Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCLIX

[DoctorStrangelove]

Two stories inspired by the Chief Autist. The entire world wishes he'd feck off to Mars & leave us alone.

Or maybe we can introduce him to Jack from Willerby. .

[NickFitz]

This seems like as good a time as any to point out that the US Secret Service don't like having their name abbreviated to "the SS"

• The Dog and the Dinosaur - ”The epic true story of a war hero, his rescued dog, and their improbable quest to find a living brontosaurus in the Congo.” A strange tale from just after the Great War. Paul Brown spent over a year researching this, managing in the process to track down the surviving descendants of Captain Leicester Stevens
• What Could Explain the Gallium Anomaly? - ”Physicists have ruled out a mundane explanation for the strange findings of an old Soviet experiment, leaving open the possibility that the results point to a new fundamental particle.” Always with the new particles
• Haunting the Human Genome Project: A Question of Consent - ”One person’s DNA became the centerpiece of a genetic sequence used by biologists the world over. Did he agree to that?” A deep dive into the history of the project that is a cornerstone of genetic research.
• How Researchers Cracked an 11-Year-Old Password to a $3 Million Crypto Wallet - ”Thanks to a flaw in a decade-old version of the RoboForm password manager and a bit of luck, researchers were able to unearth the password to a crypto wallet containing a fortune.” Which came as quite a relief to the person who owned it
• I drove a Cybertruck around SF because I am a smart, cool alpha male - Drew Magary tries out the truck in its natural environment: ”I got to drive a Tesla Cybertruck for a day this spring. You jealous? You should be, because Elon Musk’s Boy Scout project is the kind of virile, powerful spacetruck that should be owned and driven only by our largest, wealthiest, whitest men… I am one such man. That’s why SFGATE asked me, someone who knows precious little about how cars actually work, to test-drive a Cybertruck. I fit the customer profile for one to a T. I am tall. I am white. I am loud. I don’t really have many friends where I live. Most important, I desperately want people to think I’m cool.”
• Welcome to Willerby - ”We are a small village in the heartland of England. We're very old - there have been people here for thousands of years… It's usually quiet - but strange things happen here.” I don't know who's behind this intriguing project, a growing collection of short stories set in an English village.
• SpaceX Dropped Space Junk on My Neighbor’s Farm. Here’s What Happened Next - ”A Saskatchewan farmer’s near miss with potentially lethal debris falling from orbit highlights the skyrocketing risks and murky politics of space junk.” Interesting to see that SpaceX seems willing to breach international conventions in its desperation to avoid public embarrassment.
• Animals use physics? Let us count the ways - ”Cats twist and snakes slide, exploiting and negotiating physical laws. Scientists are figuring out how.” From slithering to ventilation, various ways in which animals apply science
• A Boston transit rider was frustrated by a late train. She asked the city to give them googly eyes - Is a late train less annoying if it looks at you? Apparently so: ”We embraced a fun opportunity to make people laugh after we heard from some public transit enthusiasts who suggested adding googly eyes to our trains.”
• Institute for Controlled Speleogenesis - ”Recently, I’ve been looking back at a collaborative project with John Becker of WROT Studio. The ‘Institute for Controlled Speleogenesis’ (2014) was a fictional design project we originally set in the vast limestone province of Australia’s Nullarbor Plain.” These strange menhirs would be created by dripping acid on rock.
  
  

Happy invoicing!