Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCLXXII

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Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCLXXII

Some things to read while you wait for the comet to appear after sunset, clouds willing

The Noblest of Things - ”I told my wife today, while straining the last of the four gallons of honey they left behind, that someday, maybe next spring, we should put more bees in those boxes down by the road. But they would not be the same bees I came to know over the last year. They were our first hive.” David Fowler on the highs and lows of beekeeping
Even a Single Bacterial Cell Can Sense the Seasons Changing - Winter draws on: ”Though they live only a few hours before dividing, bacteria can anticipate the approach of cold weather and prepare for it. The discovery suggests that seasonal tracking is fundamental to life.”
Robber flies track their beetle prey using tiny microbursts of movement - ”Despite their relatively crude vision, the flies I was looking for are far more adept than I am at picking out the insects they’re targeting. Somehow they’re able to zero in on their prey of choice: beetles.”
What Secrets Lurk Inside Elephant Trunk Wrinkles? Turns Out, A Whole Bunch - Turns out there's more to trunks than spraying water around: ”An elephant’s trunk, probably the most iconic and versatile piece of its anatomy, has a lot to tell us about its owner. You can, it turns out, estimate the animal’s age from its trunk; you can get a pretty good idea of the specific species; you can even figure out how the individual elephant in question prefers to move.”
The Great Bedrock Clog Heist - ”How a small outdoor footwear company lost 5,000 pairs of shoes and found itself entangled in an international crime saga.” There's gold in them thar shoes
“Every time we arrived back in the early hours in our van, we’d be stopped by the police…In those days, anyone with long hair was a drug addict”: Hawkwind’s bid to spread the counterculture with In Search Of Space (if that’s the album’s actual name) - The story of Hawkwind's second album: ”1971 album In Search Of Space established Hawkwind as masters of the space rock universe, but their mission to spread the counterculture to every corner of Britain was fraught with bad vibes and danger. In 2022 the Hawkship’s crew told Prog the story – and explained the mystery of the record’s actual title.”
Set Blueprint Archive - Everything you need to create your Star Trek fan art: ”This archive aims to preserve and make available Star Trek references, such as Set Blueprints, Concet Art, LCARS, ship models etc… Our main focus is on the blueprints used to create the various sets of Star Trek shows and movies.”
SmartBay Observatory - If you've ever wondered what's going on under the waters of Galway Bay right now, this is for you. ”The SmartBay Observatory in Galway Bay is an important contribution by Ireland to the growing global network of real-time data capture systems deployed within the ocean… The observatory was installed on the seafloor 1.5km off the coast of Spiddal. The observatory uses cameras, probes and sensors to permit continuous and remote live underwater monitoring.” There are quite often seals appearing on the live video stream
The Disappearance of an Internet Domain - Handing over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius has profound implications for a lot of domain names: ”Whether it’s Github.io, gaming site itch.io, or even Google I/O (which arguably kicked off the trend in 2008), .io has been a constant presence in the tech lexicon… What’s not often acknowledged is that it’s more than a quippy domain. It’s a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) related to a nation—meaning it involves politics far beyond the digital world.”
Street Scenes from the East End, 1950-1980 - ”Bandele ‘Tex’ Ajetunmobi was a self-taught photographer who stowed away on a boat to Britain from Lagos, Nigeria in 1947. He chose to leave Lagos as he found himself an outcast on account of the disability he developed from having polio as a child. After settling in East London, he began recording the daily lives of his friends and acquaintances, particularly on the streets and in the pubs, shops and clubs around Whitechapel, Stepney and Mile End. He continued to document the area for almost half a century, focusing on immigrant communities and the multi-racial nature of the area.” There's a lot of classic looks overdue for a revival in this gallery