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Monday Links from Near-Lockdown vol. DLIV

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    Monday Links from Near-Lockdown vol. DLIV

    Still not officially back to normal yet here, but at least I was able to get a haircut before the heatwave struck
    • The Tragic Physics of the Deadly Explosion in Beirut - Rachel Lance explains the science behind explosions: ”As a biomedical engineer with a doctorate in the patterns of injury and trauma that follow an explosion, scraping together information from accidental blasts is part of my daily work. The more mundane explosions are rarely this size, but the same principles of physics and chemistry apply. Science, along with a few case studies from history, let me do some preliminary calculations to puzzle out this explosion, too.”

    • A Heist on Time and a Half: Inside The Most Corrupt Police Squad In The Nation - That nation being the USA, and the city the squad policed being Baltimore: ”He took territory, guns, and drugs, and police brass loved him for it. He was the kind of guy they’d all grown up watching in war movies and cop shows—a hard-charging hero who was willing to break some rules and cause some chaos to bring in the bad guys… When Jenkins rolled up Oreese Stevenson, a drug war veteran, the familiar battle between cops and dealers in Baltimore would be waged in new territory, for higher stakes than either imagined. Ultimately, it would lead to a number of federal indictments against police and an investigation into Baltimore Police Department corruption that is still ongoing.”

    • Insane after coronavirus? - Writer Patricia Lockwood's entertaining account of contracting Covid-19: ”The first real symptoms were not mine, but my cat’s. Miette, who kisses me on the lips each morning to see if I have become food yet, became deathly ill with a stomach virus two days after my return; my other cats soon contracted it as well. I know what you’re thinking, but please let my husband have this. It pleases him so much to believe that our cats might have had coronavirus ‘before those cats in Belgium’. If I one day win the Nobel, it could not confer a greater distinction.”

    • I Walked 600 Miles Across Japan for Pizza Toast - Craig Mod travels across Japan: ”On this trip I was following the old Nakasendō historic highway, and would go on to walk more than 1,000 kilometers (about 621 miles) in total… Before leaving, I concocted a plan to guide my days. I would eat as many versions of pizza toast, my old stalwart meal, as possible while attempting to track down its origins at the one Japanese establishment where such a thing can be reliably obtained: the traditional kissaten.”


    • The 1904 Olympic Marathon May Have Been the Strangest Ever - If you're missing the Olympics this year, here's a reminder of how it used to be: ”The 1904 marathon was less showstopper than sideshow, a freakish spectacle that seemed more in keeping with the carnival atmosphere of the fair than the reverential mood of the games. The outcome was so scandalous that the event was nearly abolished for good.”

    • The Dangerous Undersea Search for Missing Military Heroes - Brant de Boer joins a team of US Navy reservists who search for the remains of MIA American military personnel: ”We were searching for the remains of a World War II B-17 Flying Fortress bomber named Miss Lollipop, which had been shot down on its way back from a raid during the D-Day invasion in 1944. It had been damaged by German air-defense cannons near Dunkirk, but the pilot couldn’t reach England with the burning aircraft or make a safe water landing. Of the 10 American crew members onboard, three are believed to have bailed out before it crashed off the coast. Two survived. Several were found dead. The rest remain missing in action. Visual reports from coastal defense lookouts at the time placed the wreckage near our current location.”

    • Raspberry Pi won’t let your watched pot boil - A fun project to pass the time in what’s left of lockdown: ” Harrison McIntyre, decided to make the aphorism ‘a watched pot never boils’ into reality… In this project, the Raspberry Pi runs facial detection using a USB camera. If the Raspberry Pi finds a face, it deactivates the burner, and vice versa.”


    • New Theory Says We’ve Been Wrong About How Bubbles Pop - Meredith Fore on important bubble news: ”What do a volcanologist, a pulmonologist, and a glassmaker have in common? They all worry about bubbles. The physics of how bubbles form, behave and pop is crucial to understanding natural phenomena as well as many industrial processes. According to a new study appearing in the journal Science, scientists have been getting that physics wrong for at least a couple of decades.”

    • We Quit Our Jobs to Build a Cabin—Everything Went Wrong - ”And it was awesome.” Bryan Schatz and Patrick Hutchison attempt, with limited experience, to get back to nature.

    • Commemorating Silvertown: 100 years after London's largest explosion - Finishing as we started with photos of the effects of a huge explosion in London: ”At 6.52pm on Friday 19 January, 1917, a massive explosion tore through Brunner Mond & Co munitions factory in Silvertown, East London. Fifty tonnes of TNT exploded, in what remains London’s largest ever explosion. 900 local homes were flattened, and 60,000 buildings damaged throughout the city.”



    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    Thanks, Nick. For any fans of Postman's Park and the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, there is a plaque related to the Silvertown explosion.

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      #3
      Originally posted by Old Greg View Post
      Thanks, Nick. For any fans of Postman's Park and the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, there is a plaque related to the Silvertown explosion.

      Ah yes, Postman's Park the key to the plot of Closer.
      …Maybe we ain’t that young anymore

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