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Monday Links from the Bench vol. DXXVII

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    Monday Links from the Bench vol. DXXVII

    Apparently it’s February already. Soon be Christmas
    • Safety Meeting - ”I work heavy construction in New Jersey… Between me and NYC there are countless smokestacks, highways that twist and double back on themselves, a dirty river with a tugboat chugging along, a zillion cars a minute zooming north or speeding south. I’m looking out at the armpit of America, and I am a character in a lousy Bruce Springsteen song.” Bud Smith writes about his life as a working man in America.

    • Blondie - Full Concert - 07/07/79 (Late Show) - You need something to pep you up a bit of a Monday, and what could be better than a full one-hour long 1979 gig by Blondie in New Jersey


    • Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak’s origins - ”Scientists are publicly sharing an ever-growing number of full sequences of [2019-nCoV] from patients… These viral genomes are being intensely studied to try to understand the origin of 2019-nCoV and how it fits on the family tree of related viruses found in bats and other species.” You can have a play with an interactive family tree of the virus at nextstrain.org

    • Space is the place for impossible molecules - O Level Chemistry doesn't apply in the Crab Nebula: ”Compounds with noble gases don’t form naturally on Earth. But in the interstellar medium, they are helping scientists probe the history of the universe.”

    • A Curious Herbal: Gorgeous Illustrations from Elizabeth Blackwell’s 18th-Century Encyclopedia of Medicinal Botany - ”Impoverished beyond imagination, with her husband in debtor’s prison and a young child to care for at home, Blackwell decided to enlist her early training in painting… in saving her family. After befriending the head curator Chelsea Physic Garden — a teaching facility for apprentice apothecaries established several decades earlier — she realized that there was a need for a handbook depicting and describing the garden’s new collection of mysterious plants from the New World.” This is Blackwell's plate of a pomegranate:


    • What the Earliest Toilets Say About How Human Civilization Has Evolved - ”About 10,000 years ago, in several corners of the globe, some people settled down and started farming. Villages sprung up and grew into densely populated cities. And that’s when poop became a problem.” The main advance since then has been taking a smartphone rather than a clay tablet with you to read.

    • Operation “Denver”: KGB and Stasi Disinformation regarding AIDS - Long before dodgy Facebook feeds, the intelligence agencies of Eastern Europe were disseminating conspiracy theories to gullible Westerners: ”One episode that has drawn particular attention, given its great success at the time, has been the KGB’s AIDS disinformation campaign, launched in the mid-1980’s. During the campaign, the KGB, assisted by the USSR’s Novosti Press Agency and the allied intelligence services of the Soviet bloc, sought to spread the thesis internationally that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was genetically engineered or otherwise concocted by the Pentagon as part of its alleged research in biological weapons at the U.S. Army’s Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.”

    • George III's Collection of Military Maps - A new digital archive from the Royal Collection Trust: ”George III's collection of military maps comprises some 3,000 maps, views and prints ranging from the disposition of Charles V's armies at Vienna in 1532 to the Battle of Waterloo (1815).” This is a plan of the citadel of Lille, besieged from 29 October to 8 December 1708 during the War of the Spanish Succession.


    • Game AI Pro - Three complete books on game AI with contributions from a plethora of developers, edited by Steve Rabin. ”All book chapters are free to download. Enjoy!”

    • Casual Behind the Scenes Photos From the 1967 Filming of Planet of the Apes - ”As the cast and crew brought Boulle’s vision of a futuristic ape society to life, photographer Dennis Stock, who had made his name taking pictures of James Dean and famous jazz musicians, captured the action behind the scenes and in casual street scenes. All of the photos here were taken on set in Malibu and in Hollywood in 1967, a document of what no one at the time could have known would become an over fifty-year ape saga that has outlived its first creators and may outlive us all.”



    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    New Jersey sounds like a lovely place to live.

    YouTube
    When the fun stops, STOP.

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by DoctorStrangelove View Post
      New Jersey sounds like a lovely place to live.

      YouTube
      These are the places you see in the title sequence of The Sopranos

      Comment


        #4
        YouTube

        When the fun stops, STOP.

        Comment


          #5
          Was meant to be in New Jersey this week but managed to talk them into letting me build their system remotely, have heard some 'good' stories about the place. Thanks for the links

          (Interestingly enough, the next system I'm building is in another mob related place, Las Vegas. )
          Brexit is having a wee in the middle of the room at a house party because nobody is talking to you, and then complaining about the smell.

          Comment

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