It's very annoying when I go to check an article I was going to include here and find they've suddenly faded it out after the first couple of paragraphs to insert an exhortation to "subscribe". It worked yesterday! 
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- 'Our souls are dead': how I survived a Chinese 're-education' camp for Uighurs - Uighur emigrant Gulbahar Haitiwaji's experience at the hands of the Chinese government: ”One of the officers shoved a photo under my nose. It made my blood boil. It was a face I knew as well as my own – those full cheeks, that slender nose. It was my daughter Gulhumar. She was posing in front of the Place du Trocadéro in Paris… ‘Your daughter’s a terrorist!’”
- Secret Ingredient Found to Power Supernovas - Simulations are revealing the mechanism behind supernovae: ”Rival research groups’ computer codes are now agreeing on how supernova shock waves evolve, while simulations have advanced so far that even the effects of Einstein’s notoriously intricate general relativity are being included… What they’re finding is that without turbulence, collapsing stars may never form supernovas at all.”
- Why cats are crazy for catnip - Your cat’s a junky: ”Exactly how catnip—and a substitute, known as silver vine—produces this feline high has long been a mystery. Now, a study suggests the key intoxicating chemicals in the plants activate cats’ opioid systems much like heroin and morphine do in people.”
- The Great Wikipedia Titty Scandal - A rogue administrator threw Wikipedia into a breast-related crisis: ”His fellow administrators couldn’t believe what they found. He hadn’t just created a handful of redirects, as the original report described; he’d quietly created thousands upon thousands of new redirects… He created redirects for ‘tittypumper,’ ‘tittypumpers,’ ‘tit pump,’ ‘pump titties,’ ‘pumping boobies’ and hundreds more for ‘breast pump.’ In fact, for seemingly every Wikipedia article related to breasts, he did something similar.” Edited to add: HT to OwlHoot for this one!
- The Oldest Film of a Solar Eclipse Has Been Restored and Released Online - ”In 1900, magician, astronomer and filmmaker Nevil Maskelyne used a special adapter to film the astronomical event in North Carolina.” The BFI restored his film, and here it is
- FAA Files Reveal a Surprising Threat to Airline Safety: the U.S. Military's GPS Tests - This seems highly irresponsible: ”Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) data for a few months in 2017 and 2018 detail hundreds of aircraft losing GPS reception in the vicinity of military tests. On a single day in March 2018, 21 aircraft reported GPS problems to air traffic controllers near Los Angeles. These included a medevac helicopter, several private planes, and a dozen commercial passenger jets.”
- How do you find when a supernova blew? Run the clock backwards. - More fun with supernovae: ”About 200,000 years ago, a massive star in a nearby companion galaxy to the Milky Way exploded. Blasting octillions of tons of debris outwards at high velocity, the explosion has been expanding into space ever since… the actual expansion is measurable, and by using a clever technique that runs the clock on it backwards, astronomers have determined when the light of the explosion first reached Earth: 1746 years ago, give or take 175.”
- Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus - ”This site features a curriculum developed around the television series, Halt and Catch Fire (2014-2017), a fictional narrative about people working in tech during the 1980s-1990s. The intent is for this website to be used by self-forming small groups that want to create a ‘watching club’ (like a book club) and discuss aspects of technology history that are featured in this series.” Ashley Blewer’s study guide includes links to relevant IETF RFCs, online emulators of contemporary computing technology, and more to help you get the most out of the show
- Examining a technology sample kit: IBM components from 1948 to 1986 - ”I recently received a vintage display box used by IBM to illustrate the progress of computer technology. This display case, created by IBM Germany in 1986 included technologies ranging from vacuum tubes and magnetic core memory to IBM's latest (at the time) memory chips and processor modules.” Ken Shirriff takes you through the history of hardware
- Type on Earth - ”This curated online archive is about sharing photos of letters you came across. It doesn’t matter if the letter designs are done in an amateurish or professional manner unless they are striking and surprisingly unique. And the picture itself? Well, it simply needs to be a good photograph.” I’d be curious to know how a famous London advertising agency’s name came to be crudely stencilled on this rusty Romanian barrier, photographed by Caroline Rismont
Happy invoicing!
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