Monday Links from the Bench vol. DCXXI

[DoctorStrangelove]

Further to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum thing, the MGT Sam Coupe was mentioned: I had an interview with them back in 1990 during Yet Another Sloughe of Desponde years.

Didn't get the job and MGT* went to the grave in 1992 or thereabouts without Ye Curse of Strangelove Jonah (other than the interview) having any effect.

*Miles Gordon Technology: run by one of those chaps who ventures to wear a baseball cap indoors.

I drove past the location of their unit on the Enterprise Zone the other day on one of my regular trips to B&Q.

[NickFitz]

It's cold outside. Not that I've been there, but it says it is on the Internet, so why not stay online where it's nice and warm instead

• The Notorious Mrs. Mossler - Intrigue and murder among America’s wealthy: ”Candace was beautiful. She lived in this great mansion. She gave away money to worthy causes. She had all these children she adored. She had everything she could possibly want. And then the police announced that she and her lover-boy nephew were cold-blooded killers. You could have knocked River Oaks over with a feather.”
• A New Theory for Systems That Defy Newton’s Third Law - ”In nonreciprocal systems, where Newton’s third law falls apart, ‘exceptional points’ are helping researchers understand phase transitions and possibly other phenomena.”
• Discovery of Turkish 11,400-year-old village challenges ideas of when and why humans first settled down - It seems humans may have settled down before taking up agriculture, rather than the other way around: ”Karahan Tepe, the first of a dozen prehistoric sites to be excavated by Turkish authorities in the south-eastern province of Sanliurfa near the Syrian border, includes homes within a vast ritualistic complex that demonstrates that hunter-gatherers built permanent settlements long before the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago.”
• The most dangerous woman in San Francisco - ”Four-year-old Kenneth was crying as he led his younger brother, William, down 97th Avenue in Oakland. William, too, was weeping. They couldn't have looked more lost if they'd tried… When Kenneth said they lived in Florida, one officer felt the hairs on the back of neck stand up. He grabbed the day's newspaper, its front page plastered with images of America's most wanted murderer. ‘Do you know who this lady is?’ the officer asked Kenneth. ‘Oh,’ the boy exclaimed. ‘That's grandma!’” The tale of thief, con woman and murderer Iva Kroeger.
• Mysteries of Ancient Egypt’s Sacred Baboons Revealed - ”Studies of living and mummified baboons hint at why ancient Egyptians revered these pesky primates and uncover the probable location of the fabled kingdom from which they imported the animals.” This chap was found in tomb KV51 in the Valley of the Kings.
  
  
• The Pirate Queen Who Avenged Her Husband’s Death on the High Seas - ”After the King of France beheaded a nobleman on questionable charges, his devastated widow transformed into ‘the Lioness of Brittany’ and spent the next decade exacting her revenge.” Good for her
• First powered flight - HT to WTFH for this one: ”If you happen to be passing through Chard, a small town in Somerset, England, you may be surprised to see signs welcoming you to the ‘birthplace of powered flight’… Kitty Hawk certainly deserves its place in aviation history, but so does Chard. In June 1848, inventor John Stringfellow achieved the seemingly impossible when his steam-powered aeroplane flew the length of a disused lace mill in the centre of town.”
• Elevator Wiki - ”Welcome to Elevatorpedia, the wiki about elevators and their related topics that anyone can edit.” If you aren’t interested in lifts, you will be once you’ve wasted half the afternoon going down this Internet rabbit hole
• Uncle Clive’s Greatest Hit: The ZX Spectrum - From the Raspberry Pi people, Ryan Lambie looks back at the glory days of the Speccie: ”For a generation that used it, the ZX Spectrum was the gateway into a whole new medium. At a time when computing was insanely expensive, it brought programming and video games within the reach of just about everyone.”
• Jill Bliss: Art Medleys - Lovely arrangements of fungi and other stuff by this artist living and working in the Salish Sea Islands: ”Anything used in my nature medleys is one or more of the following: in plentiful supply in the location where it was found (often in areas not commonly accessed by humans), a windfall casualty, trampled in or on the edges of an established deer or human trail… These medleys are left in place where created, to be enjoyed by anyone who happens upon them - human or otherwise. I do sometimes re-gather any personal items I wish to keep, such as crystals, rocks, feathers.” This is “Mushroom medley before sideways rain”
  
  

Happy invoicing!