The first few flakes of snow are floating about outside, but luckily it's holding off on the worst until tomorrow morning when I need to drive 70 miles to ClientCo 
Happy invoicing!
- The secret on the ocean floor - HT to Alias for this excellent BBC feature on the growing field of ocean mining: "As Kewa’s fingertips send the first commands, and the machine crunches over the ground outside, he admits to feeling a bit scared… The machine will soon be deployed not in the huge pits of an opencast mine on land but in the sunless depths a mile underwater on the ocean floor. If work starts as planned next year, Kewa will earn himself a place in history as the first person to break rock in the world’s first deep sea mine."
- Has Anyone Seen the President? - From the author of The Big Short, Liar's Poker et al.:"Michael Lewis goes to Washington in search of Trump and winds up watching the State of the Union with Steve Bannon."
- The Joy of Physics: Kitchen Mysteries - Stephen Skolnick considers the important business of ice cubes: "Scott from Chicago wants to know what's wrong with his ice trays, and physics is here to help… While 'I can only make ice properly about half the time' sounds like a self-deprecating joke about his cooking abilities, I've also encountered the same phenomenon of stubborn, shattery ice before, but never thought too much about it until now."
- A New Zealand City the Size of Berkeley, CA, Has Been Studying Aging for 45 Years. Here’s What They Discovered. - "The Dunedin Study, which began as a study of childhood development, has become one of humanity’s richest treasure troves of data on what makes us who we are."
- The Man Who Listens for Nuclear Tests Above the Arctic - "Svend Erik had not intended to spend the last 37-odd years of his life permanently in Qaanaaq, stewarding critical data through decades of changes in computing and communications technologies, but he had fallen in love." Bonus linky: Simone Bramante visited Svend Erik with astronaut Chris Hadfield, and took some photos.
- The great big Spotify scam: Did a Bulgarian playlister swindle their way to a fortune on streaming service? - Tim Ingham on an ingenious way of gaming the streaming music service: "The evidence we’ve gathered strongly suggests that one party sucked a vast amount of money – as much as $1 million-plus – out of the Spotify royalty pool, and away from legitimate artists and labels. And the best/worst part of all? They probably didn’t break any laws in the process."
- Daring To Dream: A Carpenter Tries To Build A Piano In Rwanda - Meanwhile, at the more salubrious end of the music industry: "It's Monday afternoon and Désiré Mulumeoderwa is alone in his workshop, an oasis of quiet and creativity from the parade of motorbikes and perpetual hustle outside on Kigali's streets… Mulumeoderwa is building an upright piano. It's a new undertaking for the carpenter of 20 years — and for Rwanda. The finished product would be the first Rwandan-made piano, a musical milestone for this landlocked East African country."
- The Homunculus Inside - "It is as if some cells, falling for an unfathomable hallucination, believed they still are at an embryonic stage: therefore they begin weaving new structures, abnormal growths called teratomas, which closely resemble the outcome of the first germ differentiations. These mad cells start producing hair, bones, teeth, nails, sometimes cerebral or tyroid matter, even whole eyes. Hystologically these tumors, benign in most cases, can appear solid, wrapped inside cystes, or both." WARNING: some - OK, all - of the photos in this article are unbelievably gross
- Under Victorian Microscopes, an Enchanted World - Olivia Campbell on the Victorians' fascination with the tiny creatures revealed by microscopes: "For a Victorian, being able to see what was once hidden implied that there was yet more about the natural world to be uncovered and discovered. When the world of fancy risked being entirely debunked by newly discovered rational-scientific explanations, people began ascribing fairy-like characteristics to microscopic creatures as a way to re-inject a sense of divine mystery into nature. In this way, fairies often acted as a replacement for God in popular science books: the wonders of fairyland substituted for the majesty of creation."
- The Earliest Known Printed Illustrations of the Greek Constellations - "In Europe, the earliest known printed illustrations of the Greek constellations appeared in Poeticon Astronomicon, a Latin text first published in 1482 that relays myths associated with the cosmos."
Happy invoicing!
