Here’s a 1985 list of Western musical groups banned on Soviet radio.
The strange history of the “King-Pine,” a.k.a. the pineapple.
That time Thomas Jefferson sent a moose to Paris.
June 4 is the anniversary of the 1872 issue of U.S. patent for Vaseline.
What is li-fi? The new alternative to wi-fi transmits data through lamps, streetlights, and more. Sounds like a potential new surveillance problem to me — the article “Inside the Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers,” contained this:
The developers have discovered spying by internet-connected TVs (which collect data for ad targeting), lightbulbs (users have reported some LED bulbs mysteriously connecting with the manufacturer’s server every 2 seconds), and printers (including one that sent out 34 million queries in a day).
The Science Behind Florida’s Sinkhole Epidemic.
ICYMI, Friday’s links are here, and include Europe’s oldest tree, a selection of poorly translated English language T-shirts spotted In Asia, a history of the stoplight, using AI in the Vatican’s secret archives, and the anniversary of the evacuation of Dunkirk by a flotilla of small boats (the occasion of Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches” speech).