TIL The Boston Public Library has set up free 24-hour WiFi pop-up zones in 14 outdoor locations across Boston as part of a greater investment in digital equity. https://www.boston.gov/bpl-outdoors

Klein acknowledged that many users had not understood his joke which, he said, was simply aimed at encouraging us "to be wary of arguments from people in positions of authority as well as the spontaneous eloquence of certain images". https://amp.rfi.fr/en/science-and-technology/20220804-french-scientist-uses-james-webb-telescope-sends-back-stunning-picture-of-a-spanish-sausage

How to send an email, 1980's style. Electronic message writing down the phone line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szdbKz5CyhA

"We’ve assembled the 50 greatest fictional deaths of all time—the most moving, most funny, most shocking, most influential scenes from books, movies, TV, theater, video games, and more." What an excellent list. https://slate.com/culture/2022/07/best-death-scenes-movies-tv-books-theater-songs.html

Most drivers have no idea what data is being transmitted from their vehicles, let alone who exactly is collecting, analyzing, and sharing that data, and with whom. https://themarkup.org/the-breakdown/2022/07/27/who-is-collecting-data-from-your-car

Modern application APIs are very busy and are the source of a lot of latency if not handled with performance in mind. Caching APIs ensures responses for the application are always real-time.

https://redis.com/blog/data-ingestion-speed-up-your-application/

Humans have more than 400 types of olfactory receptor. This affords us a tremendous amount of olfactory detail, and our nervous system needs to categorize all of that smell input. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01626-x

If we want a fuller appreciation of Ice Age people, we must also understand their children: how did they play, learn and stumble through the world? And what might this suggest, in turn, about the values held by our distant ancestors? https://psyche.co/ideas/the-art-of-ice-age-children-offers-a-tactile-sense-of-the-past

Pretty shirt alert! https://amzn.to/3Jwusgz

"We show that WFH industries account for more than all of the positive productivity growth during 2020-22 and discuss reasons why WFH activities may have been so productive." https://www.nber.org/papers/w30267

The pneumatic clock network was not a power distribution network but a time distribution network, which synchronized a large number public clocks by sending a pulse of air every minute. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2022/02/the-pneumatic-clocks-of-paris.html

The ‘World’s 50 Best Restaurants’ list is out. A restaurant in Copenhagen won the coveted first place. https://www.bonappetit.com/story/worlds-50-best-restaurants-2022-winners

38,052 acres of private timberlands in Montana have become part of the Lost Trail Conservation Area. The easement is a critical puzzle piece in the Lost Trail project, that will protect 100,000 acres of ecologically rich habitat, critical for grizzly bears and Canada lynx. https://flatheadbeacon.com/2022/07/14/38000-acres-of-former-weyco-land-protected-under-lost-trail-conservation-easement/

"Researchers say economic connectedness is a better predictor of a community’s upward mobility than any other characteristic studied yet." And the research was performed (respectfully!) using Facebook data. This is really interesting (and with spiffy dataviz).

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/01/upshot/rich-poor-friendships.html

In 1981, Xerox released the 8010 Information System, the first commercial computer to use the graphical desktop metaphor with folders and icons that we still use today. 40 years later, we take a look at why it was special.
https://www.howtogeek.com/769913/the-computer-folder-is-40-how-the-xerox-star-created-the-desktop/

Cities' magnetic fields can be clearly distinguished from each other thanks to their unique magnetic signatures.

Cue the hipster comments about Brooklyn and Berkeley. https://www.alphagalileo.org/en-gb/Item-Display/ItemId/223521

My kind of woman, to be honest. https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxnnqw/mexico-dick-tombstone