it's too hard.”
• The London Airport Official Guide, 1956 - Nice retro guide to what we now call Heathrow: ”As well as the ‘official’ guides published by the airport themselves other publishers got in on the act and this is one of the once numerous booklets issued by Pitkin Pictorials. The series was founded by one Mr Pitkin in c. 1946 and published soft backed booklets about special occasions or places associated with British themes”
  
  

Happy invoicing!