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Monday Links from the Bench vol. CDLXXVIII

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    Monday Links from the Bench vol. CDLXXVIII

    Lovely for the time of year The Internet, that is; no idea what it's like out there in the real world…
    • “Your Money Is Safe in Art”: How the Times-Sotheby Index Transformed the Art Market - The modern conception of art as an investment originated with a PR collaboration between Sotheby’s and The Times, of which Robert Hughes said: ”The art market we have today did not pop up overnight… Perhaps it was the graphs that did it. They gave these tendentious little essays the trustworthy look of the Times financial page. They objectified the hitherto dicey idea of art investment. They made it seem hard-headed and realistic to own art.”

    • How Our Universe Could Emerge as a Hologram - Natalie Wolchover on advances in the mathematics of the Universe: ”In the last year, though, three physicists have made progress toward a hologram of de Sitter space. Like the AdS/CFT correspondence, theirs is also a toy model, but some of the principles of its construction may extend to more realistic space-time holograms.”

    • The Lab Discovering DNA in Old Books - Finally, a use for libraries: ”[Matthew Collins] had been trying to make sense of animal-bone fragments from archaeological digs, and he began to think about the advantages of studying animal skins, already cut into rectangles and arranged neatly on a shelf. Archaeologists consider themselves lucky to get a few dozen samples, and here were millions of skins just sitting there.”

    • The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, the Pre-Civil Rights Guide to Traveling Safely in the U.S. (1936-66) - Not sure why I didn’t get around to posting this link when I saved it three years ago, but apparently a new film on the subject has had some modest success, so let’s hop on the bandwagon: ”There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.”


    • Once hailed as unhackable, blockchains are now getting hacked - ”More and more security holes are appearing in cryptocurrency and smart contract platforms, and some are fundamental to the way they were built.” Who could have guessed that would happen?

    • The mythos and meaning behind Pokémon’s most famous glitch - ”The first Pokémon games for the Game Boy included 151 Pokémon (including the ultra-rare Mew, if your parents were long-suffering enough to drive you to one of the Nintendo promo events where it was distributed). But by following a seemingly random series of steps, players could encounter a 152nd Pokémon, MissingNo (Missing Number), which took the form of an L-shaped block of pixels.” Natasha Preskey on the mythology that has grown up around this and other glitches.

    • Euro Pop Smash! Crazy Vintage Album Covers from Yugoslavia - ”Yugoslav state-owned record labels such as Yugoton produced numerous pop and rock records during the period between 1947 and 1991, providing a fruitful discography which testifies to the former socialist country’s love for music.” Love for graphic design and photogenic musicians: not so much


    • No, 'Oumuamua is not an alien spaceship. It might be even weirder. - More info on the anomalous celestial body, from Phil Plait: ”Maybe 'Oumuamua's not flat. Maybe it's fluffy.”

    • Evidence for a new fundamental constant of the sun - ”After examining data gathered over a 10-year period, the team from Northumbria's Department of Mathematics, Physics and Electrical Engineering found that magnetic waves in the Sun's corona - its outermost layer of atmosphere - react to sound waves escaping from the inside of the Sun.”

    • Wieże Ciśnień - Galerie Polskie - Or, Water Towers - Polish Galleries. It’s been nearly seven years since I posted a link in a non-Monday-Links thread to the British Water Tower Appreciation Society, and now here’s a gallery of Polish ones This modern example at Radomsko is reminiscent of the larger one at the Ford (now Jaguar Land Rover) plant at Halewood, which fascinated me in my early childhood near there



    Happy invoicing!
    Last edited by NickFitz; 25 February 2019, 12:34.

    #2
    That Europop album cover looks like a Smashy and Nicey compilation
    "Being nice costs nothing and sometimes gets you extra bacon" - Pondlife.

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