Featured Links - October 15, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

The moon over Frenchman's Bay

• Jim’s Toolbox — So many nifty tools in one collection. A simple utility that provides a front-end to many Windows' settings and features in one place Easier and faster to use than digging through the Windows 11 interface. 
• Mossad’s pager operation: Inside Israel’s penetration of Hezbollah (gift link). "New details emerge of Israel’s elaborate plan to sabotage Hezbollah  communications devices to kill or maim thousands of its operatives."
• Conceptual models of space colonization. From SFF author Charlie Stross: "And what I'm nibbling on is, to paraphrase Oliver Cromwell, the big question of what if all our models or paradigms for how to structure a colony effort are wrong?"
• The Wilderness Hidden in the Heart of Toronto (gift link). "A sprawling network of ravines threaded through Canada’s largest city offers urban explorers an oasis of birdsong, burbling creeks and whispering trees." The ravine system really is a natural wonder and extends out of Toronto; see the Rouge River system to the east which is a national urban park.
• One of the busiest emergency departments in Ontario also has some of the shortest wait times. "On a tour this week, Peter Voros, Humber River’s vice-president of clinical programs, showed off how the command centre and its staff keep patients flowing. One of the big-screen TVs displayed how long patients had been sitting in the ER’s “O-zone,” where patients wait if they are expected to be examined and sent home. Experienced nurses known as clinical expediters monitor the screens and intervene if a patient waits longer than the targeted time for their health complaint."
• Missing immune cells may explain why COVID-19 vaccine protection quickly wanes. "New insights on what stimulates long-lived antibody production could spur better vaccines."
• Amazon is filled with garbage ebooks. Here’s how they get made. "It’s partly AI, partly a get-rich-quick scheme, and entirely bad for confused consumers."
• COVID-19 raises the stakes for heart attacks, strokes, and even death long after infection, new study finds. "The study, involving nearly a quarter-million adults, found that those with any type of COVID-19 infection in 2020 had twice the risk of suffering a major cardiac event—a heart attack, stroke, or even death—in the three years after a diagnosis than those who weren’t infected. People whose infections were severe enough to warrant hospitalization faced nearly a four times greater risk of a major cardiac event or death than the uninfected group."
• 'It went horribly wrong': DNA analysis sheds light on lost Arctic expedition's grisly end. "By comparing DNA from the bones with a sample from a living relative, the new research revealed the skeletal remains belonged to James Fitzjames, captain of the HMS Erebus. The Royal Navy vessel and its sister ship, the HMS Terror, had been under the command of Sir John Franklin, who led the voyage to explore unnavigated areas of the Northwest Passage. The treacherous shortcut across the top of North America meanders through the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago."
• The politically incorrect guide to saving NASA’s floundering Artemis Program. "To get somewhere, Artemis must avoid going nowhere."