Depending on how committed you are to only wasting billable time, you may need to leave these until tomorrow 
Happy invoicing!
- Martin Luther King Is Still On The Case! - Forty-seven years ago, Garry Wills travelled with striking garbage workers from Memphis to Atlanta for the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King. Republished in the new “Esquire Classics” series, ”Wills captures the rhetorical majesty of even unknown local black preachers who thrilled congregations in the sweet antiphony of call-and-response that gave the voices of the powerless a broader resonance.”
- Could Black Holes Destroy the Universe? - "Our false vacuum will eventually decay into the lower energy state that is the “true vacuum,” and when this decay occurs, it will release an enormous amount of energy and tear apart all the currently-bound-together particles of matter. On the list of events that deserve to be called End Of The World, “vacuum decay” comes in right after “big crunch,” closely followed by “gmail outage.”" HT to Alias for this one
- Controlling the barrels in Donkey Kong - Don Hodges establishes exactly how barrel control in Donkey Kong works, by the simple process of disassembling the original Z80 machine code: ”By analyzing the assembly language code we discover the mechanism that is used to determine whether or not a barrel will descend a ladder.”
- The Ringworm Irradiators - "By the 1950s, despite growing concerns about the long-term effects of x-ray exposure and the potential for malignancy, ringworm irradiation was so prevalent that it was considered the mainstream, state-of-the art treatment throughout the world." Rebecca Kreston on the wretched history of the treatment of a moderately unpleasant condition with methods that caused a still-unknown number of cancers.
- Searching for Hidden Treasures in New York’s Abandoned Places - More great photos of urban desolation. The weird formations in this shot are pigeon droppings:
- Inside an Abandoned Toy Shop: Part 1, Part 2 - ”There are some things in life you just can’t turn down, even if it involves a 300-mile round trip to North Wales on a miserable Tuesday in January. The chance to explore inside an old toy shop, abandoned five years ago with all its stock left behind like the Mary Celeste of retail is definitely one of them. I’m glad to say it lived up to all expectations.” Just to show that Wales can beat anything New York has to offer, Ian Duff photographs an Aladdin’s Cave.
- The Case of the Vanishing Blonde - "After a woman living in a hotel in Florida was raped, viciously beaten, and left for dead near the Everglades in 2005, the police investigation quickly went cold. But when the victim sued the Airport Regency, the hotel’s private detective, Ken Brennan, became obsessed with the case: how had the 21-year-old blonde disappeared from her room, unseen by security cameras? The author follows Brennan’s trail as the P.I. worked a chilling hunch that would lead him to other states, other crimes, and a man nobody else suspected."
- 11 questions you were too embarrassed to ask about the Fast & Furious movies - "I had always been a skeptic of the films' powers… Then I watched all seven of them in a week. I stand before you today not just a convert, but an evangelist. The Fast & Furious movies stand as one of the best film franchises America has going for it right now — and maybe even a gloriously dumb representation of everything good about America." There’s a new one out, apparently
- I used a 56K modem for a week and it was Hell on Earth - Andrew Spaulding goes back to the 1990s: ”When Hopes&Fears approached me about using a 56K modem for a period of time, I got all cyber-machismo and upped the ante from their suggested three days to a whole week. I felt like seven days would make me really feel the burn; would make me check my privilege. In actuality, this was possibly the most panic-attack inducing bulltulip decision I’ve ever made.”
- Laurel Canyon Daze | CSN, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Mama Cass, The Eagles - “When I first came out to L.A. [in 1968], my friend Joel Bernstein found an old book in a flea market that said, ‘Ask anyone in America where the craziest people live and they’ll tell you California. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people live and they’ll say Los Angeles. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where the craziest people live and they’ll tell you Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they’ll say Laurel Canyon. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they’ll say Lookout Mountain.’ So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain.” — Joni Mitchell. And Henry Diltz was a photographer, who captured those halcyon days of the late 60s and early 70s.
Happy invoicing!
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