Muddy Knees
Sight-seeing on Flight Simulator.
Restoring a ratchet screwdriver from 1891.
Green Sand
There’s growing evidence that Covid-19 is airborne.
Serious brain disorders are developing in people with mild coronavirus symptoms.
Parenting in the Covid-19 economy.
Those “all over the place” feelings are symptoms of stress. Here’s what’s happening.
Thucydides in times of trouble.
When lies and incompetence collide.
A Caribbean beach could help us slow climate change.
The Madness
How the virus conquered America.
Brazil faces the worst-case scenario.
Europe’s post-lockdown rules. Telling detail: the UK has had by far the longest lockdown.
Britain has gone completely mad during lockdown.
More madness: We can’t fight covid and Brexit at the same time. But as of midnight last night, we’ll have to.
The UK government’s coronavirus testing statistics are missing most of the current new cases.
Our kids have turned 9 and 13 during lockdown and have been trying to keep up with schoolwork on Microsoft Teams day after day after day, and this short film about lockdown life by Canadian teenager Liv McNeil felt so true that it reduced me to tears.
Les poules rentrent à la maison pour se percher.
You can’t understand the world without learning about empire.
A letter to a granddaughter about Earth’s history.
Light Relief
Villanelle as muppets. David Tennant as thermos flasks.
Papercraft models of vintage PCs. I’m having a go at making the 128k Mac, the first I ever used.
Fermented Breakfast
More grouse recipes from Nat’s What I Reckon: Wham Bam Thank You Lamb, Chili Con Can’t Go Outside and Eggs-istential Crisis. Recipes do not involve actual grouse.
Cooking food on the Internet for fun and profit.
Duck eats yeast; man loses eye. It checks out.
Four Weeks
It’s almost a month since I last posted any coronavirus links here, so I should do something with the dozens I’ve accumulated before events overtake them.
Happy Anzac Day, You Legends
It’s the swearingest Aussie YouTube cooking channel that we need in these difficult times: Nat’s What I Reckon shows you how to make Quarantine Sauce, Carbo-Rona Sauce, Quarantine Spirit Risotto, End of Days Bolognese, Sin Bin Soup and the Crowd Goes Mild Curry (all NSFWFH if you have kids or other sensitive humans around). Made me intensely homesick, especially when he said to give the risotto “a good belt of white wine”. F&^% jar sauce!
Tension and Compression
A newly discovered enzyme recycles plastic bottles in hours.
The Polynesian navigator who helped James Cook reach Australia.
People from Oceania share their extinction stories.
The history of prohibition in the U.S. shows how Brexit will end.
How John Steinbeck used a diary to discipline his writing. Steinbeck on creative integrity and the art of changing your mind.
The celebrated phenomenon of teleportation.
Lego Tensegrity, as first demonstrated by Matthew Nolan.
A French pensioner was ejected from a fighter jet after accidentally grabbing the wrong handle.